Fire Mage Frequently Asked Questions — Dragonflight 10.2.5

Last updated on Jan 15, 2024 at 15:00 by Dutchmagoz 63 comments
General Information

On this page, we go over several of the most frequently asked questions regarding Fire Mage in World of Warcraft — Dragonflight 10.2.5. This will be updated as more common repeated questions surface over the course of the expansion.

1.

Are there any Haste or Critical Strike caps for Fire Mage?

You do not need any specific amount of Critical Strike to make Fire playable. Due to passive talents like Pyrotechnics Icon Pyrotechnics giving stacking 10% critical strike rating, Critical Mass Icon Critical Mass boosting your overall crit, Firestarter Icon Firestarter and Searing Touch Icon 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.

2.

How good is Fire Mage in the current patch?

All three Mage specs are very close to each other in the current patch, which allows people to largely play what they are most comfortable with. There are, of course exceptions, which we go into below.

In a Raiding setting, Fire is a great choice for a lot of the bosses; however, unfortunately, on the later bosses, Fire is falling behind the other Mage specs (especially Arcane). If you want to be fully optimal, you should play multiple specs and switch on a per-boss basis. However, if you only want to play a single spec, Fire will do quite well until the last couple of Mythic bosses.

In a Mythic+ setting, Fire is arguably the best pure ranged DPS spec in the game. It does great single-target damage, while doing very strong AoE/cleave damage on top of it without having to give up single target DPS and focusing down priority targets. Combine this with utility and defensives, and you can quickly see why Fire is so wanted. Fire only struggles a little bit at very low-key levels where enemies die too fast for its damage to really kick in, but this is mostly a luxury problem as it means the enemies are dying very fast anyway.

3.

Which race is best for Fire Mages?

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.

4.

Changelog

  • 15 Jan. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.5.
  • 16 Dec. 2023: Updated viability section based on December 19th buffs.
  • 24 Nov. 2023: Updated viability section based on live data.
  • 06 Nov. 2023: Updated viability section for 10.2.
  • 07 Sep. 2023: Updated viability section with more details.
  • 04 Sep. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.7
  • 15 Jul. 2023: Updated viability question for balance patch.
  • 10 Jul. 2023: Updated FAQ for the Fire Mage rework of 10.1.5.
  • 06 May 2023: Further Updated viability question based on item hotfixes impacting spec balance.
  • 01 May 2023: Updated viability question based on 10.1 tuning.
  • 20 Mar. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.7.
  • 24 Jan. 2023: Updated viability section due to 10.0.5 buffs and slightly altered RoP section.
  • 11 Dec. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight Season 1.
  • 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
  • 24 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
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