Fire Mage DPS Spec, Builds, and Talents — Midnight Season 1

On this page we will go over the best builds to play as a Fire Mage, for both Hero Talents.

Make sure to also read the descriptions of the builds to help you decide which build is best for your situation!

2.

Best Talents for Fire Mage

Frostfire Raid Talents Frostfire Mythic+ Talents Sunfury Raid Talents Sunfury Mythic+ Talents Delve and Open World Talents

1.1.

Sunfury Raid Talents for Fire Mage

This Sunfury build is around 2-3% behind the Frostfire variant, making it a slightly worse option, but it has better mobility (due to Scorch), making it often better on fights with high movement requirements, or depending on how comfortable you are with the mechanics.

1.2.

Sunfury Mythic+ Talents for Fire Mage

This Sunfury build is slightly ahead of the Frostfire variant in AoE scenarios, while behind slightly behind on single-target. Generally this makes it a better spec for Mythic+, but the differences are very small either way so you really cannot go wrong with either Hero spec. Sunfury also has more mobility so I recommend playing Sunfury if you have no personal preference between either.

The Mythic+ build swaps out of a few talents to be able to pick up Fuel the Fire and Meteor (and related talents), as these are critical for proper AoE DPS. Note: these are not needed for cleave DPS, like is usually the case in Raids, so you should stick to the Raid build for those even if there are multiple targets.

This build also swaps around some utility spells to provide you with very helpful tools for Mythic+, such as multiple interrupts and dispels.

1.3.

Frostfire Raid Talents for Fire Mage

This Frostfire is the highest single-target (and cleave) DPS build available, slightly ahead of the Sunfury variant, making it the best for anyone seeking maximum DPS. However, Sunfury has better mobility, so it can be better depending on the encounter and how comfortable you are with it.

This build works on all target counts, requiring no talent swaps whenever there are multiple targets. The listed Mythic+ builds focus on utility changes, not DPS changes.

Note: Frostfire builds do not run Scorch as Frostfire Bolt is simply a better filler, even when the target is below 30% health. You can spec into Scorch for the extra mobility, but this comes at a meaningful DPS cost for Frostfire. If you want to play with Scorch, I recommend playing Sunfury.

1.4.

Frostfire Mythic+ Talents Fire Mage

This Frostfire build is slightly behind the Sunfury variant in AoE scenarios, while being slightly ahead on single-target. Due to this, for best overall DPS Frostfire usually performs slightly worse, but it has better boss DPS and the differences are very small regardless so you can play either Hero spec without any issues.

The Mythic+ build is practically identical to the Raid build. It focuses on swapping into more utility spells in the Mage tree, but otherwise running the same actual DPS talents.

Note: Frostfire builds do not run Scorch as Frostfire Bolt is simply a better filler, even when the target is below 30% health. You can spec into Scorch for the extra mobility, but this comes at a meaningful DPS cost for Frostfire. If you want to play with Scorch, I recommend playing Sunfury.

1.5.

Best Delve Talents for Fire Mage

This build is focused on making Delves as smooth of an experience as possible. It focuses on maximizing your survival and kiting capabilities, by speccing into more mobility and crowd-control, while giving up very minimal DPS. This build is also excellent for outdoor content.

Fire has the following Apex Talent:

• Fired Up: Consuming Hot Streak has a chance to grant you a stack of Fired Up, which increases your fire damage. Multiple applications may overlap.
• Fired Up: Gaining Fired Up reduces your Fire Blast cooldown by 2.5 seconds per point, 2 points.
• Fired Up: Combustion greatly increases the chance of getting Fired Up, reducing each time you proc Fired Up. Also causes Fired Up to extend Combustion by 1 second.

The Apex Talent for Fire grants a lot of damage for both Hero Specs, and is virtually always taken. Fired Up is a new proc which grants a large amount of bonus damage whenever it procs, which is just a very nice passive bonus. However, even more impactful is the massive 5 second Fire Blast cooldown reduction when it procs, which happens quite frequently, especially during Combustion.

This Fire Blast cooldown reduction makes it so you barely run out of Fire Blast charges during Combustion, often only running out towards the very end of Combustion. This allows you to chain Pyroblast into Fire Blast for almost the entire duration of Combustion without needing to weave in any other spells.

All these extra Fire Blast charges do cause a bit of a weird luxury "problem", where it relatively devalues Pyroclasm, because hard-casting Pyroblast during Combustion risks overcapping Fire Blast charges, making it difficult to hard-cast during Combustion. Due to this, you often end up having to delay the hard-casts until Combustion is over.

Fire has access to the Sunfury and Frostfire Hero Talent trees.

Sunfury mostly focuses around speeding up your rotation and spawning an Arcane Phoenix alongside you during Combustion, throwing out spells of its own providing damage and some utility. Gameplay wise, Sunfury speeds up your rotation a bit by proving a couple of sources of cooldown reduction on Fire Blast or additional haste, but the main rotational change comes from Memory of Al'ar, which grants you Hyperthermia when Combustion ends. While Hyperthermia is active, you can spam instant-cast Pyroblasts or Flamestrikes, providing another Combustion-like mini-burst after Combustion ends.

Frostfire is entirely focused on augmenting your damage by firing off a bunch of extra Frost spells, like Glacial Spikes and Comet Storm. Gameplay wise, Frostfire replaces your Fireball for Frostfire Bolt, which makes your rotation slightly faster because it has a lower cast time, but otherwise plays the same as Fireball. The main rotational change comes from Frostfire Empowerment, which makes your next Frostfire Bolt a very hard hitting instant-cast spell that also deals AoE damage.

Frostfire is slightly ahead in most situations, so if seeking maximum DPS, I recommend playing Frostfire, however, both Hero Specs are very close in terms of DPS (a few % difference depending on situation), making it largely a personal preference which one you play.

Multiple talents require a change to your rotation to use them optimally. You can find more information on how your rotation will look after selecting your talents on our rotation page below.

If you are looking for in-depth explanations of what each talent does, we suggest reading through the spell summary page.

Since Battle for Azeroth, there is the option to enable "War Mode." Enabling War Mode grants the following benefits:

• PvP talents enabled in the outdoor world.
• 10% increase in World Quest rewards at max level.
• 10% more experience gained while leveling.
• Earn Conquest Points, which can reward gear every week.

With the benefits of enabling War Mode for leveling and PvE content, it is recommended enabling the feature to maximize your leveling and rewards at max level. However, doing so will enable PvP combat and the possibility of being attacked by members of the opposite faction while leveling or doing World Quests exists.

In this section, we will rank the War Mode talents for leveling and outdoor content.

1. Glass Cannon gives you a significant damage buff. The reduced health is usually not a problem in open-world content.
2. Ring of Fire puts up a relatively large circle that burns enemies who walk into the outer part of the circle, doing significant damage.
3. Greater Pyroblast is a very hard-hitting spell, especially on high-health enemies, and it will greatly increase your damage against high-health enemies, like world bosses or rares.