This post was published 1 year 7 months ago which means some of the information may be out of date!This guide will outline the Changes to Mages brought about by Patch 4.0.1. It’s now been just over a week since the changes were made and many, many people are still trying to come to grips with their classes. It doesn’t help of course that Blizzard is still changing a lot of the mechanics whilst we’re trying to learn how to play them again. The following is my impressions and opinions on the Latest changes. I`m going to cover all 3 specs with as much detail as possible but remember that all information and stats can change. This guide will be split into 3 instalments which I will write over the coming weeks up to the Cataclysm release. I`ve got several reasons for this but the main one is that It will allow me to give my opinions on all the future changes or alterations which are likely to come prior to the release of the new expansion.
(All information from hence forth was correct on the 20th October 2010 – Patch 4.0.1)
Useful Links
http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#o - Talent Trees
New Cataclysm Combat Ratings (Warning – Some of these are gonna shock you if you haven’t seen them)
Rating |
Level 80 |
level 81 |
Level 82 |
Level 83 |
Level 84 |
Level 85 |
Spell Hit |
26.232 |
34.4448 |
45.2318 |
59.4204 |
78.0218 |
102.446 |
Crit |
45.906 |
60.2784 |
79.1556 |
103.986 |
136.53799 |
179.28 |
Haste |
32.79 |
43.056 |
56.5397 |
74.2755 |
97.5272 |
128.05701 |
Mastery |
45.906 |
60.2784 |
79.1556 |
103.986 |
136.53799 |
179.28 |
Resilience |
70.7034 |
92.8395 |
121.914 |
160.15601 |
210.293 |
276.12299 |
Note: At level 85, you will need 648.91 Int to gain 1% crit.
As you can see the combat ratings have received massive Inflation on how much they go up each level. Specificaly the required amount of Crit to gain one percent Spell Critical Chance at level 85 is 179.28 (179.28 Critical strike rating = 1% Crit). Secondly the Spell Hit Cap is now 17% and Moonkins and Spriests no longer give the 3% hit buff so you will need to somehow gather 1741.582 Hit Rating in Cataclysm to reach the cap of 17% hit.
Just to Clarify the hit Chance here is a table . .
0 |
4% |
410 |
+1 |
5% |
512 |
+2 |
6% |
615 |
+3 (skull level boss) |
17% |
1742 |
Raidbuffs
Buffs |
|
5401 Mana |
Arcane Brilliance, Fel Intelligence |
6% Spell Power |
Arcane Brilliance, Flametongue Totem |
5% Stats |
Blessing of Kings, Mark of the Wild |
828 mp5 |
Blessing of Might, Mana Spring Totem, Fel Intelligence |
3% Damage |
Arcane Tactics, Communion, Ferocious Inspiration |
5% Crit |
Elemental Oath, Rampage, Leader of the Pack, Honor Among Thieves |
5% Spell Haste |
Wrath of Air Totem, Moonkin Form, Shadowform |
10% Spell Power |
Totemic Wrath, Demonic Pact |
Replenishment |
Enduring Winter, Vampiric Touch, Communion, Revitalize, Soul Leech |
30% Haste / 40 sec |
Time Warp, Heroism, Bloodlust |
Debuffs |
|
5% Spell Crit Chance Taken |
Critical Mass, Shadow and Flame |
8% Spell Damage Taken |
Curse of the Elements, Ebon Plaguebringer, Earth and Moon, Master Poisoner |
-20% Attack Speed |
Thunder Clap, Frost Fever, Infected Wounds, Judgements of the Just, Earth Shock |
As you can see the raid buffs have been heavily homogenised so many classes now give the same buffs. This is to suit the new 10 man content where Blizzard is encouraging players to “bring the player not the class”. This change has been brought on after a long time of strict 10 man guilds screaming for this change.
First up is Fire! This spec has seen a monumental work over in this patch and the way with which it is played in a raid environment has thus changed dramatically also. First off I`m going to list the new Fire talents and give brief explanations on what they now do.
Tier 1 Talents
Master of Elements (2/2) – “Your spell criticals will refund 30% of their base mana cost”. Basicly what this means is that each time you crit with any spell you will get 30% of the mana cost of that spell back and you can then re-use that mana straight away. It’s a useful spell for long fight and during WOTLK at least it was the highest source of Mana Regeneration in every fight for me. If your having Mana Issues then this is a good talent to use. How useful this spell is will depend on the length of the encounters in Cataclysm. Long Encounters will make this talent higher in value. Note: This Talent isn’t new and it was a deep fire talent during WOTLK
Burning Soul (3/3) – “Reduces the cast time lost by taking damaging attacks by 70%”. This is a pretty situational talent. Off the top of my head I cant think of an End-Game boss in WOTLK that consistently effects cast times of caster classes. This is a pretty good talent for PvP and as its only a Tier 1 fire talent so it can be picked up by all specs at Level 80. Perhaps in Cataclysm we will see bosses that interrupt frequently the cast time of casters and we might see this talent becoming useful. For now atleast this talent is fairly useless in PvE.
Improved Fire Blast (2/2) – “Increases the critical strike chance of your Fire Blast spell by 8% and increases its range by 10 yards”. Given the fact that Fire Mages are going to be using Fire Blast a lot more now thanks to the new “Impact” talent which is further down the Fire talent tree, this Talent is certainly something to look into. Although Fire Blast is fairly pathetic compared to a Fireball it can pack a fairly large punch when it crits. Not to mention Fire Blast can proc Hot Streak and having a spell which has a better chance of procing Hot Streak than Fireball which you’re going to use regularly by default is no small thing.
In my opinion for now at least if you’re a Fire Mage you should make sure you spend two talent points into “Improved Fire Blast” and “Master of Elements”. “Burning Soul” simply isn’t very useful right now and takes a lower priority over the other two talents.
Tier 2 Talents
Ignite (3/3) – “Your critical strikes from your fire spells cause the target to burn for an additional 40% of your spell’s damage over 4 seconds”. Basically what this means is make some big numbers then the game will give you some more numbers to go with your numbers! In all seriousness this is one of the no-brainer talents you should automatically pick up as a Fire Mage.
Fire Power (3/3) – “Increases the damage of your fire spells by 3% and gives your flame orb a 100% chance to explode at the end of its duration”. You may be thinking well 3% isn’t that much and Flame Orb sucks at the moment in the Beta so what’s the point. Well, if you’re thinking this then consider that on Wednesday when we were doing 20k DPS on Grandmaster Target Dummies without braking a sweat. That night our Damage got nerfed by 15% in Fire and 10% in the other specs. This was a Huge nerf and it dropped our DPS significantly as I`m sure many of you noticed when you woke up on Thursday. My point is although 3% extra damage here and there may not seem like a big boost but believe me it will add up!
Blazing Speed (2/2) – “Gives you a 10% chance when hit any melee or ranged attack to increase your movement speed by 50% and dispell all movement impairing effects. This effect lasts 8 seconds”. At the present moment in time this talent is fairly useless in a PvE environment because quite frankly you should not be getting hit by anything in raids that constitutes as a Melee attack or ranged attack with exception to a very small number of bosses. Most of the damage you receive should be from Passive effects such as Pungent Blight from festergut which I doubt would trigger this effect. It’s a nice talent for PvP but at the minute it’s not worth the points in PvE and they’re better alternatives.
Impact (2/2) – “Gives your damaging spells a 10% chance to reset the cooldown of your Fire Blast and to cause the next Fire Blast you cast to stun the target for 2 seconds and spread any fire damage over time effects to nearby enemy targets within 12 yards”. This is arguably the most significant talent in the entire spec and it’s going to be the one which affects your DPS the most in certain fights. This is a fantastic talent to have in a PvE situation where you have more than one target with lots of HP that need to die. This talent was made for bosses like Lich King Heroic. It allows you to single target Nuke one target and then spread your damage over time effects (Living Bomb, Ignite, Combustion) to nearby enemies by simply casting a Fire Blast. Its a situational talent but I have the feeling that In Cataclysm we will be seeing lots of fights where this talent may come in handy. This talent will save you lots of Global Cooldowns which would otherwise of been used to Living Bomb targets individually and when used well with Ignite and Combustion it will increase your DPS dramatically. Note: Living Bomb now has a 3 target max usage limit. This means you can only use Living Bomb on 3 targets at once.
You should definitely take full points in “Impact” “Fire Power” and “Ignite” as these are all fantastic DPS talents. The thing to remember when speccing now which I think is pretty great is that not every talent will directly increase your DPS but you do have more than enough talents to get all the pure DPS talents and have some left over for personal preference. Of course some talents are better than others and it’s always going to be that way but at least now the talent tree that you should have isn’t set in stone and some of it now can come down to personal preference and playstyle.
Tier 3 Talents
“Cauterize”(2/2) – “You have a 100% chance that an attack which would otherwise kill you will instead bring you to 40% health. However, you will burn for 12% of your maximum health every 1.5 seconds for the next 6 seconds. This effect cannot occur more than once per minute”. This talent at first seems like an anti – screw up talent which you might consider not taking because you think it will make you look like a “Noob”. At first I thought the same thing but then I considered the possible uses of it…
Tyrian on Elitist Jerks made a really awesome point about how this could indirectly become a DPS talent (My hat goes off to you bro!). Of course in progression this talent could also become useful. The healers perhaps don’t have the mana regen to spam heal everyone or they don’t have a full grasp of the fight yet and then they will of course be prone to screw ups because they like you are learning the new fight as well. You might think now that this is a pointless talent because it’s impossible to die in Heroics at the moment and you have Icecrown on farm and you over gear it. However, Cataclysm is on the Horizon ladies and gentlemen and Blizzards new direction seems to be that they want to re-introduce “insta–gib” mechanics in not just raids but in heroics as well. For this reason in the future this talent could be very useful. Its basically like the old Argent defender proc Paladins had except it`s on a shorter 1 minute cooldown.
“Why could this potentially be a DPS talent?”
This talent can be used for an aggressive purpose to gain DPS. Examples of this include: Algalon, Festergut and Sapphiron, to name a few. All of these fights have Mass AOE explosion type mechanics in them which do un-survivable damage. Algalon has his “Big Bang” ability, Festergut uses “Pungent Blight” and Saphiron has the “Frost Ball explosion thing”. All of these can be survived by utilizing the Cauterize mechanic. All of the other DPS classes will not have these advantages but you can stand there like a happy c*nt and continue to DPS whilst they are running around after the spores or running behind the Ice Block to LoS some huge bang which will kill them. Of course once cauterize eventually pops you will have to use your Mage Ward and possibly a Healthstone to help survive afterwards as Cauterize has an unfortunate mechanic of taking you down to low health afterwards.
Cauterize is definitely a situational talent and it will have varying uses boss to boss but don’t just ignore it because it could imply you die a lot. When choosing your talents when speccing fire be sure to acknowledge the above when choosing where to spend points. It can be a very useful talent if used correctly. Also be sure to put 2 points in. It’s pretty useless having a 50% chance to proc.
“Blast Wave” (1/1) – “A wave of flame radiates outwards from the target location, damaging all enemies who are caught within the blast for 41-47 fire damage and are slowed by 70% for 3 seconds”. This talent has undegone a small change but its usefullness has now increased because of the new talent system and a talent called “Improved Flamestrike” further down into the talent tree. Not only is this good in terms of its potential DPS but the slowing effect makes it useful on many encounters to name a few Valithria, Saurfang and the Lich King (Slow the Valykrs when they initialy spawn plus do significant damage to them).
“Hot streak” (1/1) – “Your spells no longer trigger Arcane Missiles. Instead, your critical strikes with Fireball, Frostfire Bolt, Scorch, Pyroblast and Fire Blast have a chance to cause your next Pyroblast spell within 15 seconds to be instant-cast and cost no mana”. This talent and the improvement for it is the main talent in the entire spec and its the main reason Fire is even a viable PvE spec. This is probrably one of the few “Must Have” talents left in the game and I do not consider it optional.
“Improved Scorch” (2/2) – “Your scorch spell has it’s mana cost reduced by 100%”. At first this talent seems like an obvious no-brainer choice. A useful spell that does descent damage which applies “critical mass” and costs n0 mana seems at first almost too good to be true. But on further consideration you have to think how often are you really going to use scorch in a fight? Hot Streak now refreshes the proc so it`s unlikely you will have to refresh the buff on the boss that often in a fight. Sure, you can now cast it whilst moving but how often do you have to move in Fights? It all depends on the future encounters in Cataclysm, at some point this talent might be worth investing in but for now it really isn’t worth the one or two talent points it’s asking for. You might think differently but consider my points when choosing your talents.
They’re 4 possible choices in the Tier 3 Talents and in my opinion Blast Wave and Hot Streak are the ones you should definitely pick up. Cauterize is another optional choice and for the moment Improved Scorch is useless because saving mana simply isn’t an issue right now. Perhaps this will change in Cataclysm, who knows!
Tier 4 Talents
“Molten Shields” (1/1) – “Reduces the Global cooldown of your Mage Ward spell by 1 second and triggers the blazing speed effect when it dissapates from absorbing damage”. To clarify what this means is that if you have this talent you could effectively use Mage Ward every single time it comes of CD with no DPS loss. Also when and if you took Fire, Frost or Arcane damage which took the Ward down you would gain a speed boost of 50% for 8 seconds (I think). For now this isn’t overly useful as most of the encounters in the expansion either don’t have fire, frost or damage over time effects and the one which do either you shouldn’t be taking damage from (Fire on the floor) or are passive and the Blazing Speed effect wouldn’t come into play such as on Sindragosa which you rarely need to move on whilst you actually receiving frost damage. Sure it could help save Healing mana but at the minute healers with half-descent gear shouldn’t be having mana issues in the vast majority of bosses anyway. This talent might be useful in Cataclysm but for now it’s not useful in PvE.
“Combustion” (1/1) – “Consumes all your damaging periodic effects on a target, instantly dealing 725 – 858 fire damage and creating a new periodic effect that lasts 10 seconds and deals damage per time equal to the sum of the consumed effects”. This Ability has been radically changed for Cataclysm and its now gives a unique damage buff that when used in conjunction with all the fire damage over time effects as well as Impact it can create a large amount of damage in a short space of time. A good addon to use with this is the new Combustion Helper addon found at Curse. CombustionHelper – Addons – Curse. Below is what it looks like on your UI. Combustion consolidates dots from Pyroblast, Ignite, Living Bomb and Glyphed Frostfire Bolt. Flamestrike does not come under the list of Combustion effects however the ignite which it can cause does.
“Improved Hot Streak” (2/2) – “Any time you deal 2 non-periodic damage effects in a row with your Fireball, Frostfire Bolt, Scorch, Pyroblast or Fire Blast spells, you have a 100% chance to trigger the Hot Streak effect”. This is another mandatory talent that is essential for any Fire Mage. You need this talent as well as the one in Tier 3 to do any kind of DPS on any fight. As said previously Fire Mages rely on this effect proccing to do good DPS in the vast majority of fights with little or no AOE involved. Note: In Cataclysm the combat ratings have been change dramatically and because of this Hot Streak will be proccing much, much less. In the future we may see this talent becoming not as useful.
“Firestarter” (1/1) – “Your molten armour spell allows you to cast scorch whilst moving instead of reducing the chance you are critically hit”. This is one of the most useful new additions to the mage talent tree. Mages are notoriously bad DPSers in fights which require a relatively large amount of moving because to do DPS we need to be standing still as even with all of our Dots combined, compared to other classes we rely heavily on long periods of none or little movement to do DPS. I`ve been testing this talent out and in combination with Living Bomb and any Hot Streak procs I was able to keep an average of 9k DPS whilst constantly moving around in a circle on the Grandmasters Target Dummy in Undercity which is a huge improvement from anything prior to patch 4.0.1.
“Combustion”, “Firestarter” and “Improved Hot Streak” are necessary talents for maxing potential DPS and should all be taken for a Fire PvE spec. “Molten Shields” for the time being at least isn’t overly useful but it probably will be an optional choice in Cataclysm. Catacylsm is going to probably full of dragons which will more than likely have plenty of Fire based mechanics so we may see Molten Shields becoming useful in the near future.
Tier 5 Talents
“Improved Flamestrike” 2/2 – “Reduces the cast time of your Flamestrike spell by 100% and gives you a 100% chance that your Blast Wave spell will automatically Flamestrike the same location if two or more targets are affected by the Blast Wave”. This is a superb talent and it makes both Blast Wave and Flamestrike pretty overpowered in my opinion. You can use Blast Wave on a group of mobs and it will instantly do a lot of damage and apply a Flamestrike you can then follow this up with more Instant Flamestrikes from up to 40 yards away. This talent makes using Blizzard to mass-aoe a DPS loss as the instant Flamestrikes do way more than Blizzard Ticks. I’ve personally binded this to one of my mouse buttons which I used to use for Blizzard and I`m getting awesome results out of it. Tanks in Random Heroics hate me because they literally can`t get agroo on mob packs any more without taunting off me constantly. Want to buy Threat Reduction!
“Dragons Breath” 1/1 – “Targets in a cone infront of the caster take 1196 to 1388 Fire damage and are disorientated for 5 seconds. Any direct Damage to the targets will revive them”. This is an optional talent but in my opinion it’s a great spell for a quick burst of AOE damage. It’s dead useful on bosses like Valithria where there are lots of non Boss type mobs which you can stun and in this case disorientate. It also did quite a high amount of Damage to the 3 Valkyrs on the Lich King when I tried it out and kept my DPS up whilst I was re-positioning myself for Defile. This is however a kind of melee, spell damage ability given the fact it has next to zero range on it. You aren’t ever going to use it to single-target a boss and it probably doesn’t do a noticeable amount more DPS than a Flamestrike. Like I said this talent is optional but its quite a lot of fun to use and for the minute at least the other optional talents aren’t overly useful.
“Molten Fury” 3/3 – “Increases damage of all spells against targets with less than 35% health by 12%”. This is the Tier 5 no brainer talent choice. On bosses in normal dungeons and random Heroics this talent doesn’t really come into play that much because the bosses die in quite literally 10 – 15 seconds now. However on a boss with a lot of healthpoints for example Festergut Heroic who has a respectable 52,200,000 healthpoints your going to spend 18,270,000 of that with Molten Fury active. 12% extra damage across all your spells is going to give you a huge increase in your damage hence why its another no-brainer choice.
As said above “Improved Flamestrike” and “Molten Fury” are the talents you should definitely get to increase your DPS as they’re both Pure DPS talents. “Dragons Breath” however is another optional talent given the fact that a Flamestrike would probably do as much damage if not more in the long term as a Dragons Breath and it’s only useful in a specific situation.
Tier 6 Talents
Pyromaniac (2/2) – “Increases spell haste by 10% if 3 or more targets are taking fire damage over time effects from your spells”. You couldn’t design a more situational talent if you actually tried. If they’re 3 or more targets up in a fight then this talent is fantastic and will basically act as a fight long mini-Bloodlust. However in single target fights or fights without 3 or more targets up consistently then this talent is worse than useless. I don’t know what Blizzard were thinking when they designed this talent but in my opinion it needs to be changed so it’s not over powered in some fights but it’s also moderately useful in other fights. I can’t really give an opinion with any merit on this talent at the current time because quite frankly it comes down to what fights / instances you plan on doing. Not to mention according to many people and posts i’ve seen and read it’s also bugged to hell. That many people can’t all be wrong so it probably is bugged.
Critical Mass (3/3) – “Your Living Bomb and Flame Orb spells deal 15% more damage, and your Pyroblast and Scorch spells have a 100% chance to cause your target to become vulnerable to spell damage increasing spell critical strike chance against that target by 5% and lasts 30 seconds”. The second part of this talent is great. Having to potentially only cast Scorch once per fight is a useful talent and on long Fights you’ll be able to sneak in plenty of Fireballs in place of a past scorch. The Living Bomb and Flame Orb part of this talent is difficult to put a round number on how much of a DPS increase this will be. I never got a Beta key because Blizzard suck but from the Logs I’ve seen and the comments i’ve read about Flame Orb damage it seems to be a very underpowered spell at the minute and it doesn’t account for a large amount of DPS. Just picking at a log from a Mage in one of the top US guilds <Premonition> during the 25 man Cho’gall testing earlier today Living Bomb and Flame Orb accounted for under 7% of his total damage today. I know this is of course only one example but I hope you get my point.
I`m not immediately convinced any of these talents are at all that great but they’re certainly potential DPS increasers. “Critical Mass” is definitely the more widely useful of the two talents in Tier 6 but the potential DPS increase of “Pyromaniac” is arguably to good to ignore. For now due to a lack of knowledge and choice I would advise you to spend points in both these talents and to perhaps make up your own minds. In the Future it may of course be an option to have an AOE fire Spec and a Single-Target Fire Spec where Pyromaniac is in the AOE fire spec and it’s not in the single target one.
Tier 7 Talent
Living Bomb (1/1) – “The target becomes a Living Bomb taking 1600 Fire damage over 12 seconds. After 12 seconds, the target explodes dealing 400 damage to up to 3 enemies within 10 yards. Limit 3 targets”. It’s blatantly obvious to anyone who played a Mage class at level 8o prior to this patch that this spell has been nerfed and significantly at that. However, it’s by far no means a useless spell. It may no longer be able to Proc a Hot Streak but it’s still able to do serious damage to multiple targets. Not to mention when used with Impact it can create a serious amount of Damage over a short time to many targets.
Living Bomb now has several issues. The first of which you can now Refresh it by accident. Refreshing LivingBomb on a target will remove the current Living Bomb and you will lose the explosion. Secondly Living Bomb has been given a cap of 3 targets it can affect. From what I gather this was because of the potential almost God-like amount of damage it could potentially do via the Impact ability. My opinion which is shared by many is that having the cap at 3 is to low and having it at 4 or 5 would be better and it would make Living Bomb more useful without making it overpowered. Raid Bosses with 4 or 5 targets are rare but not uncommon it could be argued but Raid Bosses with more targets than this are almost non-existent. The Final issue is that the way Impact works and the way Living Bomb is now limit capped on the amount of targets it can affect present a frustrating problem. If say you had 4 targets grouped up all within 10 yards of each other and you were nuking one which had a Living bomb on it. If Impact were to then proc and you were to use it the Living Bomb would be “dispelled” from your current target and it would be translated onto the other 3. Remember, Living Bomb no longer explodes when it is dispelled.
In my opinion although “Living Bomb” has had a significant nerf it’s still a useful spell to use both in Single target DPS and using it in an AOE sense through the Impact ability.
“I cant cast Pyroblast any more whilst I`m moving when I get a Hot Streak proc, why is this?”
To be honest I have no Idea why this is happening but a simple Macro you can use to allow you to do this is:
#showtooltip
/cast Pyroblast!
Note: Using this will not allow you to cast Pyro Blast without using a Hot streak proc but to be fair why would you want to anyway.
Concerns for Cataclysm!
Many Mages i’ve spoken to and comments that I’ve read have all had concerns about the direction of the Mage specs in Cataclysm, this is particularly true for those Mages who prefer the Fire spec. Below are a few topics you may or may not be interested in:
This is the end of my Fire Guide but when I get some more spare time I will have a look over the other specs. I will also come back to Fire if and when they make large changes to it. I may also choose to update this post when Cataclysm goes Live.
Thanks for reading and I hope I’ve helped
Arcánía <3
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You pretty much answered yourself – arcane is boring to play all the time, so they decided to make you play both specs, changing them from fight to fight! I think that’s a really great idea.
Fire looks more of a aoe-oriented spec with changes to Fire Blast (just imagine spreading Combustion to ALL targets in 32yd radius? gg meters) and Improved Flamestrike.
P.S. I don’t get why don’t you like Burning Soul, say transition phase on LK you will loose a ton of dps if you don’t have that?
Only if you weren’t spread out properly and its a pretty small chance of you personally getting targetted by the “ice ball things”. Secondly, having 3 talent points used in a talent which is only really useful in one fight in my opinion is a bit of a waste. Fair enough if it was being used in progression then yeah your right it would be fine but if it’s just Farm Content then they’re plenty of more useful optional talents out there. I was always top damage (or atleast in the top 3) on the Raging Spirits every try/kill in both phases prior to patch 4.0.1 and I never had this talent so there is no reason to need it anyway :P <3
P.S. In the future it may become more widely useful but as I said in the guide at the moment it’s only useful on a small number of encounters. It’s a descent PvP talent though I guess and it can be picked up by Frost and Arcane Mages given that it’s a Tier 1 Talent.
P.P.S – I actually have Burnign Soul in my Spec (3/3) because I didnt choose Cauterize because i wouldnt use it on Festergut because I just use an Ice Block which is much safer and it works out to be the same DPS loss in the long term anyway because only shit guilds have 2 Pungent Blight casts.
I`m pretty sure I have all the Tier 1 Talents actually tbh
The rest of the other choices are fairly shit for now and hopefully in cata they will become more useful
You have listed that Dragon’s Breath is optional, but it’s actually required to get Living Bomb. Any thoughts to adding in rotation advice? I’m still on the fence about whether Glyphed FFB is better than Glyphed FB, or if they should both be used (while we can Glyph for both that is).
Yeah that was a mistake by me and I should have been much clearer with using the words “Optional” and “Mandatory”. The site itself doesn’t actually allow you to add things to posts but whenever I get some spare time I`m going to make a new post with any updated content included here as well as the stuff I missed out including glyphs and reforging. As you can see it’s a very long guide and the Word Press we use for editing it is really gay for actually viewing your work so it`s very tedious to go through and read any mistakes you’ve made in the writing up process.
Moving on to answer your questions the Fire Mage rotation is very simple
SIngle Target: in order of Priority – Scorch (If needed) > Living Bomb (keep this up at all times) > Fireball > Pyroblast (with hot streak) > Scorch / Fireblast / Hot Streak (when moving) – It’s not so much as a rotation but a prioirty system although most of the time you will be standing still spamming Fireball
AOE (3+ targetsalive for 12+ seconds): It’s pretty much the same now as Single target with one small addition which is “Impact”. When you have full dots on your chosen target (Ignite, Living Bomb, Pyroblast [dot] and maybe Combustion when it’s off CD) use Impact to put all these dots on mobs within 12 yards of your target. You can then carry on with single target DPS this way and still be AOE ing
2nd AOE Option is Blastwave > Flamestrike (spam)
As of Patch 4.0.1 Flamestrike is more powerful than Blizzard for AOE purposes with fire Mages.
I`m fairly reluctant to write a huge guide on rotations and basicly a “how to play your mage” guide because I feel learning something for yourself over time makes you a better player. I only started playing and raiding in WOTLK and I was terrible at first but now I`m in a top 200 guild and when I was raiding before our sumer break I was extremely well ranked in every encounter in ICC so it’s quite a transition in just one expansion.
Use Word and then paste it in if you have troubles. Might also cut down on all the spelling errors I have to fix! :>
Good job though.
Yeah I`m gonna do that next time to be honest and i dont think i`m ever going to use the words mandatory or optional to describe talents again. Some people seem to have issues with taking these terms way out of context and i’ve been getting plenty of people QQ-ing about it :P <3
Frostfire Bolt on it’s own and the glyph will not come into play till Cataclysm hits because for the time being atleast we simply cannot gather enough Mastery for it to be effective. Without sufficient Mastery Rating Fireball is more Powerfull Than Frostfire bolt and this has also be confirmed on several blue posts.
In Cataclysm we may see Fireball becoming less powerful than Frostfire bolt but seeing as I haven’t played the Beta and Catacysm is not out for over a month I can’t give you a factual answer on this.
fireball and frostfire(glyphed) hit for exactly the same. Thing is due to crit getting completely fucked over it will defo be worth going with fireball for the extra 5% crit.
Reforging items with haste for crit until a decent lvl and then switching out a few bits for mastery would be the only time you switch to frostfire. Set bonus from tier 11 would probably be enough. To be honest though i think the dps would be only slightly different.
Looking at the raid bosses so far on Cata I personally think that arcane will steal the show… which makes me all sad :(
^^^ what he said
Although Cho`gal looks like a nice exception to that as he does have quite a few adds which the and streams showed.
ye fire looks a better choice on cho due to huge amount of moving your gonna be doing. Dot dmg and scorching while moving will be key there.
- Update –
To clear the air of some of the criticism i’ve been getting once and for all I`m going to explain why I have choosen talents to be mandatory and optional.
The mandatory talents are the talents I consider to be the ones which will effect your DPS the most. These are but not limited to (they are > NOT < neccesarily usefull on every encounter in the game):
Impact
Hot Streak
Ignite
The optional talents are ones which are either not widely usable on bosses because of their mechanics or are not useful in any current PvE situation.
I don’t think there’s any reason to worry about fire becoming boring, just wait till you get to raid with it! Flame Orb and running Scorch etc. makes it alot of fun, and also most of the encounters I’ve tried has massive movement. Overall everything in beta so far, seems to be way better in terms of fun! =)
Get off my site !
<3