The problem isn't just raid bosses; Blizzard has been messing up mages in general gameplay since Legion. Frost (which got some interesting changes back then) has been getting dumbed down to the point that it's starting to feel like Arcane (the "1-button spec"), and Fire (the only interesting spec that still requires some skill and doesn't get almost half its damage from one ability) keeps falling behind in terms of DPS (until you have virtually maxed-out gear, when suddenly it scales much faster than most other classes). One of the reasons is the fact that fireballs and pyroblasts lost the ability to do damage to targets they went through, which means now there's a sharper distinction between single-target and multi-target damage, and there's no efficient way of dealing with "light cleave" (i.e., 2 or 3 target) situations.Adding a global % damage buff based on raid boss parses (which is what Blizzard will probably end up doing) doesn't fix the fundamental problems. No class should have to rely on tier set bonuses or individual expansion "borrowed power" mechanics.
Fire mage actually asleep until the mechagon bracers come back, even then idk if they can overcome having basically only one legendary
Over 17k SV Hunters, people are really beginning to let their 'pride' behind and start enjoying what Blizz did with the spec. It isn't perfect, no, but the class already had 2 ranged specs, one almost fully pet-oriented, and the other, almost no-pet oriented. Still SV uses a pet too, but it's more of a hybrid (melee+ranged), in between the two others, although 'throwing stuff' would fit the spec more (not just the bombs). There's even some chakrams in the talent tree, that should be baseline in place of one of the other skills.
DEMONOLOGY, HELL YES!
Yep. The only good thing to happen to fire mages in the last four expansions was Enhanced Pyrotechnics (now sort of rolled into fireball itself), which made it slightly less crit- (and therefore RNG-)dependant.Then we had some artifact / azerite powers that disguised the flaws in the base spec, and now it's all about doing a lot of damage during combustion (where base crit becomes irrelevant anyway) and doing almost no damage outside of combustion. Your choices in terms of build are "do even more damage during combustion but have combustion less often" or "do slightly less damage during combustion but have it slightly more often and at less predictable intervals".I guess a small indy company can't afford to have a designer dedicated to each class. I mean, that would be a huge team of twelve people...
Retribution at the middle of the chart like I predicted... but there's still 9 classes clearly above us (with Fury still having a more beneficial Execute phase). We're not doing bad but why do we have to be at the bottom of the overall classes? We don't bring a raid cooldown like Warriors do and so it doesn't even matter if their damage isn't the highest. Yes we have some individual utility like Blessings, but they're not seen as very useful generally, and Holy and Prot Paladins do all the same as Retribution does with more (Aura Mastery; Avenger's Shield silences)... could we get Blessing of Salvation exclusive to Retribution at least?
TBH yes playing Demonology is an absolute must this raid tier and that should be your biggest spec priority HOWEVER. Destruction "despite the logs" is actually pretty decent on certain fights that require spread burst AOE. Some may say that Affliction would out class it on fights like council however with double leggo I disagree plus the economy is better due to destruction and demo sharing the same primary legendary. Personally on fights like council I prefer destro over demo due to being able to nuke the adds and maybe artificer because of how good destro's burst is compared to demonology and afflictions. You could get away with Anduin too, it's hard to look at these and not get discouraged but believe me they aren't completely accurate.
It is by now obvious that Blizzard likes to invert polarity by making the worst specs be the first and the former firsts bite the dust. By shuffling the deck they add effort to change and adapt and in their book it rhymes with adding challenge. Might be, to an extent, with one exception: hunters. Because as long as you shuffle the same deck it can be accepted, but you can’t force a majority of ranged players to go melee by picking up a different deck. It’s too much and i fail to understand how they fail to understand it.