Reflecting on the Fire Mage in Dragonflight & War Within Wishlist - Editorial

Dragonflight Retrospectives & War Within Wishlists

Now that Dragonflight is coming to a close, and The War Within is close approaching it is time to consider how Hero Talents and other potential changes may shape Fire Mage in the years to come. But before we look forward, let's take a moment to recap Dragonflight. The evolution of Fire Mage gameplay throughout the duration of Dragonflight is best summarized by looking at the talent tree and changes to it over the expansion. By looking at these changes, we can see the direction Fire has taken and perhaps make some predictions about Hero Talents, too.

Fire Mage Gameplay

Fire Mage gameplay is simple at first glance, the goal is to cast as many Pyroblasts (or Flamestrikes) as possible while maintaining various buffs and having as much uptime on your cooldown, Combustion, as possible. Hot Streak is the primary vehicle for shipping Pyroblast into your enemies' faces and casting spells with Combustion alongside Fire Blast usage is the best way to generate crits to convert Heating Up into Hot Streak. This is the core gameplay loop of Fire, and has been since before this talent system.

Dragonflight Talent System

Dragonflight introduced the new talent tree system and we have had plenty of time to get familiar with it. Overall, the system has been a success, but it wasn't always this way. Mage talents had a very rocky start in Dragonflight but with the rework in 10.1.5 the talent trees have greatly improved. Hopefully this upward trajectory continues into The War Within!

There is a lot to like about Mage talents. The class tree includes many powerful and fun to use choices. Mass Barrier gives mages a way to help support their group beyond Arcane Intellector making food and portals. Ice Cold provides a much needed alternative to Ice Block when immunity isn't needed. The removal of Rune of Power is also a welcome change, although the loss of burst from it can be felt. For raid, a lot of the talent choices for Fire become a bit standardized or "cookie cutter" but there are interesting options like Flame Accelerant, Meteor, and Alexstrasza's Fury that can perform well depending on the situation. That being said, you mostly pick the same talents regardless of the situation.

For Mythic+, Fire actually has interesting choices! There is variety when it comes to builds for AoE damage. For quick damage on packs of enemies that won't last long, the Flamestrike build can blast AoE. The addition of Fuel the Fire makes this gameplay feel a lot more rewarding than the past since you get actual feedback from Flamestrike (via Heating Up) in the same way you would from Pyroblast. For situations where packs live longer, like higher keys, the Ignite build brings a completely different playstyle that focuses on turning a primary target into fuel for an intense flame that spreads to nearby foes via Mastery: Ignite.

The talent system works for Mage, but there is always room for improvement.

• Sun King's Curse

Combustion uptime is very important to Fire, which brings us to Sun King's Blessing; there is no other talent for Fire that shapes the gameplay more. Sun King's Blessing allows for greatly increased Combustion uptime and Hot Streak generation in turn. This has many benefits or consequences, depending on how you look at it, but the main points are that it pushes fire towards being an "uptime spec" and requires frequent hard-casting: Sun King's Blessing stacks are generated by consuming Hot Streak. More Sun King's Blessing stacks means more Combustion uptime, which means more Hot Streaks, which means more Sun King's Blessing stacks, etc, etc. Round and around it goes, but the bottom line is that Fire requires constant uptime to reach its full potential and is easily derailed by interruptions. Every class loses damage when things go sideways, but Fire is punished more for this than most specs.

Sun King's Blessing is activated by hard-casting Pyroblast (or Flamestrike) which means that the spec is often forced into long casts. This is less of an issue now with current haste levels but a new expansion will come with a heavy loss of secondary stats. Thankfully, we Shimmer or Ice Floes to help with this but frequent hard-casting can be frustrating at times when the spec demands high uptime.

Sun King's Blessing also interacts strangely with Fuel the Fire, making a hard-cast Flamestrike result in wasted procs if cast while queuing a Hot Streak. Sun King's Blessing isn't all bad though, it's a very powerful talent and adds a lot of flavor to Fire. The main issue is that talents are meant to give us choices but Sun King's Blessing is the only way to play Fire in PvE due to tuning.

• Time and Temporal Warp

Bloodlust is a group cooldown, which means that when to use it is often a group decision. Mages have access to it via Time Warp. Temporal Warp is a talent that allows Mages to give themselves a second Time Warp. This effect actually stacks with Time Warp, which means you get a lot of haste; usually above 100% with good gear. Lucky for Fire, we are able to make full use of Haste. The issue with this talent is that it is tied to your Time Warp button and sometimes the correct strategy is to hold Bloodlust for a vital part of the fight.

This means that Mages have a cooldown that they want to press as soon as possible, but have to ask for permission from the group to press. This can lead to a lot of unnecessary friction in group play, since it is always in the Mage's best interest to Bloodlust the pull. You might be wondering, why is this talent not just a separate button like every other talent? To answer that we need to go all the way back to 2016.

One of the systems in the Legion expansion was Legendary items. In this expansion, we had a ring called the Shard of the Exodar. Look familiar? Back in Legion, there were stricter limitations on what this effect could do, so the functionality was baked into an existing spell: Time Warp. When the item effect was copy-pasted into Shadowlands (Memory of a Temporal Warp), then Dragonflight, some things changed. The limitation (or flavor) of tying it to an existing spell did not. This would be fine if the alternative, Time Anomaly, was better but unfortunately, this talent is a downgrade at best. Randomly getting buffs seems fun in theory but the main thing you notice with this talent is when it buffs you in a moment where the effect is completely worthless. This is not a good alternative to Temporal Warp.

• Dead Talents

Every class has dead talents. Fire suffers the most from this below the capstone line. When Hyperthermia was changed to not proc during Combustion the talent became very undertuned. Deep Impact can be seen as a downgrade in most situations. Unleashed Inferno is extremely weak compared to Sun King's Blessing. These talents have been dead the entire expansion, effectively reducing the choices for Fire Mage capstones to just Sun King's Blessing. They are only ever used in PvP, a mode that has its own enforced adjustments to spells to change the balancing separately from the rest of the game. Since PvP already rebalances most spells, why can't these talents be tuned for PvE separately?

• Buff Juggling

Fire also has a surprising amount of buffs and debuffs that stack and should be maintained. A lot of the abilities need to be used strategically to maintain these buffs while also interacting with Hot Streak, which means that you need to juggle them while also avoiding munching (or wasting) procs. This further reinforces Fire's reliance on constant uptime.

Examples include but are not limited to:

• Sun King's Blessing - Stacks to 8, must be used as soon as it is generated unless there is downtime.
• Improved Scorch (execute only) - You play around maintaining these stacks at 3.
• Feel the Burn - You play around maintaining these stacks at 3.
• Firemind - Mostly ignored, comes from Hot Streak and should stay at 3 stacks the entire fight.
• Fevered Incantation - Mostly ignored, short duration that is canceled with a non-crit. Stacks 4 times.
• Mage Fire 10.1 Class Set 2pc - Season 2 and 4 tier bonus, debuff should be maintained.
• Mage Fire 10.2 Class Set 2pc - Season 3 tier bonus, mostly ignored. Should stay stacked most of the fight. Stacks 5 times.

Some players enjoy the added difficulty of maintaining these buffs while not wasting resources, but as more effects to juggle are added, the bloat can be felt.

Flamestrike Issues

Flamestrike is a spell with a reticle (the green circle that appears when you press it). Reticles are fine for spells that are cast occasionally, but Flamestrike is used very frequently when playing with Flamestrike talents. The solution here is to use a macro for the spell to automatically place it where your mouse is. Playing this way anchors your mouse to a specific spot on your screen since every other cast is a Flamestrike. You essentially lose access to your mouse when playing this way and have to adapt by flicking it around between globals.

Flamestrike has other issues, especially with Sun King's Blessing, which we already covered. It is also a ground effect, which means that movement can heavily affect your damage when playing Flame Patch. Fuel the Fire greatly improved Flamestrike gameplay but it still has a ways to go to feel as fluid as Pyroblast.

Hero Talent Trees Wishlist

Fire will have access to Sunfury and Frostfire Hero talents. We don't really know what this entails yet, but what I'm hoping to see for Fire are new talents that allow us to break the mold of Fire being tied to constant uptime with a flattened damage profile. Once upon a time, Fire was known for being a strong burst spec with strong 2min cooldowns. Having this be an option again could introduce some variety for the Raid gameplay.

It's always a bit hard to predict what Blizzard will come up with when it comes to new talents, but the names of these Hero talents each carry a heavy aesthetic and fantasy to pull from. Based on these names and our knowledge of past Mage design, let's take a moment to daydream.

• Sunfury

No NPC embodies the concept of Sunfury more than Kael'thas Sunstrider and his followers. Prince Kael'thas is heavily associated with the Phoenix, a mythological firebird with the power of Rebirth. Every time we strike him down he somehow comes back into the story.

It's a safe bet to assume these Hero talents will interact with Phoenix Flames in some way, possibly tying in with summoning actual Phoenix guardians or calling down pillars of flame. There will likely be a tie-in for Blazing Barrier to be upgraded to Cloak of Flames and other upgrades to our fire spells with an emphasis on area of effect. Aside from summoning Phoenixes and using fire themed spells, Kael'thas Sunstrider is also known for using control spells like Gravity Lapse, Arcane Disruption, and Mind Control. Since Arcane also ties into Sunfury, there is likely going to be some overlap here with gravity magic, but it may not necessarily be tied to these old boss mechanics.

My hope is that Sunfury gives Fire some benefit for Combustion that restores the gameplay to its old high-burst self. Ideally, something that allows for more freedom with existing talents that moves it away from cooldown reduction and being an uptime spec.

• Frostfire

Frostfire is an interesting contradiction but this is a fantasy world! In the past, Mage had Frostfire Bolt as a spell that scaled with talents from the old Frost and Fire tree. The spell was later moved to be Frost exclusive, then replaced with Flurry. The term is also used in Frostfire Ridge. The official description for this zone was "a harsh land of ceaseless winter and volcanic peaks, where travelers encounter molten lava as often as painfully cold snow."

We don't have a lot to go off of here, but it's very likely that these Hero talents will come with a blue recolor for some spells. It may also tie into more ancient and primalist volcanic magic. My hope is mostly for variety in gameplay, so as long as gameplay is distantly different from Sunfury while being competitive I will be happy. Beyond this, it would be really cool if Frostfire dipped into "multicasting" or spell combos. I think this could fit well with the hybrid spells theme, but I'm not sure what it would look like in practice.

Overall, I'm (mostly) happy with the design of Fire currently and cautiously optimistic about Hero Talents. What do you think of the Hero talents coming in The War Within? Leave a comment below with your own theories!

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