Doing badly as fire, why?

[Deleted]

Ok so I'm a Fire mage at 812 with 43% crit 13% mastery and 12% haste.

I am struggling a lot in dungeons to keep up with the other dps. Anyone else have this problem? Is it a gear scaling issue or something?
My burst is at 400k+ and topping meters for the first 20 seconds but then I just fall behind badly and end up at last dps 120-160k (single target fights without a lot of movement. I mean the rotation isn't hard and i do the opener as it should be done as well.

The only thing is im playing with Incanter's Flow atm and not Rune of Power thanks to it being easier for levleing and playing out in the world, this cant have that huge of an impact?

And as of AoE i have nothing to saw, healers beat me as well.
I just swapped from boomkin to mage again after playing mage last in cata, maybe im missing something.

Rotation,
opener: Fireball precast (cause tanks pull so fast in dungeons )
combustin when it's about to cast
Fire Blast, Pyro, Fire blast, Pyro, Fire Blast, Pyro, Phoenix, Pyro, Phoenix, Pyro etc depending on how many procs i get
after this back to normal rotation with Fire Blast on heating up and pyro on procs, i cast the pyro as soon as my Fireball ends to get max ignite. Phonenix when i have 2+ stacks unless Combustion is comming of cd.
Use Ice Floes for movement and try to minimise use of Scorch

Something I'm missing?

[whisperingsage]

For the opener, you always want to use blast before phoenix, and as such you always take flame on. It's basically the only required talent no matter if it's aoe or st. The reason you use blast first is because it's off the gcd, so you can spam pyro even faster in the opening. Also, once you get pyretic incantation you get more benefit from the higher damage of phoenix if you cast it towards the end of the chain.

For aoe, conflagration and living bomb are best. If there's ~10 targets use HS on flamestrike (3+ with flame patch). Cinderstorm is also really good for aoe if they have ignite and you hit the cinders (also best for st at the moment).

[kerghan]

I don't claim to be a pro at mages at all; but when I play one I only play fire.

Living Bomb is amazing for AoE. It's easy, spreads itself, and the CD is minimal. Just use it on CD on whatever target you want.

You may also want to look at insta-cast Flamestrike on your procs? I can't imagine it beating pyroblast in any way, but.... Blizz must have made it an option for a reason.

[Deleted]

For the opener, you always want to use blast before phoenix, and as such you always take flame on. It's basically the only required talent no matter if it's aoe or st. The reason you use blast first is because it's off the gcd, so you can spam pyro even faster in the opening. Also, once you get pyretic incantation you get more benefit from the higher damage of phoenix if you cast it towards the end of the chain.

Yes i use Flame on and i most often do my 2 Fire Blast first and then Pheonix don't know why i wrote it the way i did Thanks though

[DrStiglit]

The problem is you're playing a fire mate when you should be playing a fire Mage.

[Purpleisbetter]

With combustion up your rotation should be:

Heating up- Fire blast
Pyro + FB
Pyro+FB
- use flame on here -
Pyro + FB
pyro + FB
-at this point Combustion is about to expire-
Phoenix Flame
Pyro
- RoP about to expire too
FP/FB
Pyro (if you can fit it)

Fireblast is off the global cooldown; so it's in fact much better inside combustion windows. Remember to bank as many FB, FP RoP(you actually need only 1 charge of Rop tbh)charges as you can when Comb is about to come off its CD.

Then you adapt to the situation, being aware that we don't want PF sitting at 3 charges and RoP at 2.
With Shimmer you can blink while casting, with 3 charges of Icy floes and the many instants cast we might fish, there's hardly any need to ever cast Scortch.

Aoe wise: in dungeon i personally go with Living Bomb (since we spend much more time killing trash mobs then hitting bosses):
So with 2 and 3 target u cast Living Bomb with highest priority, follow single target prio. At >= 4 targets you spend HotStreaks on Flamestrikes instead of Pyros.
Use your RoPs and Combustion on AoE tool if a boss isn't going to be engaged anytime soon.
I assume you use Kindling.Never use LB on single target.

You should read some in depth guide, there are more then a few around and for sure more helpful then me.


Dunno if it's only me but with 4 or more target i do more damage with FS then sticking with Pyro. I've no class trinket since i'm a FoTM and rerolled mage just for Legion.
I might be wrong tho, excuse me in that case

[Deleted]

With combustion up your rotation should be:

Heating up- Fire blast
Pyro + FB
Pyro+FB
- use flame on here -
Pyro + FB
pyro + FB
-at this point Combustion is about to expire-
Phoenix Flame
Pyro
- RoP about to expire too
FP/FB
Pyro (if you can fit it)

Yeah my burst isn't the problem, I also disagree on not using at least one charge of Pheonix at pull to start the cd on it. If you do that you'r Fire Blast will recharge one charge and you get one free Fire Blast out of it as well.

[Lioo]

I think you better play with ROP in dungeons.
Also did not get which talents you use (for Aoe)

[Purpleisbetter]

Yeah my burst isn't the problem, I also disagree on not using at least one charge of Pheonix at pull to start the cd on it. If you do that you'r Fire Blast will recharge one charge and you get one free Fire Blast out of it as well.

The reason you don't want to do that is to save that PF charge in order to be able to ride the Pyretic Incantantion train for your back to back RoP as much as you can plus and more important Pyros inside combustion timeframe. That's in case you are currently using PF INSIDE the combustion window.
Worth to mention that technically, you should start your combustion burst while on a Hot Streak without having invested any FB charges in order to achieve so.

Since you end your combustion phase at 5 stack, you want those 5 stacks to last as long as possible. But again, you truly need to adapt to the situation.

With some luck, a Rop+Comb->Rop PI train cut the combustion CD down by a lot.

Remember, FB, PF and any other spell crits in that window is +50% damage from RoP and +25% damage from PI. That's monstrous.

Flame On talent is the literal addition of fuel to the fire.

ps.: it's all about combustion and everything else matters little.

EDIT: since you edited the OP without me noticing it: it's mostly a talent choice issue. RoP is that superior as it synergies simply perfectly with fire gameplay and optimal envelope; both in AoE and in ST.
If you want a more, ehm, EXPLOSIVE and stronger AoE you really want LB.
LvL 100 you either go Kindling if you want to use Combustion more often (trashes, bosses hardly live up for another round) or Cinderstorm for consistent numbers with a touch of huntard-esque danger of pulling a bit too many packs at once.

I also honestly lvled much better with RoP too. Brute force is always the answer in this game lol.

[whisperingsage]

I don't see how you can start combustion with hot streak without using PF or Fireblast. It's true that you can use Combustion during another cast, but then when do you RoP? If you want to RoP after your precast it might not crit, in which case you waste uptime spamming for heating up, or you use a charge. You can't pyro then combust while it's in the air either, since it's still on the gcd.

Besides getting very lucky (or crit trinket procs), it's safest to start the chain with a PF, so you guarantee a Hot Streak and then can cast RoP and begin your chain. Combustion runs out about at the second PF, so unless that following pyro crits outside of Combustion, you didn't lose out on the Pyretic chain. In any case, Phoenix Reborn has a 10% chance on ignite ticks to reduce PF recharge by 10 secs, so you could get lucky and basically end up getting 4 PF before you finish your burst.

Of course, this all is an issue due to RoP, and if they're using IF instead, they can always just use the easier method of watching for heating up, then casting Combustion at the end of the next cast for a guaranteed HS, and begin the burn.

[konaman]

You can start combustion without PF or FB by getting Heating Up then casting another fireball and right before it hits cast Combustion.

[Toas]

You can start combustion without PF or FB by getting Heating Up then casting another fireball and right before it hits cast Combustion.

He already addressed why that's bad to do - you don't have RoP for combustion then. Not having RoP up for your combustion is a WAY bigger dps loss than not having a Hot Streak at the start. You have to cast combustion at the end of an RoP cast, nothing else.