Grim Q&A for fire mages today.

Ion said some decent things about the game overall to the justification of the secondary stat changes during the Q&A today but he iterated that they were overall happy with balance as it stands in 7.1.5 right now. Which means, this is more or less what is going to be pushed to live.

He stated that the performance numbers in live right now aren't a mistake and should match in PTR. They don't want to change the performance hierarchy (which currently has fire mage as middle of the pack). With some complex math, everything should even out to the way it has been. Except that the current PTR numbers tell a very different story.

With all the feedback provided and proof that we are seeing 80-100k DPS decreases across the board and the fact that the class is even more devastated with the removal of ice flows, we saw no improvements in the most recent build of PTR. This class is even harder and far less fun to play now that any movement with cast is dead time with dead DPS.

We were told that they weren't happy with the fire mage having great burst but then sub par sustain and that they would even it out in the sustain phase. This has not happened. A slight buff to fireball, scorch, and pyro has not even come close to making up for the huge nerf to initial burst.

Please take a look at these two videos.

The first: Same gear
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQxpYh7tMEI&t=2s
100k DPS loss

The second: 2 BIS legendaries (bracers and belt) with 4 piece tier bonus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=el2-a0UL8XA
10% dps loss

Not to mention that this is in a vacuum where there are no mechanics or movement. You don't have the luxury of standing still in fights. No one will have the time to stay still during the hardcast of a pyro in a raid boss if they have the bracers.

The changes to mage make the spec no longer fun to play and I'm terrified of what it's going to do to the viability of fire going forward. I understand that Ion didn't address most classes or specs, but they haven't spoken towards mages in a while now and we are pretty concerned as to what's going to happen (if anything) to address these major concerns.

PS. Please do not come in here with red herring hatred of fire mages. The numbers have put mage in the middle of the pack for ages now, so can we please stop perpetuating the endless hatred for them. There is a perception vs reality for mages throughout all of legion that has been well written about in this post: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20752276010