Fire Mage Best Covenants, Soulbinds, and Conduits — Shadowlands 9.2
Covenants, Soulbinds, and Conduits are the most important character customization options in Shadowlands. They have a substantial impact on your toolkit and performance as Fire Mage. This page's purpose is to help you pick the right options according to the content you intend to do in Shadowlands.
Introduction: Prerequisites
This page assumes that you are already familiar with Covenants, Soulbinds, and Conduits. If that is not the case, we have a number of pages that can help you get up to speed:
- Covenants Guide, which explains what Covenants are, what perks they bring, and how you can join one;
- Mage Covenant Abilities, which lists all the abilities that Mages gain by joining each Covenant;
- How To Change Covenant?, which tells you how you can switch Covenant (rejoining a former Covenant will require you to perform a number of tasks to regain their trusts);
- General Soulbind Guide, which explains what Soulbinds are and how you can pledge yourself to them to open up their Soulbind tree;
- Mage Conduits, which lists all of the Conduits available to Mages.
Summary of the Best Covenants, Soulbinds, and Conduits
Below we have listed a general guideline to the best Covenants. However, we strongly recommend reading further to help you pick the optimal Covenant and Soulbind, as depending on how much Renown you have, both the priority changes and the optimal tree changes.
Focus | Covenant | Soulbind | Advised Tree |
---|---|---|---|
Raiding | Night Fae | Dreamweaver | Fire Mage Dreamweaver Raiding tree |
Mythic+ | Night Fae | Dreamweaver | Fire Mage Dreamweaver Mythic+ tree |
Torghast | Night Fae | Dreamweaver | Fire Mage Dreamweaver Torghast tree |
Fire Mage Covenant Choice
Generally speaking, the best choice for all PvE scenarios for a Fire Mage is Night Fae. Venthyr is close on single-target, but behind on AoE. Although you can swap Covenants freely since Patch 9.1.5, Fire does not really benefit from this as playing Night Fae is the optimal choice for practically all PvE situations.
Best Conduits for Fire Mage
In the list below, you will find the best Conduits, organized by type. For more information, please refer to the Conduits section of this page.
- Best Potency Conduits:
Infernal Cascade is the best Potency Conduit for all situations, with
Controlled Destruction as second best for pure single-target/low cleave and
Master Flame as second best for AoE situations. However,
Discipline of the Grove (Night Fae only) is a good hybrid option, and can often be better in single-target situations than Controlled Destruction as well, depending on timers. Since you can use 3 Potency Conduits, you should generally take Infernal Cascade + Controlled Destruction + Discipline of the Grove, swapping Controlled Destruction for Master Flame on AoE scenarios.
- Best Finesse Conduits: Most of the options here are good choices and largely
come down to personal preference. However,
Flow of Time is useful in all situations and arguably the only one that increases your DPS by increasing mobility.
- Best Endurance Conduits: This is largely personal choice. All of them are very good defensive options.
Why Night Fae is the Best Covenant for Fire Mage
Night Fae is the best Covenant in practically all PvE situations for Fire Mages. It is both the best on single-target and AoE situations, while having multiple strong Soulbind options which increases the flexibility for both multi-speccing and building Soulbinds for specific situations.
A primary reason which makes Night Fae a great Covenant is the
class ability Shifting Power. This ability is good in both single-target
and AoE situations. It reduces the cooldown of all your cooldowns, including the cooldown of
Fire Blast.
Combine this with 3 solid Soulbinds that all have 3 Potency Conduit slots and
good damage boosting abilities, and it is clear why Night Fae is such a strong choice.
We cover our thoughts on the other Covenants and their Soulbinds in this section further below.
Night Fae Soulbinds
As described above, Night Fae has three very capable Soulbinds, since all of them
contain three Potency Conduit slots and have damage boosting abilities in it.
However, Dreamweaver is the best overall Soulbind, as it contains
both 3 potency conduit slots, and some great damage-boosting other traits.
On-top of being the best DPS, it also has great utility in the form of Podtender
and
Waking Dreams. We suggest using
this tree
for all situations.
Best Conduits for Fire Mage
This section only covers which Conduits you should pick. For detailed explanations on what all of the Mage Conduits do, check out our Mage Soulbinds and Conduits Page below.
Best Single Target Potency Conduits for Fire Mage
Infernal Cascade
Controlled Destruction /
Discipline of the Grove (Night Fae only)
Siphoned Malice (Venthyr only) /
Ire of the Ascended (Kyrian only)
Flame Accretion
Gift of the Lich (Necrolord only)
Best Cleave / AoE Potency Conduits for Fire Mage
Infernal Cascade
Master Flame
Discipline of the Grove (Night Fae only) /
Siphoned Malice (Venthyr only) /
Ire of the Ascended (Kyrian only) /
Gift of the Lich (Necrolord only)
Controlled Destruction
Flame Accretion
In practice, as a Night Fae, this means you will run the following 3 conduits
in all situations: Infernal Cascade,
Controlled Destruction,
and
Discipline of the Grove, swapping Controlled Destruction for Master Flame
in pure AoE situations, which, since Patch 9.1.5 can be done freely in
your Covenant Sanctum.
Best Finesse Conduits for Fire Mage
Finesse Conduits are mostly mobility and utility focused and are therefore largely
personal preference. Having said that, Flow of Time is indirectly a damage
boost as it allows you to use
Blink (or
Shimmer, if talented)
more and thus spend less time moving and not doing optimal DPS.
Best Endurance Conduits for Fire Mage
Endurance Conduits are all Conduits that improve your survivability. All of the Mage ones are strong so you can mostly pick this based on personal preference and circumstance.
Other Covenants for Fire Mage
Kyrian: Radiant Spark
Kyrian is generally the second/third best Covenant for Fire Mages. The Kyrian
ability ( Radiant Spark) is one of the worst Covenant abilities for Fire Mages, but the
Soulbind Pelagos is a pretty strong Soulbind, which makes Kyrian a decent
alternative to Night Fae on pure single target. On single target, Kyrian is around
1-3% behind Night Fae at most Renown levels.
However, in cleave and AoE situations, it falls significantly (7-15%) behind.
Kyrian is only second best while using Pelagos. When using any other Soulbind, Kyrian falls behind much
more. (5-8% on single target and 5-15%+ in AoE)
Although picking Kyrian instead of Night Fae will not really put you behind on pure single target, it will put you significantly behind in AoE situations and make you much less flexible, as Kyrian only has one good Soulbind, while Night Fae has three.
Venthyr: Mirrors of Torment
Venthyr has a strong single-target class ability, Mirrors of Torment,
and decent Soulbinds. It falls behind Night Fae 1-3% in single target situations,
but much more in AoE situations. (5-8%) It is tied for second place
together with Kyrian.
Necrolord: Deathborne
Necrolord has the worst single-target Covenant ability in the form
of Deathborne, and the second worst in AoE. This is however partially made up
with its relatively strong Soulbind, Emeni. With the optimal setup, Necrolord is
around 2-4% behind Night Fae. Necrolord does however not have any other
good Soulbinds, and has due to this the same lack of flexibility as Kyrian
has, with the second best Soulbind being 5%+ behind Night Fae in every situation.
Other Soulbinds for Fire Mage
Below we go over the Soulbinds of each other Covenant and in what situations you might consider them. The advice below applies to all Renown levels unless otherwise specified.
Kyrian Soulbinds
- Pelagos is the best Soulbind in all situations.
- Kleia is never worth picking.
- Forgelite Prime Mikanikos is never worth picking.
Venthyr Soulbinds
- Nadjia the Mistblade is the best Soulbind in all situations upto Renown 34, and the best on single target after Renown 34.
- Theotar the Mad Duke is the second best (1-2% behind) Soulbind in all situations before Renown 34, and the best AoE Soulbind after Renown 34.
- General Draven is slightly behind in all situations, however after Renown 31 it is pretty much equal to Theotar in AoE situations.
Necrolord Soulbinds
- Emeni is the best Soulbind in all situations.
- Plague Deviser Marileth is never worth picking.
- Bonesmith Heirmir is never worth picking.
Changelog
- 22 Jan. 2022: Updated for Patch 9.2.
- 01 Nov. 2021: Updated for 9.1.5.
- 15 Jul. 2021: Fixed soulbind URL.
- 28 Jun. 2021: Updated for Patch 9.1.
- 09 Mar. 2021: Updated multi-spec Covenant suggestions for buffed Necrolord.
- 05 Jan. 2021: Updated Soulbind URLs to contain conduits most logical for the given tree.
- 22 Nov. 2020: Updated page with more information regarding multi-speccing.
- 21 Nov. 2020: Updated page due to Night Fae nerfs, moving Pelagos up in the priority and adding a note on what Renown level Pelagos is better than Night Fae
- 20 Nov. 2020: Page added.
More Mage Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been written by Dutchmagoz. Dutchmagoz is a Mythic raider in one of the top raiding guilds, Angered, owner of the Mage theorycrafting website Altered Time, and the owner of the Mage Discord server, Altered Time.
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