According to everyone fire is bad right now.

[Bibbs]

I've been playing fire since Draenor when the crystal build was the thing. Anyway, I've been playing fire still through BfA and have done all the mythics and so forth. sitting at 342 ilvl and I haven't seen that crazy low dps everyone is talking about...except on trash...which is odd for fire. Bosses I always jump to first and slowly trickle to around the person in second.

Basically what I'm here for is everyones opinion on fire right now. If you're playing it of course. I know most are running the other two for now.

[Skullhack]

As a main fire mage during all Legion, doing high key and first MM bosses, I loved fire. At the moment, the core gameplay is the same, with more choices and flexibility for talents, which is always nice.

As for the numbers, all I can say is that we are sitting at something like 30% crit versus ~60% at the end of Legion. This, plus the lack of haste, is hurting the feeling and the dps of the spec pretty hard. BUT, that also mean every gear upgrade will make the spec more and more enjoyable, as well as balancing the dps with other classes.

My only real complaint on the spec is the fact that we can't have Flame On and Phoenix at the same time. Of all the classes in Legion, Fire mage and Shadow Priest are probably the one that needed the most their weapon spell as a baseline tool. Phoenix smoothed the rotation so much, and gave us an awesome burst on dungeon trash, I'm really really sad they removed it. It really feel like a step back.

Hopefully, we can still get Flame On as baseline...

[Kalstrom]

Currently running living bomb and pheonix flames for dungeons for the increased aoe, which makes it decent but not the best. Warriors can just press one button and beat it easily.
Using pyroclasm as well for single target, prefer the play style much more than meteor. If i get a few procs in cds on bosses i can top meters, but without procs its pretty bad. Lack of haste and crit makes pyroclasm not so good but i just enjoy using it.
Im disappointed that they nerfed the flamestrike slow to 20% from 50%. Frost keep their 65% with talent. This is a bad change as slowing mobs might just be mandatory requirement in M+ although this doesnt change raiding much.
Frost also has extremely good burst aoe with comet storm, and arcane has become so boring in my opinion that i can almost fall asleep playing it.
Overall i think its still fun to play, but will get a lot more fun with more stats, as getting 7 stacks of pyrotechnics can be a tad frustrating at times...

[fuzzlecuff]

I played Frost/Fire in Legion. Began BFA as frost for leveling. Got bored at 120 and switched to fire. I was shocked how weak the spec seemed compared to frost, especially vs. trash. As frost I could pull 10+ mobs, control them with Blizz/Ice Nova and burn them down with orb/comet storm. Easy. As fire you're ignite dmg sucks, the reduced slow on flamestrike makes controlling mobs difficult (esp. with a single ice nova), cast time is so high generating procs is slow & even slower when mobs beating on you.

IMO Fire needs a major retuning. I've switched back to Frost and have no plans to try fire again until some adjustments are made.

[Bibbs]

I'm sticking it out with Fire. I can almost keep up in trash pulls for mythic and for bosses I'm either 1st or 2nd. The single target is way better than the AOE for fire right now. : / Maybe things will turn around.

[DeathDefier]

People love to overexaggerate how bad something is if it isn't the best, especially if they haven't tried it themselves. Fire isn't the best at anything, but it isn't very far behind either. Fire does have very glaring issues though with crit being a not so desirable stat and the lack of AOE that fire is known for.

[Huxneva]

I mained Fire from the start of Legion. I stuck it out through the good and bad times because I love the playstyle and the feel. At times it felt like we had to do twice the effort for the same DPS, but as it was enough for the content we were doing (HC and M+), I didn't need to switch to Arcane or Frost. I went on a break of half a year post Anthorus. Dabbled with some alts during prepatch.

I restarted on my mage 2 days before BfA launch. I went in with around ilvl370, and th choice of every Mage legendary for all specs. Decided to level as Fire just to get a feel for it. I detest wPvP so I didn't turn it on. I'll admit I was tempted at times because the extra PvE talents you get seemed like it would half the questing time.

Decided also to solo level through questing only.
110-115 was reasonable. The rotation felt a bit stunted, mainly due to having to choose either Flame-on or Phoenix Flames, but ok'ish.
116-120 was a nightmare. I swear even simple mobs felt like you were solo fighting in M+x, requiring all kiting and cc you have, shimmering all the time waiting it out with 2.1sec Fireball casts until you could combust again. Sure, it was fun in a sense, but for simple quest mobs? Accidentally pulling more than 3 was an assured corpse run if you didn't have the drop combat off cooldown. For the elies at the end of quest chains you would better have everything off cooldown before the pull, or they would kill you by attrition as you stand there hitting like a foam sword after your opening burst.

I still have to start gearing up (can't play so much these days, so yes, I'm very slow I know, but I will be ready before raid opens), so I have no experience with instances yet. I fear the worst. Being at the low end of the 'Fluffy Pillow' simms doesn't bother me. What does is the projected Versatility/Mastery builds. Fire's fun is into high reactive Crit/haste builds, then it is realy enjoyable. Standing still doing century long casts, glass cannon and counting on shimmers for movement is,'t my idea of fun.

Before you say 'ltp', hey, I know I'm not Method material, but I'm decent enough do roll with relative ease through HC raiding and medium high M+ (19), being one of the better ranked mages on my medium realm.
You can criticize the choices I make. I know frost is a far better leveling spec, I know Warmode talents would be fantastic and I know higher ilvl dungeon gear would maybe give some relief (sadly my potato computer can't handle BfA group content, new one is on the way). However, should not every spec be reasonable for casual solo leveling?

[Saharez]

I share the same experience as the OP, the damage of the fire spec is competetive in current content.

Fire got some weak points:

• Dedicated AoE encounters.

• Snares.

• Maybe scaling.

On the topic of scaling, there is some evidence suggesting that the fire mage gets lower dps returns on secondary stats compared to other classes.
In addition, even though Mages are currently not featured on the ilvl 385 simulationcraft raid report, when mages was present last, the fire mage ranked dead last. among the dps classes.

These are both indicative of scaling issues, which can provide issues in mythic raids and high mythic+ content, the evidence is suggestive at best, but something we should remain aware of just the same.

Where fire excels :

• Cleave encounters with a priority target.

• Fights with a duration conforming to combustion cooldown, for example fights lasting 2 minutes and 15 seconds (30 seconds if you use the fire starter talent)

The fire mage is very similar to the legion version, there is a few major gameplay changes to stay aware of.
First and foremost, Flamestrike is far less impressive in BFA, it is rarely worth casting in a dungeon environment.
Critical chance is no longer the go to secondary stat, in many cases it is the secondary stat with the poorest scaling, for the fire mage.

Most of the time I manage to sit at the top of the meters aswell so far, but personal experience from dungeons are not evidence of much more than the fire spec is viable.
It is not evidence that the fire spec is in a good place relatively speaking, that being said, currently I feel the fire mage is in a good spot while I worry it won't remain so as we get into higher item levels.