Guide: Fire Mage 4.3

Welcome to my guide to playing a Fire Mage in 4.3. It is finally here the post everyone has been waiting for.

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.

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).

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!!!

Third times a charm

Woot Lasciel got to level 85!

Lasciel
Well after about a week my Paladin has finally hit level 85. Woooo! Yet, sadly now I'm faced with a problem. What do I spec her? I like the healing role in general but Holy Paladins have a HUGE skill curve with no good gear. Tanking isn't bad in dungeons but can I handle it raiding? What about Ret Paladins... do I want to be DPSing again? I just wish I could do all three. But I'm sure it would get crazy trying to manage the gear. So as of right now, I'm going with the easiest way to get gear. Fail DPSing through Heroic Dungeons. The worse that can happen is the mob takes extra time to get down. It's not like I'm killing anyone if I fail. ^^ -huge grin-

Healing is Feeling....

This has probably gotten to be the biggest update that this blog has seen. (No, I didn't go to Alliance...) What happened to Iggy? I have been running dual mains for awhile now. But now I have realized playing a Priest comes easier to me. Iggy has been put on the back burner for right now. Damage Control you still have a place in my heart. -makes a heart sign with her hands- But since Evo has not been online, I found more and more I wasn't playing Ignasia. Perhaps when Evo comes back, you will see me on more. Until then, I will be doing something I truly enjoy.

Almirmiel

I took Almirmiel out of Damage Control last week at the request of joining a friend's raid group to help out their guild. However, while I was gone on my camping trip I found out that someone from my past was invited into the guild. A kid that plays by the name of Wyrmhole. He was part of the handful of people that made leaving University of Suramar easier. I really hate dealing with immature people, ESPECIALLY in raiding. After the incident in BWD where I had to deal with the kids of UoS, my respect for said player decreased greatly. The group was so unorganized, immature, and without a doubt unskilled, that they could not clear trash. After that, I personally chose to never again deal with such players. As a result of said past event and his invite, I decided to leave the guild. If it is something I learned guilds are a dime a dozen. As it is right now, Almirmiel has gone back to Sanctum.

Working on DPS

As you can see I hit 13K.

21K DPS without Using Burning Blood. Woot!

From a little birdie I heard that people were whispering under their breath about my healing and dps. -smirks- So because of this, I decided to post my most recent DPS recounts. I did this with Iggy and here I go again with Almir. 

First, I told people many times my healing sucks. This is due to me not working on it as much in the past. It was a good break from having to smash my head against the wall trying to play a Fire Mage. I just started getting truly serious about gear and caring if I was any where near good. If this character has now become my main. I need to work and treat her like it. Just today I got her first piece of Tier 12 healing gear. I will start trying to heal ZA/ZGs here soon.

Second, my dps has been lacking because it's not my main spec. I've been using it so that I can get geared without being thrown out of dungeons. Its better to make up for a crappy DPS than it is for a healer who can't heal. Lucky for Shadow Priests they can use just about the same gear. I am still getting the same rotation from just about anyone I talk to so my low damage per second must be gear related. Here is my rotation: Vampiric Touch, Shadow Word: Pain, Devouring Plague, Mind Blast (for the mana regen), Mind Flay till Archangel procs, make sure none of my DOT fall off, and Mind Flay in between Mind Blast procs. I save my Fiend for boss fights, especially during Lust or Warp. Spam Mind Sear for AOE mobs. <-- I can usually hit 14k no problem during an AOE fight. (IF there is anyone out there who sees an issue within this rotation please let me know.) Until then, I am going to continue tweaking my current rotation so it yields the highest dps I can.

Fire Mage vs. Arcane Mage

I have waited too long to write this post...

I'm going to start this off by saying "I hate Arcane Mages". I've been seeing several more Mages floating around world of Azeroth. From a player who plays this class as their main, it is both a good thing and bad. Its good that more people are starting to have fun playing Mages. Its a bad thing because there are several of us out there that have beat our head against many a keyboards trying to max out our DPS. When low and behold, the newbies now can march right in specing Arcane and out DPS everyone. For those of you, who have finished 4.1 patch and just want to lay back and relax that is fine to go Arcane to take a break. (Those people know who they are and deserve that break.) However, when I run into a dungeon with an Arcane Mage and they don't even know how to Sheep properly or Spell Steal. They need go Fire and get in the back of the line like everyone else did for Cataclysm.

Now here is two Mages battling out in BH for top DPS. The Arcane Mage was just a little lower in gear and still won with their two button rotation. However, for this run I out did the Arcane Mage for Damage Done. >> Why is it that people only care about Damage Per Second? And not Damage Done? I took the boss' HP down the most from 100% to 0%, why does it matter how fast I did it in a second?

I of course was playing the Fire Mage.

And as you can see their whole 2 button rotation.

I can't wait for Firelands where I hope Arcane get nerfed and Fire gets buffed. So those who think they are bad ass for playing Arcane get put back in their place. Until then I will power myself up to hopefully be able to show up those Arcane Mages of 4.1.

Less QQ more Pew Pew

So I figured out something most horrible just now. When I reformatted my laptop, I forgot to save all my screen caps from World of Warcraft. I literally lost everything I took for a year. I had thought it was in one of my picture folders... but it wasn't. I haven't literally cried yet. But as soon as I look for a picture I thought I had and realize its gone forever... yeah I think I will start then.

So expect more pictures on this site. I will probably use this place to immortalize my screen shots now. Mwuhahaha. Also, huge thought and I will start doing this as soon as Remy (the bf) is not asleep in the next room, video posts. I don't want to turn this into nothing but a Vblog but maybe some here and there. So look for them coming soon. -big smiles-

Almirmiel in 3 pieces of Heirloom Gear. FEAR THE EXP!

As for game updates: I started playing my highest level Priest again. (Almirmiel - 85 Holy Spec) And I have come down to the conclusion that I know much more about my Priest than I do my Mage. I would only figure really because I have two Priests nearly identical. (One at 66 and the other at 75) So I'm going to start and level her up to 85 and hopefully get her raid ready as soon as I can. However, on a side note, a few of my friends and I play together on Thursday nights. I'm going to try and keep Almir's levels then around theirs so the four of us have no problems running together. So while I can't play her I will play Zechti, my level 44 Combat Rogue. She currently has one piece of heirloom gear and is leveling REALLY fast. So its going to be a race to see who gets to 85 first.

Zechti with 1 piece of Heirloom Gear.

11k DPS

So after taking a hour and a half to read the replies and actually on my Raider's application I was able to log into World of Warcraft for the night. After regemming a few things and reforging, I started working on my DPS. And wow I must say, I can see a huge day to day increase.

Back to my friends the Training Dummies, today I was able to pull 15k DPS.

After a little while I teamed up with Kewi, who was able to show me a bit more of the finer details. (Thank you again! ^^)

This was us simulating the time of a boss battle. I managed to make it all the way to the end with 11k.

This was my DPS in the middle of Lost City Heroic. I ended the dungeon out at 11k.

I'm personally amazed at the progress. At this point, within 4 days I am to the point of where I was when I was doing great for Arcane. -does happy dance- Now all I need to practice is attacking a few mail boxes. Lol. In other words, movement. Once I get how to move and cast, as well as kite. I'll be golden. With Thursday being my day off. That will be my project for tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Fire Spec Mage

 

(Writing this at 6am, so bare with me.)

Okay so for the last week I have been racking my brain to try and get down the Fire Mage Class. It has been one hell of a process. When Cataclysm first came out all I heard was how good the Fire spec was. At the time I was specked as Arcane. From what I read and researched for Wrath of the Lich King, they were 1337 at the time. At the birth of Iggy (level 1) however I was specking for Fire. It wasn't till late 70s that I had people telling me if you want to raid you have to go Arcane! Keeping in mind I refused for quite some time and wanted to stay Fire till the end. Well I broke down and listened to them. I soon after mastered the Arcane spec (granted its not THAT hard to do, it just takes timing) coming into Cataclysm. I didn't want to go back to Fire because this whole time I had pushed it aside to learn Arcane. Well now after months of throwing that spec away, I'm coming back to it.

My progress: To start off with A LOT has changed in the Fire spec. So much so what I knew before wasn't even valid anymore. I've been doing countless numbers of research trying to find the best rotation for me. Well, tonight I think I figure it out a lot more. I was in Orgrimmar practicing on the Training Dummies, when I had peaked at 23k DPS. Before when I was trying to use them for my DPS my peak was only at 10k, which I must say was HIGHLY disappointing. However, tonight I managed to stay at an average 15k DPS and ended the fight at 14k.

Also another update:

I applied to Damage Control as a Raider. I know as a Fire Mage I'm a little lacking but as you can see, every day I'm getting better and better. Really, all I need is someone to show me the ropes (because no one really has yet besides a few pointers here and there and me researching the same things over and over) and I will be great.

 

This is a screen shot of me resting after the Dummy test run and of course gloating about my DPS.