Fire Mage Talents Guide

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Going into The War Within, some of the Mage Class talents received changes, these are the most important ones:

• Ice Nova and Ring of Frost are on the same row
• Supernova and Dragon’s Breath are on the same row (Supernova will see more play most likely since we don't have to be in melee to stop mobs and it deals damage)
• Barrier Diffusion - whenever one of your barriers is removed, reduce its cooldown by 4 seconds (works very well with mass barrier)

We also still have access to Mass Barrier, Cold Snap, Greater Invis and all our utility from Dragonflight.

I want to discuss a few important talents on the class tree that warrant mentioning:

• Phoenix reborn - is, as we mentioned, our previous tier set from Dragonflight and honestly fire is not the same without this talent since most of our SKB stacks generation will come from our Phoenix flames refunds (due to low crit early season)
• All the living bomb talents on the right side of the class tree, they make living bomb a really strong talent
• Flame Accelerant - has been changed to reduce the cast time of Fireball, Pyroblast and Flamestrike by 40%
• Fervent Flickering - has been changed to reduce the CD of Fireblast by a flat 2 seconds, rather than on ignite ticks like it has been in Dragonflight (it’s essentially the same, with enough haste we won’t feel this change at all)
• Controlled Destruction - just a really powerful talent on Single Target (only downside is that it’s heavily affected by downtime if we can’t continue casting or swap targets)

Flamestrike vs Ignite

I want to discuss Flamestrike vs Ignite since it’s been a hot topic. With the current tuning, and even with all the new talents to buff and make our Flamestrike stronger on everything that is constantly AoE/cleave related, Ignite is the stronger choice currently due to our Living Bomb interaction combined with all the Ignite talents in our spec tree.

However, flamestrike is far more powerful in lower content, such as Open world or low Mythic+ if you need to blow everything up; since Flamestrike is more of a bursty front-loaded profile compared to Ignite, which is more back-loaded and ramping damage.

Since patch 11.0.5, flamestrike is by far the strongest build to play, but you lose a very big portion of your ST/prio damage in order to spec into our AoE kit, so I will not recommend it.

TLDR: Ignite on everything, unless you feel like you need more burst AoE in lower dungeons.

Historically, Flamestrike has never been good in the raid, since fire was always more of a cleave damage profile with ignite. In order for us to really double down on Flamestrike, we have to sacrifice a lot of Single Target damage, and it’s just not worth it during the raid.

For our Hero Tree and Hero Talents we are going to focus on Sunfury, as it’s the superior choice; I want to discuss some talents from the Sunfury tree to highlight how they impact us and why they are important.

Why Unleashed Inferno as Frostfire?

SKB took multiple hits during Patch 11.1, and it’s no longer the optimal option, even for Frostfire.

You can still play it, however, I will advise against it, since it’s significantly behind Unleashed inferno, which also got buffed.

Also, SKB got nerfed for frostfire, as it doesn’t give you the empowered frostfire bolt proc, so it makes SKB pretty much a dead talent for the time being.

Frostfire:

• Frostfire Infusion damage reduced by 10%.
• Excess Fire Phoenix Flames cooldown reduction reduced to 5 seconds (was 10 seconds).
• Excess Frost cooldown reduction reduced to 5 seconds (was 10 seconds).
• Excess Frost Ice Nova effectiveness decreased to 150% (was 200%).
• Excess Frost now reduces the cooldown of Meteor by 5 seconds when consumed (was 3 seconds).
• Isothermic Core now causes Comet Storm at 250% effectiveness (was 200%).
• Flash Freezeburn can no longer trigger from Combustions granted from Sun King's Blessing or Time Anomaly.

With the couple of small nerfs Frostfire took, and the CDR nerf of meteor, which affects frostfire heavily, it’s pretty safe to say that we will most likely not play Frostfire this patch.

Gameplay wise, you wont really feel any change, it’s mostly that we’ll see a difference on the meteor CDR, with less meteors/comet storms/firefalls on top of less phoenix flames from excess fire.

Sunfury:

• Spellfire Spheres - every 6 times we consume a hot streak we create a sphere. Spheres increase our spell power damage by 1% stacking up to 3 times
• Burden of Power - creates a sphere increase the damage of our next Pyroblast by 15% and Flamestrike by 60%
• Invocation: Arcane Phoenix - when we cast our OWN Combustion (not SKB) we summon an arcane phoenix to deal damage. During our arcane phoenix he cast random fire and arcane spells.
• Mana Cascade - consuming hot streak grants us 0.5% haste for 10 seconds, stacking up to 10 times
• Glorious Incandescence - consuming Burden of Power causes our next fireblast to call down 4 meteors on our target, each meteor hit from burden of power reduces the CD of fireblast by 1 second; this is important to track with a WA, since we don’t want to sit on 2 or 3 stacks of fireblast and we get another stack from the meteors essentially wasting a fireblast charge. We want to be at 1 or even 0 fireblast charges during burden of power because it can take us up to 2.5 fireblast charges or even 3 depending on haste.
• Savor the Moment - when we cast Combustion, the duration is increased by 0.5 seconds for each spheres we have up to 2.5 seconds
• Codex of the Sunstriders - over the duration, our arcane phoenix will consume each of our spheres to cast an exceptional spell. Once we consume a sphere we get Lingering Embers - Increases our spell damage by an additional 1%
• Memory of Al’ar - While under the effect of our OWN combustion (Not SKB) we gain twice as many stacks of Mana Addiction. When our arcane phoenix empowers us we gain Hyperthermia for 2 seconds + an additional 1 second for each exceptional spell the phoenix has cast. Hyperthermia synergises well with our Kindling Talent, granting us a pretty big Cooldown reduction to our Combustion.