Fire Mage Frequently Asked Questions — Shadowlands 9.0.2

You do not need any specific amount of Critical Strike to make Fire playable. Due to passives like failed Fireball critical strikes giving stacking 10% critical strike rating, Critical Mass and talents like Firestarter and Searing Touch, you can play Fire just fine even on very low Critical Strike levels, so you do not need to worry about having enough Critical Strike. Of course having more Critical Strike is not a bad thing, but it is not required. There is no Critical Strike "cap" 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

Fire is looking to be the best Mage spec in Season 1 of Shadowlands, with great single-target and great AoE damage.

All races are very close in DPS, and it generally does not matter what race you play. For a full overview of the DPS of every race, check the simulations page.

Flame Patch does more DPS than Living Bomb on 3 to 12 targets. However, the main problem with Flame Patch is the fact that it forces you to cast Flamestrike to get any use out of it, which means Flame Patch is less efficient at focusing high priority targets. Because of this, we suggest using Living Bomb in situations where priority target DPS is preferred, as it allows you to focus a primary target, but still get very competitive AoE DPS via the use of Living Bomb and Mastery: Ignite.

Rune of Power and Incanter's Flow are pretty close in overall DPS, with Rune of Power being ahead with optimal play. Because of this, it is quite hard to figure out when to use which talent. In general, on a fight with very little movement and other fight mechanics, Rune of Power is usually the best choice. Below we have listed the reasons to not run Rune of Power:

• There are raid mechanics which you can not plan for in advance that may cause you to have to move out of your Rune of Power.
• There is a lot of movement required on the fight in general.
• It is also worth noting that Rune of Power is a lot harder to play with than Incanter's Flow, so it should not be used when you are not very comfortable with the spec and fight.