Guide to the Flame: The Wonders of Flinging Fire

Post by greywolfsage

So it's not so pretty, but I tried to cover everything. Been a few days since I worked on it, but I can't think of anything else, so here goes...

Disclaimer:

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here!
At least all hope of "controllable" dps. The Fire Spec is chosen for its potential and its adaptability, not for its consistency. On any given fight, Fire as a damage spec honestly does whatever it pleases. At current gear stat budgeting, we can point it in the right direction, but not guarantee much of anything.
Playing a Fire Mage is like trying to set a forest ablaze. This can differ from same fight separated by a wipe. You might set the tree on fire (10k for me >.>) or you might flash burn the place down (20k+). When it works, its a beautiful sight to behold (I had a Cho'gall attempt where I nailed a 10k tick on Combustion, bursted to 25k dps, almost pulled threat on the bear tank with 'Zerk blown), or, more often, you feel maybe let down, or even that you're holding the raid back because you're doing everything right but stuck at 13k.
Ye have been forewarned!

Hello All!

Figured it was about time for me to make something that no one will read anyway, so here goes.

First and Foremost, I'm making this with Fire Spec PvE in mind, for those starting up, I can't comment on heroic raid content. I'm rubbish at PvP, so can't say much about it.
Also shamelessly reposting the work of the guys (and maybe gals) at EJ.

Mages In Cata

One major point I must touch on is your Role as a Mage. It's not just throwing around as much damage as you can, but it is a major part of it. It is also YOUR responsibility to make life easier on your TANK and even more importantly the HEALER.

When you join a group, toss the healer a stack of cakes. Costs you nothing, and they just might repay the kindness later, if they don't have to ask for it.

Healers are not built to carry you through damage anymore. In WotLK healers were expected to just brute force encounters, ignoring mechanics, laughing in the face of the programmers. This is no longer the case.

Are you standing in stuff on the ground? Move.
Are you pulling aggro? Drop threat(Mirror Image/Invisibility) and/or stop generating it.
Multiple mobs? Wait ten seconds before you impact/flamestrike/dragonsbreath/blastwave/blizzard spam.
Important spell/ability being cast/channeled (power hit/heal)? Interrupt it!

In general you should get very familiar with 4 spells, and as fire spec you have an additional one:

Spellsteal. Great spell this. You nick the buff off the mob, so the tank isn't dying and you (usually) deal more damage and occasionally get mana too! Watch for it (standard ui highlights it) at the bottom of the buff/debuff list on a mob.
Remove Curse. No reason not to save your healer the mana and gcd(s) to deal with it themselves.
Counterspell. See something nasty coming? Or have an addon tell you? Don't wait for someone else to do it, take some initiative! Especially on healer mobs.
Polymorph. More effective than counterspell at stopping actions being taken, lasts for a minute. Keep in mind only works on beasts and humanoids (and critters, but that's not important), heals them, and breaks on any damage dealt. Make sure to keep away from the other mobs clustering on the tank.
Dragon's Breath. The disorient portion of this acts as a second interrupt on most mobs. Quite helpful in Vortex Pinnacle, to stop the healer at least temporarily that's hiding under Grounding Fields.

Racial Choice

For Alliance:
Even though I don't like the Alliance, I feel that they should at least be mentioned for those poor souls that have friends that are Alliance and are forced to play as one (I kid :p). I listed them in order of what I saw was best. Hope this is helpful.

Draenei have Heroic Presence. It increase you're hit rating by 1% making it easier to get hit. They also have Gift of the Naaru for some self heals that mages don't normally have.
Gnomes make use of Expansive Mind. It doesn't increase Intellect but it does increase their mana pool.
The newest class Worgens have Viciousness which gives a small amount of crit. Nothing ground breaking but one of the better traits for the Alliance. They also have Darkflight for when Blink is on CD.
The only good thing for Dwarfs is the Stoneform. Not much use for PvE I believe but works for PvP.
One great thing about Humans is Diplomacy. Nothing real class specific for mages from this race.
Night Elves have hardly anything for Mages. Shadowmeld might be useful, but is more useful for Druids and Rogues.

Also to add:
Humans have Will to Survive. Shared CD with PvP Trinket.
Nelves have Quickness. I'm not sure if hit rating can overcome this miss-chance, I remember mention of it a long time ago.
Gnomes have Escape Artist. Another sort of PvP Trinket, and doesn't appear to be on a shared CD.

For Horde, Take your pick. Just can't be a Tauren. All have notable bits, pick the one you like looking at the most, racials cause mostly minor changes to the game:

Goblin seems to be favored for Rocket Jump and Time is Money.
Troll was top before for its Berserking.
Take Orc for the same reason you do as a hunter. Especially PvP orientated ones. Blood Fury, , (though I'm not sure if it applies yet), and Hardiness.
I went Belf, Arcane Torrent is handy. Serves as a free Mana Pot.
Or undead for their Will of the Forsaken. 45 sec shared CD, iirc. Also, Cannibalize can be handy for soloing/PvP. And the headbang.

Spec

Any spec'cing is pretty simple if you know what you like and what you don't. Have a clear goal in mind.

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#o0hZfchrkbRRsfoc:ozcksMmz0
^ Standard spec.
The 2 points in Pyromaniac can be shuffled, maybe into Blazing Speed and Molten Shields for more hardmodes? Or Arcane Concentration for some more mana saving properties, but you don't really need that, imo.

A couple points.

Imp. Fire Blast is very marginal in it's increase in dps. Someone made a thread about it that I can't find now that showed, with a very specific, I think 5 scorch – 1 ImpFB, that it was about 60 deeps increase. As haste got higher, it would be less. In a raiding buffed environment, it shouldn't be hard to fit more than that in.
TL;DR – Not worth the talent points.

Cauterize.
It's a love/hate talent. Can be quite vicious if you're not careful. Any damage that would kill you instead brings you to 40% health. Also applies a DoT dealing 48% of your health pool. You'll need to use a Warlock's Healthstone, if you have it (~17k heal), Incanter's Flow, , or Ice Block as a last resort.
And of course get away from whatever is killing you, if you can.
Recommended for raiding.

Impact
Great cleave talent. Have to edge in a bit closer though. You can usually force a proc with a cycle of the Fire AoE's. Impact copies all DoT's on target to all others in its range. Except for Living Bomb. Living Bomb can only be on 3 targets at one time. So if you have 4 mobs and Impact Living Bomb, it will jump to the other 3 and leave the original target free.
Glyphs

Glyphs

Primes
You should be using Glyph of Crittermorph, , and Arcane Momentum.
Fireball works out to be just a bit better, and I prefer extra crit and Ignites over a ~200 damage dot from , once its at full stack.
That and the evils of Ignite Munching, but we'll talk about that later.
seems nice, but more crits from harder hitting spell (Pyro) is more Ignites and more damage.

Major
I highly recommend . A bit of a godsend in PuG heroics.
is handy.
Beyond that take your pick.

Minor
None game breaking really. Slow fall glyph is nice, 1 less reagent to carry around.

Rotation

Priority System. You have a few main things to watch for as a Fire Mage.

debuff. Applied via Scorch or Pyroblast or
This debuff provides 5% extra crit. Lasts 30 seconds. Same as the debuff provided from Warlocks. If CM is disappearing early, please check for warlock talents in your group.
Living Bomb. One of our largest sources of damage through a fight. Let it tick off so the secondary explosion can occur, which counts for Hot Streak procs, and then refresh it. Keep this up as much as you can.
– Triggered by and Pyroblast Clearcasting Driver
This is a free Pyroblast. Note: it counts as free for Master of Elements, so no mana back from crits. Usually a good source of ignite. Also refreshes Critical Mass, some mages prefer to hard cast this spell while tank is running in to pull.
. Keep this out and on CD. Only attacks one target at a time, but with the talent , it has a nice little BOOM effect at the end. More damage you don't have to worry too much about. Though it is as buggy as Blink for making a travel line... >.>
Fireball. Bread and butter. If you're not using GCD's for anything else, spam away.

Some things to be wary of:

Scorch's debuff appears to have a delay from when it's cast is finished and when it actually shows up on boss. Wait a heartbeat before hitting Bomb to ensure uptime.
Use trinkets as often as possible, and use them optimally before applying a Living Bomb, share the love. There are addons to help with watching CD's, like PowerAuras. I'll have a link down below.
Combustion is a very nice CD. It combines the damage of the DoT's you have personally applied to the target, and makes a new one that ticks for all their damage. Make sure Living Bomb is still up when you use this ability, sometimes it can tick off if you wait on a Hot Streak. Your biggest source of damage for Combustion, however, is Ignite. Ignite can stack up quite a lot of damage, and while a Hot Streak signifies at least 2 Ignites are ticking, the Pyroblast DoT is not imperative for a good Combustion.

Ignite Munching
Now, the biggest pain that Fire Mages have with their own mechanics is a little bugger called Ignite Munching. This phenomena is due to server lag, which means there isn't much in terms of coding Blizzard can still do about it. It occurs when 2 spells damage a target for critical amounts at the same time. In 4.1, DoT's will no longer be able to crit, serving as a patch job to the unpredictability of landing a Fireball or Pyroblast on a crit from Living Bomb. The source of munching we can control is the fact that Fireball and Pyroblast have identical travel times. If you use HotStreak as soon as Fireball is finished casting, both spells with arrive at the same time. If they both should crit, only one spell, likely Fireball's, will be converted into an Ignite tic. This is bad, mmk? The current solution devised is to cast a Scorch before using that free Pyro. It's a stutter-step that isnt a complete loss in dps (ie you just wait for it to travel) to allow the server to keep up with you.

Post by greywolfsage

Gearing

In the interest of sharing, someone already took some time to compile a list of pre-raid gear to collect here .

Now to the nitty gritty everyone is always so interested about.

Fire Mages priority for gearing is roughly as follows, as it stands in 4.0.6:
Int > Hit > Crit or Haste > Mastery.

*Note* Spirit isn't in here. Anywhere. It's no good to us. Leave it for the healers.
With the exception of wands. There's all of 5 wands at 346-359 right now. New patch is supposed to add more, but take what you can get.

Stat ratings (Rating for 1%) are:
Hit- 102.446
Crit- 179.28
Haste- 128.05701
Mastery - 179.28
Int- 648.91 (this is the conversion rate into Crit)

Intellect.
Mana, Spell power, a slight amount of crit. It is our favorite stat.
Hit rating.
Intellect is quite powerful. Some say to gear for it even at the sacrifice of Hit rating.
For the purposes of this guide, I recommend getting hit capped. Some other classes, like warlocks and spriests, don't loose that much if a spell should miss.

But as I considered it, when you consider how Mages deal their damage, hit cap becomes more important. At least in my eyes. A lot of the damage a fire mage deals comes from critting. If your spell misses, there's no crit registered. If there's no crit there's no extra Ignite dot, and also, say so long to those free Hot Streaks. And even if you do get lucky and land the hits, Hot Streak itself could still miss. I've been as close as .07% off hit cap, and I noticed it. Went back to look at the logs, missed 30 some spells. On one fight. It's always been the easiest way to increase your dps, and also the safest way. Do yourself a favor, at least when you're starting out, and get hit capped. In 346 gear, with Reforging, it's not as bad as it seems.

6% hit is required to hit heroic bosses. Should easily get that on gear.
17% is for raid bosses, or anyone with a Skull. That's 1742 rating, get as near to it as possible.
Crit
Munching has devalued this. As it stands on the Compendium, you take your pick of either Haste or Crit. Remember to take into account all of the changes that are temporary or specific spell applications, as these are not reflected on your character sheet. 5% crit from the talent, 5% crit from 2pt11 on all of the nukes, 5% crit from Glyphed Molten Armor.
Haste
More haste means more spells cranked out in the same time period. At a minimum, under raid buffed situations, you want 12.5% haste. This grants Living Bomb one extra tick. It is the 1st haste breakpoint. Not a Soft Cap. The next tic is added at something like 37.5% haste which isn't obtainable at this point as far as I know.

The point to remember is the Crit rating is still RNG. Just because you have 50% chance doesn't mean half of your spells will be crits. Just like back in Wrath, Haste is still valuable because it is still a powerful dps increase, just look at the meters on Altarius. I for instance get 12k in heroics usually, I'm sloppy, up to about 16k in a 25m BH (got REALLY sloppy on that one, I could feel it), and Altarius I can make 20-22k. So it boils down to higher crit is a better chance per roll, versus haste netting more rolls in the same amount of time. Or just maintain a balance, which is the best route I believe, because even without critting Fireball is a decent hit, so you will still see the meters climb.
Mastery
It sounds nice, but is lackluster. Mild boosting to dps. This is the stat to reforge away from, for whatever you need. Not really game-breaking or game-changing, like Frost or Arcane.

Enchants

Just to cover it, mmk?

Head: Arcanum of HyjalArcanum of Hyjal
Shoulders: Greater Inscription of Charged Lodestone Greater Inscription of Charged Lodestone
*Note* The shoulders from Therazane are BoP NOT BoA! This is supposedly working as intended.
Cloak: Greater Intellect 50 int nomnomnom
Chest: Mighty Stats Dirt Cheap one or Peerless Stats Best one
Wrist: Mighty Intellect Pricy, but Best or Critical Strike Cheap Crit or Speed Cheap Haste
*Note* There are greater forms of crit/haste, granting 65 rating, but those require Maelstroms, so just go for Int at that point.
Hands: Haste or Mastery.
*Note* There is a greater mastery version, but not for haste, atm. I prefer the haste one myself.
Belt: Ebonsteel Belt Buckle New Belt Buckle . Don't forget it!
Legs: Powerful Enchanted Spellthread New spellthread.
Boots: Lavawalker is the most recommended. Other choices include Mastery,Precision,Haste.

MH: Hurricane the cheap one, or Power Torrent, the really nice one, but usually takes a while for people because of the 4 Maelstroms.
OH: Superior Intellect. Not as rediculously powerful (+100 int) as it once was, I believe it still causes equivalent level staves to be beaten out in terms of stats.

Gems

Meta: Burning Shadowspirit Diamond Activates with 3 red gems. Easy as cake.

Red: Brilliant Inferno Ruby Our precious. If sockets aren't worth it, ie not an Int bonus, use these.

Blue: Veiled Demonseye Int/hit gem. Straightforward.

Yellow: Reckless Ember Topaz or Potent Ember Topaz. Take which one you need.

Post by greywolfsage

Consumables

Severed Sagefish Head. Only food to really be using, though Pickled Guppy might be easier to obtain. Or Fortune Cookie depending on your Profession choices and whether or not the mats are being price-hiked as a 'WoW Lotto Ticket'.
Maybe at higher gear levels you might pick up Grilled Dragon, or Seasoned Crab.
Flask of the Draconic Mind. 300 int? Yes please!

Professions

Gathering Skills
*Note* Special thing here, with the introduction of cataclysm, Mining and Herbing grant exp. Around 30k for Cata levels on each node harvested. And the results of your work has pretty decent staying power on the AH.

Mining
. Always welcome
Synergies with Jewelcrafting, Blacksmithing, and Engineering.

Herbalism
. Also welcome
Synergies with Alchemy and Inscription.

Skinning
Not even 1%. Meh.
Synergies with Leatherworking.

Crafting Skills

Alchemy
Vibrant Alchemist Stone
Make your own Flask and Potion
Mixology

Blacksmithing(Can be pricy to level)
No gear we can use
,
Bit more lucrative, several good crafteds for healers and tanks.

Enchanting
Synergies well with Tailoring
Ring x2, extra 80 int is welcome
Always more gear to enchant, good steady income

Engineering ( Picked up this one, personally)
Lightweight Bio-Optic Killshades, great item, Heroic Raids to beat it
Nice for pvp lawlz, lots of bombs
Tinkers (Invisibility Field, Flexweave Underlay, Nitro Boosts, , Grounded Plasma Shield )
is really powerful, great pairing with Arcane Torrent
Special mounts

Jewelcrafting ( My other choice )
Chimera's Eye gems (Like for us, Brilliant Chimera's Eye, only get 3 of em at a time though)
Little dependent on server enconomy for making a profit
Some stuff for hunters, moderate gold opportunity (Curse you removing ammo blizz!)

Inscription
Free shoulder enchants. No grinding Therazane!
Glyphs at non-rediculous prices!
And Darkmoon Card of Destruction. Sells very well, and for good reason. "of Waves" makes Darkmoon Card: Tsunami, BiS for Healers, and Darkmoon Card: Volcano which is BiS for any mage, or Ele sham, Boomkin, Spriest....

Leatherworking
Gear isn't for us, pretty good pieces to sell though
Fur linings are a plus

Tailoring (Can be pricy to level)
Master's Spellthread
, an awesome cloak enchant.
Great gear pieces ( Dreamless Belt will serve you well)
Can sell the rest
Great to level with Enchanting, gear you make can be disenchanted

Addons

You should have DBM or BigWigs.
Tells you about boss abilities. Also has a nice “GTFO OF THE FIRE!” for any relevant mechanic. Tells you phase switches and things. Any and all raiders should have one of these. Works on regular dungeons too.

Combustion Helper
A fantastic addon. Little window that can be moved closer to your action bars so you can keep an eye on CD's at the same time. Also tracks the time on multiple Living Bombs if you put them up, as well as Critical Mass timer, and notice that it recognizes the Warlock debuff as well in the countdown.

PowerAuras
A great addon for visual notification of CD's and other abilities like dots that you can orient around you character, while watching for fight mechanics. Storyr was even kind enough to share.
http://www.wowhead.com/forums&topic=181215/fire-mage-power-auras-with-exports \

Post by greywolfsage

reserve, just in case

Post by 484162

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Post by Nathanyal

Don't forget about the Undead racial Cannibalize. It works really well for me in Tol Barad. As well as any other PvP situation. Can't say how well on leveling as before it only restored health and not mana, but it should work as long as you don't forget about it being there.

Post by greywolfsage

very nice read and in my opinion a nice lay out, but then i dont know to much about guides :) only got 2 things to point out for now with your spell rotaion you should include flame orb on each cooldown :), and with the taloring you should also include the darkweave imbroidary probs the best proffesion buff for mages 500 odd int very nice :) other than that its nice imformative and you have yor links in there :) (unlike me :P)

Mmm, I remember flame orb just because I use synapse springs and arcane torrent so much lol. Thanks for the reminder.

And I was thinking about the weave enchant as I was finishing and I got side tracked, thanks again!

Post by 799296

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Post by greywolfsage

I believe 85% is the hard cap, before you add in 5% scorch, 5% Molten Armor, and 5% raid crit buff.

But more relevantly, I believe EJ determined that in the 20-50% crit rating range, the Hotstreak talents clash, with the crossover point at about 34%, I think, during which time I believe it's suggested to stack Haste until you can leapfrog over it. At least thats how I understand it. And haste is quite useful for us anyway. Just look at what happens to your meters on Cookie or Altarius. =D
Love those fights.

Post by nickseng

Reported for sticky!

Couple of comments though.

- While Mage Ward won't save you from Cauterize, Mage Ward + Mana Shield will. Keep that in mind. (Although, it kept me alive with me having 110k hp. It might not at higher levels of HP)

- Not sure if this is worth mentioning, but Hot Streak (Tier 1) seems to be stealthed-buffed. It has a much higher proc rate now.

Post by greywolfsage

Post by 138583

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Post by greywolfsage

Troll racial mixed with Forsaken.
Mining synergies with jc, bs and....engi.

1) Hmm, how did that happen? XD
2) Hurpin mah derp!

Post by 161859

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Post by 484162

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Post by greywolfsage

Not sure if this is affecting anyone else, but the Table of Contents links are not working for me. I click on them, and it doesn't do anything.

Is there some kind of setting I need to enable for it to work? I use IE8.

yah same here takes me to a wowhead page saying page nout found, and im using the current most up todate firefox :)

Hmmm, its the spaces in anchoring, BBCode no likey.
fixded it.

Post by 161859

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Post by greywolfsage

Hmmm, its the spaces in anchoring, BBCode no likey.
fixded it.

Still not working for me. I don't get the "Page not Found" issue anymore for the ones with spaces. However, it still doesn't go to the anchor.

The main reason I'm asking is that I'm trying to put anchors in one of my other posts, and I can't get those to work either. I'm wondering if it is just my computer settings.

Was that the "Consumables" one? It doesn't go to an anchor because I don't believe I actually added that one.
All the others work though.

Post by 161859

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Post by greywolfsage

Well, I'm in Chrome. It's quite nice. :P
I can't tell why it wouldn't work, sorry.

I'm glad you like the guild in spite of that. ^.^

Guide to the Flame: The Wonders of Flinging Fire

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