General Fire mage example for anyone wanting to get into the spec

Classes Mage
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Ok so just thought Id post a quick vid of my current fire mage rotation / trinkets in use to give a general idea of how I try to maximize damage.

I tend to use mirror image just after starting combustion, I know its more defence based now than in the past, but it still seems to help with threat even if it doesn’t state that in the tooltip.

Fairly balanced stats with my current 199 gear although I’m sure that will change with further drops.

Crit: 31%
Haste: 13%
Mastery: 13%
Versatility: 12%
Speed: 3%

Talent notes:

Reason I went with Blazing Soul over Shimmer, is that Soulshape is quite handy for big movement requirements and rest of the time having a stun break on a short cooldown is worth more to me than shimmer currently for a lot of M+ / PVP and even raiding where stun mechanics can kick in.

(side note: the extra fire shield is also quite handy for surviving various mechanics and helping healers)

Covenant: Night Fae (cooldown reductions)
Recommended addon: WeakAuras (WeakAuras-3.1.4.zip)

Using: Niya

Conduits: “Infernal Cascade” / “Run without Tiring” (for some extra healing). “Flow of Time” to help get more blinks off.

I’m also using Firestorm Shoulders legendary because it offers some interesting if slightly tricky to use additional nukes throughout to keep things interesting.

I am making use of weak auras and specifically: luxthos for shadowlands

If you like the look, its very handy for tracking overall cooldowns whilst not having to stare at your action bars.

As shown in the above video when my shoulders proc, I get a loud ringing sound to make it obvious, its built in as part of luxthos’s own weak aura set and you can really set it to what ever sound you prefer by simply typing: /wa

Then use the search to type “Firestorm” and hit the drop down for Luxthos and you should see Pyroblast - Firestorm > Goto “Actions” tab along top then under “On Show” tick “play sound” and select what ever you like from the list. (personal pref “Sword Ring”, though may be a bit loud for some.

Kindling is a great last tier talent to take on top of the Night Fae ability as any crits from the majority of our main attacks helps reduce the cooldown on combustion even further, to take advantage of our burst window again.

Opening rotation looks like: Combustion > Phoenix Flames > Fire Blast > Pyroblast (rinse and repeat)

Logs

If you want to check my general damage feel free to try.

wowanalyzer
warcraftlogs

Both of which include recent parses.

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I hadn’t occurred to me that the firestorm legendary would also help with the cooldown of combust when using the final tier talent.

It seems with night-fae and firestorm, you’re getting incredibly fast combust regen without needing to stack crit. Thanks for the video :slight_smile:

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Np, its even more hilarious if you take the world pvp talents that also help it out. :smiley:

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I’ve been frost mage from the moment i made this character, but thinking of going fire. Would you recommend the swap?

Last week i had Memory of a fevered incantation drop from the world boss, and is making me wonder whether to make the jump to fire.

Only problem is i find the spec still a bit tough to survive with right now and lots of down time to heal

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Tried fire (currently frost) I just couldn’t get the hang of it.It just feels awkward.

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You shouldn’t be casting mirror images in combustion thats a big no no. You shoudn’t be using shifting power on a ST combust either. You should also comb and 2x fire blast DURING your first fireball cast, followed by 2 pyros to get your infernal cascade buff 2 stacked.

I recommend Asuna’s youtube guide. Best one I’ve seen.

2 Likes
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This is absolutely not how you want to combust.

To begin with, you want to activate combustion towards the end of a fireball cast so it gives you a heating up.

Using mirror images during combustion is about the worst thing you can be doing, and why are you using phoenix flames and fire blast to trigger hot streak when you’ve already got heating up, completely a bunch of hot streaks of them?

You also want to use shifting power while your combustion is still active, and if you’re going to use it outside of combustion, at least use your rune of power first so that’s also affected by the cooldown reduction.

Casting fireball during combustion is also something you absolutely don’t want to be doing, if you’re completely out of instants and don’t have shifting power, scorch is better than fireball.

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Only on flamestrike combustion

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I have been messing around with the rotation for a bit, Ill admit could prob use mirror just before combust to avoid wasting a cooldown.

Btw you do realise each fire blast resets the infernal cascade duration timer right? So as long as your using it multiple times during combustion window there is no need to spam 2 x at start and getting more fire blasts from shifting power, your essentially getting off extra fire blasts for more damage?

But scorch spam is not going to help your kindling talent regen combust faster, unless you get a lot of lucky pyro procs.

For last 30% sure, but start of a fight no.

Combustion > Phoenix Flames > Fire Blast > Pyroblast

With talents I’m running that’s:

3 x Phgoenix
3 x Fireblat

So I tend to go with using all 3 alternately during the initial combustion phase:

Phoenix Flames > Fire Blast > Pyroblast > Phoenix Flames > Fire Blast > Pyroblast > Phoenix Flames > Fire Blast > Pyroblast.

This makes hot streak very predictable and also means most of them are regening at a reasonable rate as well.

I then try to aim to keep at least 2 stacks of each available for my next combustion unless I get a lucky hotstreak proc.

I am not saying I cant improve, but I just find it works well for me and a friend who is also a fire mage and using the more traditional fireball 1st approach is often much lower on overall damage compared to myself.

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Mirror images is dps neutral, there’s no gain to use or loss to use it in full rotation. You can use it before a raid boss pull, before your opener for a slight dps increase. Also can be used during movement or if you can’t attack for a few seconds, like los on sludgefist for example.

It stacks to 2. That’s why you get them off early and pyro before your fireball hits to get two pyros in a row. Combustion is about getting as many pyros in as you can. You can phoenix flames and fireblast the full 12s without needing shifting power, except during bl you just use a scorch near the end, you scorch because its a faster cast than fireball.

This isn’t me working it all out, this is me listening to the advice of the cleverest mages in the world through the altered time discord. Below is the pic from wowhead.

https://i.imgur.com/QJSsBtM.png

1 Like
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So not going to the top of the threat list isn’t a gain?

Sorry but I disagree, I’ve been in enough fights now where using it does seem to help with this, as noted on my first post for this, it may not say it affects agro any more but it does still interact with it in some way, as otherwise when using it on random mobs or end of torghast boss room solo, they wouldn’t just go for the mirrors when your the main damage to them.

It stacks to 3 with the correct talent selection.

Your essentially not giving yourself the opportunity to spread infernal cascade over a longer time period if you limit yourself to 2 stacks.

Not saying it isn’t, but I think your missing the point, my setup and rotation are pretty fluid and easy to follow in almost all situations.

The whole fishing for a heating up with a fireball or pyroblast at the start, is to me just clunky waste of combustion time. Factoring in travel time to boss, server latency and possible clicking it at just the wrong time during the cast.

In their/your opinion.

Just blindly following something because you think someone smarter than you came up with it, doesn’t really make any sense to me, I like to test things out.

p.s. I did try the pic you sent, honestly its much more annoying than my standard rotation.

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Your right about mirror images taking threat off you but that shouldn’t matter on a boss fight with a tank or 2. It can be good to use them before a combust on a pack but they won’t be up for every combustion. Just to be clear mirror images don’t reduce the threat you create, it’s just transfers it to them while they are up, then it all goes back to you.

The infernal cascade buff stacks to 2. That’s why, unless you would be munching procs, you fire blast twice before your first pyro so you get a 20% dmg buff on it instead of 10%.

The only fishing is one pyro hardcast prepull in raid but I think it is a dps gain whether it procs or not. You would start casting it when the countdown timer is on 5. Then you adjust your combustion whether it procs or not.

I trust them because they spend a stupid amount of time simming and working out the best possible rotation. The reason you can sim your character is because this mages wrote the apl that tells the sim the rotation. If you watch the (few) mages involved with the world first race or check their logs they are doing this combustion because it is mathematically the highest possible outcome.

You’re not wrong that it isn’t easy to get used too but you’ll see the difference when you get it right. I haven’t mastered it yet, I think my haste is a bit low because I struggle to get to my 3rd fireblast in time to keep the infernal cascade buff up. The flamestrike combustion is even trickier!

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Thanks. Was confused on 2 x fireblast vs 2 x infernal cascade. Will posibly look at dropping in on discord some time and yea may just start using greater pyro at start to see how it goes. Current on use trinket slighty annoying as have to run arond for haste buff.

Thoug. I can get all 4 instant pyro off with that and tw at start if legedary procs.

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Looks like the biggest critiques I had about this have already been covered, but I’ll give you a little bit of an advice for the future regardless.

Don’t attempt to feelcraft the rotation by doing something because “it feels like the best choice”. This stuff is intensely researched by the best mage players out there, and it’s based on sims. The mage discord is a good place to find this info from. Also, a bunch of guides also cover these findings and go by them, such as icyveins.com, wowhead, alter times own website etc. So always follow them over your own intuition.

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As noted Lidlmage, I don’t mind taking things on board, what I do mind is a mindless sheeple mentality of everyone must copy everyone else.

Everyone must watch videos. Everyone must sim every little thing.

I actually enjoy learning as I go. Its part of the fun. If all we do is exact copies of everything, then what is even the point of playing the game?

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You’re free to do as you please, but when instructing others you must always offer the most accurate information or at the very least have a disclaimer saying that you’re not doing that.

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Thing is you would think some of these super perfect dps guides would actually make it onto the wow forums, instead they get buried on lots of different sites or discord, why is it so much effort for someone to simply collate it on the official forums for new mages to follow?

I have noticed a few say they don’t like the fire rotation and I can understand why if they are looking at some of the pictures depicting various rotations with and without crit.

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Plenty of out of date guides floating around too. As above though, wowhead and icy-veins are always safe bets. When you want to dig deeper the discord will answer any question and studying warcraftlogs and subcreation can show you how the best results were got.

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That is haste dependent. With enough haste you end up doing shifting power for ST, but for the poster’s haste level, yes you shouldn’t

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What kinda haste you talking? You don’t do it with bl, my sims don’t even do it with tw ring stacked on top of bl so it can’t be in the apl?