1. Introduction

Fire is a spec that revolves around interactive critical strikes and burst damage, while possessing some unique mechanics such as casting while casting.

2. Spells & Abilities

3. Talents

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4. Rotation

4.1 Rotation Overview

The fire mage rotation revolves around 2 main concepts:

• Maximising Hot Streak generation
• Maximising damage during Combustion

4.2 Hot Streak

Fire is based around maximising Hot Streak. Hot Streak is gained by achieving two direct critical strikes in a row. One critical strike gives us Heating Up, and a critical strike while Heating Up is active gives us Hot Streak. Hot Streak makes our next Pyroblast or Flamestrike instant cast and doubles its Ignite damage. In order to assist us with this, Fire mage possesses the unique ability to cast Fire Blast while casting, making it easier to convert Heating Up into Hot Streak.

Note that by the time a Fireball reaches the target and critically strikes you will be already casting another Fireball - continue to cast, cast Fire Blast while casting, and consume the Hot Streak with Pyroblast at the end of the cast.

We always want to cast a non-instant spell before an instant Pyroblast (usually Fireball, but sometimes Pyroblast) so that both spells hit the target at the same time. This is because there is a small grace window where if one spell crits and the other doesn’t, we don’t lose the Heating Up gained from the spell that crit. Do note that this trick does not work with Scorch due to its faster travel time, so keep that in mind when moving or using Searing Touch.

Other spells we have that do not interact with this Hot Streak build/spend flow such as Meteor and Shifting Power, can be used at any time after a Pyroblast.

4.3 Combustion

Combustion is our main DPS cooldown and where a lot of our damage comes from. To maximise damage during Combustion, we want to enter Combustion with 2+ charges of Fire Blast, and 2+ charges of Phoenix Flames. This pooling logic also applies to Combustion gained via Sun King's Blessing

Our goal during Combustion is to cast as many Pyroblast as possible. An ideal Combustion consists of chaining instant casts. Every Pyroblast will give you Heating Up, so you only need to cast one other spell to gain Hot Streak. This additional spell should be Fire Blast, Phoenix Flames or Scorch. Use Ice Nova as your final global if you do not have time to generate AND spend another Hot Streak before Combustion ends. With Charring Embers, Phoenix Flames should always be cast prior to Combustion.

The priority of the alternating spell is as follows:

1. Phoenix Flames if Charring Embers has less than 3 seconds left
2. Fireball with Flame Accelerant
3. Fire Blast
4. Phoenix Flames
5. Scorch / Fireball

Consuming Sun King's Blessing while in Combustion adds 6 seconds to your current Combustion. However casting Combustion while one is already active via Sun King's Blessing will simply reset your Combustion to its base duration.

Combustion should be used on cooldown as much as possible. It can be delayed slightly for things such as extra damage phases, or add spawns to take advantage of the additional Ignite cleave, as long as you do not lose a Combustion cast during that encounter.

  Double Pyroblast Trick

There are a few situations where we might Scorch during Combustion. You should be aware of the 'double pyro' trick. This essentially let's us cast 2 Pyroblast in a row without generating in between. This only works if all spells are guaranteed to crit.

To perform this trick cast Scorch with a Hot Streak (or convert a Heating Up into Hot Streak during the cast)

At the end of the cast, press Pyroblast twice.

Why does this work?

1. Your Scorch cast with Hot Streak finishes
2. You do not gain Heating Up/Hot Streak immediately because there is a server side delay on buff application
3. Hot Streak is consumed by Pyroblast
4. You gain Heating Up from the Scorch once the server is done applying the buff
5. Pyroblast lands and converts Heating Up into Hot Streak
6. You can Pyroblast again

4.4 Opener

To open with Firestarter. Precast Fireball into Phoenix Flames. Cast Fireball and spend Hot Streak on Pyroblast. Do not overcap on Fire Blast charges. Once you reach 8 stacks of Sun King's Blessing, hardcast Pyroblast & activate Combustion at the end of the cast. Even if the target is still above 90% health. Continue afterwards as normal.

If your target reaches 90% health before 8 stacks of Sun King's Blessing, cast Combustion anyway and consume Sun King's Blessing at 8 stacks.

To open without Firestarter, Precast Fireball/Pyroblast into Phoenix Flames and enter Combustion afterwards.

4.5 Priority

4.5.1 Priority outside Combustion

1. Cast Shifting Power after Combustion.
2. Cast Pyroblast with Hot Streak.
3. Cast Scorch if Improved Scorch has less than 4 seconds left.
4. Cast Phoenix Flames if Charring Embers has less than 3 seconds left and you do not have Hot Streak.
5. Hardcast a Pyroblast with a Sun King's Blessing.
6. Cast Meteor. Attempt to sync Meteor with Combustion - but do not activate Combustion until after Meteor.
7. Cast Phoenix Flames to prevent overcapping on charges or munching Flame's Fury.
8. Cast Fire Blast if you are about to cap on charges.
9. Cast Fire Blast with Heating Up.
10. Cast Scorch if the target is below 30% health.
11. Cast Tempered Flames.
12. Cast Fireball.

4.5.2 Combustion Priority

1. Cast Shifting Power if you do not have enough Fire Blast or Phoenix Flames charges to extend Feel The Burn.
2. Cast Meteor.
3. Cast Pyroblast with Hot Streak.
4. Cast Pyroblast with Sun King's Blessing.
5. Cast Scorch if Improved Scorch has less than 4 seconds left.
6. Cast Fire Blast with Heating Up.
7. Cast Fireball with Flame Accelerant
8. Cast Phoenix Flames with Heating Up if Charring Embers has less than 3 seconds left or to prevent munching Flame's Fury.
9. Cast Scorch if you are able to generate AND spend another Hot Streak.
10. Cast Ice Nova.

When over 100% haste, you should cast Fireball in Combustion over Scorch.

4.6 Forcing Sun Kings Blessing

Outside Combustion we can aggressively spend Phoenix Flames and Dragon's Breath to reach 8 stacks of Sun King's Blessing quickly while saving our Fire Blast charges for the actual Combustion itself. I recommend doing this at around 5-6 stacks of Sun King's Blessing, but always make sure to have enough Phoenix Flames to maintain Charring Embers.

1. Cast Phoenix Flames/Dragon's Breath with a Heating Up
2. Cast Fireball -> Pyroblast with a Hot Streak
3. Cast Pyroblast at 8 stacks of Sun King's Blessing

This is technically a minor loss over playing 'normally' but will be quite common in practice due to being much easier to execute.

5. AOE Rotation

5.1 AOE Overview

The AOE rotation can be split into 2 distinct styles based on what spell you want to spend Hot Streak on.

• Pyroblast and Ignite based AOE. Good for cleave or priority damage.
• Flamestrike based AOE. Good for high target counts.

With current tuning I recommend Ignite for priority damage and Flamestrike for AOE damage at 3+ targets.

5.2 Ignite

Ignite is spread from the primary target to nearby targets via Fire Blast. Therefore Ignite based AOE involves the same rotation as single target.

The most important thing to keep in mind with Ignite based AOE is to make sure your priority target lives for as long as possible. While we will initially build up and spread a massive Ignite bank during Combustion. We can keep the damage 'rolling' by consistently DPSing the same target. Each spell we cast will redistribute the Ignite bank across all 10 ticks and spread it again, drastically increasing our cleave DPS.

5.3 Flamestrike AOE Rotation

The crux of Flamestrike based AOE is simply replacing Pyroblast with Flamestrike.

5.3.1 Priority outside Combustion

1. Cast Shifting Power after Combustion.
2. Hardcast a Flamestrike with a Sun King's Blessing.
3. Cast Meteor. Attempt to sync Meteor with Combustion - but do not activate Combustion until after Meteor.
4. Cast Phoenix Flames if Charring Embers has less than 3 seconds left and you do not have Hot Streak.
5. Cast Fire Blast if you are about to cap on charges.
6. Cast Flamestrike with Hot Streak.
7. Cast Phoenix Flames to prevent overcapping on charges or munching Flame's Fury.
8. Cast Fire Blast or Dragon's Breath with Heating Up.
9. Cast Scorch if the target is below 30% health.
10. Cast Fireball.

5.3.2 Combustion Priority

1. Cast Shifting Power if you do not have enough Fire Blast or Phoenix Flames charges to extend Feel The Burn.
2. Cast Meteor.
3. Cast Flamestrike with Sun King's Blessing.
4. Cast Flamestrike with Hot Streak.
5. Cast Phoenix Flames if Charring Embers has less than 3 seconds left and you do not have Hot Streak.
6. Cast Fire Blast with Heating Up.
7. Cast Phoenix Flames to prevent overcapping on charges or munching Flame's Fury.
8. Cast Scorch if you are able to generate AND spend another Hot Streak.
9. Cast Ice Nova.

6. Stats & Gearing

6.1 Stats

Fire has no stat breakpoints, no hard caps, and no specific stat percentages to aim for - that's not how stats work anymore.

• Haste reduces the cast time of our spells, the global cooldown, and the recharge time of Fire Blast.
• Versatility provides a flat damage increase and damage taken reduction.
• Critical Strike increases the critical strike rate of our abilities and therefore the rate at which we generate Hot Streak. It also increases our Mastery during Combustion with Improved Combustion. With Kindling critical strike increases our frequency of Combustion.
• Mastery - Ignite causes our direct damage spells to deal additional damage over 9 seconds based on the damage of the original spell. Can be spread via Fire Blast.

Due to the large stat budget on items, item level will usually be an upgrade. Stat weights vary depending on your current gear and talents. To accurately compare items you must sim yourself. Remember that Mastery value increases when cleaving with Ignite.

Generally prioritise stats like so:

1. Intellect
2. Haste
3. Versatility
4. Critical Strike
5. Mastery

This does not mean that an item with intellect is always better than one without.

6.2 Trinkets

Because active trinkets share a cooldown, we generally want to pick up one active trinket and one passive trinket. For up to date trinket data please refer to the sims page of the site.

Recommended trinkets for Raiding:

• Belor'relos
• Whispering Incarnate Icon

Recommended trinkets for Mythic+:

• Tome of Unstable Power
• Whispering Incarnate Icon

6.3 Crafting & Dinars

Recommended Embellishments:

• Blue Silken Lining is currently the most powerful embellishment if you can maintain uptime, however this is not always possible. The best slots to craft in are Bracers, Belt, and Feet.
• Shadowflame-Tempered Armor Patch is the safer option. The best slots to craft in are Bracers, Belt, and Feet.

Good dinar items (in no particular order)

• Weapon - Dreambinder, Loom of the Great Cycle
• Cloak - Voice of the Silent Star
• Trinket - Belor'relos
• Trinket - Whispering Incarnate Icon
• Ring - Seal of Diurna's Chosen
• Ring - Seal of Filial Duty

7. Consumables

• Phial: Phial of Tepid Versatility
• Potion: Elemental Potion of Ultimate Power
• Rune: Howling Rune


• Chest: Waking Stats
• Weapon: Sophic Devotion
• Legs: Lambent Armor Kit
• Ring: Devotion of Haste


• Bracers: Devotion of Avoidance
• Cloak: Writ of Avoidance
• Waist: Shadowed Belt Clasp


• Gems: Keen Ysemerald

8. Racials

Fire generally has more impactful DPS racials than some of the other specs in the game. Utility racials still remain powerful and are worth consideration.

8.1 Horde

• Tauren - Brawn makes Tauren the best Horde race for Fire. It does the same DPS as Dwarf but has a worse utility racial.
• Troll/Orc - Berserking & Blood Fury are competitive DPS racials that have the advantage of making the damage more burst oriented than Dwarf/Tauren
• Goblin - Rocket Jump is one of the few useful utility racials while Time is Money keeps the race somewhat competitive for DPS.

8.2 Alliance

• Dwarf - Might of the Mountain makes Dwarf the best race for Fire. It does the same DPS as Tauren but has better utility in Stoneform.
• Void Elf - Spatial Rift is one of the few useful utility racials while Entropic Embrace keeps the race somewhat competitive for DPS.

9. Macros

#showtooltip
/cast Combustion
/cast Blood Fury
/cast Berserking
/use 11
/use 12
/use 13
/use 14
/use 2

#showtooltip
/cancelaura Ice Block
/cast [nochanneling] Fireball
/targetenemy [noexists][dead]

#showtooltip
/cast [@cursor] Flamestrike

#showtooltip
/cancelaura Ice Block
/cast Blink

#showtooltip Counterspell
/cast [@mouseover,harm][@focus,harm][harm] Counterspell

#showtooltip Spellsteal
/cast [@mouseover,harm][@focus,harm][harm] Spellsteal

#showtooltip Remove Curse
/cast [@mouseover]Remove Curse

10. Advanced

/cancelaura Alter Time

10.3 How Ignite Works

• Hot Streak doubles the Ignite damage of the affected spell.
• Ignite deals damage over time based on your Mastery. With 36% mastery, a spell that deals 10k damage would deal 3.6k damage over 9 seconds through Ignite.
• Ignite ticks every second. so in the above example Ignite would tick 9 times dealing 400 damage per tick.
• When Ignite is applied to a target with an already active Ignite, the duration is extended so that Ignite will tick 10 times. The duration will be somewhere between 9 and 10 seconds.
  • If the above Ignite had ticked 5 times there would be 1.1k Ignite damage remaining (this is referred to as the Ignite bank).
  • If you cast another spell for 10k with 36% Mastery (3.6k Ignite damage). The Ignite bank would increase to 4.7k. The bank is then evenly re-distributed across all 10 ticks. Meaning each tick would do 470 damage.
• When you cast Fire Blast. The 4 (or 8) targets with the smallest Ignite bank within range of the primary target are chosen as potential spread targets. If the Ignite bank on a given target is smaller than the primary target, the primary Ignite successfully spreads & overwrites the old one. If the Ignite bank on a given target is larger than the primary target, nothing happens and that potential Ignite spread is lost.
• When you cast Fire Blast the following events happen in order:
  1. Ignite is spread.
  2. Fire Blast damage is dealt.
  3. Feel The Burn is gained.
  This means that Feel The Burn does not benefit the Fire Blast that triggered it, and the Ignite damage from said Fire Blast is not spread.

10.4 Double Pyro Trick

There are a few situations where we might Scorch during Combustion. You should be aware of the 'double pyro' trick. This essentially let's us cast 2 Pyroblast in a row without generating in between. This only works if all spells are guaranteed to crit.

To perform this trick cast Scorch with a Hot Streak (or convert a Heating Up into Hot Streak during the cast)

At the end of the cast, press Pyroblast twice.

Why does this work?

1. Your Scorch cast with Hot Streak finishes
2. You do not gain Heating Up/Hot Streak immediately because there is a server side delay on buff application
3. Hot Streak is consumed by Pyroblast
4. You gain Heating Up from the Scorch once the server is done applying the buff
5. Pyroblast lands and converts Heating Up into Hot Streak
6. You can Pyroblast again