Let Them Cook
Fire Mage has substantial changes coming in patch 10.1.5: Fractures in Time. This was something that Blizzard teased with their
Mage Redesign post a couple weeks ago, but we finally have actual information on a much needed redesign of the Fire Mage talents. The new Fire Mage is now playable on the PTR, and today I'd like to highlight the big changes and share my first impressions of the spec after playtesting it. Spoiler alert: It's good.
For the full list of changes, check out the
Patch 10.1.5 Dragonflight PTR Development Notes.
10.1.5 Fire Mage First Impressions VideoNew Baseline Spells
烈焰风暴 and
灸灼 are now baseline. Not much to say about this other than it is a fantastic change, and means you will never have to feel as if you are giving up damage for these talents.
Rune of Power Removed
能量符文 has undergone many changes throughout its tenure of over a decade, but the spell is finally being removed. This means two main things: Fire Mage burst will be somewhat diminished (although other areas of the spec will still cause it to still have a lot of burst damage) and Mage is no longer confined to a small area in cooldowns, allowing it to more effectively damage on the move.
Aside from hindering movement,
能量符文 also incentivized cooldown reduction heavily, since
燃烧 automatically activated with it. Without
能量符文 this becomes less important. That being said, the value of cooldown reduction is tied to the strength of cooldowns. Since Fire still has strong cooldowns, cooldown reduction will still be very important.
Another quirk of
能量符文 was that it was mainly used for lining up burst windows with
太阳之王的祝福. With this change,
太阳之王的祝福 is also getting a bit more freedom, but you will still likely want to use it the instant you get it.
Sun King's Blessing and Pyroclasm Combined
火焰冲撞 is also missing in the new talent tree, but it is still around! It has been baked into
太阳之王的祝福, which means that the notoriously annoying hard-cast for a short
燃烧 buff now packs a hefty punch by tripling the damage of your
炎爆术 or
烈焰风暴 that activates it. The activation buff for
太阳之王的祝福 has also been extended, which should make it a lot easier to carry over downtime, or from pull to pull.
Overall, these are great changes but the best change to
太阳之王的祝福 is that you now have an alternative to it with
无羁狱火, for a playstyle that doesn't revolve around hard-casting!
Differing Playstyles
As mentioned above,
无羁狱火 is an alternative to
太阳之王的祝福 that increases the potency of
燃烧 while greatly reducing its cooldown as well. This talent increases the uptime of
燃烧 similar to
太阳之王的祝福, while proving a
softer alternative to the hard-cast playstyle. In my playtesting, this talent felt very strong, and much better to play than
太阳之王的祝福. We will have to see where tuning for these talents ends up, but ideally they end up being equal so players can choose the playstyle they prefer. Another interesting feature of
无羁狱火 is that it makes
时间紊乱 a bit more desirable than before since the
燃烧 procs from it would be much more valuable. That being said,
时霎扭曲 is still very strong and is likely to remain our the default pick.
Flamestrike Facelift
As previously mentioned,
烈焰风暴 is now baseline, giving us more options in AoE without sacrificing Single Target talents. If decide to stray from Single Target, there is an awesome new talent to play with!
火上浇油 gives
烈焰风暴 a chance equal to your Crit chance to provide
炽热连击. This means that you no longer require two builders per
烈焰风暴 in AoE! This is an enormous buff to the
烈焰之地 playstyle and means we will likely have more build options for Mythic+ aside from just spreading
精通:点燃 with these new talents.
It should be mentioned that
烈焰风暴 is still a ground targeted spell, which means that
烈焰之地 will still require targets to stay somewhat still for its 8 second duration.
Hyperthermia
过热高温 is not a new talent, but with the new capstone design, it is easier now to pick up. This talent allows us to machine gun
炎爆术s or
烈焰风暴s while it is active. It is still a bit random, but it does seem to proc more frequently now (although there isn't data to back this up yet). In general, I am a fan of this talent and it feels a lot nicer now that we aren't locked into the
太阳之王的祝福 playstyle that it clashes with.
Other Changes
There are many other changes to the talent tree for Fire Mage when it comes to positions of talents and their effects. A couple examples include:
- 涅槃重生 flipped. This now grants the Mastery while 不死鸟之焰 is on cooldown.
- 群体屏障 provides your barrier as useful group buff to 4 nearby allies.
- 群体隐形 moved from being a PvP talent to the class tree.
- 变易幻能 moved from the capstone layer to the top of the tree.
- 流星 moved to Fire tree, no longer splits damage without the follow up capstone: 深度撞击.
- 强攻烈焰 is a raid focused talent to increase 精通:点燃 outside of AoE. In theory, this talent provides a tuning knob for ignite in AoE vs Single Target.
- 深寒凝冰 provides an alternative to 寒冰屏障, letting you cast it off the GCD and continue moving and cast for the duration at the cost of immunity. It should be noted that this also works with 急冻 making it an extremely strong cooldown when you don't need immunity.
Be sure to check out the talent tool, which has been updated for 10.1.5 to scope all of the new talents out yourself!
Example Talent BuildSome Issues Remain
I want to emphasize again that the changes to Fire in 10.1.5 are overwhelming positive. Since we have spent a lot of time warming up now, let's talk complaints about Fire that are on my wishlist for things to change:
- The lack of burst without 能量符文 is noticeable, especially when playing 太阳之王的祝福. This could be intended but to me, Fire should have burst.
- Many of the talents such as 烈火意志 and 炽燃感触 feel like small maintenance buffs.
- 时霎扭曲 still feels like it should be a separate button from 时间扭曲. This is no longer a legendary effect; It should be its own button!
- 活动炸弹 still feels very weak, and I don't see any reason to try and build talents around it in its current state.
- 无羁狱火 and 太阳之王的祝福 still feel a bit too similar, it would be nice to have an alternative where 燃烧 has a much stronger cooldown at the cost of uptime.
- 不死鸟之焰 feels bad to press without 阿莱克丝塔萨之怒, but choosing 涅槃重生 forces us to press it more.
Conclusion
In my
last write-up on Fire Mage, the article ended on a somber note:
With Dragonflight we had the promise of a new talent system with fun choices but we ended up getting Shadowlands Fire Mage version 1.1. For some of us Mage veterans it feels as if the class has been a abandoned for a while now when it comes to the issues with the spec and the lack of variety. Even if the class is tuned high and the damage is good, it still has serious problems. Now is as good of a time as ever to raise these concerns. I sincerely hope the next time I write something like this for Fire Mage, I can tell you that we are making progress.