Introduction
This guide was written by Siqs and has now been updated for patch 9.1.5 by Tamir.
My name is Tamir, also known as Tam1h, Raiding with Angered on Ragnaros EU. I’ve been raiding competitively since Warlord of Draenor, and Pushing High Keys as a Mage since Legion.
What has changed
Strengths of the spec
- Great single target
- Very bursty damage profile, both on single target and AoE.
- Cookie cutter build for every single scenario (Covenant, soulbind, conduits, stats, etc).
- Good Pi/Fae guardians/conquerors banner target, Fire mage has a very high damage ceiling if you can gain any of these buffs.
- Very durable.
- Great at moving (specially when there's mobs below 30% HP)
- 1 minute cooldowns are insanely overpowered for raid scenarios, and in castle nathria it gives a very clear advantage on most bosses
- Access to Cauterize + Podtender if you are part of the Nightfae Covenant Which essentially making you Unkillable
- Very Strong Execute Phase, Especially Combined with Sun King’s Blessing Legendary
Weaknesses
- Very low consistent damage
- Very poor damage if your having to hold DPS
- Poor target swapping
- Passive cleave outside of combustion is dead
- Long combustion cooldown on AoE
- If you can’t hit the boss you can’t reduce combustion cooldown
- Requires mobs to live for long during combustion to have any meaningful passive cleave
9.1.5 Fire Mage Changes
Sun King’s Blessing got buffed\hotfixed, which making it the best single target legendary.
Recent Changes
- The biggest change is how Fire Mage's mastery works. In Shadowlands, ignite spreading is not a part of Mastery. Instead, you have to use Phoenix Flames in order to spread it.
- Removal of corruption also means ignite isn’t your top damage by a mile anymore, however still a meaningful portion, specially on ST and on any low target count cleave.
- Combustion now also drops rune of power, which smoothens the rotation quite a bit.
New Spells
Focus Magic - Don't play this talent. However you can trade Focus magic with another mage buddy to give each other 5% crit, which adds up to 10% when your buddy crits, which should have 100% uptime
Mirror Image - Not a new spell, however, reworked into a defensive baseline cooldown. Arcane, in particular, had a lot of defensive cooldowns already and with images being a defensive cooldown now, you will survive most raid encounters without an issue. This spell also drops aggro, as the mobs will hit the images until they all dissipate.
Alter Time - Like images, this spell was changed, however, re-introduced as a new baseline addition. Alter Time is incredibly overpowered defensively. There have been so many occasions during testing that this spell has been useful. For me the biggest use of Alter Time was actually the healing, however, I’ve also used it in some encounters for movement.