Fire Mage DPS Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — Midnight Pre-Patch (12.0)

The Fire rotation at its core is all about generating as many Hot Streak procs as possible to fire off instant cast Pyroblasts. The general rotation involves casting Fireball until Heating Up procs, and then converting it into Hot Streak via Fire Blast.

Since Fire Blast can be cast while casting, you always keep chaining Fireballs, and then when one of them crits, while you are casting the next Fireball, you cast Fire Blast to generate the Hot Streak. Then, as your Fireball cast finishes, you can fire off the Fireball and use an instant Pyroblast. Both of these spells will land at the same time, and if one of them crits, you immediately get a new Heating Up and the cycle continues into Fireball + Fire Blast -> Pyroblast.

This Fireball / Pyroblast cycle is alternated by Combustion phases. During Combustion, all of your spells are guaranteed critical strikes, so instead of casting Fireballs to trigger Heating Up, you chain Pyroblasts and Fire Blasts. You combine this with using other hard-hitting spells during Combustion like Meteor for massive burst damage.

This leads to the following basic rotation:

1. Use Combustion when available.
2. During Combustion, use Fire Blasts and Pyroblasts to generate Heating Up and Hot Streaks. When you run out of Fire Blast charges, use Fireball.
3. Cast Meteor when ready outside of Combustion only if it will come back up before your next Combustion. Make sure to always have Meteor ready when Combustion is ready!
4. Cast Pyroblast when you have Hot Streak.
5. Hardcast Pyroblast when Pyroclasm procs.
6. Cast Fireball as a filler to generate Heating Up.
7. Use Fire Blast to get Hot Streaks when you have Heating Up.

If you feel like you have a good understanding of the basics, we recommend checking out the other tabs for the full single-target and AoE rotations.

The Fire rotation follows a priority system. Below we list this priority system. You should read from the top to the bottom, and then execute the first action where all conditions match.

1. When Combustion is ready, go into the Combustion rotation below. With Firestarter, delay your first Combustion until the boss reaches 90% health.
2. While Hyperthermia (granted when Arcane Phoenix ends via Memory of Al'ar) is up: Cast Pyroblast, using Fire Blast when you have Heating Up. This is because even though Hyperthermia makes all Pyroblasts instant, it still benefits from the Hot Streak Mastery: Ignite damage bonus, which is why you want to time your Fire Blasts around generating additional Hot Streaks.
3. Cast Meteor immediately as it becomes available. - Click for timing details

   Meteor has a 30 second cooldown while Combustion has a 60 second cooldown, allowing you one Meteor in-between Combustions, but only if you immediately use Meteor without any delays. If you forgot to use Meteor quickly and Combustion is coming up soon, you should instead skip the Meteor and save it for the Combustion.
4. Cast Pyroblast when you have a Hot Streak proc. Aim to cast Pyroblast immediately after a Fireball cast so both land at the same time. See our Pyro Chaining section below for more info on why.
5. Hardcast Pyroblast when Pyroclasm procs. - Click for advanced usage details

   • Ideally you want to save a proc for Combustion if possible. This means, if you only have a single stack of Pyroclasm, and Combustion is coming up before Pyroclasm expires, you should delay the hardcast until right before Combustion, and then hardcast Pyroblast into casting Combustion as you finish the Pyroblast cast.
   • However, make sure Pyroclasm never runs out and you do not overcap on charges. This means, if you have 2 stacks, or it is about to expire, always cast it right away.
6. Cast Scorch if you have a Heat Shimmer proc, and you do not currently have Hot Streak.
7. Cast Frostfire Bolt when Frostfire Empowerment procs and you do not have Hot Streak or Heating Up.
8. Cast Fire Blast when you have Heating Up to convert it into Hot Streak.
9. Cast Frostfire Bolt as your filler to generate Heating Up / Hot Streak.
10. Cast Fireball as your filler to generate Heating Up / Hot Streak.
11. Cast Scorch if you have to move and have no instant casts to burn.

Combustion should be used on cooldown whenever possible. You should always overlap Combustion with other damage boosts to further increase your damage, such as Meteor, trinkets and racials.

With Firestarter, you want to delay your first Combustion until the boss is 90% health. Afterwards, use it on cooldown as much as possible.

Since Combustion makes every spell critically strike, you want to get as many hard-hitting spells in the window as possible. To facilitate this, you should save at least one charge of Fire Blast, but more is better, unless you are specced into Spontaneous Combustion, in which case you should not pool any charges.

During Combustion, we will be casting a lot of instant Pyroblasts. Since Combustion guarantees a crit, this will always cause your Pyroblast to proc Heating Up or Hot Streak. Because of this, you only need one other spell to generate Hot Streaks. During Combustion, this will be Fire Blast and Fireball.

1. Begin casting Fireball. If you started the Combustion phase by hard-casting Pyroblast with Pyroclasm, this replaces this Fireball step.
2. Depending on your Hot Streak / Heating Up status, execute the option listed below:
   • If you already have a Hot Streak proc: cast Combustion near the end of your Fireball cast
   • If you already have a Heating Up: cast Combustion + Fire Blast near the end of your Fireball cast.
   • If you have neither: cast Combustion + Fire Blast halfway through the Fireball cast, followed by a Fireball.
   • The end result of any of the above 3 steps is that you end up with a Hot Streak proc, and a Fireball in the air. This allows you to cast two Pyroblasts in a row after finishing the Fireball. One from the Hot Streak, and one from the first Pyroblast landing + the Fireball landing.

Follow the priority list below while Combustion is active.

1. Instant-cast Pyroblast whenever you have Hot Streak.
2. Hardcast Pyroblast when you have Pyroclasm and Combustion has at least 3 seconds left.
3. Cast Frostfire Bolt for generating Heating Up / Hot Streak when Frostfire Empowerment procs.
4. Use Scorch if you still have a Heat Shimmer proc from before Combustion, and you do not have Hot Streak. (Note: it cannot proc during Combustion itself, and you do not need to save any for Combustion)
5. Use Fire Blast for generating Heating Up / Hot Streak.
6. Fireball to generate Heating Up / Hot Streak when out of Fire Blast charges.

Pre-cast Pyroblast and then go into the Combustion rotation.

There are 2 main AoE rotations. Either simply doing your single target rotation, and letting Mastery: Ignite and other cleave effects do the AoE for you, or a Flamestrike based rotation.

The Cleave based rotation simply does the standard single-target rotation, while passively spreading Mastery: Ignite to nearby enemies. Due to this, it is very easy to pick up as you do not need to learn any new rotation whatsoever for AoE scenarios.

The only exception is when there are low health enemies that are close to dying. In these cases, you can use Flamestrike to quickly finish off the low health enemies, and then go back to the single-target rotation.

Note: you must be specced into Fuel the Fire to use the Flamestrike rotation.

The Flamestrike based rotation is also relatively straight forward. It follows the single target rotation, with one very critical change: Any time you would normally use Pyroblast, you instead cast Flamestrike:

• Any time you would spend Hot Streak on Pyroblast, spend it on Flamestrike instead.
• Any time you would hard-cast Pyroblast with Pyroclasm, use Flamestrike instead.
• Keep using Fireball as your filler. Do not replace it for Flamestrike.

Which rotation to use depends on various factors. Below are some guidelines to follow, however, these are not hard rules, as there are many factors to consider, like how low health the enemies are, how much you want to focus on priority damage, etc.

• Never hard-cast Flamestrike.
• Never hard-cast Flamestrike unless you have Pyroclasm. With Pyroclasm, only hard-cast it if the other conditions also apply.
• At least 2 targets must be present for the Flamestrike rotation, however with 2 targets it is usually better to focus down a single target since the DPS increase is minor. On 3+ targets, Flamestriking is a decent DPS increase.
• You must be specced into Fuel the Fire for the Flamestrike rotation.
• If you want to focus down a priority target, do not use Flamestrike, use Pyroblast instead. Otherwise, use the Flamestrike rotation for optimal DPS.

Understanding how to generate Critical Strikes as efficiently as possible is crucial in utilizing Fire effectively. This specialization is designed to crit more often than not, so it is easy to understand why learning to execute the right combos to create a chain of crits is paramount.

Whenever you get a Heating Up proc, you should convert it to a Hot Streak using Fire Blast. Generally, you will then want to cast a Fireball and immediately spend your Hot Streak on a Pyroblast as your Fireball cast finishes. Both of these spells will strike simultaneously, giving a chance of an immediate follow-up Hot Streak if both critically strike. If only one of the spells critically strikes, Heating Up will proc, and you can immediately Fire Blast and repeat this process.

There is a 0.2-second grace period where Heating Up will not be canceled if two spells impact simultaneously and only one critically strikes. This grace window is why it is so critical to always cast Fireball into Pyroblast, because normally, if only one of them crits, and the other does not, you will lose the Heating Up. But if you cast both at the same time, if only one of them crits, you keep your Heating Up.

This is known as "Pyroblast Fishing" or "Pyroblast Chaining" and is the best way to create a large chain of crits. The exception to this rule is during Combustion, where all spells will crit, allowing you to chain together various combos that are covered in more detail in the rotation section above.

Pyroclasm is a key proc (if talented). When it procs, your next non-instant Pyroblast or Flamestrike does greatly increased damage. At first glance, this is a very simple proc: you just hard-cast Pyroblast and it does significantly more damage. However, there are some small things we can do to squeeze out extra DPS.

Since it makes our next Pyroblast do significantly more damage, we ideally want to use it during Combustion so we can guarantee it crits. And since it stacks up to two times and lasts 15 seconds, we do not immediately have to spend it. Additionally, whenever it procs a second stack, it actually resets the duration of both stacks to 15 seconds again. Due to this, we can theoretically delay one stack for a long time by getting one proc -> wait until second proc -> refreshes duration -> use one of the procs -> wait until next proc -> refreshes, etc. We can do this for as long as needed until Combustion is ready, if we proc Pyroclasm often enough.

In practice, you can play around this in the following way:

• Whenever you have 2 stacks of Pyroclasm, always use one. We never want to risk overcapping stacks!
• If you only have a single stack of Pyroclasm, hold onto it until either:
  • Combustion is ready: Hard-cast Pyroblast into Combustion as the cast finishes
  • It has less than 5 seconds duration left. Use it right away to ensure you do not waste any stacks.

Combustion is Fire's primary DPS cooldown, available every minute when talented into Kindling. It guarantees all your spells critically strike, amongst various other buffs like bonus mastery or straight up more damage, based on talents. As Sunfury, it also grants you an Arcane Phoenix while Combustion is active and various other benefits after it ends.

Since Fire is all about critically striking to generate Hot Streak, this is obviously a massive damage buff and makes your rotation very fast paced while Combustion is active.

Generally, you will want to use Combustion immediately as it comes up, but it can be beneficial to delay it in certain cases, for example if your group is about to use Time Warp or a similar effect soon, or an important raid mechanic that needs high DPS is coming soon, or additional targets that come up, etc. However, since Combustion is only a minute cooldown, delaying it is usually not a good idea as it is very likely to lose you an extra usage if you delay it too much.

We go more in-depth on the actual full rotation during Combustion in our Combustion rotation section.

Meteor is a 30 second cooldown when talented into Blast Zone, that hits hard and activates various other bonuses depending on Talents and Hero Talents, like proccing Frostfire Empowerment as Frostfire or granting Pyroclasm as Sunfury.

Meteor and Combustion have very tight timings, as Meteor has 30 seconds cooldown and Combustion one minute, meaning you can cast Meteor exactly once in-between Combustion usages. Since the timing is so close, it is critical you use Meteor immediately as it comes up to ensure you do not have to skip a usage, or delay Combustion, both of which are bad.

Time Warp is an ability which buffs your entire party or raid group within 100 yards with 30% haste for 40 seconds. This buff is shared with multiple other spells like Bloodlust and Heroism. These all put a debuff on all your group members which blocks them from getting the effect again for 10 minutes, so you cannot get this same effect from multiple sources multiple times.

As Time Warp applies to the whole group, it is generally decided by the raid or party leader when it is used, to optimize usage for the whole group, instead of just using it when it is best for your personal usage. However, if there is no assigned time or you are in a pick up group without any real leadership in terms of strategy, it is generally a safe practice to use Time Warp right after combat starts so it is up while everyone has all of their DPS cooldowns ready. Of course make sure to only do this if there will be enemies active for the entire 40 second duration of the buff on the pull, as on some fights bosses might go inactive or do some kind of phase change early on in the fight.