Fire Mage Best Covenants, Soulbinds, and Conduits — Shadowlands 9.1

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.

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

Generally speaking, the best choice for nearly all PvE scenarios for a Fire Mage is Night Fae. However, for people planning to play multiple specs, this might not be the optimal choice. If you plan to play Fire Mage in single-target content, but Frost in 2-3 target content, picking Venthyr is also a good choice, as Venthyr is only slightly behind for Fire on single target (1-3%), but meaningfully ahead for Frost in 2-3 (5-7%) target situations. Night Fae is a solid pick for Frost as well on larger AoE pulls (like most Mythic+ pulls), but on low target counts is very much behind Venthyr. Whether you pick Night Fae or Venthyr will largely come down to what type of content you plan to do with what spec. Unfortunately it is relatively hard to pick one Covenant to do well with as both Fire and Arcane.

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.
• 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.

Night Fae is the best Covenant for nearly 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.

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.

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.

1. Infernal Cascade
2. Controlled Destruction / Discipline of the Grove (Night Fae only)
3. Siphoned Malice (Venthyr only) / Ire of the Ascended (Kyrian only)
4. Flame Accretion
5. Gift of the Lich (Necrolord only)

1. Infernal Cascade
2. Master Flame
3. Discipline of the Grove (Night Fae only) / Siphoned Malice (Venthyr only) / Ire of the Ascended (Kyrian only) / Gift of the Lich (Necrolord only)
4. Controlled Destruction
5. 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.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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.

• Pelagos is the best Soulbind in all situations.
• Kleia is never worth picking.
• Forgelite Prime Mikanikos is never worth picking.

• 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.

• Emeni is the best Soulbind in all situations.
• Plague Deviser Marileth is never worth picking.
• Bonesmith Heirmir is never worth picking.