Current and Potential Future Concerns
* Luck: Fun VS Frustration. Fire mages absolutely love Crit. However, getting crits equates to getting lucky. A little luck here and there is fun, it gets you excited when that Hot Streak pops up, and you love the high MoE returns from your constant crits. But there's an ominous balance between loving crit, and relying on crit so badly that it's what makes the tree not only functional - but fun to play. Well, Combat ratings have been substantially reduced at lvl 85. You just won't be critting that much anymore. This has several major repercussions for Fire as outlined below:
o Master of Elements: MoE is much less effective. Since you aren't critting very much, you won't be getting anywhere near as much mana return via MoE
o Hot Streak: Will become a much rarer occurance. Rare enough such that Critical Mass can start falling off your targets, unless you Scorch Refresh it.
o Fun Factor: Although "Fun" is subjective, many mages will agree that Hot Streak Pyroblasts are a hallmark fun element in the Fire tree. Given that Hot Streaks will be much rarer at 85, we'll need to be mindful whether the playstyle will become too boring in their relative rarity. Tier 3 Hot Streak was designed to help combat this, but whether it does enough remains to be seen.
o Combustion: Getting a strong Ignite (via Crits) is needed for an optimal Combustion. But with lower ratings, this is more difficult to pull off (Takes more time, requires more luck). Combustion has a 2 minute cooldown: But are you prepared to wait a considerable amount of time after that to actually use it, because you want to get a worthwhile Ignite up first? Do you consider that interesting or frustrating design? Having a big Ignite isn't "Icing on the cake" for Combustion, it's the whole damn cake!
* Living Bomb has several issues, outlined below:
o Refreshing LB on a target will remove the current LB without an explosion. If you clip your LB reapplication, even if by only by a split second, you lose the explosion completely. Very frustrating.
o Living Bomb Target Cap. LB was given a cap of 3 targets during Beta. This was due to how ridiculously OP Impact could be when used with an uncapped LB. However, the cap now causes frustration when Living Bomb interacts with Impact, as outlined in the next point. Simply increasing the Living Bomb cap to 4 or 5 would alleviate this from occuring in most realistic circumstances. This is because pulls with 4-5 mobs are common, but 6 and above aren't. Having the Cap set at three just seems a little too low, when 4-5 would make much more practical sense.
o Living Bomb + Impact Interaction. Awkward and very frustrating. If you have 4 mobs, with LB on one, using Impact will result in Living Bomb being spread to the other 3 targets - and Living Bomb will actually get removed completely from your primary target. This occurs whether you wanted it to happen or not. Furthermore, there is no explosion when it's removed.
* Ignite. Ignite has been plagued with bugs for a long time. That hasn't changed, but in Catalysm DOT's are more important than ever to the Fire tree. Even our new mastery is directly tied to them. Anything involving Ignite bugs is now a more pressing issue than ever, especially when some people report losing up to 50% of Ignite damage via buggy Ignites.
* Improved Scorch. Beta mages are confused: Is Scorch intended to be used frequently as part of our main rotation? Is Improved Scorch meant to be the counter for the reduced efficiency of Master of Elements? Should we be alternating between Fireball and Scorch to sustain our mana? If we are meant to be using an underpowered Improved Scorch (mana sustainable) often, will Fireball be balanced to be overpowered (but mana unsustainable) to even it up?
* Pyromaniac. Thematically, this is a great talent on paper which fits the Fire tree perfectly. However, many are worried about balancing concerns Pyromaniac may bring in future. Pyromaniac is excellent when you can get it up (3 targets present) and useless if you can't. Alternating between 10% haste being up or down depending on fight mechanics, is a huge pendulum to have swinging from a balance perspective.
* Mana Viability. There are all sorts of problems arising with Mana Viability at level 85. Fire really struggles to go the distance on longer fights, even with smart Gem/Evocation/Pot usage. To have our current (WOTLK) Mana pools, we'd need 180k mana on the Beta with premade gear. Obviously we don't have that, so where do we get all that extra needed mana from? It's not coming from Master of Elements (much less effective) or Empowered Fire (removed) anymore.
* Number of Fire AOE Talents. Fire has a fair amount of AOE orientated talents. Improved Flamestrike, Blastwave, Pyromaniac, Impact. There's concern AOE talents take up far too many points in the Fire tree, and serve only to restrict the choices you have for other talents such as Mana Efficiency or single target DPS. If AOE is getting pushed somewhat into a niche role in Cataclysm, why have so many talent points dedicated to it?
* Combustion: Combustion can deliver impressive damage over the 10 second duration, with proper planning, time and a little luck. Some mages are concerned because getting the essential Combustion DOT's up not only takes time (GCD's) but also a little luck (Ignite). Combustion isn't optimally used as an immediate burst cooldown. Some players love this aspect of a cooldown that requires smart use and planning, but others dislike it. Those players feel this is awkward design - and would prefer Combustion to be a more traditional burst cooldown.
Spec Survival Guide
The most important thing to realise when speccing Cataclysm fire: You need to make choices about what suits you. Your playstyle, personal preferences and the content you're currently doing ingame. There is no one perfect spec. Instead, there are options - and you'll need to decide which one fits you best. Start by asking yourself these four questions:
1 - Do you consider pushback protection essential or unnecessary?
2 - Do you consider all utility talents unnecessary?
3 - Are you prepared to sacrifice minor DPS to pickup compelling utility talents?
4 - Do you recognise and understand the indirect DPS increase utility talents can bring? (Eg: Increased Movement speed from Blink, Cauterize allowing you to ignore Spores on Festergut)
Once you know your answers for those questions, you can plan your Fire Spec much easier. Several example builds are below.
* Scenario 1: Pushback Protection and Maximum DPS Essential
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft This Level 85 build picks up Burning Soul and all DPS talents . Three free point remain for you to allocate. Only one point was placed into Improved Fire Blast to bring the range to 35 yards, making impact easier to use. Putting in the second point (to bring Impact range to 40 yards, in line with all other Fire Spells) can be considered optional. You could allocate your remaining 3 points to Cauterize, Improved Blink or Arcane Concentration. Some of those talents can be situational DPS increases, or just pure utility, depending on the encounter.
* Scenario 2: Pushback Protection unnecessary, Utility desired
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft. This Level 85 build skips full Burning Soul and instead picks up two utility talents: Cauterize and Molten Shields. Blazing Speed is skipped completely, but Molten Shields will still proc the Blazing Speed effect with your Mage Ward. You keep 2/2 Impact for maximum AOE power. You sacrifice 1% haste (via Netherwind Presence) for all the aforementioned talents. If you want utility and Pushback protection, you can easily modify the build to this: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft . This only sacrifices 1 point from Netherwind Presence and Improved Fire Blast to keep Cauterize and Burning Soul. Losing a point from Improved Fire Blast means nothing except you need to cast at 35 yards (instead of 40) to use Impact.
* Scenario 3: Improved Blink Desired
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft. This Level 85 build picks up Improved Blink for a minimal DPS loss. Why would you want improved Blink? Well not only is it tons of fun, but can situationally help you get out of the fire / to the new point much faster, so you can begin casting quicker - which in turn will directly will translate into a DPS increase. Improved Scorch is skipped, and a point skimmed from each of Piercing Ice/Impact.
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft is another option. This drops Cauterize completely and instead picks up full Burning Soul. Cauterize is a 'all or nothing' talent, and you either want 2 points in it or none at all.
* Scenario 4: Maximum AOE Power Needed
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft. This level 85 build picks up Shatter and Improved Cone of Cold for more AOE potential. This will allow you to Frost Nova and Cone of Cold Freeze targets, followed with Shatter via Flamestrike/Blastwave. You skip utility talents, Pushback Protection, skim a point from Netherwind Presence and pull a point from Improved Scorch. Whether this sort of AOE focused build will find much use in Cataclysm, remains to be seen.
* Lvl 80 Builds
To change any of the above builds to a Lvl 80 build you must drop 5 talent points from somewhere. You can:
- Drop Improved Scorch immediately. It's unnecessary for the WOTLK raiding model.
- Two points in Master of Elements might be unnecessary, given how short many encounters are now. This will depend on your guild, level of progression and what content you do.
- Reconsider which AOE orientated talents are actually needed for content you do. Many fights have no AOE or adds. In those situations: Pyromaniac, Improved Flamestrike, Blastwave and Impact might be unnecessary. If you do Heroic Lich King 25 for example, you might consider them all essential!
Be realistic! Subspec talents represent a relatively small DPS value per point, 1% Crit or Haste. Player skill is a much bigger factor in determining DPS for most players. You can easily drop a point or two from these talents, and don't need to feel guilty for doing so. That 1% loss is irrelevant, if Cauterize saves you from a certain death (and consequently doing 0 dps for the remainder of the fight). If you're the perfect player who never makes mistakes, and people responsible for keeping you alive never make mistakes either - then perhaps Cauterize has no value for you.
Specific Talents: Discussion
* T3 Hot Streak VS T4 Improved Hot Streak: How do they work? Credit to Maje and Shaewyn for the information below
- Hot Streak can proc off Fireball, Frostfire Bolt, Scorch, Pyroblast, or Fire Blast. Hot Streak does not proc off periodic crits (such as from Living Bomb).
- How does Tier 3 Hot Streak work? The non-mathy answer: It works by making sure Hot Streak isn't too rare at low levels of crit, and isn't too common at high levels of crit.
o T3 Hot Streak boosts your chance to get a Hot Streak when you have a low Crit rate. As your Crit rate increases (Via Gear upgrades, raid buffs etc) this chance is reduced, and eventually hits 0 when you reach a certain Crit rate.
o Although the T3 Hot Streak bonus scales down with increasing crit, the chance of a T4 Hot Streak scales upward with increasing crit. The two talents complement each other.
- For a more mathy answer, i'll quote the excellent work of Maje and Shaewyn who posted their findings in this thread here:
http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t104767-...2/#post1766032 . Their obvservations and conclusions were as follows:
* T3 Hot Streak gives no benefit above 47% Crit
* T3 and T4 cross over at about 34% crit chance. That is, below 34% crit, T3 is more valuable, above that point T4 is more valuable.
* Below 19% crit, T4 HS gives you less than 1% chance per cast for a HS proc, if you have T3 HS.
* Below 9% crit, T4 HS gives you less than 0.1% chance per cast for a HS proc, if you have T3 HS.
* Several diagrams explaining the above points were made by Shaewyn. Click the spoiler tag below to see them. For his full analysis and commentary, visit the link above.
Click Here ← Click Here
For Shaewyn's commentary and analysis regarding these diagrams, visit this link:
http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t104767-...2/#post1766032 This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 864x531.
This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 863x531.
* Cauterize
Don't be too quick to dismiss this talent! It might be much more powerful than you realise. The first use is the obvious one: Save you from Death. A one minute cooldown is very short for this type of effect, and hugely useful during difficult heroic and raid progression encounters. Don't confuse easy current content (where you rarely die) with difficult future Cataclysm Heroic content, where you likely can and will die often.
The other use of Cauterize is for DPS. You can use the talent aggressively for a surprisingly large DPS gain. Three examples of where this is possible are Algalon, Festergut and Sapphiron. All of these fights have 'Big Bomb' type mechanics which will instantly kill you, unless you perform various mechanics (Enter Black Holes on Algalon, get Spores on Festergut, LOS behind Tombs on Sapphiron). However you can use Cauterize to ignore all of these mechanics completely. On Festergut, there are 2 Pungent Blights, and you could Iceblock one and use Cauterize for the other. On Algalon, there are several Big Bangs and you can ignore them all and just let Cauterize save you while you continue to DPS. Even fights such as Sapphiron (Back in Naxx) you can ignore every Frost Bomb and let Cauterize handle your survival, and continue to happily DPS while everyone can't - because they must perform survival mechanics dictated by the encounter. On Kel'thuzad, don't bother moving from Void Fissures - let Cauterize handle it. You'll still want to use Mage Ward and/or a Healthstone to help survive afterwards, as Cauterize will take you to low levels of health as you burn.
Cauterize can be a situational talent. However when assessing whether it's something you should spend points in, make sure to consider the above. Only acknowledging the 'saves me if I die' aspect of the talent ignores the other, very powerful mechanic, which can let you aggressively ignore various boss mechanics for compelling DPS gains.
* Improved Scorch
The term 'free scorch' gets attention! But we need to put its practical use into perspective. Currently, we need more information regarding Fire's Mana in Cataclysm - and new Raid/Heroic encounters - to ascertain whether the talent is worth spending points in for a raiding build. If you cast only Scorch a few times a fight during periods of movement, but rarely outside of that, you probably won't need to invest 2 talent points to make those couple scorches free to cast.
Improved Scorch might sound fun, and the 'free Scorch' term gets you excited - but keep in mind it might ultimately not be worth the points. When Cataclysm is released, we'll have a better answer for this.
* Burning Soul: Pushback Protection
Should you take Burning Soul? The answer is, it depends. Burning Soul is a DPS talent for any encounter which will cause spell pushback. It can also be completely useless for encounters that don't. Burning Soul is always a nice talent to have, but whether it's essential is up for good debate. The value of the talent will be more readily apparent when we begin to see Cataclysm Raid Encounters, heroics - and can make a better call on exactly how often you'll experience spell pushback.
As a result of the above, you'll see various Fire Builds which either pick up or skip Burning Soul. Either can be considered optimal, because it will depend on the encounters they're being used for.
* Impact and Improved Fire Blast
Impact spreads DOTs with their current remaining duration. If you have 1 second left on your Ignite and Impact Fire Blast spread it, all affected targets will also get an ignite with just 1 second left.
Most Fire Spells in Cataclysm have a 40 yard base range, except Fire Blast, which is 30 yards
Impact relies on Fire Blast to spread DOTs
* You need to be mindful of what range you deem is acceptable for Impact usage. If you place 0/1/2 points in Improved Fire Blast, you'll need to be within 30/35/40 yards to take advantage of Impact. Both points in Improved Fire Blast are required if you wish to bring Impact use range in line with other Fire spells.
* You'll notice that many Cataclysm Fire builds will just place one point in Improved Fire Blast (35 yard range) - and deem the second point as optional.
* Combustion - How does it work?
The tooltip states, "Instantly deals X to Y Fire damage and creates a new periodic fire effect on the target, lasting 10 sec and dealing the same damage per time as all your existing periodic fire effects".
Combustion sums up the individual DPS of all your existing DOTs on a target, creates a new debuff with that value, and has the new debuff tick every second for a 10 second total duration. Remember that the wording in DOT tooltips, or what a DOT ticks for, is not necessarily its DPS value. If a DOT debuff says, "1500 damage every 3 seconds" or "5000 damage over 10 seconds" - they still both tick for 500 DPS. The DPS values is what Combustion combines when consolidating DOTs, to calculate the new consolidated DOT's value. For example, if you have:
- Ignite ticking for 500 dps
- Pyroblast ticking for 200 dps
- Living Bomb ticking for 300 dps
= Combustion would create a new DOT which ticks for 1000 dps over a 10 second period, for 10 000 total damage.
* Combustionhelper is a nifty little mod that makes it easier to manage your dots, and thus use Combustion optimally
* CombustionHelper - Addons - Curse
*
* Combustion can be spread via Impact
* Combustion consolidates DOT's from: Pyroblast, Ignite, Living Bomb, Glyphed Frostfire Bolt
* The damage-over-time portion of Flamestrike does not actually leave a debuff on affected targets, therefore it does not interact with Combustion. The upfront damage of Flamestrike however, can (as it can Crit and leave an ignite).
Glyphs
NYI
Primary Nuke: Fireball vs Frostfire Bolt
NYI
Cataclysm: Key Fire Changes
This section is intended to quickly and concisely sum up the main Cataclysm Fire changes:
- New Fire spell Flame Orb: Tooltip reads "Launches a Flame Orb forward from the Mage's position, dealing X Fire damage every second to the closest enemy target for 15 secs." The Flame Orb does not AOE as it travels, instead it attacks the closest target. At the end of its travel path, however, it can explode in an AOE via the Fire Power talent. This spell is more accurately described as a single target DPS cooldown which can provide a single AOE explosion upon expiry.)
- Fire Mastery: Flashburn - Increases the damage done by all your periodic fire damage effects by 20%. Each point of Mastery increases periodic damage done by an additional 2.5%.
- Fire Specialization is a perk mages get for being Fire. It increases the damage of your Fire spells by 25%.
- Spirit is useless for mages
- Molten Armor no longer scales with spirit. Selfish Crit bonus reduced to 3%.
- Mage Armor allows the Mage to regenerate 3% of maximum mana per 5 seconds
- The Hot Streak talent has been split into two talents: "Hot streak" and "Improved Hot Streak". For details on how "Hot Streak" scales with Crit chances, check out the above section which goes into further detail.
- Combustion was heavily reworked
- Impact and Improved Fire Blast talents allow Fire mages to spread DOTs
- Firestarter allows Scorch to be cast while moving
- Critical Mass was given a selfish benefit, in addition to providing the +5% crit debuff. Pyroblast can apply the crit debuff in addition to Scorch.
- Hot Streak (and Improved Hot Streak) can proc from Pyroblast
- Frostfire Bolt can be used as a primary nuke in the Fire tree, but you must use the FFB Glyph
- Frostfire Bolt only leaves a DOT if you're using "Glyph of Frostfire Bolt". The base spell has no DOT.
- Living Bomb can only be applied to 3 targets
- The explosion from Living Bomb can only hit 3 nearby targets
- Living Bomb can be refreshed before the timer expires, but doing so will not cause the current Living Bomb to explode
- Fireball Dot component removed
- Pyroblast has a 3.5 second cast time
- Blast Wave redesigned to be a targettable, range casted AOE. It no longer knocks back.
- Mage Ward now absorbs Fire, frost and Arcane damage.
- Flamestrike radius increased to match that of Blizzard
- Focus Magic and Torment the Weak are no longer available to Fire Mages.
Fire in Cataclysm
Quite frankly, it's hard not to be excited about the current incarnation of Fire. Feedback includes comments ranging from simply "Excellent" to "The Gold Standard of Cataclysm talent design". The spec now feels like a thematic powerhouse: Full of inspired, fun talents that complement each other well. For two reference videos of Beta Fire Mages demonstrating all the fun synergy and tools, follow these links: YouTube - Cataclysm Beta - Fire AoE Madness + Flame Orb! and YouTube - Fire Mages Cataclysm Build 12803
To start with, we can note that Fire now is heavily sporting a "Burn everything" theme, with use of DOT's and AOE heavily encouraged and rewarded. Many talents involve Dots and play off the concept of creating, spreading, consolidating or refreshing them. Spells and talents such as Living Bomb, DB, Blastwave, Improved Flamestrike, are encouraging you to burn everything in sight - and reap the rewards via Ignite, Flashburn, Pyromaniac and Master of Elements. If Blizzard intends Fire mages to recklessly unleash copious amounts of Fire magic onto foes, the talents do a great job of backing up this theme up. The "Flashburn" mastery also complements this theme well.
Three fire talents now work together beautifully to create Fires new regenerative rotation - which can be completely cast on the move. Free mana scorches (Improved Scorch) until Hot streak procs, then casting 0 mana Pyroblasts and reaping the rewards of Master of Elements - whilst taking advantage of Firestarter granting mobility. Three more talents also have great synergistic potential: Molten Shields, Cauterize and Blazing speed. Using Mage Ward to absorb Cauterize procs, will guarantee you a way to proc Blazing Speed at a time you certainly will want it. Everything just works together well, you can make a story about a dozen talents and their interactions in a couple lines:
Mage Ward is worth casting when Cauterize procs, which in turn will proc Molten Shields, and still allow for Firestarter scorches as you run away with Blazing Speed. Coupled with Improved Scorch, Hot Streak and Pyroblast, mages will actually regenerate mana while doing this via Master of Elements returns. If multiple targets are present, Combustion can be used on the primarily target and Impact could be used to spread Dots to nearby targets to take advantage of Pyromaniac - and also allow Blastwave to grant a free Improved Flamestrike.
Current Questions and Concerns
Not many people seem to be complaining about fire. Most reactions seem to be overwhelmingly positive, but of those which aren't, the complaints generally fall into these chains of thought:
- "The new Flame Orb spell is very underwhelming"
- "With the slashed combat ratings at 85, hot streak rarely procs, and that's boring because HS+Pyro is what made Fire rotations more dynamic and fun"
- "The Fire tree has too much emphasis on AOE or Dots"
- "The Cata Fire tree playstyle is too similar to WOTLK's, for single-target situations"
- "Pyromaniac is a dangerous talent. It provides a huge benefit to encounters where 3 mobs are present, but 0 benefit to those where they aren't. Which encounter is Blizzard going to balance the talent around?"
Fire does indeed seem to have more potential when there's movement and/or adds (opportunity to AOE). Thats where Improved Scorch, Improved Flamestrike, Blastwave, Pyromaniac, Firestarter, Blazing Speed, Mage Ward and Impact etc come in. Most of those talents lose some potency or usefulness when movement and adds are taken out of the equation - and others become outright pointless.
If we take a Patchwerk fight, with 0 movement and 0 adds - then it's easy to see how people might justify their 'fire looks boring' concerns. But how many Patchwerk type raid fights will there be in Cata? Well that will remain to be seen. I think it would be a fair assessment to conclude that how fun fire ends up being, may depend heavily on whether Raid Encounters give the spec the opportunity to make use of many of the many excellent talents in the tree. But really, does this make fire any different to other class trees?
If you imagined Flame Orb would be a really powerful AOE spell, which would cause people to tremble and scramble to flee upon approach, you might be quite dissappointed. The Flame Orb itself doesn't actually AOE as it travels. However, it does explode at the end of its path via the Fire Power talent. It also moves very slowly. A reference video is here, YouTube - Cataclysm Beta - Flame Orb . The spell does have potential, but you'd be forgiven for not being very excited about its current implementation.
Some open questions to start us off:
- Is Fire a little too reliant on movement and/or encounters with Adds/AOE, to take advantage of many of its fun mechanics and talents? Pyromaniac isn't exactly a small buff. Would the absence of said Raid Encounters heavily change current opinions of the tree?
- Numbers on beta are currently subject to change, but mana problems for fire are widespread. Is Scorch intended to be used as a Lesser Fireball type mana management tool in normal rotations, and not just something that's cast on the run? Or perhaps more actively switching between Molten and Mage Armor during combat?
- Combat ratings are being slashed in Cataclysm, and Hot Streak will become a much rarer occurance. What impact will this have to something many people consider a fun, pivotal element to the current Fire rotation and playstyle?
Credits to Tyrian: Elitst Jerks
