Fire Mage Midnight Playstyle and Rotation Guide

There is a general rotation that you should follow as a Fire Mage:

• Build Heating Up with Fireball Crits and convert them into Hot Streak! via Fire Blast - remember that it's off the GCD, so you can convert Heating Up to Hot Streak! mid Fireball cast.
• Combustion on CD.
• Don’t cap on Fire Blast Charges, let it always be on recharge, but always have a charge available so you won't be Fireballing for too long if you need to convert Heating Up to Hot Streak! for the instant Pyroblast.
• Fireball should be followed up with Pyroblast. This results in both crits at the same time and should look like this: Fireball > Pyroblast (with Hot Streak! proc) at the end of the Fireball, this is the bread and butter of Fire Mage.
• Try to line up Meteor with Combustion if talented.

Fire Mage Opener:

• Start by precasting Pyroblast and convert into Hot Streak! with Fire Blast until the target is at 90%, so we take advantage of Firestarter
• Proceed with Fire Blast and convert into Heating Up, then into Hot Streak! until the target is 91% (this is pretty important for the Apex Talent, Fired Up)
• Use Potion + Bloodlust + Racial + Any Active Trinket (skipped if macro'd into Combustion)
• Fireball into Combustion
• Meteor (if talented)
• Weave Pyroblast and Fire Blast to chain crits inside Combustion
• Once ran out of Fire Blast or you get unlucky with Fire Blast refunds, weave with Scorch
• Fill with Fireball or Frostfire Bolt

General Playstyle

There are a few key rules and things to focus on as a Fire Mage to improve and do as much damage as possible during a boss fight or M+ dungeon.

Always be casting. Make sure you are always casting something. Fire suffers heavily from down time and many passives are most beneficial during high uptime in combat, so make sure you always cast something. For example, use Shimmer to keep the cast flow going, outside of Shimmer Fire Blast on the move if you need. Get into the habit of stutter-stepping during GCDS to get where you want, pre plan your movement in advance, and avoid moving long distances without casting unless you really have to.

Always use Combustion on cooldown to avoid wasting potential overall Combustion uptime during a fight or dungeon. The only exception being when there is a Damage Amp phase of a fight or when there is a big pull planned in your Mythic+ dungeon route.

Always convert Heating Up to Hot Streak! via Fire Blast.

Never cap on Fire Blast Charges, try to keep one available for when you need it, but make sure it's always in the process of recharging.

Try to hold at least 2 Fire Blast charges when going inside a Combustion window. We don't have Phoenix Flames anymore, so we have to be smarter about our Fire Blast usages when Combustion has around 10s left on its cooldown.

Flamestrike: Flamestrike should be used on 5 or more targets.

Tips and Tricks

This is going to be a small section that you could somewhat min-max. Keep in mind that despite fire being a heavily pruned spec, there are still some things we could optimize to get the most damage output possible.

Make sure to use Mirror Image on cooldown during M+. Many abilities can be targeted to the images, such as leaps and sometimes bolts, and in general it can increase your survivability significantly, meaning your healers will be happy.

Keep in mind its a gain to fish for Fired Up Procs if the encounter allows for it and delay our Combustion until 90-91% of the target, that way we can stack our Apex Talent (Fired Up) and go into Combustion with high stacks of Fired Up which will cause us to do increased Fire Damage.

In some dungeons/areas you can sometimes Flamestrike the ceiling instead of the ground, I recommend trying and experimenting with targeted Flamestrike instead of at area or using a Cursor Macro to avoid this. Flamestrike should be used on 5 or more targets.

When Combustion is at around 12 seconds from being available, it is important that you start banking on Fire Blast charges to make sure we enter Combustion with a healthy amount of Fire Blast charges ready. Ideally, this should be 3, but 2 is also okay. NEVER overcap Fire Blast charges, always let it be recharging.

If you have a Hot Streak! and Combustion is coming off of cooldown in the next 3-4 seconds, hold that Hot Streak! to make sure we enter Combustion with an existing Hot Streak!. This makes the opening sequence of Combustion much smoother.

Cooldowns

Combustion is our only real cooldown, outside of Meteor.

Since Combustion is a static 1 minute cooldown, it should be used pretty much any time it’s available, without delaying, unless there is some sort of Damage AMP or some massive pull you are planning with your Mythic+ group.

Keep in mind that Combustion isn't as dynamic as it used to be, which makes lining it up in Mythic+ pulls and Raid a lot easier.

The most important thing is to empty the Fire Blast bank before Combustion ends.

Fire Blast is a big portion of our damage and contributes towards our Ignite, and it's what spreads Ignite, so we don't want to have any charges left once Combustion ends.

Because of our apex talents we get a lot of Fire Blast refunds, which let us be extremely aggressive with our Fire Blast spenders.

Find a good keybind so it's something that you find easy to spam, and remember it's off the GCD.

An example of a Combustion window will look something like this, assuming you already have Heating Up active, if not Fire Blast. And spend on Pyroblast on Single Target or Flamestrike on 5 or more targets.

• Fire Blast
• Spender
• Fire Blast
• Spender

And you repeat this cycle until you run out of charges.

If for some reason you don't have Fire Blast chargers to convert into Hot Streak! during Combustion, replace Fire Blast with Scorch. It's a fast spell that generates Heating Up / Hot Streak!. This problem might happen with extremely low haste.

Defensives

Unfortunately mage took a massive hit with all the defensives pruning for Midnight, taking out 3 defensives from our Kit: Mirror Image damage reduction component, Greater Invisibility damage reduction component and Mass Barrier.

With these removed or changed, it leaves us with only Blazing Barrier, Alter Time, and Ice Cold / Ice Block.

It's definitely going to be rough, especially early on when you are not familiar with incoming damage in raid or keys; which means that you have to know exactly when damage is incoming and will need to be more conservative with using your defensives to avoid lacking one when you really need it.

Alter Time now has an even higher priority to learn how to use it properly, since this is going to be the main difference between living and dying as a Mage.

Blazing Barrier is your first line of defense, and should be used whenever you feel there's incoming damage. Preferably before you enter a Combustion / Hyperthermia window, as we don't really want to waste GCDS on a Blazing Barrier during the limited 12 second window where we deal any real damage. That being said, if you have to use it to make sure you won't die, then it's better than dying.

Ice Cold / Ice Block are your last line of defense, and should be used strategically. This is the only source of massive damage reduction that we have, besides these we are basically exposed to damage and in very big danger.

Make sure you are familiar with dungeon pulls or incoming damage in the raid boss fights so you won't get caught off guard, without a defensive ready.