Fire Mage Frequently Asked Questions — The War Within (11.0.5)

You do not need any specific amount of Critical Strike to make Fire playable. Due to passive talents like Pyrotechnics giving stacking 10% critical strike rating, Critical Mass boosting your overall crit, Firestarter and Searing Touch guaranteeing crits, you can play Fire just fine, even on very low Critical You do not need to worry about having enough Critical Strike levels. Of course, having more Critical Strike is not a bad thing, but it is optional. There is no Critical Strike "cap" (aside from 100%), at which point more Critical Strike is bad. Additionally, there are no meaningful haste caps or breakpoints either.

Having said that, the best way to determine what items you should use is to use Raidbots' Top Gear.

Unfortunately, the mini rework received in 11.0.5 is quite a single-target nerf. However, it does come with a decent AoE buff, making it better at Mythic+, while becoming weaker at raiding.

Fire has relatively low single-target damage. Luckily, it does have great mobility, and a very powerful niche of good execute DPS. However, due to its relatively low numeric output, it struggles to do good DPS in raids.

In Mythic+ however, Fire is very competitive. It can choose to either do strong AoE damage, or decent single-target while doing completely free AoE damage. The latter especially is quite viable in multiple of the current dungeons, making it a solid Mythic+ choice.

All races are very close in DPS, and it generally does not matter what race you play. Usually, Dwarf or Human is going to be the highest DPS, but it depends on your gear and the content you are doing, and generally all races are within half a percentage of each other. For a full overview of the DPS of every race, check the simulations page.