Fire Mage DPS Stat Priority — 12.0.5

You will want to prioritize stats as follows for both single-target and AoE:

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

All of the secondary (non-Intellect) stats are very close in value despite the way they are ordered on our list. We encourage players to sim themselves, if possible, to determine what stats you should aim for according to your current distribution, as this may change depending on your current values. This is because a deficiency of one stat will often cause it to become high in value relative to the others until you reach a "normalized" value. Due to this, we strongly recommend using Raidbots Top Gear instead to handle your gearing needs (see our Raidbots guide).

FAQDo I Need a Minimum Amount of Critical Strike to Play Fire Mage?

Since proccing Heating Up/ Hot Streak requires Critical Strikes, many people assume you need a lot of Crit to play Fire. However, you do not need any specific amount of Critical Strike to make Fire strong. Due to passive talents like Overflowing Energy giving massive stacking critical strike rating when you do not crit on Fireball, Fire Blast being guaranteed crit, Scorch being guaranteed crit under 30% enemy health, and various other talents boosting crit, you can play Fire just fine, even on very low Critical Strike rating. In many cases, crit is actually the worst stat because of how many guaranteed critical strikes Fire gets.

FAQIs There a Haste cap for Fire Mage?

There are no breakpoints or caps for Haste for Fire Mage. However, there are diminishing returns on all stats, where acquiring more of them reduces the value, so generally a bit of balancing is valuable.

Secondary stats have diminishing returns. This means as you get more points into one stat, it will take increasingly more rating to get 1% more stats. This reduction goes as follows:

• From 0 to 30%, there is no penalty.
• From 30% to 39%, there is a 10% penalty.
• From 39% to 47%, there is a 20% penalty.
• From 47% to 54%, there is a 30% penalty.
• From 54% to 66%, there is a 40% penalty.
• From 66% to 126%, there is a 50% penalty.
• You can not get more than 126% from gear rating.

Generally, you can ignore most of this, but it does again put emphasis on using simulations to determine what stats to use. We strongly advice you to use Raidbots Top Gear to determine what gear to equip, as it automatically handles all of these complexities for you.

The gems, enchants, and consumables you will use are directly derived from your stat priority, and you can find our advice on this topic in our dedicated page.

Intellect is your primary stat. It provides you with Spell Power, which increases the damage of your spells.

Critical Strike increases your chance to critically hit, which in turn increases your chances to get Hot Streaks.

Mastery, through Mastery: Ignite, increases the damage of your Mastery: Ignite DoT.

Haste influences the cast speed of your spells. It also influences the cooldown of Fire Blast and falling speed of Meteor.

Versatility is a flat-out damage done increase and damage taken reduction.