Playstyle & Rotation
Opener
- Precast Pyroblast 3 seconds before the pull, assuming you are at a decent distance from the boss
- Follow up with a phoenix flames immediately
- Trinkets, potion and racial (essentially anything you have available to press, can macro it together).
- If the pyroblast crits and you ended up with a hot streak, then cast another fireball and activate combustion halfway through the fireball cast, that way you chain pyroblast crits inside combustion
- Proceed to spend fireblast charges (if you still have the Hyperthread Wristwraps, then spend fireblast first, then use bracers)
- Spend phoenix flames charges
- Once you’re out of any instant casts, such as fireblasts or phoenix flames, then scorch for the remaining duration of combustion
- Immediately Cast shifting power after combustion ends
- Proceed with the filler rotation of fireballing and weaving phoenix flames and fireblast in to make sure we never cap on them.
Opener with Frostfire
- Precast Pyroblast 3 seconds before the pull (depending on distance from target) so it reaches the boss as soon as the timer is on 0.
- Followed up with a Phoenix flames.
- Use Potion, Trinket and any racial you have available.
- Cast Meteor (to proc Comet Storm) and immediately Press Combustion.
- Follow up with 1 Fireblast to Convert our Heating up to Hotstreak.
- Continue with Fireblast and Phoenix flames weaving - remember that excess fire gives us Phoenix flames CDR, never cap on Phoenix Flames Chargers.
- Once you are out of Fireblast and Phoenix flames, but inside combustion, continue weaving Scorch to convert heating up to hotstreaks.
- Continue Filling with Frostfire bolts (its instant with the proc).
- Cast Meteor on CD, since it’s less important for Unleashed Inferno, we only benefit from Fireball, Fireblast, Scorch and Phoenix flames and the damage from Meteor/Comet storm is very high, so we don't want to line it up with Combust anymore (unless its for adds similar to the Queen Ansurek roots).
Multi Target
The AoE Rotation starts to take over once 5 or more targets appear; the spender changes from Pyroblast to Flamestrike.
The AoE rotation is the same as Single target via Ignite spreading. We essentially press the same buttons.
However, if you are doing lower difficulty content, such as lower level keys, and you are specced into Flamestrike, it should go like this:
- Cast phoenix flames or Scorch
- Cast flamestrike, and halfway through flamestrike, activate combustion
- Cast flamestrike again from another hot streak from the previous flamestrike in combustion
- fire blast
- phoenix flames
- Meteor (inside combustion to benefit from combustion, skip this line for Sunfury)
- flamestrike
- Fire blast
- Dump any remaining fire blast charges you have into flamestrike
- Dump any free phoenix flames charge refunds from the Fire 4-set tier set bonus
- Shifting power if you are out of Fire blast charges
- Flamestrike
- Scorch to fish for Hot Streak for the last Flamestrike
- Continue to consume hotstreaks until Your Sun king’s blessing is ready, hard-cast flamestrike (ignore SKB for sunfury)
- Repeat step 3 onwards
Playstyle
In general, your playstyle and especially cooldown use should be modified on a fight-by-fight basis. This has historically been one of the best strengths of Mage in cutting-edge content. Our CD timing is variable, and the damage we do in short bursts can overcome difficult parts of an encounter.
With that being said our positioning and understanding of what we are about to pull or face in a boss encounter is crucial for our success as a Fire Mage. Get familiar with the dungeons or encounter and understand how it can affect combustion, maybe there are pulls that we want to not use combustion to make sure it's available for a bigger pull that is coming up next.
Get comfortable with fire, memorize the combustion rotation and priority and you’ll see massive success in no time.
Get used to stutter stepping between your GCDs. You want to only use your blink charges for large movements. If you only have to move 10 yards and you have a few seconds to get there, do it by stutter stepping in your rotational down time.
Lastly, Mage is one of the tankiest DPS classes in the game, but nearly all of our defensives are proactive buttons and not reactive. Blazing Barrier, Alter Time, Mirror Images, and Ice Block all do no good if you haven’t pressed them before a damage event happens. Get used to studying damage patterns of encounters and knowing ahead of time when you are about to take a big hit. Your healers will be able to feel the difference if you are playing well defensively, and they will thank you for it.
General Playstyle Rules
- Use Combustion on CD.
- Don’t overcap on phoenix flames.
- Don’t overcap on Fireblast.
- Always follow up Fireball with Pyroblast to chain Hotstreaks together.
- Never cap on SKB - as soon as you are on 10 and ready you should start hardcasting that pyroblast and enter a SKB Window - this is THE most important thing.
- Pay attention to Phoenix reborn refunds as they give you a chargeback and deal extra damage.
- A.B.C - Always be Casting. If you notice there is a lot of movement that prevents you from casting, consider Ice Floes as an alternative. And remember, even some damage is better than no damage at all, you can cast fire blast or scorch or even phoenix flames on the move until you are able to stand still again and start casting your regular rotation.
- Don’t be too aggressive with Fireblast, always have 1 in your pocket incase you need to convert heating up to hot streak, and don’t sit on fire blast charges for too long since fireblast is tied to our Living bomb, so it’s important we track Lit Fuse with a Weakaura so we know we need to press Fireblast in the next 8 seconds.
Cooldown Usage
Frostfire
For Frostfire, we mostly refer to our comet storm/meteor combo whenever there is any cleave or AoE situation. We want to be familiar with fight timing, or in M+ situations whenever our meteor comes off CD and we know we have a decent pull coming; while we don’t have combustion, we want to make sure we have some AoE damage via our Meteor/Comet Storm Combo.
SKB
SKB is still not where we hope it would be, still lacking behind unleashed inferno for both hero talents. However, we refer to SKB as a CD; it means we want to build it as fast as possible with instant spells such as Fire Blast / Phoenix Flames / instant Frostfire bolts.
Building SKB stacks as soon as possible is by far the most important thing.
Sunfury & Unleashed Inferno
For Sunfury, while playing unleashed inferno, it’s important to maximize Hyperthermia uptime. We want to send as many pyroblasts as possible, to make sure we benefit from the kindling CDR while weaving Fireblast in between to make sure we are building higher ignite and make sure we aren’t capping on Fireblast (even during Hyperthermia, since it’s off GCD).
Overall, by far the most important thing for fire is to always be casting. Fire is an uptime spec. Our uptime is by far the most important thing, since everything synergies one way or another with our kit, as long as we are casting spells and consuming hotstreaks and generating ignite.
Defensives
As mentioned above, Fire has excellent survivability and good Mobility with Mirror Images, Alter Time, 2x Shimmer, Ice Block, Greater Invis (which also increases our movement speed if talented), Blazing Barrier and our Cheat Death, Cauterize.
Rotating our defensives properly can significantly increase our chance to live, even when there is a high amount of incoming damage!
Note: Don’t be afraid to be aggressive with a defensive CD, since shifting power reduces all our CDs by 10 Seconds, while on 1 minute CD.