Flaming Friday 2: The Burning Sequal
Oh Alexstrasza my sweet little dragon queen, I never knew you could look so cute in a kimono. Though I do love seeing your skin when you wear your little skimpy bathing suit armor and your see-through cape, I have to say that this is much more suited to you. Image from the Haiku contest page on Wowhead. Nice of them to have this little contest, but I wish they weren’t so pathetically slow to get their Cataclysm talent calculator updated with all this new info.
Happy Flaming Friday to everyone! It’s been a week since Beta Build 12759 and all the new talents were released, so none of this should be news really. This is more to get my thoughts out on all the new mage fire talents as well as a few others that might be important, and maybe get some feedback on my ideas for PvP and PvE specs.
Here we go again!
The Fire Mage Tree and all it's Blazing Glory...Now With Improvements! :)
Pyroblast - Hurls an immense fiery boulder that causes X to Y Fire damage and an additional Z Fire damage over 12 sec.
Not much has changed on this one except that they increased the damage on the initial hit, which is a good thing. Still the optimal opener spell for when you’re out soloing and still the one for those tasty Hot Streak procs.
Molten Armor - Causes X Fire damage when hit, increases your ciritcal strike chance by 3%, and reduces the chance you are critically hit by 5%. Only one type of Armor spell can be active on the Mage at any time. Lasts 30 min.
With how they setup talents in the latest build, this defensive spell is going to be a great deal sweeter and more useful. By itself it’s decent enough, though I would prefer frost shields for leveling, but you take what you can get, yes?
Tier 1
Master of Elements - 2/2 - Your spell criticals will refund 30% of their base mana cost.
It hasn't changed since last Flaming Friday. Still the optimal choice for mages going into PvE no matter what you spec. Mana conservation in raids is a big deal. Also optimal first skip for PvP. Good to see Blizzard rethought their first tier and took this down to a two rank talent. No longer need to waste a third point to max it out.
Burning Soul - 3/3 - Reduces the casting time lost from taking damaging attacks by 70%.
Same talent, new graphic, the one talent that a fire mage will take regardless if he's looking to raid or melting Alliance faces. I still think that it's not so much use in raid since mages technically aren't suppose to get hit but sometimes they do.Although moments like that they should usually be moving instead of trying to cast something.
Improved Fireblast - 2/2 - Reduces the cooldown of your Fire Blast spell by 4 sec and increases the range by 10 yards.
I called that one it seemed. Blizzard got rid of Incineration (sad to see it go, it seemed like a decent talent) and brought this from Tier 2 down to Tier 1. Good job, Blizzard. Fire Blast is still the famous insta-FWOOSH we all know and love and thanks to a revamp on how Impact works, it will be useful in PvE as well as PvP. It's just one of the many new ways to inflict nasty AOE on enemy groups. Still one to make beautiful face melting music.
Tier 2
Ignite - 3/3 - Your critical strikes from Fire damage spells cause the target to burn for an additional 40% of your spell's damage over 4 sec.
Extra dots of course mean extra damage and dots seem to be a big thing for fire mages. This is an essential talent to take for both PvE and PvP as I've been told, so don't pass up on it.
Fire Power - 2/2 - Increases the damage of your Fire spells by 3% and gives your Flame Orb a 100% chance to explode at the end of its duration.
Moved down from Tier 3 to Tier 2 and now it just flat increases damage for all fire spells. Not bad. Also, thank you, THANK YOU Blizzard, for giving fire mages back their ability to have exploding fire orbs. Now the question is whether or not I'll use this for a PvP spec. From what I've seen of Flame Orb it just stands in one spot for a duration and attacks things that are near it. Any player worth his brain is going to get away from that as quickly as possible so the exploding part is...well, kind of useless in PvP. PvE though, this seems like gold.
Blazing Speed - 2/2 - Gives you a 10% chance when hit by a melee or ranged attacks to increase your movement speed by 50% and dispel all movement imparing effects. This effect lasts 8 sec.
Same as before, good for PvP and obvious skip for PvE. A later talent takes this thing though and sort of runs with it.
Impact - 2/2 - Gives your damaging spells a 10% chance to cause the next Fire Blast you cast to stun the target for 2 sec and spread any Fire damage over time effects to nearbye enemy targets within 12 yards.
WoW! Seriously, seriously WoW! This talent has seen some very nice and juicy looking changes over the past month and I am really, really eager to sink my teeth into this when the game goes live. Not only did they do as I asked and brought the proc chance back up to 10%, not only does it deliver its sexy little stun, but it spreads that fiery DoT damage to everyone close to the target. Sexy, sexy. MOAR DOTS MOAR DOTS! Great for PvP obviously but also now has some PvE applications as well.
Tier 3
Cauterize - 2/2 - You have a 100% chance that an attack which would otherwise kill you will instead bring you to 40% of your maximum health. However, you will burn for 12% of your maximum health every 1.50 sec for the next 6 sec. This effect cannot occur more than once per minute.
Once again, WoW! This is frickin' Awesome! If you've ever played Modern Warfare or Modern Warfare 2 you might be reminded of the Last Stand perk where when you would normally die you would drop to the ground, pull out a pistol, and crawl around able to shoot enemies for a few moments before you finally did die. This basically works just like that. Unless you can get a last minute heal before those six seconds are up, you're going to die, but the point is that those six seconds are easily enough time to get a Fire Blast in, followed by a Scorch, and if you're lucky get a Hot Streak proc off of that in order to get a possible win. It's a sexy brand new talent that drips with PvP goodness. Good job, Blizzard!
Blast Wave - 1/1 - A wave of flame radiates outward from the target location, damaging all enemies caught within the blast for X Fire damage and are slowed by 70% for 3 seconds.
Not quite your Mommy and Daddy’s Blast Wave talent, boys and girls! No longer do we get the radiate around the caster get the hell away from me knockback (and those in Vanilla didn't even get the knockback), now Blast Wave has a range! You can aim it at people to flambe them with a quick insta-cast AOE. Personally I would have rather kept the regular way with the knockback for PvP purposes, but this spell is much more useful now for PvE and AOE. Especially with the little gem you get from Improved Flame Strike talent later in the tree.
Molten Shields - 2/2 - Reduces the global cooldown of your Mage Ward spell by 1 sec and your Mage Ward triggers the Blazing Speed effect when it dissipates from absorbing damage.
Unlike how it was in the last time I did Flaming Friday, this talent no longer has a dubious usefulness. Now, it's frickin' awesome. Get your Blazing Speed to proc just by having Mage Ward (which is the combination of your Frost and Fire Ward spells with Arcane added in) be canceled by absorbing damage? How cool is that? The thing that I wonder about is whether or not this talent will have Blazing Speed itself as a prerequisite. Right now, it doesn't. If it stays that way you might be able to get away with not taking Blazing Speed at all to get this.
Improved Scorch - 2/2 - Reduces the mana cost of your Scorch spell by 100%.
Another big change to a talent. The effect it had to increase your critical strike chance on a target has been given to Critical Mass talent. Now this one just gives a mana-free Scorch. Pretty good if you ask me, but I think you can skip it for PvP. This used with the talent Firestarter is going to be pretty solid gold for Fire mage raiders who sometimes have to cast on the move.
Tier 4
Pyromaniac - 2/2 - Increases spell haste by 10% if 3 or more targets are taking Fire damage over time from your spells.
No change at all to this talent from last time. Still means more Flamestrikes, more Blizzards, more Living Bombs, more wide area mass destruction (even more now with Fire mage's juicier AOE abilities). But...still useless against single target boss fights unless they have lots of adds. I can see the potential for PvP in this but that's also very situational. You aren't going to see a lot of times where Alliance are grouped together, so maybe the points to spend on this talent can be better spend on something else.
Combustion - 1/1 - When activated, this spell increases the critical strike chance on your next non-periodic Fire damage spell by 100%. In addition, when that critical strike lands, all of your existing Fire periodic damage effects will be merged into the Combustion effect, burning at the same rate but over 10 sec.
After getting some explanation to how this talent might work from before I have a better appreciation for it now. There are a lot of potential dots going onto a target when you hit them with your fire spells, so using this with a potential Hot Streak proc can cause massive damage to be dealt out. Pity they decided to take the dot damage away from Fireball spell otherwise it could have done more, but oh well. We'll have to see how this actually works in Beta and in live.
Hot Streak - 3/3 - Your spells no longer trigger Arcane Missiles. Instead, any time you score 2 non-periodic critical strikes in a row with your Fireball, Frostfire Bolt, Scorch, or Fire Blast spells, you have a 100% chance the next Pyroblast spell cast within 10 sec will be instant cast and cost no mana.
I just noticed something as I was typing this out. The old version had this proccing off any Fire spell, but now it's just these listed ones. I'm guessing that means that it no longer crits off the AOE criticals from Living Bomb then? Sadness, but I can see how that might be a little over powered. It still has Scorch and Fire Blast though so that counts for PvP, so I can't complain too much. It's going to be a bit harder to get this to activate but Procs are still great!
Firestarter - 1/1 - Your molten Armor allows you to cast the Scorch spell while moving instead of reducing the chance you are critically hit.
Another brand new talent for fire mages and Holy God Damn, this one is just as awesome. Really, I'm starting to wonder if Fire mages might be a little OP, but with the nerf they did to talents like Hot Streak I don't think so. Being able to cast Scorch while moving, no longer having to stop and cast when you would also like to keep away from the bastard that’s trying to kill you, or run circles while you kill him. Get those Hot Streak procs while on the move! Question is though, is it worth it to sacrifice the reduction in being critted in PvP? I'll think yes for now.
Tier 5
I still have issues with this tree as being the beginning of where mages begin to lose some options if they want to go deeper, but I guess there are enough choices in the lower tiers that you don't have to take everything here. Plus the awesome of some of these talents makes up for it.
Improved Flamestrike - 2/2 - Reduces the casting time of your Flamestrike spell by 100% and gives you a 100% chance that your Blast Wave spell will also automatically Flamestrike the same location if two or more targets are affected by the Blast Wave.What was once a joke in ancient times has now grown up to become something damned useful. More AOE destruction with just a Blast Wave and Blizzard got a bit of sense and made this spell insta-cast. I couldn't have asked for better.
Dragon's Breath - 1/1 - Targets in a cone in front of the caster take X Fire damage and are Disoriented for 5 sec. Any direct damaging attack will revive targets.
No change to this spell really except for one. Before it said “turns off your attack when used. Not sure why they got rid of that but maybe it wasn’t useful. I don’t know enough about current mages to whether or not it had any use. At the core of things though, it's still the power of my Hot Awful Breath and be Stunned By it's Awesome Might! Still the most useful PvP spell they have. I'm really looking forward to making use of this to ruin some hopes of a few Alliance who get close enough and think they are going to kill me. It's a pity that the damage doesn't seem to contribute to getting Hotstreak to proc, and I still don't agree with making this spell a requirement in order to get Living Bomb. I'm still looking forward to this ability.
Molten Fury - 2/2 - Increases damage of all spells against targets with less than 35% health by 12%.
Hasn't changed since last time. Great for PvE and raid bosses and the extra tricks up their sleeves that they like to pull out when they get near death, for PvP it seems like a fence ability. I wonder if the points would be useful elsewhere. Mage experts help me out here.
Tier 6
Still the lonely talent on this tier and I still don't agree with it. You have loads of talents in teir 2, 3, and 4, I say maybe take one of the ones that you'd obviously take in one of the lower tiers and put it up here. ...or not. I guess a change like that would be purely cosmetic and wouldn't change much of anything. So maybe find a new talent you can put into this tier to add a little more choice, a little more flavor to this tree. Do that to all talent trees even. All the same, at least the lonely talent in this tier has been drastically improved.
Ciritcal Mass - 3/3 - Your Pyroblast and Scourch spells have a 100% chance to cause your target to be vulnerable to spell damage, increasing spell critical strike chance against that target by 5% and lasts 30 sec. Increases the damage done by your Fireball, Frostfire Bolt, and Pyroblast by 3% per Fire damage over time effect on the target, up to a maximum of 9%.
Holy balls! Not only does this talent look useful now, it even goes as far to make putting Scorch back into the rotation of any fire mage pretty much essential. Start off with Living Bomb, then cast Scorch to get the debuff, proceed with fireballs to try and get Hot Streak procs remembering to keep up your LB and Scorches in order to keep that damage flowing. From my understanding it's not too difficult from current day fire rotation. For PvP and the ability to cast Scorch while on the move, this is just going to mean better chance to get that Hot Streak proc and give your Alliance friend a face full of pyromania. Thank you Blizzard for improving this talent. I send you hugs.
Tier 7
Last, but sure as hell not least, is what I like to call "The Tag"
Living Bomb - 1/1 - The target becomes a Living Bomb, taking X Fire damage over 12 sec. After 12 sec or when the spell is dispelled, the target explodes dealing Y Fire damage to all enemies within 10 yards.
Tag, you're it! One of those spells that's useful in any situation. It does damage to single targets and it's even more friendly when the target has nearby friends. I am sad that it's explosion doesn't seem to cause Hot Streak to proc as I mentioned, but I also said that I can see that might be overpowered. I'm not too worried about it though. A great talent to finish off a tree that has been vastly improved over the weeks since the 41 point talent trees were introduced.
Before I said I would never take any talents off of the Frost Tree because I hated the Frost tree and I generally consider it to be a skill tree, just like beast mastery for hunters, demonology for locks, and the paladin class in general. Well here's me putting my foot in my mouth because for both PvE and PvP, I will be taking this.
Piercing Ice - 3/3 - Increases the critical strike chance of your spells by 3%.
Yes, I can get past the rather contradictory name and icon this presents to a Fire mage because extra criticals are extra criticals, and that's that. This will be at the cost of Invocation in the Arcane tree but ask yourself, what's better for a fire mage? 10% extra damage some of the time or 3% extra crit all the time? Hot Streak has judged. Crit wins.
Rest of my points go into Arcane Tree.
Tier 1
Arcane Concentration - 3/3 - Gives you a 10% chance of entering a Clearcasting state after any damage spell hits a target. The Clearcasting state reduces the mana cost of your next damage spell by 100%.
Hasn't changed since last time, still the choice to go for PvE.
Improved Counterspell - 2/2 - Your Counterspell also silences the target for 4 sec.
For every choice of PvE there is a choice for PvP. ...well, usually anyway. This is the choice for any mage serious about PvP, and Blizzard is still sensible enough to keep this at Tier 1. Take it, L2 Counterspell, treat it well, and it love you long time.
Netherwind Presence - 3/3 - Increases your spell haste by 3%.
Hasn't changed since last time. For PvP, get it so you can have improved Blink, for PvE I say get it if you have the points left.
Tier 2
I'm only going to cover one talent in the second Arcane tier because that's the only one that really looks useful at this point. They moved Arcane Mastery up to a higher tier which is a shame because of the lost critical in PvE, but ...ah well. Piercing Ice makes up for it I guess. Invocation might be nice by the way I'm going now I don't have the points for it, and Improved Arcane Missiles is useless for those who take Hot Streak. That only leaves...
Improved Blink - 2/2 - Increases your speed by 70% for 3 sec after casting the Blink spell.
Yes it was a typo. Excellent. You sure as hell can't say no to increased movement rate at the tail of a blink. This is another one of those spells PvP mages should always be ready to use at a given moment, just like Counterspell.
Here's how I'm going right now for my talents.
Fire PVP Spec
This will be my primary spec for now and it starts off pretty simple. Burning Soul and Improved Fire Blast. More crit on FB means more chance for Hot Streak to proc and it's instant damage making it good for quickly whitling down your opponent.
In Tier 2, doesn't matter what spec you're going with, start off with Ignite. That extra dot damage is cheddar. After that I took Impact to make Fire Blast a little more dangerous. This gives you your path to Tier 3 but you might have to backpeddle a little and put at least one point into either Fire Power or Blazing Speed. Blizzard in their wisdom made the three good PvP talents in Tier 3 cost only four points, so if you want to go on to Tier 4 you got to either devote some to Improved Scorch or backtrack a little. I maxed out Blazing Speed because escapes are good.
For Tier 3 itself, it should be a no brainer really. Get Blast Wave. It might have changed from it's more useful knockback but that ranged ability to slow targets down is pretty sexy in itself. After that get Cauterize. Also cheddar for PvP, being able to keep going for a few more seconds after otherwise dying. Finally get Molten Shields. Blazing Speed after you lose Mage Ward is too god damned golden to pass up.
Tier 4, start with Combustion and then get Hot Streak. Hot Streak is a fire mage's bread and butter now matter how he specs. Finally get Firestarter. I've got a hard-on for being able to cast Scorch on the move.
Tier 5 should be an easy choice to start off with. Dragon's Breath, it is your friend in combat against Alliance degenerates. I took Improved Flamestrike after that. Ability to get a free Flamestrike off of casting a Pyroblast, situational considering it only happens if you hit more than one target, but still pretty sexy. Moreso is the instant cast Flame Strike. I love it. And I also did take Molten Fury, which was one of three talents I was juggling with. The other two are Fire Power and Pyromaniac. I mentioned that I think the Flame Orb spell might be good for getting someone to move where you want them too but I can't imagine them hanging near it to catch its explosion, so it doesn't seem that useful. Pyromaniac is situational useful, because I don't see many times where Alliance are going to be grouped three together very often. Being able to do more damage to targets that are almost dead, I think that's the more useful talent, so I went with Molten Fury.
Tier 6, Critical Mass is now useful for PvP as well as PvE. Increased crit chance off of Scorch and Scorch and I are going to become fast friends.
Tier 7, Living Bomb? The Tag? Obviously.
Piercing Ice in the first tier of the Frost Tree is of course a must have for any fire mage for the extra crit. In the Arcane Tree, duh? Get Improved Counterspell and also go with Netherwind Presence because haste is nice and you need it to get Improved Blink.
Fire PVE Spec
Instead of Improved Fire Blast I get Master of Elements. Conserving Mana in boss fights is important. Still went with Burning Soul.
In Tier 2 I of course get Ignite, and then I put points into Fire Power. Exploding Flame Orb is a lot more useful on NPC mobs who are too dumb to run away. I anticipate the beginning of some juicy AOE goodness at level 81 with this. I also got Impact for even more AOE goodness courtesy of a Fire Blast.
In Tier 3 I skipped Cauterize and Molten Shields. Both are more useful for PvP, not so much for dungeon crawls and raids, unless you're really dumb and like to draw agro. Blast Wave is essential and free mana Scorches are awesome.
Tier 4 I went again with Combustion and Hot Streak, and I got Pyromaniac for more AOE sexiness. I'm on the fence about Firestarter for PvE. Is it useful to being able to cast Scorch on the move because technically the only time the mage should move is to avoid being damaged in any PvE situation. But they are still doing damage when they move with this so I can see the use, but would the point be better used elsewhere?
Tier 5, Dragon's Breath. Not so useful in PvE, so I wish Blizzard didn't make it needed to get Living Bomb. Oh well. Molten Fury is a must, and Improved Flamestrike is awesome for even more AOE love.
Tier 6, Critical Mass speaks for itself in its use. So does Living Bomb in Tier 7.
In the arcane tree I got Arcane Concentration to help conserve mana and I maxed out Netherwind Presence. Here's the thing though. Three talents are kind of fighting over a single talent point that remains in order to have the talent or max it out. Netherwind presence (which I have maxed in now), Firestarter, or maxing out Pyromaniac. I can take two of these but I can't have all three. Which is most important in PvE and raids for fire mages? Ability to cast Scorch on the move, having 10% extra haste some of the time, or having 3% haste all of the time?