#1 - Nov. 17, 2016, 1:24 a.m.
It is so apparent that devs care more about mages. There's no excuse anymore. Warlocks, Ele Shamans, Hunters, DKs, and so many other specs have been clamoring for something.
Day. Two. Mages get a wall of text explaining why these changes were made. Not just a "We're looking into it!" answer. But an actual explanation how they came to their decision and useful feedback.
Patch 7.1.5 Fire changes
As a long time fire mage player (among other classes, don't pigeonhole me ), I think it's very fair to say the spec needed some adjustments - that's something I've heard in Trade and Guild Chat since Legion day one (even the post above me is a player who boosted a mage for this reason).
While there are some (what I personally feel) valid concerns with how adjustments affect investment into Artifacts, our adjustments aren't of the caliber that should warrant "FIRE IS DEAD" being screamed from the mountaintops. We want players to play the spec they want, and not focus on switching in an out of the FotM every patch cycle.
Anyways, it's good to note that we are still iterating on 7.1.5, and we are by no means patch-complete at this point. We are not currently in a state where we are ready to share detailed thoughts on Fire until the changes are fully implemented.
Datamining is not always something you should be going by 100% when providing feedback - just something to keep in mind.
It's concerning that you are trying to justify nerfs with things you hear from guild chat and trade chat. Fact of the matter is, fire is just fine at the moment. It's not too strong, it's not too weak. Just fine. Every logging metric in the world corroborates this, the only people screaming fire is OP are daily dungeon heroes and trolls. Thanks for communicating at least.
There's really no difference between trying to justify nerfs with conversation on the forums than with chats with players in game than with players on Social Media. Every voice matters, and channel with a voice is just as valid as the next.
Nerfs aren't "justified" through conversation alone - in fact I think "justified" is a dangerous word to use here. The developers are looking at tons of information when they make these adjustments. I'm not saying conversation didn't impact changes at all (the previous were my notes, and I'm not a developer), but there are more than enough cases where people laugh and tell their fellow mages to be quiet or they will get them nerfed to cause a bit of an eyebrow raise for myself.
Ion went over why the Bracers are being changed during BlizzCon. You can find information on that elsewhere, as I don't have it readily available to repeat. But every pack should be what you consider "middle of the pack" in an ideal world. Raid vs Mythic environments adjust this, of course, but I don't see Fire falling off the deep end because of this.
In fact, with future secondary stat changes (talked about in the post BlizzCon Q&A) I think gear scaling will improve ten fold, and I foresee that these changes will actually be better long term.
Let's have a deeper discussion on this once 7.1.5 changes are finalized on the PTR, but I'll gather the feedback here for now and send it over.
Thank you again for a quick response! Yesterday felt very grim, but after thinking about it, I have absolutely no reason to believe this iteration of the PTR is final (and I am one of the people who lived through the "jaw dropping damage" of Burning Crusade). I don't necessarily agree with the every voice matters, but, again, how do you weigh the voice of these opinions to what happens in practice? Mages aren't exactly crushing it in Emerald Nightmare or Trial of Valor, they have their strong fights and their weak fights, they aren't shadow priests. By every metric, they are just okay, middle of the pack. This is underscored by the fact that the legendary wrists are indeed too powerful and is largely what props up mage performance.
On a side note for the legendary wrists. I know they were slated for a nerf this patch. I get it, they absolutely were too strong. I would just like to bring up the fact that their current iteration on the ptr makes the proc useless. The nerf they received is incomparable to the nerfs other over the top legendaries received (unholy wrists, havoc ring, etc.), they are simply on a differing order of magnitude. As of right now, in a vacuum, the proc is almost not worth using. This is further exacerbated by the removal of ice floes, which, for all intents and purposes, makes what once was the BIS legendary for fire mages absolutely worthless. Now, it is possible there are further changes that mitigate this nerf (for example, making pyroblast only take 3 seconds to cast, as an example), but as of right now, the bracers are just a glorified stat stick in 7.1.5.Appreciate the feedback on the bracers. I'm not sure of the state of the legendary item changes, they could very well be in flux, too...
Thats not even all of it. Look at that. So many classes would kill for this level of dialogue. And it took them two days to get it.
Just admit it at this point that you care more about mages than other classes. We already know.
Edit: Devs are now talking to mages in their discord. Unreal.
And I know the quote is large and not all Blizzard. It's not misdirection. They answered lengthy responses rather than ignoring it. That's the issue.
Edit #2: I also am aware that more changes are to come for classes. But there was so much hype for these notes for under-performing classes that the aforementioned classes should have been pushed first. They could have buffed Fire afterwards for all I care.
At this point, the fact is Blizzard is either grossly negligent to particular classes or astoundingly incompetent in community management.
Edit:
11/17/2016 11:49 AMPosted by OrnyxIt's good to note that I am not a developer, so the title here is very misleading.
I did leave notes in multiple class forums that 7.1.5 is very much in flux, and that's basically what I did in the mage forum. These other comments came later in the day, near to when I was leaving the office, so I didn't have time to dive into conversations with Warlocks, for example.
We have notes for other specs that we will be sharing throughout the length of the 7.1.5 PTR, but we are not necessarily ready to talk about the state of every spec at this time - Fire is just in a more solid place. I do plan on sharing more 7.1.5 information today and tomorrow as stuff comes to me that is more set-in-stone.
This is immensely helpful if actual information comes later. We have heard this before and have seen nothing come from it.
#4:
11/16/2016 05:42 PMPosted by OrnyxNoticed. I've passed the feedback along that Ice Flows is one of the the things that player's feel are hurting the spec. As said, we are still iterating, so I'll update you guys as things come to me.11/16/2016 05:15 PMPosted by Solkanar...
With ice flows, that is reasonable
