Incoming Marquee bindings nerf..

[Reigne]

Is anyone else uneasy about this?

To me the bracers have been the reason fire mages parse high on warcraft logs. Without them mages can't compete in the 90th percentile with shadow priests and marksmanship hunters.

Do they think fire mages are still overpowered? Do you guys think we are overpowered?

[kenisaim]

Blizz has said they want fire mages to be number 1 AOE. I dont think they like that we accomplish that by spreading ignite through chaining high pyrocrits. Hence the pyro nerf and flame strike buffs.

[Unreal]

In terms of % dps gain through a single legendary, fire mage bracers were too strong compared to other classes and their BiS legendary. That's why they're nerfing it, at some point it's scaling would allow fire mages to be better than a ton of other classes in st.

[kaywiz]

Hah, go figure they decide to nerf it right after I find them. I wonder if they will reduce the damage bonus or if they will try to reduce the frequency it procs?

[lopstar]

Ppl who have the bracers and progress with it, will realise, that the dps increase isn't that big as it is in sims.
But without the bracers, fire mages will be quite low on dps meters, cause there is NO dps outside combustions.

[Fuzada]

In terms of % dps gain through a single legendary, fire mage bracers were too strong compared to other classes and their BiS legendary. That's why they're nerfing it, at some point it's scaling would allow fire mages to be better than a ton of other classes in st.

While I agree that the % dps gain is an outlier among legendaries, I'm not sure the point on scaling is valid / proven.

The nerf to bracers needs to be considered in context with the rest of what Ion said. They're contemplating a re-work of secondaries, and specifically called fire mage out as an example of secondaries being too strong. I'd expect that a bracer nerf will come in concert with other changes to the spec in 7.1.5. In addition, I wouldn't be surprised if s2m is addressed in 7.1.5 as well, so it is probably a bit early to say that they're nerfing fire and ignoring s2m SP.

Point being, it is premature to get our panties in a bunch until we see the nerf and other class changes. If they hotfixed a bracer nerf without touching the rest of the spec I would very disappointed, and surprised.

[kaywiz]

In terms of % dps gain through a single legendary, fire mage bracers were too strong compared to other classes and their BiS legendary. That's why they're nerfing it, at some point it's scaling would allow fire mages to be better than a ton of other classes in st.

While I agree that the % dps gain is an outlier among legendaries, I'm not sure the point on scaling is valid / proven.

The nerf to bracers needs to be considered in context with the rest of what Ion said. They're contemplating a re-work of secondaries, and specifically called fire mage out as an example of secondaries being too strong. I'd expect that a bracer nerf will come in concert with other changes to the spec in 7.1.5. In addition, I wouldn't be surprised if s2m is addressed in 7.1.5 as well, so it is probably a bit early to say that they're nerfing fire and ignoring s2m SP.

Point being, it is premature to get our panties in a bunch until we see the nerf and other class changes. If they hotfixed a bracer nerf without touching the rest of the spec I would very disappointed, and surprised.

I am very curious how they plan to accomplish making our intellect a more attractive stat than crit. They could decrease the effectiveness of critical strike rating and increase our spell coefficients to accomplish this I suppose?

[Dacien]

There is some retard in development department who has a beef on mages.
Cause nerfing mages more than they already did is not a logical thought.

But shadow priests is just balanced.

They tried to bring down Marquee Fire Mage performance with the Pyro nerf. Now they're finally admitting that the bracers themselves need addressing. When the real-world numbers fall into place post-Marquee nerf, and when current real-world numbers are factored in, I anticipate a fire buff.

[Kintoun]

I calc'ed the ability alone on bracers to be a 9.1% DPS increase. I don't know much about other classes legendaries, but that does seem high. IMO nerf the bracers, but revert the Pyro nerf. Math below.

Default Patchwerk Mage_Fire_T19H base profile:
375745.8 DPS

Mage_Fire_T19H with bracers and applying Xenost's findings*:
414215.4 DPS

Mage_Fire_T19H with bracers but remove proc usage from APL:
379596.6 DPS

Fire Mage Legendary Bracer proc buffs a Mage's DPS by 9.1% on a patchwerk fight.

* Xenost's altered APL:
actions.combustion_phase+=/pyroblast,if=buff.hot_streak.up|buff.kaelthas_ultimate_ability.up&buff.combustion.remains>cast_time+travel_time

[Dutchmagoz]

The bracers should be nerfed, (just like some other class/spec legendaries, like boomkin helm) but the spec should be buffed in return. The only mage logs in top 100 of all specs got the bracers, and it should be people without bracers as well.

My idea would be something like: Nerf bracers from 300% to 250%.

Buff pyroblast damage by 6% (basically revert the nerfs from before)

[Zulandia]

I'm with Dutch. With the relative rarity of legendaries (and getting a specific legendary in particular) they should not feel requisite for a spec to feel competitive.

Obviously it sucks for the people who have them but it's the right call in the long run (assuming the baseline is buffed to compensate).

[Reven]

On the beta to took a significant buff to make the bracers usable in the first place, so I hope the nerf is mild. 250% feels too low, it will hopefully end up at something like 275% or 285%. It still has to remain the single target legendary for fire mages, just lessen the spike damage produced.

The fact that Fire mages are all about spikes in damage through burst (RoP/Comb/Sinew) and have lackluster ST sustain is another issue entirely that needs addressing.

[Pimpin_hooters]

It seems that, with the illogical changes to fire, Mages are not being well represented by intelligent people on the forums, and the right information is not being communicated well to the people responsible for class balance. How do we, as a community fix this? What specific forums should we be campaigning on? Is there a dev that has something against mages, and why? Do we not have representation on the wow side?

[Pank]

Well to be honest, like 5% of the mages overall have the bracers. And dont say it isnt true since we ( community on AT ) represents like a fraction of players that are investing more into the game, hence many users here have the bracers already. And they are broken when compared to a mage who doesnt have them.

For example, yesterday I did a DHT+7 with a fellow mage who had those ( and I dont ) and we both had koralon's equiped as well. He's pyro did around 25mil dmg more compared to mine. And the number of pyro casts was kinda the same. So you can see that playing fire without those can't be rewarding as they are doing that much difference. Ion ( the game director ) is always saying that everything should feel rewarding and thats probably one more reason they are nerfing those. Also fire has always been weak on starting tier in the expansion and has grown steadily to be one of the strongest specs in the later patches. A lot was said already that they were preemptively nerfing the spec before it gets out of control again.

The reasons for low st dmg are also pyromaniac talent not being super impactful, since it would only significantly boost your dps in combust but whatever, its fine ) and unstable magic being really really weak. Yeah, most of us are using living bomb for padding and whoring if nothing else.

+1 for dutch for re-buffing the pyro for those 6% and nerfing the bracers if anything.

Also, another smaller rant with the statement from devs ( or whoever it was on the wow crew ) is that fire mages should be the first in aoe. Yeah we'r completly fine but that flamestrike buff was really dumb since we dont even use it for the most part. They should fix that the flame strike could be a viable option when aoeing smaller add count. A huge part of that is also reworking or buffing the flame patch talent since its useless as well.

[Marlernx]

The bracers should be nerfed, (just like some other class/spec legendaries, like boomkin helm) but the spec should be buffed in return. The only mage logs in top 100 of all specs got the bracers, and it should be people without bracers as well.

My idea would be something like: Nerf bracers from 300% to 250%.

Buff pyroblast damage by 6% (basically revert the nerfs from before)

I also think they should revert pyro nerf as mages without the bracers are somewhat mediocre on ST, but i think 50% is a bit over the top. It should still feel rewarding getting the proc and getting the cast off. I'd rather take 275-280% or nerf the proc rate to 15% maybe.

[ssviolett]

It should be done long time ago, but without nerfing our Pyroblast damage. I hope if they nerf bracers, they will buff something else, since we are kinda far from top right now. I don't want to level my frost artifact from level 1.

[JeebusEFR]

I do not agree that these should be nerfed, currently they are not responsible for mages powering groups through content. We want them to feel powerful and valuable and over time more mages are going to get them through RNG drops. Time will heal all the special snowflakes that do not feel that it is fair they they do not have them and feel they are broken due to this. The people that Min/Max and know how to properly coordinate their gear should be rewarded with having such a piece of gear. The casuals will not use it properly or enough to make a difference in storyline progression or in any way that will break the pace of the game.

I do not cry because my Chevrolet doesn't perform like a Lamborghini.

[Pank]

Hehe that's funny. I've only done more than 3 times your mythic + and I've got koralons! Wauv

On a more serious note bracers or no bracers, wer kinda struggling with single target and that should be addressed. And since fireball and pyoblast without RoP basically don't do any dmg whatsoever and unstable magic does very little to zero, the only way to generate some dmg in between combustion and not having RoP is hitting pyro with bracers. Yeah sure RoP is great and paired with fireblast, PF and that second RoP charge you can get a great chain of pyroblasts in between two combustion. But thats it. Most of the talents that should buff our single target dmg are kinda useless. Adding more aoe fights to the future raids, sure. But that's just a bad fix if we are going to get remade into a pure aoe spec. Again emphasizing how ridiculous was the flame strike buff and the pyroblast nerf.

[Mage]

Again emphasizing how ridiculous was the flame strike buff and the pyroblast nerf.

I think they are following their old paradigm of "no class should be best at everything". Fire was good ST (not best by any means) and very good AOE/cleave. Now it is straight up bad ST and good AOE/cleave. Traditionally you would just switch to the competitive ST offspec for ST fights, however, Legion gearing/AP grind made sure that is not going to happen for 99,9% of people.

Bad design is bad.

[Pank]

Yep, well put. I'm even keeping some extra pieces of gear in my bank just in case something like that does happen tho. At the moment, it is still unlikely.

Also a non direct quote from a q&a: "Frost mage is way better than the numbers on logging sites suggest because a lot of the best mages are playing Fire right now.
If Frost mages were buffed slowly into being the best spec, lots of Fire players will be upset about the effort they already put into their artifact and gear. Those players will also switch to Frost, having it swing far ahead of Fire in logs and making it look very strong." And that is before the big buff to frost.

And these are the dev notes from September 23rd: " Classes
Developers’ Notes: As we discussed last week, we’ve been gathering a massive amount of data based on how each spec has been performing in this first week of raids and Mythic Keystone dungeons, so that we can make a number of tuning changes with next week’s realm maintenance. The overall goal of these changes is to buff up some underperforming specs while also reining in a couple of over-performers, without dramatically changing anyone’s playstyle or causing them to feel as though the spec they chose to focus on became the “wrong choice.” "

I wandered a bit on the off topic side , my apologies.