Fire Mage

[Mythotical 0]

I remember the days of mages having frostfire bolt but required you to pretty much spec fire and some in frost. Since the day that talent trees got a revamp, I have slowly seen Frost mages become dominant in all raids including BRF. Arcane is nearly non-existent, therefore I'm here to at least keep my mage fire.

 

I read in another thread, HERE, that HFC is not really for fire mages unless you have the gear. So here I am to dig to the bottom of this before I finish leveling her to 100.

 

If fire mages are more gear dependent than frost mages, what stat priority should I have to maximize my DPS on my gear?

 

According to the Fire Mage DPS Stat Priority page, this is the current priority:

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

So should I stick with that or alter it a bit for the purpose of taking my fire mage into HFC? I ask this because I feel Haste > Mastery as a method to increase DPS and bring forth a better fire mage.

 

Yeah I'll experiment but I want to get others opinions on the priority of stats for a fire mage.

[Irugard 1]

Fire mages by far require the most gear to even be considered viable. Once you do though it is quite strong, however for burst fights, progression fights, arcane is much better. At lower gear levels, frost is by far the best. Frost requires the least gear to be effective and scales the worse with better gear (falls off after heroic HFC gear).

 

For fire, you need crit, crit, and more crit. Once you reach a certain amount, mastery starts being more important. However, as a fresh fire mage, crit is so much more important. You will need to sim your character to determine when exactly you should be going for mastery over crit.

 

Haste is useless for fire until you get crit. Also, your t18 4 set gives you 6% haste so it makes mastery that much better. Think of haste as a stat that makes your other stats stronger. 

 

I know to each his own and all that, but fire is extremely terrible until A LOT of gear. Fire is downright awful until mythic HFC gear. Need tons of crit and mastery for it to really shine. I would strongly recommend playing frost at lower gear levels and arcane once you have heroic gear. You can dabble into fire but you will quickly see how weak it is.

[Mythotical 0]

TY Trugard. I'll run some sims and see what I come up with. However, would stacking too much mastery give diminishing returns? I intend to stay fire from starting HM to finishing mythic HFC. So I'll use any knowledge I gain here and from my sim to better play a fire mage.

[Irugard 1]

No, there is no diminishing returns on mastery. Crit and mastery are overwhelmingly better than any other secondaries for fire.

[drunkencastr 0]

I play a fire mage in mythic content, and i can tell you it is hard to get the right gear to pull comparable numbers.  i have found that i needed to get to 47% crit, then stack mastery. 

[KingVallard 0]

TY Trugard. I'll run some sims and see what I come up with. However, would stacking too much mastery give diminishing returns? I intend to stay fire from starting HM to finishing mythic HFC. So I'll use any knowledge I gain here and from my sim to better play a fire mage.

When it comes to normal/heroic fights if you get good enough at fire you can pull raid worthy numbers (I personally despise frost and play fire on my guild's alt runs) However the fact still stands that with similar gear and effort you'll do more damage as frost/arcane. Also note that in the 700-720 range arcane is nigh unbeatable in dps potential. I perform my 732 mm hunter's rotation flawlessly on most fights and still have issues competing with our mage who's still learning arcane's subtleties.

 

Until mythic gear everything but crit is irrelevant and i'd actually recommend gimping ilv for crit gear (5-10 ilv if it has decent crit) and having as much mastery as possible without hurting crit. Haste isn't very good for you but if your ilv is low enough it might be worth lowering mastery for. Even then it'd be easier just to increase Ilv than to gear haste. 

 

I recommend pugging HFC. It's super easy to get into with group finder out and you should be fine for dps as a fire mage (at 701 in pvp gear I pull about 40k ST with only 40% ish crit and low mastery) and gear pretty quick. Remember that you'll do much better on cleave fights like assault and council than on reaver / kilrog ect.

 

Also spending 10 minutes on fatboss/icy-veins guides will make you a better raider than most PuGs you'll compete with.

Edited April 5, 2016 by KingVallard

[Irugard 1]

This is a bit of an overstatement. Arcane mages don't start to go crazy until at least 720 ilvl. Not just the ilvl but also require the heroic class trinket and heroic PoF. Hunters on the other hand scale incredibly well early with terrible mythic scaling. So at heroic gear, MM hunters are very VERY good dps. Arcane dps shoots up exponentially with mythic gear. At 700 ilvl arcane is awful, doing 40k is a miracle.

 

At the 700-720 ilvl frost mages are by far the spec mage spec. Hunters are much better than mages in this ilvl bracket

Edited April 7, 2016 by Irugard

[Curinir 4]

If you are playing fire you need a 6/6 Sandman's Pouch and about 47.8% static crit. This ensures that when you SMP procs you will have 100% crit on the crystal. Also, lining up crystal and Combustion with your trinket is far more important than lining it up with the ring. If you don't have the proc you will run the risk of ruining your combust, which is where the real power of fire is. There is a great guide on Altered Time about fire. you should check it out. You can find it here

Edited April 8, 2016 by Curinir

[Drkdragon 9]

If you are playing fire you need a 6/6 Sandman's Pouch and about 47.8% static crit. This ensures that when you SMP procs you will have 100% crit on the crystal. Also, lining up crystal and Combustion with your trinket is far more important than lining it up with the ring. If you don't have the proc you will run the risk of ruining your combust, which is where the real power of fire is. There is a great guide on Altered Time about fire. you should check it out. You can find it here

For the 47.8% crit does that include self buffs? food?

 

I may actually have too much crit now that I have been looking into things.

 

Armory Profile

[fspy 0]

2285 Critical Strike Rating (with 6/6 SMP) is the cap on Prismatic Crystal, assuming full raid buffs and Fire spec.

 

math+source.

[Wandiwen 0]

If you are playing fire you need a 6/6 Sandman's Pouch and about 47.8% static crit. This ensures that when you SMP procs you will have 100% crit on the crystal. Also, lining up crystal and Combustion with your trinket is far more important than lining it up with the ring. If you don't have the proc you will run the risk of ruining your combust, which is where the real power of fire is. There is a great guide on Altered Time about fire. you should check it out. You can find it here

For the 47.8% crit does that include self buffs? food?

I may actually have too much crit now that I have been looking into things.

Armory Profile

I run around 45.5% crit and have no problems. After you reach that raid buffed go for mastery. Having the trinket off Council really helps. After I got mine (Warforged luckly) I actually enchanted haste (Bleeding Hollow still on wep) to sit at 20% raid buffed and gained DPS over using all mastery enchants.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/stormrage/Wandiz/advanced

Edit:Linked profile.

Edited May 14, 2016 by Wandiwen

[Drkdragon 9]

How much haste is needed to do a full rotation on the PC?

[Damnone 0]

You are terribly wrong, the spec to go for mythics and even heroic is Fire/Arcane. With low gear frost stands with fire and arcane, but after a point they are both better. Fire is viable for most fights in HFC and I play mainly fire, and Im always competitive against rogues, aff locks and arcane mages. I do switch to arcane for pure burst/single target. If you want to do decent dps its mandatory: Vial of the sands, Council trinket and if you dont have it Iron Reaver one. 47% crit raid buffed and them go full mastery. here is my character:

 

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/mal'ganis/damnone/advanced

 

 

[Damnone 0]

here follos my mythic Archimonde progression parse, most dps are better geared than me or the same ilvl and Im still #1 most of pulls: 

 

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/MnT2wZx16kcBrRFP

[Valks 2,373]

You are terribly wrong, the spec to go for mythics and even heroic is Fire/Arcane. With low gear frost stands with fire and arcane, but after a point they are both better. Fire is viable for most fights in HFC and I play mainly fire, and Im always competitive against rogues, aff locks and arcane mages. I do switch to arcane for pure burst/single target. If you want to do decent dps its mandatory: Vial of the sands, Council trinket and if you dont have it Iron Reaver one. 47% crit raid buffed and them go full mastery. here is my character:

 

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/mal'ganis/damnone/advanced

 

Yeah, Frost is pretty terrible right now in H/M. Arcane is just.. insane. The damage is superb, even with not-so great gear. Fire is better on.. HFA, Council and Xhul I believe? I think that's the only ones and Arcane does better on the others, but I'm not 100% on this.