Fire Mage DPS Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — Dragonflight 10.0.7

Welcome to our Rotation page for Fire Mages. On this page you will find everything you need to know about actually playing the spec in Raiding scenarios.

The primary focus on this page is on raiding scenarios. Although the rotation is going to give pretty good results in Mythic+ as well, for a more Mythic+ oriented rotation, see our Mythic+ page.

If the rotations below seem overwhelming to you, or you would like to read a more simplified version of the rotation, you might benefit from visiting our Easy Mode page, which outlines a close-to-optimal rotation in simpler terms.

The content on this page is purely PvE-related. If you are looking for PvP Rotation Tips, please visit our PvP page below.

Use the switches below to tailor the rotation to the talents you are using or situations you expect to be facing, and it will populate the rotation priority list appropriately:

• Pyroclasm Talented (see Sun King's Blessing & Pyroclasm section below for more info)
• Sun King's Blessing Talented (see Sun King's Blessing & Pyroclasm section below for more info)
• Fiery Rush Talented
• Shifting Power Talented
• Temporal Warp Talented
• Searing Touch Talented
• Meteor Talented
• Alexstrasza's Fury Talented
• Hyperthermia Talented
• Dragon's Breath Talented

1. Cast Time Warp while under the effects of Temporal Displacement (or similar effects), right before you plan to use Combustion, stacking 2 Time Warp effects.
2. Cast Pyroblast while Firestorm is active.
3. Cast Meteor if Combustion Combustion is ready, or Combustion is not ready within 45 seconds. Outside of right before Combustion, only cast Meteor during Rune of Power.
4. Cast Combustion when it is off cooldown, 0.5 seconds after casting Meteor. Then follow our Combustion rotation below.
5. Cast Combustion while you are in the middle of a Fireball cast. Then follow our Combustion rotation below.
6. Cast Rune of Power if Rune of Power is not already active due to Combustion.
7. Cast Shifting Power when Rune of Power and Combustion are on cooldown, and you do not currently have either of them active. Lastly, ensure you do not have 3 charges of Fire Blast. Generally, this means using it right after your Combustion phase.
8. Hardcast Pyroblast when you have a Pyroclasm or Sun King's Blessing proc. There are many advanced techniques to improve your dps around Pyroclasm And Sun King's Blessing that we describe in our Sun King's Blessing & Pyroclasm section below.
9. Cast Pyroblast when you have a Hot Streak proc.
10. Cast Dragon's Breath if Combustion is active and there is less than 1 second left on Combustion.
11. Cast Fire Blast when you have Heating Up.
12. Cast Phoenix Flames when you have Heating Up and Combustion is active.
13. Cast Phoenix Flames while Rune of Power is active, and you do not currently have a Fireball or Pyroblast in the air to the target, and you have at least 1 charge of Fire Blast or another charge of Phoenix Flames, or Dragon's Breath ready and convert the Heating Up gained to Hot Streak via any of the 3 spells listed.
14. Cast Phoenix Flames when Rune of Power is active, and you will cap on Phoenix Flames charges before Combustion is ready.
15. Cast Scorch if the target is below 30% Health.
16. Cast Fireball to generate Heating Up.
17. Cast Scorch if you have to move and have no instant casts to burn.

The core component of this specialization is chaining as many Critical Strikes together as possible to maintain large Mastery: Ignites. Fire is an extremely reactive specialization, meaning most optimizations occur moment to moment rather than planning a large damage dump minutes.

It is highly recommended you read the "Combustion Usage" section as it is of crucial importance to the Fire specialization.

Combustion should be used on cooldown whenever possible. You should always overlap Combustion with other damage boosts that allow for a large overall Mastery: Ignite, 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 for both of them. This is the case both for normal Combustions and Combustions gained via Sun King's Blessing.

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 and Phoenix Flames. Below we have listed the priority of spells during Combustion:

1. Use any on-use trinkets and racials like Sinful Aspirant's Badge of Ferocity and Berserking.
2. Cast Fireball if you are casting Combustion manually in the step below. If you gained Combustion from Sun King's Blessing, skip the Fireball and the next step.
3. 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 a second Fire Blast near the end of the Fireball cast.
4. Instant-cast Pyroblast whenever you have Hot Streak
5. Hardcast Pyroblast when you have Sun King's Blessing 8th stack or a Pyroclasm proc and Combustion would not expire before the hardcast finishes
6. Alternate Fire Blast and Phoenix Flames for generating Heating Up / Hot Streak to keep up the Feel the Burn buff
7. If you are out of Fire Blast and Phoenix Flames charges, cast Scorch for generating Heating Up / Hot Streak

It is important to note if you proc the 8th 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.

Hardcasting a Pyroclasm proc during Combustion is a minor DPS gain. Still, you must be sure it will finish before Combustion ends, or it is a significant DPS loss.

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.

When you have Sun King's Blessing talented, especially when combined with Pyroclasm, there are a couple of optimizations you can make that will greatly improve your DPS.

Below we list some advanced tips for using Sun King's Blessing:

• If you are also running Pyroclasm, you will want to hold the Pyroclasm procs for Sun King's Blessing, as long as Pyroclasm would not expire before you would finish hard casting Pyroblast for Sun King's Blessing. This also counts during Combustion If you have two stacks of Pyroclasm, you should always use one.
• Only use Rune of Power for Sun King's Blessing proc (and preferably Pyroclasm).
• During Combustion:
  • Always hardcast Pyroblast with Sun King's Blessing proc
  • Only hardcast Pyroblast with Pyroclasm proc, if you can finish the cast before Combustion expires. Try to line up the Pyroblast hardcast so that it applies both Sun King's Blessing and Pyroclasm.
• If you have a Hot Streak active while hard casting Pyroblast for Sun King's Blessing, do not immediately cast Pyroblast after hard casting Pyroblast, but wait a mini second (only 0.1 seconds is needed). This is done because of a bug that would cause you to lose out on a stack of Sun King's Blessing if you cast it too quickly.

The current tier set for Fire is as follows:

• Fire Mage 2pc: Pyroblast and Flamestrike cast with Hot Streak deal 10% increased damage.
• Fire Mage 4pc: Fire Blast, Phoenix Flames, and Fireball deal 10% increased damage, and their chance to critically strike is increased by 10%.

As a Fire Mage, the current tier set bonuses do not impact the rotation. If you want more information on whether or not the tier bonus is worth equipping and how it impacts the best in slot list, check out our gearing page.

Most of your damage on multiple targets will come from simply doing your single-target rotation and spreading Mastery: Ignite to nearby targets via Fire Blast. However, there are some spell usage changes to the rotation depending on target counts, if you have talented into Flamestrike and/or Flame Patch, which we currently do not recommend. It is worth noting that most of the advice below assumes all targets are equally important. Suppose any of the targets are a higher priority. In that case, it is almost always worth focusing on the primary target and spreading Ignite to the other targets.

Without Flamestrike / Flame Patch talented:

Do the standard single target rotation. Avoid target switching when possible, as it will reduce the overall damage of Mastery: Ignite. Only target switch for Searing Touch or when required due to fight mechanics.

Additionally, if you have Alexstrasza's Fury, use Phoenix Flames only when you do not have a Hot Streak. Try to save all charges for Rune of Power and Combustion.

Cast Living Bomb if there are 3 or more targets stacked, and at least 1 of the targets will live for at least 8 seconds.

Cast Dragon's Breath if there are 3+ targets present or at any target count with Alexstrasza's Fury talented, and you do not currently have Hot Streak.

With Flamestrike talented, without Flame Patch talented:

• Cast Flamestrike on 6+ targets while Combustion is active.
• Cast Flamestrike outside of Combustion with Hot Streak on 4+ targets, or hard-cast on 6+ targets.

With Flamestrike and Flame Patch talented:

• Cast Flamestrike on 3+ targets while Combustion is active.
• Cast Flamestrike outside of Combustion with Hot Streak on 2+ targets, or hard-cast on 3+ targets.

If you have Hyperthermia talented and it procs, treat it like a hard cast when looking at the above lists.

Understanding how to generate Critical Strikes as efficiently as possible is crucial in utilizing Fire effectively. This specialization is designed to crit more often than not, so it is easy to understand why learning to execute the right combos to create a chain of crits is paramount.

Whenever you get a Heating Up proc, you should convert it to a Hot Streak using Fire Blast. Generally, you will then want to cast a Fireball and immediately spend your Hot Streak on a Pyroblast as your Fireball cast finishes. Both of these spells will strike simultaneously, giving a chance of an immediate follow-up Hot Streak if both critically strike. If only one of the spells critically strikes, Heating Up will proc, and you can immediately Fire Blast and repeat this process.

There is a 0.2-second grace period where Heating Up will not be canceled if two spells impact simultaneously and only one critically strikes.

This is known as "Pyroblast Fishing" and is the best way to create a large chain of crits. The exception to this rule is during Combustion, where all spells will crit, allowing you to chain together various combos that will be covered in more detail later in the guide.

• Dragon's Breath (unless talented into Alexstrasza's Fury)
• Blast Wave
• Living Bomb
• Meteor
• Frost Nova
• Flamestrike
• Any non-damage spell, such as Blink or Ice Block

The Pyroclasm talent gives a chance to proc the buff of the same name, which makes your next non-instant Pyroblast hit extremely hard. Typically, you will want just to cast these non-instant Pyroblasts as you get the procs, however, since the proc can stack up to 2 times, there are scenarios in which you should hold onto it as long as you only have 1 charge:

• If Rune of Power will run out before you would be able to finish the non-instant Pyroblast, you should wait until Rune of Power ends and then cast the non-instant Pyroblast.
• If you are also running Sun King's Blessing, you want to save 1 Pyroclasm proc to line it up with Sun King's Blessing, as long as the Pyroclasm proc would not expire before you can stack Sun King's Blessing.

That said, the most important thing is to use the Pyroclasm procs. It is a huge DPS loss if they ever time out before being used. Because of this, it is advisable always to keep 1 stack of Shimmer available for the situation where you get a certain raid mechanic on you while casting the non-instant Pyroblast, so you can simply Shimmer away instead of interrupting this long cast and risk losing the proc.

Meteor should always be used together with Rune of Power, since they have the same cooldown. If you do not have Rune of Power talented, it should be used on cooldown, but make sure it is available when Combustion becomes available.

Rune of Power is a medium-length cooldown best used to apply significant pressure during its duration. Rune of Power will always overlap with Combustion automatically due to the passive portion. The active amount should only be used in combination with Sun King's Blessing, if talented. If Sun King's Blessing is not talented, it can be used:

• to push a damage check;
• when several advantageous procs overlap;
• during a period of zero movement;
• on AoE.

This can be cast when you have to reposition slightly. It lasts for 60 seconds, but it only has a 25-second cooldown. You can and should cast it before the start of every engagement.

Scorch should be used in place of Fireball while Combustion is active. The reasoning is pretty straightforward:

• Faster cast time
• Guaranteed Critical Strike
• No travel time

In contrast, Scorch is very weak outside of Combustion for the same reasons. Because it has no travel time, you cannot efficiently fish for Pyroblasts.

Scorch can be cast while moving and will also grant you a speed buff when talented into Frenetic Speed. Wherever possible, try to instead rely on Shimmer before relying on Scorch. Combined with Frenetic Speed, this spell can benefit extended movement if your charges of Shimmer are unavailable. However, try to lean less heavily on this spell as a movement crutch, as it will deflate your damage due to its lack of potency. The only exception is when you have talented Searing Touch, and your target is under 30% Health, as you can then use Scorch freely instead of Fireball.

Fire Mage is an elementary enough specialization to perform on a target dummy. Still, a few key factors will separate the good from the great. Learning to focus on what is important and mastering the core concepts of a specialization is what leads to overall solid performance on the damage charts. 3 major concepts form the central trinity of optimizing for success:

1. proper use of Combustion;
2. critical Strike chains;
3. movement management.

Managing movement is a fundamental skill shared by all the caster classes in World of Warcraft. The highly mobile nature of the Mage class allows flexible and creative ways to move during combat, making it of supreme importance that you give this the proper respect.

We talked about "Pyro Fishing" earlier in the guide, so there is no need to go over it in detail again here. It should be considered, however, how important properly chaining together your abilities is and its overall impact on your DPS. This is especially true on cleave, as building a smooth and powerful Mastery: Ignite will determine how much cleave and AoE you can output. Get used to properly chaining your spells by practicing on target dummies or in LFR.

While it is difficult to describe the best ways to position and move during a dungeon or raid encounter, it is essential to your success as a Fire Mage.

Try and use Shimmer for "urgent" movement — when you need to travel from one place to another as quickly as possible. Blazing Barrier is a good choice when you only need to take a few steps, as it only costs a single global cooldown.

The combination of Scorch and Frenetic Speed can also be useful for extended movement if Shimmer is unavailable.

Always try to position yourself in a location central to fight movement. For example, if the boss is being moved in a circle, try to stay on the inside of the kite path to ensure minimal movement.

Many players will unconsciously move during fights, despite it being unnecessary. For example, sometimes the boss or adds will be moved by the tank a couple of yards. Though you are still in range to cast, you subconsciously mirror that movement, costing you global cooldowns. Consciously work to "quiet" your movement, and reduce unnecessary movement to a minimum. The best way to see this in action is to take a video of your raid, then watch yourself play. Most players will be surprised by the amount of wasted movement they commit. When you are forced to move, use the tips above, and make your path as direct and decisive as possible.

The opener below assumes the standard talent setup containing Feel the Burn, Sun King's Blessing and Firestarter and as talents. If you do not run Firestarter, start the fight with the standard Combustion rotation.

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

1. Cast Fireballs and Fire Blasts and consume your Hot Streaks as you get them until 8 stacks of Sun King's Blessing. Only cast Fire Blast to avoid capping on charges.
2. Once at 8 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.
3. Continue the standard Combustion rotation like normal.