Fire mage guide Level 90.
Introduction: Fire's Movement and sustain even with minimal gear makes it an excellent choice for any budding raider. It seems to be the most competitive spec when dealing with both "Patchwork" and "movement" fights. The playstyle is very similar to the way it was played from 4.3 onwards. However, much of the heavy RNG has been removed; it is still there, but the damage spread is far less.
Video Format:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=Df5PMn_Y5KE
Our Abilites:
- Ignite: A 4second DoT that deal damage equal to a percentage of our core abilities damage, modified my mastery.
- Fireball: Our main "Filler" Spell
- Scorch: Our main "Filler" Spell while moving
- Frostfire Bolt: Can be glpyhed to replace fireball (also has a 40% slow)
- Inferno Blast: Replaces Fire Blast; an instant spell that deals moderate damage and will always crit
- Pyroblast: Like fireball with more damage and an amazingly powerful DoT.
- Heating Up: Occurs after a critical from Fireball, Fostfire bolt, Scorch, Infernoblast and Pyroblast
- Pyroblast!: is triggered after two successive crits on the boss from any combination of Fireball, Fostfire bolt, Scorch, Infernoblast and Pyroblast. Pyroblast! allows your next Pyroblast to be an instant cast, does not stack.
- Combustion: Our Main DPS cooldown with a 45 cooldown and 10 second DoT, can be glyphed to have a 90 second cooldown nd 20 second DoT.
Stat priorities:
- Hit + Expertise to 15% (5100)*
- Haste to 12.5% (3056) [+5% from raid buff] - This assumes Glyph of Combustion OR
- Haste to 15% (4052) [+5% from raid buff] - This assumes NO Glyph of Combustion**
- - This allows for an extra tick of living bomb, pyroblast and glyph of combustion.
- Crit
- Haste
- Mastery
*4420 for Draenei
** Minus 425 from haste value for goblin [2631 and 3627 respectively)
Always using Molten Armor.
Sockets:
- Red: 160 Int
- Yellow: 80int 160Crit
- Blue: 80 Int 160Hit
Stat Weights*: Stat wights vary upon your gear: **WIP
Suggested Glyphs:
Glyph of Combustion: Tends to be more beneficial due to the nature of buff scaling at the start of the fight and in combination with timewarp/bloodlust.
Glyph of Fire Blast: Allows you to spread your Mage Bomb effects along with other DoTs
Suggested Talents:
Unfortunately there are some just flat out bad choices for fire.
Tier One:
Presence of Mind should only ever be taken on fights with near-zero movement, similarly Icy Flows should only be taken on fights with movement only every minute. This, leave us with scorch as our only real option. Scorch also has excellent synergy with fire as it also applies ignite and can trigger heating up/Pyroblast!.
Tier Two:
Blazing speed is not terribly useful in most fights, due to the fact we already have access to fast movement from blink and glyph of invisibility. therefore, ice barrier and temporal shield both of which are excellent choices remain.
I favour temporal shield in terms of allowing maximum DPS, as it is not on the global cooldown, therefore, can be macro'd in with another spell such as fireball. However, for pure mitigation of damage, I like ice barrier which is also why I favour it for progression.
Tier Three:
Pretty useless for raid encounters, however, ring of frost can be used to create a safety circle for healers to stand in and prevent adds from destroying them before tanks have a chance to pick them up. Frost jaw is also useful as a secondary ranged CC if poly-morph is on cool down
Tier Four:
All three are viable but i prefer cauterize as it allows for you to make a mistake, whist improved invisibility and cold snap rely on you actively preventing damage. Furthermore, Improved invisibility is also useful as an instant aggro dump if needed.
Tier Five:
I never use frost bomb, in terms of AoE and single target it is just on part with living bomb, however, the long cast time and haste modified cooldown makes it feel clunky. Nether tempest is just about the same as living bomb in terms of single target damage and way behind in terms of AoE, however it has one distinct advantage, living bomb must run its full duration to be worthwhile instead of fireball, where as nether tempest only has to be allows to run for 6-8 seconds to be beneficial so on fights like Elegon where you have to nuke down adds in this period of time nether tempest is slightly better. Which leaves living bomb my go to choice for both AoE and single target damage.
Tier Six:
A personal choice. For me; between rune of power and Inchater's ward. With invocation being viable in theory but not practice, there are almost no fights that allow for you to stand there for 6 seconds every 40 seconds on cool down with no repercussions. Rune of power is technically the best IF you never allow it to fall off and you rarely leave to rune on the ground, however, at least in Mogushan Vaults the fights have persistent movement, which leaves inchaters ward. This spell passively grants 6% damage and has decent mitigation, and since almost every fight has very predictable damage if you use deadly boss mods and such, you can regularly proc the 30% spell damage buff.
EDIT: If you can make invocation work for you with 90%+ uptime good for you. However, I still find the talent awkward and unplayable. But like I said personal choice.
Rotation
1: Use combustion when off cool-down and there is both a pyroblast and ignite on the target. Aim to use Combustion when these dots are as large as possible without sacrificing the maximum number of times combustion could be used within the encounter, for example; If there is a 5 minute fight and you are using the glyphed version of this spell. You can only afford to wait 10 seconds between cooldowns IN TOTAL to use this ability to its maximum potential
2: Maintain your bomb spell:
- Living bomb should be refreshed either x<= 2seconds before the DoT expires or immediately after
- Nether Tempest should be refreshed as close to expiring as possible, put preferably before not after.
- Frost Orb should be used as often as possible.
3: Use Pyroblast! AKA instant Pyroblast.
*Pyroblast! does not stack
** Pyroblast! is triggered after two successive crits on the boss from any combination of Fireball, Frostfire Bolt, Scorch, Inferno Blast and Pyroblast.
4: If you have the buff "Heating Up" cast Inferno Blast as your next spell is traveling towards the boss. Both Scorch and Fireball have a travel time so if you are fast and Inferno Blast is off cooldown you should regularly be able to use Pyroblast!.
5: Cast fireball, or Utilize a tier one talent ability if on the move.
* Not fire specific but:
6: Use Mirror Images as many times as possible throughout the fight.
Alter Time:
Lastly alter time, the most ideal time to use this is during time warp, with Incanter's Ward's bonus damage and trinkets active with Pyroblast! useable, this doesn't exactly happen often. So I aim to save it for time warp with trinkets at the very least. BUT PLEASE NOTE buffs that occur in the 6 seconds after it is initially activated will be removed when triggered. This means you can cheat yourself out of timewarp and then gain the debuff... don't do that. also time warp does not reset cooldowns it merely acts to prolong buffs, and return you to the exact position and health you were when casting it.
If you have any suggestion or CONSTRUCTIVE feedback please let me know