Welcome to my guide to playing a Fire Mage in 4.3. It is finally here the post everyone has been waiting for.
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| Behind the Scenes of Ignasia |
Do you like to see things explode? Do you wish you could actually move during a fight? Do wish not to see the same 2 damn spell buttons? If you answered 'Yes' to any or all of these, I think you need to respec. You know who you are, all those Arcane Mages... (I will not bash on Frost Mages, who are some scary players mainly one by the name of Ala-something from The STIG.)
STATS
From most important to least...
INT - I imagine this stat is a given, any person playing any sort of spell caster knows Intelligence is the most important stat out there. It does anything from increasing our Mana pool to increasing our Critical Strike chance as well as Spell Power.
Hit Rating - Sadly in Cataclysm this became the second more important stat for all classes (except healers). With out Hit Rating, you are able to miss while attacking any mobs of equal level or higher. For Mages with their Ranged Spells the Max Hit Rating needed is 17%. Anymore after said percent is useless and will not effect you.
Spell Power - Seriously who doesn't want to do more damage? This is mainly found on weapons and trinkets so don't go looking for it on random gear.
Haste / Crit - For my current build I made sure that my Haste was soft capped* at 12.5% so that I get an extra tick off my DOTs. After I made that soft cap, I started dumping all the rest of my stats into Crit. I much perfer more Crit over haste to hopefully proc more Pyroblasts and increase the damage done by my Combustion.
Mastery - This is the least needed stat and due to it, I just use it to reforge into something else that I need. Like currently with my gear, I needed to up my Hit Rating to the current cap so I took from Mastery till I had enough for 17%.
TALENTS
I honestly don't want to spend time with going over what each talent is and why its important. Here is my current spec and you can choose to read through each talent while you copy feel free to. I would MUCH advise it.
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| Current Fire Spec Talent Tree |
One thing I will mention cause I've had people already ask me why not Improved Fire Blast? 1. I don't use said spell that often except for AOE rotation. 2. I would rather go with Piercing Ice from the Frost Tree which increases Critical Strike chance of all spells by 3%.
GLYPHS
Again, like the talents there is no point to sit and explain each thing. However, I would like to mention that there are very few 'required' glyphs for this spec most are player preferences. The ones I find to be required are Glyph of Pyroblast, Glyph of Fireball, Glyph of Molten Armor, and Glyph of Dragon's Breath (for increase AOE damage).
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| Fire Spec Glyphs |
ROTATION
I will like to mention this is all just how I play my Fire Mage so there are other ways out there that work (some even better) but it all based on Player Preference. The reason I do it this way is because I run into a lot of Fire Mages that seem to try to over complicate things. I find my way to be very simple and effective.
- REQUIRED ADDON: Combustion Helper -
***First things first, you want to make sure that at all times Arcane Brilliance and Molten Armor is on you.***
Single Target: I start all fights by casting Flame Orb then Living Bomb and then straight into a hard cast Pyroblast for the Critical Mass talent to kick in. You can use Scorch as well but I prefer the bigger hit that Pyroblast does. Once I completed this rotation and have Critical Mass on said target, I go into spamming Fireball. I make sure as well to refresh Living Bomb right when it falls off the target. At this point I'm hoping for Pyroblast procs in which the spell icon will glow and a spell effect will pop up along the right and left of your character. If I haven't gotten a proc in quite some time I will hard cast Pyroblast to go for a Combustion. (If you are running Combustion helper the box will light up in green when all three dots/effects are running on the target.) For those with mana issues, the above rotation will likely cause you to be out of mana A LOT. To fix the problem it is good to add a few Scorches into the Fireball rotation. How many Scorches you need to cast compared to Fireballs will be based on your gear and mana. To start off with try a part rotation of 2-3 Scorches per Fireball.
AOE Targets: For when there are multiple mobs, I will still start off the fight with a Flame Orb. However, this time instead of only targeting one with Living Bomb, I target 3. I proceed to then spam Blast Wave when it is off cooldown and Flamestrike. Something very important with Flamestrike is the damage over time effect is has. Waiting until the dot falls off the mobs will not only increase the damage on them but also conserve mana. So don't go trigger happy with Flamestrike, it is ineffective spell and mana wise. I will still cast Fireball while waiting for Flamestrike's dot to fall off as well as re-Living Bomb 3 targets. Included in all this is to still pay attention to your Combustion. I won't use it for small trash groups like Troggs and such. However, if you are able to get off a Combustion (while doing AOE or even in a 2-3 target fight) and you can Impact (the proc for Fire Blast) another target it will spread your Combustion (Fire DOTs) over to said Impact Target. I will use Dragon's Breath as well, but mainly if the mobs are stacked tight and in front of me, due to it only being a cone effect.
A big tip for all of this is to know the fights. If you don't know the fights, how are you going to know when you can stand and DPS your little heart out without dying to Boss Effects around you. Knowing when to use cool downs like Mirror Image and Time Warp (and Trinkets) will GREATLY effect your damage. So please do the research of the fight before walking in saying 'I'm the best Fire Mage there is!'.
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If there is anything that I have missed that you would like me to go over, please leave me a comment and I will get back to you. I want to state again this is not professionally done, this is just me playing my class. Less QQ more Pew Pew!!!
