Fire Mage Frequently Asked Questions — The War Within (11.1.7)

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.

In 11.1, Fire is performing relatively well, sitting comfortably in the upper half of dps specs.

In Raiding content, Fire struggles a little to compete with the very top performing specs (especially melee classes). However, amongst the ranged classes, Fire is performing very well, able to keep up on most bosses with the other top ranged specs.

In Mythic+, Fire is performing very well. It can do both good AoE and priority damage, has great survivability, and provides good group utility, so many groups will want to bring a Fire Mage.

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.