BOOM here comes the BOOM ready or not, haha how you like me now?!
LK has, so far, been the best expansion in history for mages. Multiple specs viable for both PvE and PvP, and patch 3.3 is gifting us with a PvE viable frost spec (or close enough for most people), and a fire tree that’s viable for PvP.
Wait, what? Hell yeah, fire for PvP.
Been paying attention to the PTR notes? No? Forgot? Here’s a ‘fresher:
- Mana cost of DB and BW slashed, they’re cheap as dirt now.
- Firestarter, that talent everyone ignores that gives you instant flame strikes when you use DB or BW, now also makes that flamestrike cost no mana.
- Burning Determination now grants you immunity to the next silence or interrupt effect.
Fire already has other talents which edge it close to being a great PvP spec. Fireblasts that can stun, Living Bomb on unlimited targets, instant pyros whenever you crit twice, blazing speed, a disarm and anti-execute damage reduction.
In case you missed it, the Scorch effect applies all five stacks immediately as of 3.3. No need for the glyph at all. Hurray for raiding fire mages! The glyph is still around of course, providing a 20% boost to scorch damage. Bah, says the raiders, no one will ever take that.
Of course no raiding fire mage would take that! What kind of raider takes a PvP glyph?
That’s right. PvP glyph.
So here’s what I’m thinking. If you’re going fire for PvP, you can’t rely on either fireball or frostfire bolt. Those casts are just far too long to be effective. Frost can get away with a long cast time because of their ample roots and snares, but fire doesn’t have that option.
Solution? Don’t use a long casted nuke. Use a short one. In this case, Scorch.
Scorch is fast, deals reasonable enough damage, and bumping it’s damage by 20% is meaningless for raiding, but very powerful for fire PvP.
Scorch doesn’t hit that hard, yes, I know. But you can cast two of them in the same time it would take you to cast a single fireball, and you don’t have room for Improved Fireball or Empowered Fire in a PvP spec anyways without making very serious sacrifices.
Besides, with an additional 18% (23% once you’ve scorched at least once) to scorch’s crit chance from fire talents, it’s primary duty is fueling hot streak procs.
Interestingly, this means a fire PvP spec relies less on cast times than any other mage spec. Scorch and polymorph, both base 1.5 seconds, literally everything else is instant cast. A fire mage can probably afford to drop haste gear completely in favour of crit gear, and gem spellpower everywhere.
Fire PvP mage with over 50% scorch crit chance and 3k spellpower? This is happening.
Consider this open dialogue. Me thinking via type. Specs linked are purely speculation.
A spec somewhere along the lines of 17/54/0 seems the obvious choice to me. Magic Absorption, possibly Arcane Fortitude, dispel protection, Spell Impact (to ramp up scorch, fireblast and blast wave damage) and Imp. Counterspell seems to offer more than the frost tree does. Going the arcane route, TtW isn’t necessary, as you wouldn’t use any of those spells in a deep fire/arcane build. Scorch would be your only casted nuke.
Mana talents might not need to be taken. Fireblast and Pyroblast would be your most expensive abilites. Scorch is cheap, all of your utility abilities are cheap, and any flamestrikes you cast are free anyway. Burning Soul, too, wouldn’t be needed.
I’d have to play it in action, but on paper it looks like spell pushback and mana just won’t be issues.
The only glaring issue is the lack of a snare. Fire has reasonable control by itself, but your two major control abilities are tied to a 30 second and a 20 second cooldown.
Could there be merit to a deep fire spec that uses the frost tree? We have frostbite, a 20% MS effect, icy veins, and the tantalizing temptation of getting Shatter with a fire spec. Would it use rank 1 frostbolt or try frostfire bolt? Using FFB has it’s merits, the possibility is there for some horrific shatters. Imagine FFB/instant pyro into a frozen target.
IV would be a neat way to get around FFBs lengthy cast time, as would using rank 1 FrB to get off a quick snare. The fire side would also provide BW’s knockback, DB’s disorient, a stun, disarm, and a movement speed boost which might provide the breathing room necessary to allow for a long cast nuke.
Of course, using FFB would also open the possibility of using the FFB glyph, giving FFB a 19% crit chance from talents and the glyph alone. Get 25% crit on gear, and you’re looking at near 94, 95% crit chance on frozen targets before factoring in resilience (roughly 85% crit chance against well geared opponents).
This being FFB, we’d have Burnout, Ignite and Ice Shards all stacking together for nightmare proportioned crits. You’d have to get Empowered Fire in a FFB build, too, so where would you take those points from? World in Flames maybe? Flame Throwing?
What glyphs, then? Evocation is a given, and in a FFB spec so is the FFB one. Using the arcane/scorch build, the scorch glyph is obvious, so in either case it’s the third glyph slot that’s a question mark.
If mana turns out to be an issue, glyph of mana gem? I use it currently in my arcane shatter built, it works extremely well. Glyph of poly? Glyph of IV for added defense against melee in the FFB build?
Or just screw the theatrics and get glyph of living bomb?
Those are some pretty interesting ideas…I like that you’re always thinking about different specs and off the wall playing styles. What would you do about reaching the hit rating for fire pvp…if you didn’t get ep would you need a bunch of hit or how would that work? I feel like fire would be similar to arcane where you would need a bunch of res to survive.
I know the hit rating and spell pen rating is 130 but is that with the hit talents or not?
I’ve been playing 60/0/11 arcane with a feral druid and having a fun time just bursting down one opponent while we cc the other. Matches are either won in 20 seconds or we end up loosing but either way they are usually over pretty fast. haha
Anyway keep the great ideas coming, I def agree wrath has been the best time for mages since wow has been released.
You’d need about 6% from somewhere, the most likely place being, say, rings/neck piece/cloak, perhaps something from WG with hit.
Usually that’s enough to get all the hit you need, though for PvP nobody really thinks twice about socketing it here or there to hit the cap.
Can’t wait! I’ve been using the instant flamestrike for pvp and pve (heroics) forever. It’s about freaking time that the mana issue is addressed. I use evocation and living bomb glyphs for pvp. Gonna use scorch a lot more when the change hits.
Currently in PVP, provided the opponent cannot regain large amounts of health instantly or does not have more than 40,000 health. Guaranteed win (especially if combustion is up) is something along the lines of lb, fire blast, db, cast ffb or pause then scorch, flamestrike, blast wave, fireblast, flamestrike, then frost nova, ice lance pew pew, fire blast. They should be pretty much dead or with very little health and u should be on at least half health (although very little mana, especialyl if you mana shield). Then you hide in a corner and satisfy your thirst. But I prepare to farewell the thirst problem muhahaha.
AHAHAHAHAA!!! FIRE PVP POST!! FIRE PVP POST!!! HAHAHAHAAAAA!!! YOU ARE ALL SO SCREWED!!! YOU LIKE THAT? YOU LIKE THAT!?!? CRY FOR MERCY, SO I CAN THROW ANOTHER PYROBLAST INTO YOUR FACE!! WATCH THE TEARS BOIL AWAY IN SLOW MOTION!!! IT’S A FREIGHT TRAIN MADE OF THE RAW ETERNAL FLAME OF CREATION CARRYING THE BURNING APOCALYPSE!!! SARGERAS HAS NOTHING ON MEEEEEEEEEE!!!
PREHEAT ARENA TO FIVE THOUSAND DEGREES!! IT’S IMPROVISED BURNT TROLL TOAST FOR BREAKFAST, SEARED ORC ROAST FOR LUNCH, AND WELL-DONE TAUREN STEAKS FOR DINNER!!! AND NO, MY COOKING SKILL IS NOT AT JOURNEYMAN LEVEL YET!!! SO I MIGHT OVERDO IT A LITTLE!!!
LIGHT THE FUNERAL PYRES, BABY!! DANCE AROUND THE PAGAN FIRES!! BURN THE WORLD!! BURN THE WARLOCKS!! BURN EVERYTHING!! THEN LIGHT THE ASHES ON FIRE FOR GOOD MEASURE!!
I’m going to read your post now.
… I think I love you.
This post is so full of win I just got happy in my pants.
I have one of these moments everytime fire gives me one of those rewarding kill(s) moments where the victim is a pile of ash.
I like the scorch idea, that may just fly. I’ve already seen a few fire mages who play really well do ok in the current setup – with a nice quick nuke from scorch it just might push fire over into viability.
One thing though, I doubt that FFB will ever see much use in PVP because getting interrupted locks out both the Fire and the Frost schools. With such a long cast and a glaring “interrupt me now!” weakness I think we’ll have to pass on the shattery goodness – although perhaps for 5v5…
Oh, and one last thing – they’re going to have to break down and make the blazing speed buff talent an on-use clicky instead of a proc – put it on a 2 min cd and then it will be on par with glyph of icy veins. Frost will do snare kiting, while Fire will have its very own Sprint on a 2 min cd.
I used to pvp constantly as a mage back in the oooooooooold days of vanilla. And any fire mage worth his snot would tell you now, as he told you then, the real strength of scorch has little to do with it’s cast time.
The real strength is that it’s doesn’t point a gigantic arrow back to you.
So in BGs, you can hide in a bush and snipe – hell, in some fights people don’t even notice the scorch hitting; it’s just not very visual.
I once held the IB GY against about 20 allies by myself – just cause they couldn’t find me. It was fun. Then one saw me and I was dead in about 10 seconds. Go fire.
I acutally had went fire just last week, though I kind of just shoved points where I thought they might find use.
Quickly did I find that even with all my pvp haste gear, fireball was indeed just a bit too long of a cast to take seriously.
I switched to this spec you suggested now, and find it is a bit better due to having counterspell, I cannot think of how many times I would have died had I not counterspelled chaos bolt, flame shock, etc.
It is indeed a fun spec which can only get better once I am not running oom after killing one or two people (instant flamestrikes are a double edged sword). My 16.6k mana pool just isn’t cutting it. But hey, still getting top damage and killing blows in battlegrounds!
yeh, fireball is almost considered a nuke. u only use it when u either enter combat, dragon breath, or Frost nova. The reason i use it when i frost nova (which some people like to argue about) is that if i don’t get a successful burst combo, i like people to waste their silencing spells in the middle of my cast while they’re frozen; for they still have the 3 seconds in the nova, i have reduced silencing gear, and i now have the “Burning determination” silence/interrupt buff for later use in serious combat. Ofc this only works on most classes unlike locks, which i guess u’d want to scorch untill the FB stun procs. O, and im not sure wat ur talkin about the instant flame strike being a double edged sword. Idk wat it was on december 1st, but it cost no mana here. I just turned fire not too long ago ago from frost so it could be different, but its definitely a change in method for me
The elementalist build looks like a real feast-or-famine dealie … either you get off your Combusted supercrit FFB into a frozen target, followed by instaPyro, and it dies a horrible yet delightfully fiery death, or you can’t get the space to pull it off and you get cut into small pieces. The prevalence of pillarhumping in arena might relegate this one to BG’s alone … Frostbite procs just aren’t reliable enough.
The vulnerability of FFB to interrupts is another issue … I might suggest fake-casting with ABlast (perhaps with a /y I’M AN ARCMAGE WHO DOESN’T STACK HASTE for added believability) to draw out the interrupt, but that will leave your Blink and CS locked out for a few seconds, which could be just as detrimental. Or, worse, your opponent might not throw the interrupt.
Snare heavy partner? Actually a Frost DK looks kinda interesting. Hungering Cold counts as a freeze, right? Deathgrip and Chains of Ice to give you some room.
Regardless, it looks like this spec uses a far more interesting variety of spells than the usual 3-4 that Frost and Arc specs use. Will be fun to try.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=Archimonde&n=Sprink&group=2
My fire PvP spec that I’ve been BGing with for a little while. So far, it’s been working great. Mind you, I have roughly 6-10 seconds to live, but at least I put out enough damage to make up for it. ^_^
I love the fact that fire can become a less-laughed-at option for PvP now.
the only down side i can find for this on first blush is that scorch has a shorter range than FB/FFB. (doesn’t it?)
Indeed it does. FFB has an unalterable range of 40 yards, scorch and flamestrike are base 30 yards, whereas fireball/LB/pyro are all base 35 yards.
so, it’s a bit more dangerous, but whatever. i don’t know about any other fire mages, but i tend to run deep into hordie crowds yelling “INCOMING!” anyway. : )
SUICIDE MAGES ❤
Did this in TBC where all I did was stack crit like nobody’s business and play with a POM Pyro spec. The issue behind Fire’s general perceived weakness in PvP is that it’s not built to survive a long time. Arcane has a snare and a Vanish, Frost has lots of Snares, a huge damage shield and 2 Blocks. Fire has…a speed boost and one PBAoE Snare. Hardly sufficient considering the huge crits people are dishing out these days.
As such, playing Fire in PvP means you need to get in, blow some shit up and gtfo. Failure to do so means you have 1 chance at Blocking and running, most likely with mana shield up and your mana pool draining like crazy.
Live free, die young, I guess…
Semi-unrelated question (and I can’t use my g-mail from work, so I’m posting it here while I’m still thinking about it):
Is there a specific spec that you prefer? Or did you pick arcane because it currently pushes the highest DPS output?
(Yes, I’m being neurotic about spec again… I’ve already made a tangible post-3.3 wishlist for an Arcane switch. 😛 )
For raiding?
I picked arcane because I like it. The DPS difference between it and fire is so small as to be unnoticeable, but at this point I’m a better arcane mage than I am a fire mage.
I can squeeze better numbers out of an arcane spec than I can a fire spec.
Ah, then I’m probably a bad fire mage, then. Or still lacking some crit. (39.33% self-buffed). Or both.
My conflict comes from liking all three specs and just wanting to push numbers a bit higher. Yes, it shouldn’t matter considering what I do with my mage. I’m not top-end/progression anything…but I do get pulled into a pug now and then and I’d rather not embarass myself too much. 😛
Inspired by this post, I decided to give fire PvP a whirl even before the patch hits… you know – to get warmed up and stuff?
I can say it is totally fun, a nice change in playstyle, and it certainly looks like some of the issues are being addressed with the patch.
There is definitely a survivability issue and a mana issue to contend with, but there is great potential and the extra mobility that comes from not casting anything longer than a scorch really makes a difference.
I find myself wishing for slow a lot when im being chased by axe weilding mouth frothing bubble popping hamstring slicing crippling poison stabbing allies… but then I remember I have DB and BW and along comes a hot streak and suddenly it’s not such an issue anymore.
I did sacrifice 2 points in flame throwing and put them into arcane shielding instead, as mana shield is too much of a liability to use otherwise, and range isn’t often an issue…. I think I’ll change that back again on patch day as I should have a bit more mana to play with.
On the whole though, heaps of fun. Also you can hide in a bush and toss out living bombs on everyone and then just wait for the hot streaks to roll on in. Mucho fun.
[…] got excited about Fire PvP, but seriously, who […]
Extremely informative post. Thanks!
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=12304211734&sid=1&pageNo=3
We have a great discussion going on fire PvP–I think that Shatter/FFB is my favorite spec so far, and I’ve tried a fair few Fire builds. You lose some toys but meh 😦
been BG’ing with this spec since this article came out and man is it fun. Made a change to the spec recently:
Post 3.3.3 I’ve taken the points out of Blazing Speed and Focus Magic and put them in Empowered Fire.
2 reasons… the first is in a BG, you’re constantly having to reapply FM since people are dying and it’s easy to just forget or not notice and be running around with out the buff anyway. The second is that Empowered Fire now boosts Pyro damage. In addition, the mana return helps with the one big short coming of this playstyle and that’s mana efficiency.
I haven’t seen an appreciable drop in hot streak procs due to the loss of FM and I’m definitely going OOM less often. They need to make Blazing Speed an on use and not proc ability, I’m tired of never getting it when I NEED it.
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