Fire Mage Playstyle and Rotation Guide

Opener

• Pyroblast at 3 Seconds before the pull.
• Press Potion, Bloodlust and Immediately Fireball.
• Halfway through that fireball, cast activate Combustion and press double Fireblast to reach Double Pyroblast sequence, that pyroblast will generate another pyroblast and we can continue chaining pyroblast during combustion.
• When you reach 1 or 0 fireblast, you can use mecha bracers, since they are off the GCD. Remember the sequence has to be FireBlast > Pyroblast > FireBlast > Bracers to ensure we are getting the most amount of fireblast chargers back.
• Once you are out of fireblast charges, continue to chain hotstreaks via phoenix flames.
• Once you reach 10 stacks of Sun King’s blessing, you can hardcast pyroblast and enter Sun Kings Blessing Window (cast shifting power if you are at low charges of Fireblast or Phoenix flames before).
• If for whatever reason you have nothing to press inside combustion or Sun King’s Blessing, fill with Scorch.
• Continue to fill with fireball, but don’t overcap on fireblast charges.
• Save at least 2 fireblast charges before entering the combustion/SKB window.
• After combustion ends, we enter our Hyperthermia window. We want to spend as many hotstreaks as possible during that window. Based on our spheres and phoenix, the time of hyperthermia can vary. Nonetheless, we want to only cast pyroblast non stop for the entire hyperthermia window.
• During Execute, Improve Scorch takes Prio on Single target. It's important to keep the debuff up at all costs on 2 stacks!
• Don’t sit on Fireblast chargers during execute, use Scorch to convert into Heating up and Use Fireblast to convert into Hot Streak.
• Start banking fireblast and Phoenix flames chargers 15 seconds in advance to our Next upcoming Combustion.

For unleashed Inferno, the opener mostly stays the same, you just ignore the SKB part.

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).

Hyperthread Wristwraps

The famous mechagon bracers from the mechagon workshop dungeon are making a return in Patch 11.1, and according to sims, it’s around a 0.6-0.8% increase to play vs normal bracers.

The sequence you want to use the mecha bracers in should be the following:

1. Fire blast
2. Spender (either pyro or flamestrike) Fireblast
3. Bracers

That way you can ensure you get the most amount of Fireblast Chargers back from the bracers.

You want to track Glorious Incandescence to make sure you consume that proc before you use the bracers; you may want to slightly delay using the bracers until Glorious Incandescence is active, this way you will get an amount of Fire Blast chargers back.

The sequence is the same for AoE And Single Target.

Hyperthermia Window Usages

There is a small min-max that you can do during Hyperthermia. It's not a huge dps gain, but I will address it anyway.

If you have enough Fireblasts to spend, you want to Convert Fireblast into Hotstreak during Hyperthermia. This is because the ignite value from Hotstreak is doubled with Hyperthermia, giving us instant pyroblast, but it's not hotstreak pyroblast so it’s important to know that.

In AoE if possible, and you have enough haste, you want to try and maintain Feel the Burn up time for Ignite spread value during Hyperthermia.

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:

1. Cast phoenix flames or Scorch
2. Cast flamestrike, and halfway through flamestrike, activate combustion
3. Cast flamestrike again from another hot streak from the previous flamestrike in combustion
4. fire blast
5. phoenix flames
6. Meteor (inside combustion to benefit from combustion, skip this line for Sunfury)
7. flamestrike
8. Fire blast
9. Dump any remaining fire blast charges you have into flamestrike
10. Dump any free phoenix flames charge refunds from the Fire 4-set tier set bonus
11. Shifting power if you are out of Fire blast charges
12. Flamestrike
13. Scorch to fish for Hot Streak for the last Flamestrike
14. Continue to consume hotstreaks until Your Sun king’s blessing is ready, hard-cast flamestrike (ignore SKB for sunfury)
15. 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

Generally speaking, Fire is a cycle spec, which means we build SKB Stacks via hotstreaks and we enter SKB Window outside of our normal combustion.

This means we don’t really want to hold off using combustion, because it’s just going to delay us further from our next SKB Window. So, unless you ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO hold combustion for something in the Raid, like an important damage phase or an add you have to burst down, then always press combustion on CD.

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.