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
불기둥 and
소작 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
마력의 룬 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,
마력의 룬 also incentivized cooldown reduction heavily, since
발화 automatically activated with it. Without
마력의 룬 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
마력의 룬 was that it was mainly used for lining up burst windows with
태양왕의 축복. With this change,
태양왕의 축복 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
화염 파열 is also missing in the new talent tree, but it is still around! It has been baked into
태양왕의 축복, which means that the notoriously annoying hard-cast for a short
발화 buff now packs a hefty punch by tripling the damage of your
불덩이 작렬 or
불기둥 that activates it. The activation buff for
태양왕의 축복 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
태양왕의 축복 is that you now have an alternative to it with
풀려난 지옥불정령, for a playstyle that doesn't revolve around hard-casting!
Differing Playstyles
As mentioned above,
풀려난 지옥불정령 is an alternative to
태양왕의 축복 that increases the potency of
발화 while greatly reducing its cooldown as well. This talent increases the uptime of
발화 similar to
태양왕의 축복, while proving a
softer alternative to the hard-cast playstyle. In my playtesting, this talent felt very strong, and much better to play than
태양왕의 축복. 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
풀려난 지옥불정령 is that it makes
시간 이상 a bit more desirable than before since the
발화 procs from it would be much more valuable. That being said,
시간 변곡점 is still very strong and is likely to remain our the default pick.
Flamestrike Facelift
As previously mentioned,
불기둥 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!
불꽃의 연료 gives
불기둥 a chance equal to your Crit chance to provide
몰아치는 열기. This means that you no longer require two builders per
불기둥 in AoE! This is an enormous buff to the
화염 파편 playstyle and means we will likely have more build options for Mythic+ aside from just spreading
특화: 작열 with these new talents.
It should be mentioned that
불기둥 is still a ground targeted spell, which means that
화염 파편 will still require targets to stay somewhat still for its 8 second duration.
Hyperthermia
이상 고열 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
불덩이 작렬s or
불기둥s 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
태양왕의 축복 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:
- 잿불의 생명 flipped. This now grants the Mastery while 불사조의 불길 is on cooldown.
- 대규모 방벽 provides your barrier as useful group buff to 4 nearby allies.
- 대규모 투명화 moved from being a PvP talent to the class tree.
- 힘의 전환 moved from the capstone layer to the top of the tree.
- 유성 moved to Fire tree, no longer splits damage without the follow up capstone: 거대 충돌.
- 불꽃 심화 is a raid focused talent to increase 특화: 작열 outside of AoE. In theory, this talent provides a tuning knob for ignite in AoE vs Single Target.
- 얼음장 provides an alternative to 얼음 방패, 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 급속 빙결 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 마력의 룬 is noticeable, especially when playing 태양왕의 축복. This could be intended but to me, Fire should have burst.
- Many of the talents such as 불꽃정신 and 화상의 자극 feel like small maintenance buffs.
- 시간 변곡점 still feels like it should be a separate button from 시간 왜곡. This is no longer a legendary effect; It should be its own button!
- 살아있는 폭탄 still feels very weak, and I don't see any reason to try and build talents around it in its current state.
- 풀려난 지옥불정령 and 태양왕의 축복 still feel a bit too similar, it would be nice to have an alternative where 발화 has a much stronger cooldown at the cost of uptime.
- 불사조의 불길 feels bad to press without 알렉스트라자의 격노, but choosing 잿불의 생명 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.