First Impression of the Fire Mage Rework in Patch 10.1.5 - Guide Writer Feedback

RPT Publié 31/05/2023 à 06:51 par Preheat

World of Warcraft Version 10.1.5 PTR – Fractures in Time

MAGE

Take a look at the developer’s notes in the Mage feedback thread.
All ability damage increased by 15%.
Invisibility is now learned by all specializations at level 16.
Incanter’s Flow now replaces Invisibility in the Class tree.
Shifting Power has been moved to Incanter’s Flow previous location.
Rune of Power and Meteor have been removed.
New Talent: Ice Cold – Ice Block now reduces all damage taken by 70% for 6 seconds but no longer grants Immunity, prevents movement, attacks, or casting spells. Does not incur the Global Cooldown.

Ice Cold is located on Shifting Power’s previous location on the talent tree.

New Talent: Mass Barrier – Cast Prismatic/Blazing/Ice Barrier (based on your specialization) on yourself and 3 nearby allies. 2 minute cooldown.

Mass Barrier is located as a choice node with Mass Invisibility.

New Talent: Mass Invisibility – You and your allies within 40 yards instantly become invisible for 10 seconds. Taking any action will cancel the effect. Does not affect allies in combat.

Mass Invisibility located as a choice node with Mass Barrier.
Developers’ note: The PvP Talent for Arcane will be updated in a future PTR build.

Accumulate Shielding is now a 1 rank talent (was 2). Barrier cooldowns now recharge 30% faster while the shield persists at rank 1.
Accumulate Shielding now connects to the Time Anomaly/Temporal Warp choice node.
Time Manipulation is now a 1 rank talent (was 2). Now reduces the cooldown of your loss of control abilities by 2 seconds at rank 1.
Time Manipulation now connects to the Time Anomaly/Temporal Warp choice node.
Displacement now heals the caster for 20% of their maximum health when returning to the Blink location.
Winter’s Protection now reduces the cooldown of Ice Block by 30 seconds per rank.
Displacement is now located after Flow of Time.
Greater Invisibility now replaces Invisibility when talented and is located below Temporal Velocity.
Mass Barrier is now cast on yourself and 4 allies (was 3).
Fixed an issue with Prismatic Barrier applying to more than 4 allies.
Mass Invisibility duration increased to 12 seconds (was 10 seconds).
Diverted Energy’s barriers now heal you for 20/40% of the damage absorbed (was 10/20%).
Flow of Time reduces the cooldown of Blink by 2/4 seconds (was 1/2 seconds).
Temporal Velocity’s movement speed duration increased to 3 seconds and 5 seconds after using Blink and Alter Time, respectively.
Temporal Velocity’s movement speed after Blinking increased by 10/20% (was 5/10%).
Incantation of Swiftness now increases movement speed by 40/80% for both Invisibility and Greater Invisibility.
Ice Cold can no longer be dispelled.
Fixed an issue that caused Displacement to replace Invisibility and Greater Invisibility.
Fire

Flamestrike has been removed from the talent tree and is now learned at level 12.
Flamestrike cast time reduced to 3.5 seconds (was 4 seconds).
Cauterize has been removed from the talent tree and now learned at level 19.
Pyroblast cast time reduced to 4 seconds (was 4.5 seconds).
Mastery: Ignite now causes Fire Blast to spreads Ignite to 3 targets (was 4).
From the Ashes now increases Mastery by 2% for each Phoenix Flames charge on cooldown (was previously for each charge off cooldown).
Pyrotechnics is now located on row 2.
Improved Flamestrike has been renamed to Surging Blaze.
Surging Blaze now increases the cast speed of Pyroblast and Flamestrike by 0.5 seconds and their damage by 10%.
Surging Blaze is now located on row 3 after Pyrotechnics.
New Talent: Fuel the Fire – Flamestrike has a chance equal to 100% of your critical strike chance to contribute to Hot Streak.
Fuel the Fire is located on row 4 after Surging Blaze.
Pyroclasm has been removed.
Sun King’s Blessing now also increases the damage of your next Pyroblast or Flamestrike by 300% in addition to granting Combustion.
The temporary buff granted by Sun King’s Blessing that increased damage and Combustion has been renamed to Fury of the Sun King and it now has new icon to better differentiate between the stacking buff and actual buff.
Fury of the Sun King duration increased to 30 seconds (was 15 seconds).
New Talent: Unleashed Inferno – While Combustion is active your Fireball, Pyroblast, Fire Blast, Scorch, and Phoenix Flames deal 40% increased damage and reduce the cooldown of Combustion by 2.5 seconds.
Unleashed Inferno is located as a choice node with Sun King’s Blessing.
New Talent: Intensifying Flames – While Ignite is on 3 or fewer enemies it deals 15% increased damage.

Developers’ note: This is not yet implemented but will be selectable in the talent tree.

Intensifying Flames is located on row 5, replacing Cauterize.
Fervent Flickering is now located on row 4 after Phoenix Flames.
Improved Scorch max ranks reduced to 1 (was 2) and damage dealt to targets with the debuff increased to 4% per stack at rank 1 (was 2%).
Call of the Sun King now also increases Phoenix Flames damage by 15%.
Firefall’s number of Fireballs and Pyroblasts required to call down a Meteor reduced to 15 (was 30).
Firefall no longer grants double benefit from hitting players.
Firefall is no longer a choice node with Pyromaniac.
Pyromaniac is no longer a choice node with Firefall. It’s now located after the Feel the Burn and Improved Combustion choice node.
Conflagration damage over time increased by 12% The chance for enemies to flare up increased to 15% (was 10%).
Master of Flame now spreads Ignite to 2 additional enemies during Combustion (was 4).
Master of Flame is now located below the Firemind and Improved Combustion choice node.
Fevered Incantation max ranks reduced to 1 (was 2) and critical strike damage increased to 2% per stack (was 1% at rank 1).
Fevered Incantation is now located on row 8, replacing Pyroclasm in the tree.
Wildfire no longer increases Ignite damage. Instead, it now grants 4/8% critical strike damage and an additional 3/6% critical strike damage when you activate Combustion.
Hyperthermia’s duration increased to 6 seconds (was 5 seconds).
Hyperthermia is now located on the final row.
Fiery Rush is now located on row 9 directly after Kindling.
Living Bomb’s cooldown increased to 30 seconds (was 12 seconds), damage over time increased by 30%, and explosion damage increased by 20%.
Kindling now causes Scorch critical strikes to reduce Combustion’s cooldown in addition to its current effect.
New Talent: Convection – Each time Living Bomb explodes it has a 35% chance to reduce its cooldown by 2 seconds.
Convection is located on row 7, directly after Living Bomb and Incendiary Eruptions.
Meteor is now located on row 9 of the Fire tree.
Meteor no longer splits damage evenly between targets hit by default and its damage is reduced when hitting beyond 8 targets.
Meteor’s damage increased by 10%.
New Talent: Deep Impact – Meteor’s damage is increased by 20% but is now split evenly between all enemies hit. Additionally, its cooldown is reduced by 15 seconds.

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 Video

New Baseline Spells

Choc de flammes and Cautérisation 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

Rune de puissance 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, Rune de puissance also incentivized cooldown reduction heavily, since Combustion automatically activated with it. Without Rune de puissance 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 Rune de puissance was that it was mainly used for lining up burst windows with Bénédiction du roi-soleil. With this change, Bénédiction du roi-soleil 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

Pyroclasme is also missing in the new talent tree, but it is still around! It has been baked into Bénédiction du roi-soleil, which means that the notoriously annoying hard-cast for a short Combustion buff now packs a hefty punch by tripling the damage of your Explosion pyrotechnique or Choc de flammes that activates it. The activation buff for Bénédiction du roi-soleil 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 Bénédiction du roi-soleil is that you now have an alternative to it with Inferno déchaîné, for a playstyle that doesn't revolve around hard-casting!

Differing Playstyles

As mentioned above, Inferno déchaîné is an alternative to Bénédiction du roi-soleil that increases the potency of Combustion while greatly reducing its cooldown as well. This talent increases the uptime of Combustion similar to Bénédiction du roi-soleil, while proving a softer alternative to the hard-cast playstyle. In my playtesting, this talent felt very strong, and much better to play than Bénédiction du roi-soleil. 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 Inferno déchaîné is that it makes Irrégularité temporelle a bit more desirable than before since the Combustion procs from it would be much more valuable. That being said, Déformation temporelle is still very strong and is likely to remain our the default pick.

Flamestrike Facelift

As previously mentioned, Choc de flammes 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! Alimenter le feu gives Choc de flammes a chance equal to your Crit chance to provide Bonne série. This means that you no longer require two builders per Choc de flammes in AoE! This is an enormous buff to the Gerbe de flammes playstyle and means we will likely have more build options for Mythic+ aside from just spreading Maîtrise : Enflammer with these new talents.

It should be mentioned that Choc de flammes is still a ground targeted spell, which means that Gerbe de flammes will still require targets to stay somewhat still for its 8 second duration.

Hyperthermia

Hyperthermie 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 Explosion pyrotechniques or Choc de flammess 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 Bénédiction du roi-soleil 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:

Né des cendres flipped. This now grants the Mastery while Flammes de phénix is on cooldown.
Barrière de masse provides your barrier as useful group buff to 4 nearby allies.
Invisibilité de masse moved from being a PvP talent to the class tree.
Puissance fluctuante moved from the capstone layer to the top of the tree.
Météore moved to Fire tree, no longer splits damage without the follow up capstone: L’impact.
Flamme intensifiée is a raid focused talent to increase Maîtrise : Enflammer outside of AoE. In theory, this talent provides a tuning knob for ignite in AoE vs Single Target.
Un froid glacial provides an alternative to Bloc de glace, 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 Cryostase 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 Build

Some 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 Rune de puissance is noticeable, especially when playing Bénédiction du roi-soleil. This could be intended but to me, Fire should have burst.
Many of the talents such as Esprit avivé and Gare aux brûlures feel like small maintenance buffs.
Déformation temporelle still feels like it should be a separate button from Distorsion temporelle. This is no longer a legendary effect; It should be its own button!
Bombe vivante still feels very weak, and I don't see any reason to try and build talents around it in its current state.
Inferno déchaîné and Bénédiction du roi-soleil still feel a bit too similar, it would be nice to have an alternative where Combustion has a much stronger cooldown at the cost of uptime.
Flammes de phénix feels bad to press without Fureur d'Alexstrasza, but choosing Né des cendres 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.