Soloing as Fire

[krshna]

Hello. I am by no means experienced with my Mage. I rolled one the first day of Cata, and I am just now approaching level 80, and the new content. So far, I have been using mostly Arcane and Frost. Fire never quite seemed ready, and I thought I would wait until Living Bomb was available to try it.

Finally I have tried Fire. As far as LFD and dungeons, it's the most interactive during trash. But that isn't necessarily a good thing. I pull similar damage done with Flamestrike ---> Arcane Explosion spam as Arcane, and Flamestrike ---> Blizzard as Frost. Single target on bosses though really seems unintuitive to me. Living Bomb's damage is balanced around the assumption that it's final tick will AoE the area around the afflicted target. Pyroblast rarely procs. The spec is even more mana intensive than Arcane. And Fireball's cast time is so long it's painful. To top it off, I think we can all agree that Combustion pales in comparison to Icy Veins and Arcane Power.

But aside from all of this. How does one quest as Fire. After using Arcane Blast auto-proccing Slow, and Frostbolt, grinding mobs without a slow of some sort on the mob really is a pain. Coupled with the fact that a lot of Fire's damage is over time, bursting down a mob before they reach you isn't really happening. I find myself pulling with Pyroblast, applying Living Bomb, and then Scorch-kiting will on the run. This works fine in a wide open space, but any kind of tightly packed area makes that technique a little hairy.

I've tried using the unglyphed Frostfire Bolt to pull while soloing, and then Scorch spam. But that seems a little bit haphazard. How is everyone else doing it?

[Torian kel]

Everyone else levels as frost

[Happily]

Fireball -> Living Bomb -> Scorch to death or if Impact procs, use it. This is a very mana efficient way to kill mobs, but relies a bunch on criticals. If I get a Pyroblast! proc, I usually save it for the next mob, coupling it with a Fireball. I never cast Fireball after the pull, as a Scorch or two does more damage.

In an AoE situation, I can top the charts with proper Impact-Ignite technique. Flamestrike usually yields in at least one critical hit, applying Ignite on that target. Using Impact on that target then spreads Ignite to all targets. To do even more damage, I Scorch spam my Living Bomb target until I crit, use Combustion on that target, then Impact to spread all three DoTs to every mob. Yes, this means you need to save your procs. It has 10+ seconds for a reason.

Personally, I enjoy Arcane the most. When AoE is present, it's not extremely hard to keep up on the charts. And for single target, superior dps is always how it goes.

[CoolHwip46]

Frostfire Bolt > Living Bomb > Scorch kite > Pyroblast when it procs > Frost Nova/Dragon's Breath to get distance if you need it. The mob probably isn't dead yet keep so keep kiting with Scorch and reapplying Living Bomb, which is hard in tight areas as you said. Personally, I leveled as Frost because of how hard some of the mobs hit now and especially when you get more than one on you at a time, Ice Barrier/Pet's Freeze and overall the quick direct damage and control comes in handy - instead of waiting for Pyroblast procs that never come since our Critical Strike Rating is unreliable now. Also this is a little off topic but while leveling, I used my focus Polymorph macro all the time which really cut down tabbing to find the right target which wastes time as mobs are running toward you.