Introduction
The 10.0.5 Guide was written by Bjarturr, and updated by Tamir for Patch 10.1
Hey you, you’re finally awake! Welcome to Method’s Fire Mage class guide. My name is Bjartuur. I’ve been playing a mage since the Legion launch and have been competitive in either high M+ or raiding since the end of that expansion. I’ve been having a lot of fun with a mage on the beta so far, and I hope you join me in playing the blue class on live!
What has changed
Patch 10.1 Fire Mage Changes Tuning
- Pyroblast damage increased by 8%
- Fire Blast damage increased by 10%
- Fireball damage increased by 15%
- Scorch increased by 15%
- Improved Combustion now grants Mastery Equal to 75% of critical strike(was 50%)
- Improved Scorch duration increased to 12 seconds (was 8 Seconds)
Conclusions about Fire Tuning:
The recent buff to our single target toolkit is very much appreciated, as it makes us more relevant outside of Combustion, which is always a welcome improvement. Additionally, the Improved Combustion buff has also given us a net boost to our Ignite/AoE cleave.
This means that crit is now less of a bad stat since it transforms into mastery on cleave, although it still isn't the most desirable stat for Fire Mages. With these buffs, I would consider Fire as the best Mage spec currently, as we head into Season 2 in the raid and Mythic+. However, this is subject to change.
First Impressions
Fire mage and the other 2 specs have not undergone many gameplay changes from Shadowlands. Depending on your enjoyment of the class previously, that could be a good or a bad thing. The primary change to be aware of is how ignite spreads. Formerly in Shadowlands, ignite was spread by Phoenix Flames, leading to a more active gameplay style where you had to think about when and how often to spread your ignite on some encounters. In Dragonflight, ignite is now spread by Fire Blast leading to an entirely passive style more akin to Legion and BFA. This change makes us slightly better at cleave than we were previously. In order to do a large volume of AoE, we do have to give up a decent chunk of ST damage, thanks to the structure of the talent tree.