Fire Mage DPS Spec, Builds, Talents, and Glyphs (WoD 6.0.3)
On this page, we present the viable talent and glyph choices for Fire Mages in World of Warcraft WoD 6.0.3. We detail what each of the talents and glyphs do and in which situations they should be taken.
The other pages of our Fire Mage guide can be accessed from the table of contents on the right.
This guide has been reviewed and approved by Dutchmagoz, who raids in MCO, one of the most efficient guilds in the world (top 100 with a 13-hour a week schedule) and who is a theorycrafter at Altered Time.
If you want to read all about the Patch 6.0.2 changes and learn how they affect your character, make sure to read our Mage Transition Guide!
1. Talent Choices↑top
- Performance-enhancing
- Survival
- Crowd Control
- Movement
- Utility
- Situational
Talents can easily be changed, thanks to 
Tomes of the Clear Mind.
You will frequently find yourself changing talents and glyphs between
encounters, in order to adapt your play style to different mechanics.
Therefore, it is important to understand what each of your talents does and
how they affect your play style.
2. Tier 1 Talents↑top
Tier 1 talents have been designed with mobility and survival in mind. You have the choice between:
Evanesce, which replaces 
Ice Block and causes you to avoid all attacks against you (on a 45-second cooldown);
Blazing Speed, which suppresses slowing effects and increases your movement speed by 150% for 1.5 seconds (on a 25-second cooldown);
Ice Floes, which allows you to cast a spell while moving (the spell has 3 charges, with a recharge time of 20 seconds).
Evanesce works in a similar way to 
Deterrence.
You should use it for boss fights where there are attacks that need to
be avoided by players (such as AoE attacks from the boss). You can also use
it to help your healers, if they have problems dealing with particularly
damaging boss abilities. This talent should also protect you from most
environment damage (void zones, fire walls, etc.). It only has a
45-second cooldown, which means that you can use it very often, and you
can even reset its cooldown with 
Cold Snap (one of the possible
Tier 4 talents). The main downside is that choosing Evanesce replaces
Ice Block, because Ice Block works on everything that Evanesce works on,
but the opposite is not true.
If you decide to go for a movement-enhancing talent, the choice between
Blazing Speed and Ice Floes depends on the type of
movement during the encounter. Blazing Speed provides you with emergency movement,
for when you need to move really fast for a short period of time. Blazing Speed
is a good complement to 
Blink. So, if you think Blink is not enough
to handle all the emergency movement, then use Blazing Speed. Otherwise,
use Ice Floes (which is much better from a DPS perspective).
3. Tier 2 Talents↑top
Tier 2 talents have been designed with survivability in mind.
Alter Time returns you to your current location with your current health
after 10 seconds or when you cast Alter Time for a second time.
Flameglow grants you a passive shield that always absorbs a bit of
the damage you receive.
Ice Barrier absorbs a quantity of damage (the absorption effect scales with Spell Power) and
prevents spellcasting from being delayed, while active.
Alter Time is the default choice here. You can use it to heal
yourself back to full health after a particularly damaging attack, saving your
healers' Mana. It is off the global cooldown, which means that casting Alter
Time does not result in a DPS loss. Also, you can use Alter Time for mobility
(which directly translates into more DPS), for example when you need to go a
certain location to hit something or dodge an ability, before coming back to
your original location. Finally, unlike in Mists of Pandaria, Alter Time does
not affect Mana, which means that Arcane Mages can no longer take advantage of
it to restore Mana.
Ice Barrier is useful when you need the extra life it provides to survive
an attack that would otherwise kill you.
Flameglow is not as powerful as Alter Time or Ice Barrier, but it
provides its shield passively and you only need 16 damage events in 25 seconds
for it to beat Ice Barrier in terms of overall damage reduction.
4. Tier 3 Talents↑top
Tier 3 talents have been designed with crowd control in mind. Whichever talent you choose depends on the encounter, but we think that these talents are mostly for PvP and are most often irrelevant in PvE. You have the choice between:
Ring of Frost, which summons a 10-yard ring that lasts for 10 seconds and
that freezes, for 10 seconds, enemies entering it (up to a maximum of 10 enemies);
Ice Ward, which causes all enemies within 10 yards of a friendly target
to become frozen for 5 seconds when the target is struck;
Frostjaw, which silences and freezes the target in place for 8 seconds.
5. Tier 4 Talents↑top
Tier 4 talents have been designed with survival in mind. You have the choice between:
Greater Invisibility, which improves and replaces 
Invisibility,
giving it an instant effect and making you take 90% less damage while
Invisibility is active (and for 3 seconds after coming out of
Invisibility);
Cauterize, which causes an attack that would otherwise kill you to
instead bring you to 35% of your maximum health, after which you will burn for
28% of your maximum health over 6 seconds (effect cannot occur more than once
every 2 minutes);- Cold Snap, which finishes the cooldown of your Ice Block
(or Evanesce, if you chose it as your Tier 1 talent),
Dragon's Breath,
and 
Frost Nova while also restoring 22% of your
maximum health.
Greater Invisibility and Cauterize are your two options, here.
Whichever you will choose mostly comes down to personal preferences, but
Cauterize is easier to use, as it triggers its effect passively, unlike
Greater Invisibility, which requires a bit of planning to use effectively.
Greater Invisibility is a great damage mitigation tool, which you can also use
to remove DoTs and effects.
Cauterize can be used to maximise your DPS by standing still instead
of moving away to avoid a damaging boss ability. You can also simply consider
it as an extra life for whenever you mess up. Remember to follow it up with
Ice Block or Evanesce (which does not remove the DoT, but
helps avoiding a few ticks), if you feel that your healers will not manage
to heal the DoT that Cauterize leaves on you (it hits pretty hard).
Cold Snap can be a small DPS gain, because it can reset
the cooldown of
Dragon's Breath, allowing you to use it twice in a row
for a short burst of AoE damage.
You can also consider for its ability to reset Ice Block's cooldown,
allowing you to use it twice in a row or a lot more often than its 6-minute
cooldown would otherwise let you. This is very situational (especially if you
use Evanesce as your Tier 1 talent) and rarely useful.
6. Tier 5 Talents↑top
Tier 5 talents provide you with abilities that focus on multiple-target damage.
Living Bomb deals damage over 12 seconds to the targeted enemy.
When it expires or the target dies, Living Bomb also deals damage to all
enemies within 10 yards.
Unstable Magic gives your
Fireball and 
Frostfire Bolt a 30%
chance to explode on impact, dealing an additional 50% damage
to the target and to all other enemies within 8 yards.
Blast Wave can be cast on an ally or an enemy target.
In both cases, it deals damage to all enemies within 8 yards,
also reducing their movement speed by 70% for 4 seconds.
If cast on an enemy, this enemy
will take 100% increased damage from Blast Wave (compared to the
nearby enemies). Blast Wave replaces Frost Nova and has
2 charges, with a recharge time of 25 seconds.
For single-target damage, your choice of talent depends on your Tier 7 talent.
- If you use
Meteor as your Tier 7 talent,
Unstable Magic and Blast Wave are equal, so use Unstable Magic
on a largely stationary fight (because in this case, using Blast Wave would have no added
benefit and would force you to have one more ability to cast) and Blast Wave on
fights with movement (while moving, you can cast Blast Wave, but you do not
benefit from Unstable Magic very much). - If you use
Prismatic Crystal, then Blast Wave is the
talent of choice for all single-target situations.
For every other situation, Living Bomb is your talent of choice.
Blast Wave can also be considered if a fight requires a lot of burst
damage during very short periods of time.
7. Tier 6 Talents↑top
Tier 6 talents are damage-increasing talents.
Mirror Image creates 3 copies of your Mage that cast
Fireball
at your target. The copies disappear after 40 seconds.
Rune of Power summons a rune that causes you, when standing within
8 yards of it, to deal 15% increased spell damage. The rune lasts for 3 minutes
and you can have 2 runes up at one time.
Incanter's Flow passively increases your damage done. It follows
a 10-second cycle, during which the damage increase changes every
second: 4%, 8%, 12%, 16%, 20%, 20%, 16%, 12%, 8%, 4%.
Rune of Power is the default talent in this tier.
Incanter's Flow is a viable alternative for encounters with
movement, when it gets hard to stay in the proximity of your Rune of Power.
Mirror Image can be considered in single-target fights that
last between 2 minutes 30 and 3 minutes, because you can get 2 full uses of
your images and the boss will die immediately after that.
8. Tier 7 Talents↑top
Tier 7 talents give you performance enhancing abilities or effects.
Kindling causes your critical strikes with Fireball,
Frostfire Bolt, 
Pyroblast, and 
Inferno Blast to
reduce the remaining cooldown of 
Combustion by 1 second.- Prismatic Crystal conjures a crystal at your location that only you can attack.
The crystal lasts for 12 seconds. Every time it takes damage from you,
it amplifies that damage by
30%
before spreading it evenly between all enemies within 8 yards.
- Meteor calls down a meteor at the target's location. 3 seconds later, the meteor
hits the ground and does damage to all enemies within 8 yards. It leaves an AoE effect
on the ground that continues dealing damage every second for 8 seconds.
Meteor is the talent of choice in this Tier, if you do not have
the Tier 17 4-piece bonus.
If you have this set bonus, then Prismatic Crystal is the best talent and Meteor
should only be taken for dealing with a lot of adds. In any case, using Prismatic Crystal
is difficult, see our rotation page for more details.
Kindling is the worst of the 3 talents, but it is very simple to use
and may be an adequate choice for beginners.
9. Major Glyphs↑top
None of your major glyphs will be mandatory. Some will increase your DPS in very specific situations, others will improve your survivability or make some spells more useful.
DPS-increasing glyphs are listed below.
- Glyph of Combustion doubles the cooldown and the duration of
Combustion. This glyph can be considered mandatory, because
it allows for Combustion to last longer when it benefits from your
opening cooldowns.
- Glyph of Inferno Blast enables you to spread Pyroblast,
Ignite, and Combustion to up to 4 targets when using
Inferno Blast (up from 3, without the glyph). - Glyph of Dragon's Breath increases the damage of Dragon's Breath by 100%. This
can be extremely useful for dealing with adds that will live for a very short time.
The other potentially useful major glyphs are listed below.
- Glyph of Blink increases the distance you travel with Blink by 8 yards. It is mutually
exclusive with Glyph of Rapid Displacement.
Glyph of Counterspell grants the ability to cast Counterspell
while channeling or casting another spell, at the expense of increasing its cooldown
by 4 seconds. This glyph will be beneficial every time you will be on interrupt
duty.- Glyph of Frostfire Bolt can be very useful if you need to add a slow
in your rotation. This glyph will line up the cast time of Frostfire Bolt
with that of Fireball, making it possible to swap Fireball for
Frostfire Bolt in your rotation (both spells do the same damage).
- Glyph of Ice Block causes Frost Nova to be automatically cast,
at no Mana cost, when Ice Block terminates, after which time you
are granted a 3-second immunity against all spells. This is the best defensive
ability you can get as a mage, because the 3-second immunity works on practically
everything in the game. Note that Glyph of Ice Block
does not trigger
Blast Wave.
- Glyph of Rapid Displacement causes Blink to now have two charges, on a 15-second
recharge time. This is an extremely beneficial glyph, because it basically allows you to
use Blink twice in a row. The downside is that Blink no longer
frees you from stuns and bonds. This glyph is mutually exclusive with
Glyph of Blink.
- Glyph of Regenerative Ice provides a nice heal during Ice Block, up
to 40% of your maximum health if you remain encased for the whole duration.
Glyph of Remove Curse is a nice glyph to have in a fight where you
must use Remove Curse. That said, the temporary damage boost it provides
does not compensate for the global cooldown it costs to cast Remove Curse.
10. Minor Glyphs↑top
Among the minor glyphs, only Glyph of Momentum is of interest.
It will allow you to blink in the direction where you
are going. It can be very useful if you are moving sideways and want to keep
facing the boss.
11. Changelog↑top
- 11 Dec. 2014: Refined Tier 5 section.
- 16 Nov. 2014: Added Level 100 talents.
