I'm not sure I understand how "knowing when to fireball" is any more of a decision than knowing when to use your dps cooldowns in the past. Instead of switching to a higher dps rotation, you'd simply use AP/MI/etc. You still have to take fight length into account to determine just how long you can delay using a CD before you gimp yourself by either having your CD's not line up with procs, or waiting so long that you wind up using them fewer times in a fight than you could if you use them as soon as the CD is up (although sometimes this is preferable of course if the burn phase is extremely critical). The only difference I can see is that switching to a higher dps rotation is more penalizing, as once you run out of mana, you're locked into the low dps rotation for the duration of the fight, or until evo comes off CD (as mana gem would only give you a very short time of higher mps rotation). Balancing around low/high dps rotations, basically makes evocation into a very clunky dps cooldown.

I suppose the question I'm trying to ask is, if we're trying to give fire controlled burst to reward proper planning of the fight beforehand, why not do this through stronger dps CD's, instead of adding in a poorly implemented mana management metagame, which ultimately is the flavor (and is better implemented) in a different spec?

Because someday you might outgrow it.

Who knows? Maybe in tier 13 or 14 gear, fire mages will be balanced around a Fireball to Scorch ratio where they don't need to scorch.

Also because, it may bring possibilities for alternative strategies. For example, I am currently investigating a fire spec which does not take improved scorch, but instead, switched to mage armor when it needs to regen a bit. I cannot say with certainty if this strategy will bring better results, but there is no harm in investigating it.

Also, because there is precedence. As I mentioned in my post on the beta forums, there are many other caster DPS specs which have 2 talent point investments that seem critical to that specs longevity, Balance druids are one of them (Euphoria). Shadow priests are another.

At this point in time, I have found little evidence that Blizzard is, from a core design principal, against having a 2 talent point investment being somewhat 'mandatory' for a specs longevity.

Time (and more investigation) will tell I think.

I can understand why some like this sentiment, but I think a mechanic such as this would be better served and suited to the Arcane tree.

After playing around in more Beta Heroics, I'm surprised at how concerned I am of what could become of Fire in Cataclysm. I agree we need another interactive 'thing to do' now that Hot Streak / Pyroblast are relatively rare. We also have problems with getting Impact up when we need it most, getting Crits for an Ignite when we want to use Combustion, and Regen issues. I thought about ways to tie this all together into a neat package which can address all issues elegantly, and thematically suited for Fire.

My suggestion is to consider bringing to Fire an Archangel / Evangelism type mechanic: Evangelism - Spell - World of Warcraft and Archangel - Spell - World of Warcraft . So let's reword both of these talents with a Fire theme in mind, and use it to address the myriad of concerns we currently have:

Something like this would be an elegant solution to addressing a myriad of Fire's current problems. Suddenly you can use your Fireball (via Fiery Evanglism) to reduce the frustration of (and empower you with more control over) current Cataclysm fire mechanics:

- Guarantee an impact proc, on demand, when you need it
- Guarantee an ignite proc, on demand, when you need it (such as immediately before you'd like to use Combustion)
- Guarantee a way to create on demand burst damage (PvP players have said this is something currently missing from the Fire tree, after the Combustion chances)
- A little more flexibility with Hot Streak. Once every Archangel cooldown, you can guarantee a Pyroblast crit (and if used after one prior crit, will result in a guaranteed Hot Streak proc)
- Mana regen via Scorch (But making Scorch act more like a Fireball, damage wise, when Scorch is used like this)

This isn't about removing luck, it's about giving mages some cooldown tools/tricks to manage important Fire mechanics.

There's still an element of luck in the tree, but now we have a little more control and a few tricks up our sleeve to make your own luck if needed. Especially useful for periods where we want to use cooldowns, or special mechanics such as Impact or Combustion. One thing i'm noticing more and more on beta is how much of a pendulum Combustion can be. It's fun and amazing when you get that huge ignite up, it's frustrating and awkward when you can't.

I like that the Fire tree gets so excited over Crit. Some of the new mechanics are really fun, such as Impact and Combustion. But fun is one half of the coin, frustration is the other - when you aren't getting lucky enough. Since getting crits/impact/mana regen via MoE relies on luck, we need to be given a few small tricks to help address 'dry periods' where we just aren't getting lucky.

After reading all the above, it now sounds bland by comparison to say "Just use Scorch in Fire rotation". Could you do this? Sure. But still there are more inspiring ways to address Fire Mana, regen, and address other mechanics' problems (impact, combustion burst etc) in one thematically fitting fell swoop.

Although you could still use Scorch in the aforementioned example for regen, it was intentionally given a +X% damage modifier, in addition to the Mana Restore mechanic. This is intended to make Scorch feel/act like a strong Fireball (damage wise) once in a while, and not leave a sour taste when used as a way to regen. Using Scorch to regen mana feels quite cheap. Subjective yes, but thats a ABx1/2 style rotation feeling better suited to the Arcane tree. Fire is about raw power, being reckless, and hitting hard - not about frequently throwing wimpy scorches around in the main rotation.

Key point from my above post: Fire has some great, fun mechanics. But that fun can very quickly turn to frustration, if they haven't been implmented elegantly.

Logix, the scorch model you propose has serious flaws that mages faced in TBC in the absence of a Shadow priest. It will be impossible for mages to ever be balanced in the end game because our DPS will be at some constant value for some X time (or 175 seconds in your example) and then at every time beyond x seconds our DPS decreases by virtue of having to scorch. The problem becomes which to "balance" mages around. Are we balanced to do competitive DPS at at 5 minutes, 3 minutes, 10 minutes? Whichever they choose will in turn make us more powerful in fights of a shorter length, and less powerful in fights of a longer length because the ratio of fireballs to scorches isn't a constant - it would change based on the fight length.

Second, so say that fireball takes no skill because we don't have to manage mana is incorrect. There is plenty of evidence to support that skill still plays an incredibly important role in how much damage a mage puts out, and that spans from CD usage to just putting yourself in good positions. Additionally, while on shorter fights (particularly in ICC due to the 30% buff) we often don't worry about mana, on the longer fights like LK, Halion, and to some extent Putricide, I was definitely concerned with mana still. We already have a mana dependent spec in arcane, and I still don't see why we should push that on to fire as well.

Raencloud: The question then becomes, though, why do we even HAVE a mana bar if we're not balanced around alternating between burning and regenning. The alternatives are we hit a button every now and then and never really think about it, or we hit a button every now and then, never really think about it and stop becoming functional after say 6 minutes.

I'm not saying I necessarily agree with the direction being suggested by Logix, but is our mana bar supposed to simply be decorative?

People have the tendency to jump to strict opposites, it's not either we don't care about mana or we need to babysit every single point of mana we get.

Take a look at WotLK pre-patch, barring the steam-rolled 11/12 h-bosses in ICC, LK and Halion heroic were both fights were I had to be mindful of my mana, note, not babysit or not care about, but be mindful. I would use all my gem charges (remind me why do they still have charges) and then make a judgement on whether am I going to need to evocate (and when) or make another gem and no I didn't have a pet druid to throw innervates.

I just think that having the mage expanding half his concentration on babysitting mana through an involved encounter is an overkill, there is no reason to have two specs doing it. I realize there are people who like that aspect, something that Arcane is known for and that's fine but having fire do that as well seems wrong.

But we are coming into the realm of personal preferences and touchy-feely stuff for which this is probably not the place.

There is very little decision making in the current fire mana model. You get below a certain threshhold of mana, you hit your ability if its up. Timing evocation properly so you get the full benefit + do not get interrupted or eat damage is the only "skillful" part of mage mana management that can you apart from others.

Regarding spending points on improved scorch, I don't think it's necessarily that any of us object to spending the points on it, it's that the spec just has so many damage talents that we already can't really justify any of the "fun" stuff, yet another mandatory point sink would feel pretty frustrating.

Why does hotstreak have a higher priority than living bomb if crit levels will be so low? That hotstreak proc wont be going anywhere come 85's combat ratings, and the lb is assured damage. Shouldnt I try to keep LB up as much as possible, because at 85 theres a very low chance of a hotstreak proc being lost to another hotstreak proc?

I'm not exactly sure either, i think it is because you may get new hot streak procs before you mana to use this one and thus losing one. This can happen if for examplewhen you still have a fireball on its way to the target and you have a HS. If that HS is not used but LB instead it will just be overwritten if its a second crit, or even if its a proc from HS T3.

As Maje elaborated on, there was more to managing mana prior to the ICC buffs, and even still on HLK with the buff than just using evocation when it's up and popping gems on cool down, especially if you want to maximize DPS. While the standard way to play involves gemming as soon as possible, I often found that if I strictly followed that model on say, Halion, I would evocate too late into the fight and then run out of mana towards the end or be forced to evocate again at under 35% (which is obviously never good for a fire mage). In our strategy my job was to kill the infernals, not the mass of embers, but to counter mana problems I often dropped a flame strike to get some ignites on the clump for mana returns. But to directly answer your question Kolenzo, if every caster spec in the game (except arcane for obvious reasons) is operating with a "decorative" mana bar, why should fire be handicapped by it?

To Zaldinar, I disagree with that assumption, because fire prior to 4.0.1 was capable of playing through various fight lengths without losing DPS. Looking forward though, testing is proving that this is no longer possible and my point (and many others) is that we shouldn't be balanced that way with fire. We're not asking for free spells here, but we do want to be able to continually maintain a competitive DPS rotation throughout a fight with mana management tools, either passive or active. Throwing a subpar DPS spell into rotations for mana efficiency (Scorch) does not accomplish that goal for the reasons I explained before, and therefore is a poor path to take.

Because that's the order I told it to cast them in. Its literally swapping two numbers in a data file to make it try them the opposite way. When its done with what I've got it chugging on now I'll see if there's a significant benefit to swapping it the other way.