Welcome to the Fire Mage Raid guide for the World of Warcraft patch 11.0! This guide covers everything you need to know to understand your character! Are you starting out and leveling up from 70? Check out the leveling guide!
Overview
Hero Talents
- Sunfury is the main hero talent used in both single and AoE scenarios. Frostfire is around 15% behind single target and only around 5% worse in AoE. Because of this, it is advised to use Sunfury in all forms of content.
- Spellfire Spheres
- This is the core mechanic of Sunfury. Every Hot Streak! spent gives you a Spellfire Spheres and when you reach 6, it empowers your next Pyroblast. It then gives you Glorious Incandescence which gives you plenty of Fire Blasts to work with.
- Invocation: Arcane Phoenix
- Your Spellfire Spheres are spent through this talent. The bird popularly known as, "Arlo" is going to take the generated Spellfire Spheres and cast quirky spells such as Arcane Barrage and Flamestrike.
- Memory of Al'ar
- After Combustion ends, you are granted Hyperthermia for 2 seconds, and an additional 0.5 seconds for each exceptional spell it had cast. This provides a satisfying end to your Combustion, letting you spam cast Pyroblast.
- Frostfire Mastery
- The core mechanic of Frostfire revolves around these two mastery buffs. They passively give you stats and when they reach max stacks, empower your Fire Blast and Phoenix Flames.
- Imbued Warding
- This should be your default pick as you are already able to move during your Ice Cold. There could be some niche situation that pops up that you need both Ice Block and the ability to move where the other talent is going to shine.
- Severe Temperatures
- A nice little passive increase to your Frostfire Bolt.
- Isothermic Core
- This talent makes Meteor almost mandatory compared to Sunfury. The free Comet Storm you get almost doubles the power of Meteor.
- Frostfire Empowerment
- Empowers your Frostfire Bolt and makes it instant cast while also granting you max stacks of Excess Frost and Excess Fire. You receive a Frostfire Empowerment every time you enter a Combustion including a Sun King's Blessing. However, you do not receive this if you finish the Sun King's Blessing cast while still in Combustion.
- Excess Frost and Excess Fire
- These are the main gameplay altering talents within the Frostfire tree. Reaching max stacks of Excess Frost causes your next Phoenix Flames to also cast Ice Nova at 200% effectiveness. Reaching max stacks of Excess Fire cause your next Fire Blast to also cast Living Bomb at 150% while also reducing the cooldown of your Phoenix Flames.
- The rotational impact these talents have on your rotation is pretty simple. Make sure to spend each proc before casting your next Frostfire Empowerment proc to make sure you do not munch them.
- These are the main gameplay altering talents within the Frostfire tree. Reaching max stacks of Excess Frost causes your next Phoenix Flames to also cast Ice Nova at 200% effectiveness. Reaching max stacks of Excess Fire cause your next Fire Blast to also cast Living Bomb at 150% while also reducing the cooldown of your Phoenix Flames.
Talents
When to use this Spec
This is the main spec used by Fire Mage's in Raids. This Should be your default talent tree on all bosses.
Gameplay Altering Talents
Discover all talents that significantly alter your gameplay within the Spec and Class Talent trees. This section gives a concise overview of these talents and their applications but for a more detailed look check out the Rotation and Deep Dive sections below.
Spec Tree
- Unleashed Inferno
- Finally, after a couple of years Sun King's Blessing is not taken in all forms of content for Fire Mages! Sun King's Blessing is behind by 4.5% in single and 2.2% for AoE scenarios currently. Sun King's Blessing damage profile could make a comeback with how it interacts with how Mythic+ works in the future though.
- Phoenix Reborn
- This is a returning tier set turned into a talent. This talent gives you more Phoenix Flames charges and empowers them.
- Kindling
- This is a big part of why Fire Mages have Combustion up so often. This talent ends up reducing your Combustion to around a minute cooldown.
- Hyperthermia
- Allows you to spam cast Pyroblast while this buff is active. This gives you a nice break in the gameplay whenever this procs or when you receive this buff from Memory of Al'ar.
Class Tree
- Shifting Power
- This spell is used after your cooldowns to get them back quicker.
- Time Anomaly
- Be ready to react to the procs you get from this talent, they can impact your rotation differently depending on when they proc.
- Mass Barrier
- Make sure to use Mass Barrier to help your dungeon teammates out.
- Shimmer
- This talent node is the main reason mage in general has such high mobility. Being castable while casting and ignoring the GCD, it is essential you manage your Shimmer well to achieve 100% uptime on DPS during any encounter.
Hero Talents
- Lessons in Debilitation
- This talent option is more not wanting to limit the CC capabilities of Supernova if you do take it, than the free Spellsteal but it is nice.
- Savor the Moment
- Numerically the best pick currently.
- Rondurmancy
- Numerically the best pick currently.
Rotation
Tier Set
- 2-Set: Phoenix Flames damage increased by 10%. This amount is increased to 25% on its primary target.
- 4-Set: After dealing damage, Phoenix Flames has a 10% chance to return to you, refunding 1% of the cooldown on Phoenix Flames and granting you 6% increased spell damage for 10 seconds.
Overall a simple passive tier set that increased the damage of your Phoenix Flames. The 4-set currently is very weak only being 0.2% better than another armor item with better stats. You do not think about this tier set and can treat it as completely passive.
Single-Target
Opener
- The goal of your single target opener rotation is to enter Combustion as quick as you can while reacting to your Pyroblast crits.
- If the precasted Pyroblast did not crit, cast a Fire Blast during the fireball cast and then also activate Combustion during the Fireball cast.
- If the precasted Pyroblast did crit, then activate Combustion during the fireball cast.
- Combustion is castable while casting other spells and is off the GCD.
- Fire Blast is castable while casting other spells and is off the GCD.
Priority List
This is a general priority you aim to maintain throughout the fight.
Combustion Priority List
Combustion is Fire Mages main cooldown and with how much uptime you can obtain on Combustion with Unleashed Inferno, maximizing these windows is crucial to playing fire mage correctly.
- Cast Pyroblast with Hot Streak.
- Cast Scorch to maintain Improved Scorch.
- Cast Fire Blast with Heating up.
- Cast Phoenix Flames with Heating up if you have Phoenix Reborn or to prevent overcapping Phoenix Flames.
- Cast Scorch with Heat Shimmer.
- Cast Phoenix Flames.
- Cast Scorch .
Outside of Combustion Priority List
- Cast Shifting Power after Hyperthermia.
- Cast Fireball if you have less than 1 Phoenix Flames charge and Hot Streak! is up (this is known as pooling).
- Cast Pyroblast with Hot Streak.
- Cast Scorch to maintain Improved Scorch.
- Cast Fire Blast with Heating up if you are not pooling.
- Cast Scorch with Heat Shimmer.
- Cast Phoenix Flames.
- Cast Scorch if the target is below 30% health.
- Cast Fireball.
Hyperthermia Priority List
Generally during Hyperthermia you are only casting Pyroblasts. The only exception is weaving in Fire Blasts when you have Heating up during some conditions.
- Cast Pyroblast with Hot Streak
- Cast Fire Blast with Heating up if you are about to cap on charges.
- Cast Fire Blast with Heating up to maintain Feel the Burn.
- Cast Fire Blast with Heating up if Shifting Power is up or almost up.
AoE
When using the recommended build, the rotation is exactly the same as single target. Because of Ignite, your damage is passively spread when casting Fire Blast to the mobs surrounding the main mob you are targeting. This means that you target the priority mob of each pull and Pyroblast away!
Deep Dive
Ignite
An important aspect of doing damage with the Ignite build, especially in lower keys, is to swap your Ignite off of your priority target before that target dies or you need to swap. You can achieve this by having your last global be a Fire Blast before swapping targets. By doing this, fire mages do not lose any damage if their priority target dies or they need to swap off of a target to another one.
Shimmer Cast Immunity
Shimmer is very unique as it gives the caster a small grace period of being able to cast spells while moving. This lets Mages perform some technical maneuvers in order to lose zero damage during knockbacks or other events where casting is required and the Mage needs to move small steps. At a basic level, you achieve this by first casting a spell, using Shimmer, taking the small step then standing still and resuming casting. When using this on a knockback, you first start casting a spell, use Shimmer right before the knockback and Shimmer again as soon as the knockback goes off. If done correctly, the cast should not have cancelled and you have achieved full uptime during a knockback without Ice Floes!
Phoenix Flames vs Fire Blast
Understanding the differences has a steep learning curve when playing Fire Mage for the first time. Fire Blast is off the GCD, castable while casting and instantly hits the target when you cast it. Phoenix Flames on the other hand, is on the GCD, not castable while casting, and has a travel time before it hits the target. This drastic difference can cause issues because of the gameplay loop between generating and spending Hot Streaks. Since you use Fire Blast fairly frequently, you might expect Phoenix Flames to behave the same but, it is the polar opposite. The best advice is to expect these "rhythm disruptions" during your Combustion and become more comfortable with waiting for your Phoenix Flames to hit the target.
Losing damage from distance due to Phoenix Flames travel time.
Phoenix Flames has a very slow travel time. Depending on your haste and distance from the boss, this can cost you damage. You lose damage because you can be in a position where you are waiting for your Phoenix Flames to hit the target while your global is ready. The simplest way to fix this issue is to be closer to the boss. Another way you can fix this issue is by doing something called, "Phoenix Flames Weaving." This is only doable when you have high haste and are forced to be far away from the target. After casting Pyroblast during your Combustion, you are going to have a Heating up. You can then cast Phoenix Flames into Fire Blast into a Pyroblast Pyroblast combo. You can achieve this because you send the Pyroblast before the Phoenix Flames hits the target. This completely negates the time you lose by waiting for your Phoenix Flames to hit the target while your GCD is ready. Here is what it should look like.
It is important to remember that this is only doable with 100% or higher haste and you need to be at least 20+ yards away from the target.
Understanding Mechanics
Rotational min-maxing is just one aspect of mastering a specialization, but there are numerous other key mechanics that influence your performance. Use the following guides to improve them.
Nerub-ar Palace
The following tips are mainly applicable to Heroic Bosses. Mythic tips are released after our progression concludes.
← Scroll for more Bosses →
Offensive Cooldown Usage
- Due to several procs such as Hyperthermia and Time Anomaly reducing your Combustion cooldown through Kindling and Unleashed Inferno, your Combustion timings can change from pull to pull. It is best advised to send on cooldown.
Boss Tips
- Be aware of all the movement that is needed on this fight. Use Shimmer well to not lose uptime throughout the entire fight.
- Additionally, during Ready to Feed utilize Alter Time to quickly feed the boss multiple times
Offensive Cooldown Usage
- Due to several procs such as Hyperthermia and Time Anomaly reducing your Combustion cooldown through Kindling and Unleashed Inferno, your Combustion timings can change from pull to pull. The only caveat is to save Combustion for the downstairs phase.
Boss Tips
- You can Shimmer and even Alter Time over Spewing Hemorrhage.
- You can damage the adds with Ignite from anywhere in the platform. It is best to fully single target the boss and easily cleave adds 80 yards away!
Offensive Cooldown Usage
- Due to several procs such as Hyperthermia and Time Anomaly reducing your Combustion cooldown through Kindling and Unleashed Inferno, your Combustion timings can change from pull to pull. It is best advised to send on cooldown.
Boss Tips
- Use defensives whenever you are targeted by Decimate or Decimates are about to hit Cosmic Simulacrums.
Offensive Cooldown Usage
- Due to several procs such as Hyperthermia and Time Anomaly reducing your Combustion cooldown through Kindling and Unleashed Inferno, your Combustion timings can change from pull to pull. It is best advised to send on cooldown.
Boss Tips
- Help control the Infested Spawn if needed.
- You are generally in one Shimmer range for all mechanics during this fight. If targeted with Spinneret's Strands for example, simply Shimmer away instantly and Shimmer back after the mechanic.
- Save Shimmer charges to quickly follow and interrupt the boss.
Offensive Cooldown Usage
- Due to several procs such as Hyperthermia and Time Anomaly reducing your Combustion cooldown through Kindling and Unleashed Inferno, your Combustion timings can change from pull to pull. It is best advised to send on cooldown.
Boss Tips
- Use Blazing Barrier to quickly cleanse yourself from Unstable Web. This is doable because of the Energized Barriers talent.
- As a Mage you are an excellent interrupter as you can travel great distances and instantly Counterspell enemies.
Offensive Cooldown Usage
- Due to several procs such as Hyperthermia and Time Anomaly reducing your Combustion cooldown through Kindling and Unleashed Inferno, your Combustion timings can change from pull to pull. It is best advised to send on cooldown.
Defensive Cooldown Usage
- Try to save Mirror Image for each intermission phase.
- Try to have a Blazing Barrier for each Assassination.
Boss Tips
- Use Ice Cold as an emergency button. For example, if you get hit by multiple Twilight Massacres.
- The main thing to keep an eye out for on this boss is the position of each Nether Rift. Their placement dictates how much you get pulled towards them. Try to position yourself in a way that each Nether Rift is at a similar distance to you.
- It can be very difficult as a Mage during the pull ins because your first instinct is to Shimmer away. I found it is best to trust the pull and go whenever it drags you and only Shimmer if it is absolutely necessary.
Offensive Cooldown Usage
- Due to several procs such as Hyperthermia and Time Anomaly reducing your Combustion cooldown through Kindling and Unleashed Inferno, your Combustion timings can change from pull to pull. The only caveat is the absorbs and damage amps that are present throughout the fight. If they are happening close to a Combustion, hold Combustion until they occur.
Boss Tips
- Use Mirror Image before the pull to cover the first Venomous Rain as you can take lots of damage early on in the fight and it saves you an entire global!
- Use Alter Time and teleport back instantly after getting pulled in by Web Vortex to save yourself some movement.
- Alternatively, use Demonic Gateway if available to negate the pull in effect.
- Try to get some good distance from the adds that spawn from Call of the Swarm since they fixate the closest target.
- Alternatively if you are feeling nice, you can bait them on you intentionally and use your movement to get away from them.
Stat Priority
Understand your secondary stat priority and the tertiary stats needed for optimal performance during Raid boss fights as a Fire Mage. For more detailed information, visit the Stats and Attributes guide.
Higher Item level items are better in most scenarios. For an accurate representation of what item to equip you should use Simcraft! A static "Stat Priority" is just a starting point and can easily shift depending on your individual gear.
- All secondary stats are affected by diminishing returns. Click here to learn more!
Tertiary
- Avoidance - Great stat to reduce the damage intake of "Area of Effect" abilities.
- Leech - Provides additional healing through damage dealing. The damage of your pets does not heal you thus Leech is a great tertiary for you since most of your damage is coming from your own spells.
- Speed - Niche tertiary that can be very useful and has been proven useful in the past. Makes playing certain mechanics a lot easier.
Gear
| Slot | Item | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Head | Cocoonsilk Cowl | Mists of Tirna Scithe |
| Neck | Sureki Zealot's Insignia | Sikran |
| Shoulder | Beacons of Violet Rebirth | Catalyst |
| Cloak | Anvilhide Cape | The Stonevault |
| Chest | Runecoat of Violet Rebirth | Catalyst |
| Wrist | Consecrated Cuffs | Crafting |
| Gloves | Jeweled Gauntlets of Violet Rebirth | Catalyst |
| Belt | Cord of the Pious Warder | Siege of Boralus |
| Legs | Coattails of Violet Rebirth | Catalyst |
| Boots | Consecrated Slippers | Crafting |
| Ring 1 | Key to the Unseeming | Bloodbound Horror |
| Ring 2 | Stitchflesh's Misplaced Signet | The Necrotic Wake |
| Trinket 1 | Ara-Kara Sacbrood | Ara-Kara, City of Echoes |
| Trinket 2 | Spymaster's Web | The Silken Court |
| Weapon | Krix'vizk's Speech Rod | City of Threads |
Below you are presented with a good list of farmable alternatives that are obtainable outside of WoW’s weekly lockout system. While replaced in time as you progress, these offer immediate character power.
| Slot | Item | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Head | Cocoonsilk Cowl | Mists of Tirna Scithe |
| Neck | "Emergency Stop" Keychain | The Stonevault |
| Shoulder | Reanimator's Mantle | The Necrotic Wake |
| Cloak | Anvilhide Cape | The Stonevault |
| Chest | Shadowed Orator's Tunic | The Stonevault |
| Wrist | Deathshackle Wristwraps | Mists of Tirna Scithe |
| Gloves | Tricksprite Gloves | Mists of Tirna Scithe |
| Belt | Cord of the Pious Warder | Siege of Boralus |
| Legs | Powder Monkey's Leggings | Siege of Boralus |
| Boots | Tainted Earthshard Walkers | The Stonevault |
| Ring 1 | Experiment 08752's Band | The Dawnbreaker |
| Ring 2 | Stitchflesh's Misplaced Signet | The Necrotic Wake |
| Trinket 1 | Ara-Kara Sacbrood | Ara-Kara, City of Echoes |
| Trinket 2 | Gale of Shadows | Grim Batol |
| Weapon | Krix'vizk's Speech Rod | City of Threads |
Trinkets
Below you can find active and passive alternatives to our recommended trinkets. Do note that some trinkets are better than others depending on the raid boss.
Active Trinket alternatives
- Ovi'nax's Mercurial Egg
- Decent on-use trinket but can be worse if it's a movement heavy fight.
Passive Trinket alternatives
- Empowering Crystal of Anub'ikkaj
- Good passive trinket that procs secondary stats.
- Gale of Shadows
- Grants stacking intellect, 100% uptime of maximum stacks as long as you're casting spells.
- Unbound Changeling
- Good passive trinket that procs secondary stats.
Embellishments
It's recommended to hold your Spark of Omens craft and wait for further tuning.
- 2x Duskthread Lining
- Passive increase to Versatility.
- Requires you to be above 80% health to work so it can be suboptimal on specific encounters.
Remaining Sparks
- Crafted items are 636 item level and regular items are 639 on max item level therefore it's not beneficial to equip crafted items outside of your 2x embellishments unless you don't have access to other high item level gear on that slot.
Simcraft
To find the best combination of gear available to you or identify the best possible upgrades, visit our Simcraft guide to learn how to utilize Simcraft easily and effectively.
Consumables
- Phials
- Flask of Tempered Swiftness -- maximum DPS.
- Flask of Tempered Versatility -- less DPS but more survivability.
- Food
- Feast of the Divine Day
- Feast of the Midnight Masquerade
- Combat Potion
- Tempered Potion
- Health Potion
- Algari Healing Potion -- a big burst of healing
- Weapon Oil
- Algari Mana Oil -- default
- Oil of Deep Toxins
- Augment Rune
- Crystallized Augment Rune
- Sockets
- Versatile Emerald
- Culminating Blasphemite -- Unique, use one of each gem color to enhance your Culminating Blasphemite.
- Quick Sapphire
- Quick Ruby
- Quick Onyx
Enchantments
| Head | Nerubian Gemweaver |
| Neck | Magnificent Jeweler's Setting 2x |
| Cloak | Enchant Cloak - Chant of Winged Grace |
| Chest | Enchant Chest - Crystalline Radiance |
| Wrist | Enchant Bracer - Chant of Armored Avoidance Nerubian Gemweaver |
| Waist | Nerubian Gemweaver |
| Legs | Sunset Spellthread |
| Boots | Enchant Boots - Scout's March |
| Ring 1 | Enchant Ring - Radiant Haste Magnificent Jeweler's Setting 2x |
| Ring 2 | Enchant Ring - Radiant Haste Magnificent Jeweler's Setting 2x |
| Weapon | Enchant Weapon - Authority of Radiant Power |
You buy Nerubian Gemweaver from the Great Vault Vendor to add sockets to your Helm, Wrists & Waist.
Races
For min-maxing a Fire Mage in raiding, different racial traits can provide a tremendous benefit to your character. If this is not your top goal, picking a race that fits your style works just as well.
- Stoneform -- Dwarf
- Dispels Magic and Bleed debuffs. Has been useful in the past on some bosses with Bleeds.
- Rocket Jump -- Goblin
- Do a small jump in the direction your character is facing.
- Berserking -- Troll
- Strong DPS racial but lines up somewhat with Combustion.
- Reduce the duration of movement-impairing effects by 20%. This was only useful once in the recent history of progression raiding but is still worth noting.
- Blood Fury -- Orc
- Strong racial for damage because of Blood Fury which lines up with Combustion.
- 20% reduced stun duration on you which can be useful in some situations.
- Spatial Rift -- Void Elf
- Spawn a shadow traveling into your facing direction, and activate it again to teleport to it.
- Maximum range of 100 yards.
Recommendation
In general, it's safe to say that if you care about min-maxing your DPS, you should go with the highest DPS racial. That being said, the story is a bit different if it's about progression raiding. Some help out massively to speed up the progression on certain bosses. Notably, Dwarf with their Stoneform helped out on Tindral Sageswift and Fyrakk the Blazing in the latest Race to World First by having easy access to dispelling yourself at crucial points of the fights mentioned.
Macros
Discover recommended macros for Fire Mage during Raid encounters and watch a quick video guide on creating simple macros for your character.
Cursor Macros
Flamestrike
#showtooltip
/use [@cursor] FlamestrikeMouseover Macros
Recommended Macros
Addons
Below, you see a screenshot of the author's User Interface for their Fire Mage, outlining which addons are used and how they are utilized in Raids to make your life easier.
Addons
WeakAuras
Changes this Patch
Patch 11.0.2
Patch 11.0
FAQ
Q: Why can I sometimes not do double Pyroblast after a Scorch?
Credits
Written By: Hopeful, Wolfdisco
Reviewed By: Wexi