The Joys of Making Things Go Boom

So, for the past couple months, I’ve wavered back and forth between specs. I dabbled in Fire, tried the Arcane Shatter spec outlined by Euripedes over at CriticalQQ – very fun spec, btw – and when 3.3 came out, tried the new Deep Freeze. Ultimately, though, for now, I’ve settled in with a FFB spec, a variant on the 0/53/18 spec. I adopted that for PvE when 3.3 came out, keeping the Arcane Shatter for PvP, but I decided I’d be better served by getting competent on one basic spec before trying to manage two wildly different ones.

Most of my PvP lately has been Wintergrasp, and it’s been fun, even though it’s frustrating to usually be outnumbered, and deal with the no-strategy mentality that seems to be so common in the Alliance on my server. You know… “let’s all go to Sunken Ring, grab siege engines, and rush the east wall, so the Horde can all mass there to meet us! Defend towers? We don’t need no stinkin’ towers!”

Did you know the guns on the fortress walls are a great for practicing your spell rotations? They last long enough to get a couple full Living Bomb applications in.

I still die fairly regularly, and I can’t hold a workshop against four or five horde, but I can generally make them work for it, I’m working on my pillar-humping skills. I’m slowly getting better about opting for survival, rather than dying a glorious death. I still tend to fight longer than I should.

PvE-wise, my son finally reached 80, and has been running amok running random heroics. Seriously. He was 77 on the weekend before Xmas, made 80 on Monday about noon, and by noon the next day, had forty-four badges of triumph. So, finally, our group has a tank of sorts. He’s mostly been off-tanking or DPS, but in the runs we’ve had, he’s done a good job.

I’ve dabbled in the random dungeon thing. Until now, I’ve avoid pugging like the plague, simply because I early on got tired of the asshats. The random LFG instituted in 3.3 has been really nice. So far, I’ve only had to deal with one would-be elitist jerk. Thing was, he managed to piss of everyone in the run, not just me, so good riddance. My New Year’s resolution is to be more aggressive in using the random LFG.

Edit: Then Gnomer over at Gnomeaggedon decided to do a pingback to this as a Fire PvP post. I guess I used the words PvP and Fire in it… lol. So now I have to make it live up to the title!

Further edit: Yay, Euripedes has graced us with a REAL Fire PvP piece.

Here’s the thing. Since I wrote this, I switched back over the Arcane Shatter spec, and finally to Arcane for PvE as well. My reasoning for the latter was much the reason as going Fire in the first place… I don’t want completely dissimilar sets of spells to manage. So, okay, why did I switch back over to the Arcane Shatter for PvP? That’s the question I hope to answer here, and that has plenty of bearing on Fire PvP.

I liked Fire PvP. Watching a blood-elf pally burst into flame made me giggle maniacly. But here’s the rub: Now that he’s burst into flame, what do I do???

Yes, as a fire mage, you are very, very mobile. You have a sweet, quick little spell to spam, Scorch. But let’s face it, by itself, Scorch isn’t going to take a reasonably well geared opponent down, even if you’ve dotted them up with Living Bomb. So, what are the options?

Hasted (but still long cast time) FFB. Nice. But too long of cast time to be of use in a head to head encounter, when you’re getting smacked on the head with HoJ.

Hot Streak proc/Pyroblast. Nice – if it’s procced.

Fireblast – instant, but not enough oomph to bust through a melee types hitpoints.

Blastwave, followed by Flamestrike on the Firestarter proc – nice, and you can get it off easily… but again, not enough damage to really cut through the hitpoints.

Dragonbreath, followed by Flamestrike on the Firestarter proc – Ditto.

That was my reason for the changeover. No real “finisher”, at least that I could figure out. With the Arcane Shatter, I had Arcane Barrage, loaded up with Arcane Blast, and then a PoM/FFB as a “down you go”. Fire is great, if you’re teamed with something that can provide that finishing kick… but solo, not so much.