Now, when i first read this i almost jumped off my chair(which woulda sucked since i was doing a test in school), finally! dragons breath in arena, my dream came true. It would be imba and frost spec will be no more, but then it hit me. Fire still wont be viable, why you ask ? Ill explain it.
First of all the damage:
Yea in pve, fire kicks the living shit out of frost, so why not in pvp? simple answer: resilience.
Frost has shatter, and a water elemental. Shatter gives you super high crit even on high resilience targets. Fire however, has combustion, but while this might be nice in a 1on1 fight, its not worth a whole lot when you need on-demand burst in a 5v5 match. Because combustion, sadly lives on RNG, even though it WILL guarentee 3 crits, its impossible to say when those will happen, a ranged frost nova is just so much more superior in that regard.
Next, the water elemental doesnt give a damn about resilience, mine hits for approx 730-750 on average with its waterbolts, that is just about 300 dps, meanwhile i can cast my frostbolts, sheep, nova, CS. Fire just doesn't have that huge luxury. Also, next to rogues, fire mage were the class that critted the most pre TBC, rogues now however have AR/prep as a spec that doesnt rely alot on critical damage, fire still does.
Mana/survivability:
Even with iceblock fire will still have lesser survivability than frost(as it should be) ice barrier, superior snares, will still keep frost up higher.
Now mana, fire is extremely mana ineffecient for arena compared to frost, a single dragons breath costs 700 mana, that is HUGE(compared to WE that costs about 340 does way more damage, has a ranged nova and lasts quite a bit longer), blast wave is almost the same, and as a "golden talent" isnt really powerfull compared to an improved CoC. First of all the mana cost is almost the same, damage is close to the same, but CoC snares for longer, and isn't affected 2 times by resilience.
Blast wave both get the direct reducement in crit damage AND the reduced dmg from dots(ignite) not to mention blizzard did the "awesome" thing to change the animation to a minsized frost nova. Taking this into consideration, and the already obvious mana issues mages have in arenas, fire is really gonna be lacking.
Now, how to fix it ?
Damage:
Without buffing pve fire to the point that its imba, i think the only option is to remove the dmg reduction on ignite through resilience(with it being a dot) and some sort of "crit through resilience" talent, a stackable debuff through improved scorch? And no, i really dont want a Phoenix or a Fire elemental pet, so dont even think about it! Of course, this would need HUGE tweaking, to be succesfull or even balanced.
Mana/survivability:
Honestly, i dont feel fire needs more survivability than what is given through a trainable icblock, its supposed to be high damage and less survivability, so its better to leave it at that.
Mana however, a reducement on the mana costs of blast wave and dragons breath would help alot, especially because Dragons breath is such a great spell, and its gonna be used as much as possible to help interrupt healers. Blizzard also says that they will buff our mana issues in longer fights, the new evocation will obviously also help on this problem, and a buffed mana gem is gonna go some way.
Now even though i just proven that fire still will be inferior, im still gonna try it out, just as i think 80% of arena mages will, ill try it out, and see how far it will go.
Oh yea no funny pictures for the moment, im still in school waiting to start a math lesson, ill post some if i got new ones at home :)
-Artanias
Update: Pictures! they are, however all from the same player, Eleuteurios :P
This guy is as fucked up as a french whorehouse, but as funny as an entire season of friends.
1 comment:
Took me time to read the whole article, the article is great but the comments bring more brainstorm ideas, thanks.
- Johnson
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