Arcane vs Fire in PvE

[Paraydewey]

Hello i have question, becouse i play Fire in PvE, and one of my friend playing Arcane, i have 862 ilvl, he have 864 (arcane) on last dungeon, his Arcane Blast Did 16 mln dmg (this is one skill), my pyroblast did 4 mln, fireball did 2 mln, what is the problem with fire? ... Why Arcane doing so much dmg?

[m3gacrash]

i think mage spells like fireball , pyroblast , are nerfed ...cuz a mage arcane with lower gear and lower traits than me does almost as me (ME at 891 ilvl and his mage is 875)

[juliaray]

I tested the arcane and fire on a mage 820 ilvl in the blizzard, in question the damage was pretty much alike, but the fire seemed to be trickier to handle in my opinion, I guess it is not nerfed. I preferred playing fire seemed more complicated and fun, if it were nerfed you can be sure no warrior would use arms which in most of the veteran servers arms is bugged and in that not. But I think cool a GM opinion on this.

[Warbike]

Fire mage is not bugged, i compared its stats with retail and they scale perfectly.
However, fire was destroyed in this patch. The best spec to play on retail is Frost, but on Freakz there are problem in single Boss encounter like Krosus where Frozen Orb doesn't ever it boss(losing proc chance and damage).
Anyway i play fire and i found a way to maximize its damage, but no chance to beat a frost/arcane mage in a single target fight.

[divinity4uuu]

Fire has the most dmg out of the 3 specs . Single target and aoe . Not as bursty as the other 2 specs indeed but at the end of an encounter, you should come on top. Just make sure u have around 50% crit chance and 20% haste and 2 tier 19 piece bonus . After that just make sure you adapt you rotation based on the crit procs .

[Lemonbunnie]

divinity4uuu wrote:

Fire has the most dmg out of the 3 specs . Single target and aoe . Not as bursty as the other 2 specs indeed but at the end of an encounter, you should come on top. Just make sure u have around 50% crit chance and 20% haste and 2 tier 19 piece bonus . After that just make sure you adapt you rotation based on the crit procs .

Don't listen to this guy, because everything he just said is downright wrong.

In the CURRENT PATCH on Freakz (7.1.5):

Fire has the best BURST AoE damage of the 3 mage specs on large packs of mobs (over 4-5), if under 3 mobs Frost beats out fire easily.

Fire has the SECOND best burst in Single Target, best burst belonging to Arcane, although Fire's burst in ST depends heavily on getting the right procs inside Combustion (bracer proc, 4 piece tier set proc, whispers proc, etc).

Frost doesn't have the burst of the other 2 specs, but it's sustained damage is miles better than the other 2, Fire's dps currently dipping very hard after it's burst window.

As for gearing Fire:


After you get the 2 piece set from Nighthold and especially if you have the legendary belt, Crit devalues heavily and you should run with around ~40% crit and focus on stacking haste, mastery and versatility. Depending on the content you are doing and the talent choices you are running with each of those secondary stats becomes either more important or less important.

If you are doing mass AoE damage then Mastery is the best stat by far, even better than crit. Although if you are running with Flame Patch, haste start becoming more valuable, because it gives you more ticks.

If you are doing ST damage with Mirror Images, then Haste and Versatility start becoming better and Mastery becoming somewhat devalued because Images don't benefit from Mastery, but they do from the other stats.

These are just some rough guidelines to go by, because honestly Fire on this patch is pretty meh and wonky regarding ST. The best option is to just sit your *** in front of a dummy and play around with different stat weights till you find the best combination for you.

Fire COULD come out on top of Frost on the damage meters on bosses where you have an AoE component (like Skorpyron, Tychondrius, Botanist, Gul'dan, Spellblade), that damage is what's called "padding", meaning an inflated dps that doesn't really reflect it's true contribution to the fight. If you don't believe me, just check under damage taken for the boss. It doesn't help if you have 1mil+ dps on recount if you can't kill the boss.

Whereas Fire has to sacrifice it's ST damage to do AoE, Frost's boss damage benefits greatly from having adds, because you can reset your Frozen Orb cooldown faster, thus giving you more Ice Lance procs, thus more damage on the BOSS, which is what matters.

Don't get me wrong, I mainly play fire. It's by far the best spec for m+ and also the most fun. Frost can become boring very fast, because you basically have to spam Ice Lance, but saying shit like "fire isn't as bursty" or "fire should come on top" and "go with 50% crit" is just downright mindnumbingly stupid and is the mark of someone who doesn't understand his spec and he shouldn't be listened to.

[BlindBrain]

Do you know how Fire will develop in next Patch?
It is pretty annoying to be lacking dps so hard as fire mage.

[Pinocchio Evreiesc]

Performance wise fire will get better as an expansion progresses, it has always been that way, cause of more crit stats on higher ilvl gear allowing you to invest in other shit like mastery/versa which for fire are basically raw damage increases.
Specifically related to legion, it wont be the absolute best, especially on single target fights. Frost will pretty much be king till the end of the xpack as it was on retail, especially here on this server since i have a gut feeling double icelance on flurry procs wont be hotfixed as it was on retail in 7.2.5

There were ofcourse those rare cases on retail in 7.1.5 where...how should i say it....one trick pony fire mages would dominate some bossfights, quick example that comes to mind is gul'dan. But those players had YEARS of fire experience as hardcore raiders so....yeah, theres that.

Anyway just enjoy legion mage while you can and be happy you dont have to look at BFA mage or play it. Im permanently scarred, after the first month i struggled to find reasons to renew my subscription but decided to add 3 more months thinking 8.1 will change things for the better. Boy was i wrong...

The xpack is great lorewise, very interesting stuff happening from that perspective but my god the gameplay is just so bad, mages in particular have become the epitome of insipidness. Fire spec is basically never used except for G'huun mythic lmao where you have to play with the scorch execute talent, it has to be the most awkward niche i've ever seen for a class/spec in any expansion. Mages basically are in raid for arcane intellect or specced arcane for fights where you need high burst on priority targets. Dont even get me started on BFA arcane spec...

[Jijing]

Well Blizzard never hotfixed double icelance, all they did was increase flurry missile speed. That made it harder to double il but not impossible, u can do it even in bfa... I dont know i think ur overreacting about bfa mage state, fire is shit, but arcane and frost are bout viable in their own depending on fight.

[Pinocchio Evreiesc]

Yes ofc arcane is viable but have you played it? If you think you can survive an entire expack having 80% of your damage as arcane blast in your rotation....then i guess you are a champ. But for the rest of us more normal plebz the spec is disgusting to play. Dont really see that as overreacting when the spec literally became 1 button. Eh, anyway lets stop the bfa cancer offtopic.

About the icelance flurry thing, i consider it fixed since you can only do it with shimmer now. It might be ok at training dummies but in pve you will never do that shit reliably because you want your shimmers for mechanics.

[Jijing]

1st of all i was not talking about class mechanics i was talking about numbers, and beside it would not be 1st expansion where arcane has to press 1 button.

[Kwaczus]

i'm playing fire about 835ilvl and im doing easily more DPS than fury war / destro lock / frost mage, because i have my own rotation depending on my gear and stats, actually 45% crit, 16% haste, 9% mastery.
First of all try to keep all the dots (flamestrike, meteor, double dot from fireball and ignite) keep spamming fireball and use combo for free using pyroblast and flamestrike. If you miss any crit just repair it by artifact skill

[Lemonbunnie]

Kwaczus wrote:

i'm playing fire about 835ilvl and im doing easily more DPS than fury war / destro lock / frost mage, because i have my own rotation depending on my gear and stats, actually 45% crit, 16% haste, 9% mastery. First of all try to keep all the dots (flamestrike, meteor, double dot from fireball and ignite) keep spamming fireball and use combo for free using pyroblast and flamestrike. If you miss any crit just repair it by artifact skill

Omg, stop giving advice.

[Kwaczus]

Lemonbunnie wrote:

Kwaczus wrote: i'm playing fire about 835ilvl and im doing easily more DPS than fury war / destro lock / frost mage, because i have my own rotation depending on my gear and stats, actually 45% crit, 16% haste, 9% mastery. First of all try to keep all the dots (flamestrike, meteor, double dot from fireball and ignite) keep spamming fireball and use combo for free using pyroblast and flamestrike. If you miss any crit just repair it by artifact skill Omg, stop giving advice.

You mad?

[LethalFactorLK]

This conversation is not going anywhere, Next time you start flaming each other you will be warned