Fire Mage DPS Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — The War Within Pre-Patch

The Fire rotation at its core is all about generating as many Hot Streak procs as possible, to fire off instant cast Pyroblasts. There are many ways to do this, but the general rotation involves casting Fireball until Heating Up procs, and then converting it into Hot Streak via Fire Blast.

Since Fire Blast can be cast while casting, you always keep chaining Fireballs, and then when one of them crit, while you are casting the next Fireball you cast Fire Blast to generate the Hot Streak. Then as your Fireball cast finishes, you can fire off the Fireball and an instant Pyroblast at the same time. Both of these spells will land at the same time, and if one of them crits, you immediately get a new Heating Up and the cycle continues into Fireball + Fire Blast -> Pyroblast.

Additionally, you have some other methods to generate Hot Streak, like Phoenix Flames and Dragon's Breath (if talented into Alexstrasza's Fury), These other spells exist to provide even further Hot Streak generation, as they are guaranteed critical strikes. (with Call of the Sun King

This Fireball / Pyroblast cycle is alternated by Combustion phases. During Combustion, all of your spells are guaranteed critical strikes, so instead of casting Fireballs to trigger Heating Up, you chain Pyroblasts and Fire Blasts. You also tend to throw in Scorch (and Phoenix Flames with some talents) outside of Fire Blast and Pyroblast, for when you run out of Fire Blast charges.

Finally, you have various talents that provide multiple things to track. For example, Sun King's Blessing is another method of obtaining Combustion, making it very important that you do not waste these procs.

1. Cast Meteor if Combustion is ready, or Combustion is not ready within 45 seconds.
2. Cast Combustion 0.5 seconds after casting Meteor. Then follow our Combustion rotation below.
3. Cast Combustion while you are in the middle of a Fireball cast. Then follow our Combustion rotation below.
4. Cast Shifting Power when Combustion is on cooldown, and you do not currently have it active. Lastly, ensure you do not have 3 charges of Fire Blast. Generally, this means using it right after your Combustion phase ends.
5. Hardcast Pyroblast when you have a Sun King's Blessing proc.
6. Cast Pyroblast when you have a Hot Streak proc. Generally aim to cast Pyroblast immediately after a Fireball cast so both land at the same time. See our Pyro Chaining section below for more info on why.
7. Cast Scorch if the target is below 30% health and Improved Scorch is timing out within a couple of seconds, and you do not currently have Hot Streak.
8. Cast Fire Blast when you have Heating Up to convert it into Hot Streak.
9. Cast Phoenix Flames or Dragon's Breath to generate Heating Up or convert Heating Up into Hot Streak. Ensure there are no spells in flight toward the target when doing this.
10. Try to keep up Feel the Burn by timing your Fire Blast and Phoenix Flames in such a way that you refresh the stacks as late as possible. Generally this will work out automatically, but do keep an eye on it, and perhaps cast a Fire Blast earlier or later during a cast to ensure it refreshes Feel the Burn.
11. Cast Scorch as your filler if the target is below 30% Health to generate Heating Up / Hot Streak.
12. Cast Fireball as your filler to generate Heating Up / Hot Streak.
13. Cast Scorch if you have to move and have no instant casts to burn.

Combustion should be used on cooldown whenever possible. You should always overlap Combustion with other damage boosts to further increase your damage, such as Meteor, trinkets, and racials.

Since Combustion makes every spell critically strike, you want to get as many hard-hitting spells in the window as possible. To facilitate this, you should save at least one charge of Fire Blast and Phoenix Flames, though preferably, all charges will be available unless you are specced into Spontaneous Combustion, in which case you should not pool any charges. Combustions gained via Sun King's Blessing do require pooling regardless of talents, as Spontaneous Combustion does not work for these Combustions.

During Combustion, we will be casting a lot of instant Pyroblasts. Since Combustion guarantees a crit, this will always cause your Pyroblast to proc Heating Up or Hot Streak. Because of this, you only need one other spell to generate Hot Streaks. During Combustion, this will be Fire Blast, Phoenix Flames and Scorch.

First, we want to enter Combustion in any of the following ways:

1. Cast Fireball.
2. Depending on your Hot Streak / Heating Up status, execute the option listed below:
   • If you already have a Hot Streak proc: cast Combustion near the end of your Fireball cast
   • If you already have a Heating Up: cast Combustion + Fire Blast near the end of your Fireball cast.
   • If you have neither: cast Combustion + Fire Blast halfway through the Fireball cast, followed by either a Scorch, or a Fireball. Use Fireball during Time Warp, Scorch otherwise.
   • The end result of any of the above 3 steps, is that you end up with a Hot Streak proc, and a Fireball in the air. This allows you to cast two Pyroblasts in a row after finishing Fireball. One from the Hot Streak, and one from the first Pyroblast landing + the Fireball landing.

Follow the priority list below while Combustion is active.

1. Instant-cast Pyroblast whenever you have Hot Streak.
2. Hardcast Pyroblast when you have Sun King's Blessing final stack.
3. When Flame's Fury procs (the proc gained from Phoenix Reborn), cast Phoenix Flames to generate Heating Up / Hot Streak.
4. Use Fire Blast and Phoenix Flames for generating Heating Up / Hot Streak while keeping Feel the Burn buff up. When you run out of stacks of Fire Blast and Phoenix Flames, use Scorch. When Flame Accelerant is up, cast Fireball instead of .
5. Cast Dragon's Breath in Combustion if there is less than 1 second left on Combustion and you do not have any Hot Streak procs.

It is important to note if you proc the final stack of Sun King's Blessing during Combustion, you should hardcast Pyroblast to extend your Combustion by 6 seconds. Make sure to keep up your Feel the Burn buff during it.

Worth noting, activating Combustion while you have Sun King's Blessing's Combustion active will NOT add 12 seconds to Combustion. Instead, it will reset the duration. So never cast Combustion during Sun King's Blessing's Combustion.

If you are not running Firestarter, you just immediately go into the Combustion rotation after pre-casting Pyroblast.

The opener below assumes the standard talent setup containing Feel the Burn and Sun King's Blessing, combined with the less standard but still commonly used Firestarter.

You always pre-cast Pyroblast 4 seconds before the pull timer finishes.

1. Chain Pyroblast and Fire Blast until you are out of Fire Blasts.
2. Cast Shifting Power to get 3 Fire Blast charges again.
3. Cast Fireballs and Fire Blasts and consume your Hot Streaks as you get them until 10 stacks of Sun King's Blessing. Keep your Fire Blast charges at or above 2.
4. Once at 10 charges of Sun King's Blessing, hardcast Pyroblast (even if the target is still above 90% health). Near the end of the cast, cast Combustion. Ensure you press Combustion before the Pyroblast cast finishes, or you will lose the Sun King's Blessing Combustion.
5. Continue the standard Combustion rotation like normal.

Since Flamestrike based builds are currently significantly worse than cleave-based builds, Fire does not actually have any difference between the single target and AoE rotation.

While doing your single target rotation, you will automatically spread Mastery: Ignite and Lit Fuse will consistently apply Living Bomb to your target and nearby other target via Blast Zone.

Combine this with various other talents like Firefall throwing down Meteors, Mark of the Fire Lord applying large Mastery: Ignites from Living Bomb, and Phoenix Flames high AoE damage, you can see how simply doing your single target rotation leads not only to significant AoE damage, but also increased single target damage, via Sparking Cinders.