Fire Mage Frequently Asked Questions — The War Within Pre-Patch

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.

Prepatches usually have very limited balancing, as it is only a short temporary period before the expansion launches. Generally, all specs will be more than viable to be played during this period. Fire is currently looking to be relatively weak compared to other specs, but still more than playable, and there is likely to be constant tuning, changing what is best.

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.