Fire Mage DPS Spell Summary — Shadowlands 9.0.2

If you are new to Fire, it is recommended you start here. If you have played this spec before or have already achieved a level of comfort playing this spec in a practical environment, it is recommended you skip this section and move on to the rest of the guide.

Keep in mind, some spells might be much easier to use via macros, or are more easily used in combination with other spells. Visit the macro page below to get a good idea of such macros.

Note that this page simply lists all the different abilities, assuming you are at max level. If you are leveling, check out our dedicated Mage Leveling page, which has detailed information on when you unlock all of these abilities.

Mana is your primary resources, though it has little to no impact on your main rotation. It is not realistically possible to run out of Mana without excessive use of Spellsteal, and therefore you do not need to worry about your Mana levels as a general rule.

Mastery: Ignite is your Mastery. All direct-damage caused by Fireball, Pyroblast, Fire Blast, Scorch, Meteor, and Flamestrike (see Basic Abilities to learn more about these spells) will cause your target to burn for a percentage of that damage over 9 seconds. Hitting a target with Ignite already active will add the new Ignite damage to the already existing Ignite and then distribute itself over 10 seconds.

These abilities are available no matter what talents you chose, and form the bread and butter of this specialization.

Fireball is your main filler spell. You will be casting it a lot to fish for Heating Up procs.

Fire Blast has 2 charges (3 with Flame On talented), and always critically strikes when used. This ability is not on the Global Cooldown, and can be cast while casting other abilities. It has a 12-second recharge. This ability is mainly used to generate an automatic Critical Strike following Heating Up proccing off one of your spell critical strikes, immediately forcing Hot Streak.

Pyroblast is our main nuke. It has an extremely long cast time, so it should only be used as a pre-cast prior to the fight or when Hot Streak is active.

Phoenix Flames is the only way for a Fire Mage to spread its Mastery: Ignite. When using Phoenix Flames, the Ignite on your primary target will spread to 8 nearby targets. Additionally, Phoenix Flames can crit and contributes to Heating Up and Hot Streak. It also does decent damage to the primary target and a little bit of AoE damage.

Flamestrike is our main nuke on cleave and AoE. It has a long cast time, but can be made instant via Hot Streak.

Dragon's Breath is an instant cast spell that does moderate damage and disorients targets in a cone up to 12 yards away from the caster. Dragon's Breath should only be used on 6+ targets, or for the disorient effect.

Scorch is an extremely weak spell that can be cast while moving.

To learn how to use these abilities together in your rotation, read the rotation part of our guide below.

Fire Mage has several important procs that are very important to the normal rotation. These procs can almost be considered as being your real "primary resource".

Heating Up is a passive that will proc any time your direct-damage spells score a Critical Strike.

Hot Streak is a passive that procs after you score a second critical strike in a row following Heating Up. This passive makes your next cast instant, and doubles the Mastery: Ignite value from the spell. We will nearly always use this proc on Pyroblast (see Basic Abilities), however, it can be also used on Flamestrike.

Additionally, some talents like Pyroclasm give a Fire Mage additional procs. See the talents and build section for in-depth explanations.

Combustion is our DPS cooldown. It lasts 10 seconds, and increases your Mastery (the bonus damage generated via Mastery: Ignite) by an amount equal to 50% of your Critical Strike rating as well as increasing our Critical Strike by 100%. This ability is off of the Global Cooldown, and it can be cast while you are casting other spells. Since this ability drastically increases our damage output via Ignite, and allows us to chain a lot of instant cast spells, due to giving 100% Critical Strike (and thus always proccing Heating Up) it is extremely strong in both single target and AoE scenarios.

Time Warp increases Haste by 30% for 40 seconds for all party and raid members. This ability debuffs everyone with a debuff that prevents the possibility of benefiting from Time Warp, Heroism, and Bloodlust for the next 10 minutes.

Below are listed some of the most impactful defensive and utility abilities a Fire Mage has to offer to a raid or dungeon group.

Ice Block is one of the best defensive tools in the game. It causes you to be completely immune to any form of damage, debuffs, or otherwise negative effects. It can be used to save yourself from dying to incoming damage, but in many cases, it can also solo raid mechanics that otherwise need multiple people.

Cauterize gives Fire Mages a safety net from mistakes. Any hit that would kill you, will instead proc Cauterize, healing you and then burning most of the health it healed you over 6 seconds afterwards, once per 5 minutes. The debuff can be removed via Ice Block, although simply outhealing it is also possible. Addiitionally, casting Blazing Barrier right after Cauterize procs will also absorb most of the damage from Cauterize allowing you to live. Keep in mind, that if the hit that would normally kill you does more than 200% of your total health, Cauterize will proc but you will still die instantly, so it will not save you from everything.

Arcane Intellect buffs the entire raid, giving them more Intellect. Mages are the only class that give this buff, so most raids will want at least 1 Mage, to ensure the raid has this buff.

Remove Curse can be used to remove Curses from your raid or party.

Alter Time can be used as both a defensive and a mobility tool. Ten seconds after casting this ability, or after pressing it a second time, you will be returned to your location and health from when you cast it. One common usage is to activate it right before a big hit, and then re-activating it after the big hit to immediately heal back to full health.

Mirror Image spawns 3 copies nearby which will attack your enemies. While you have at least one copy alive, you will take 20% less damage. Any direct damage will you take will cause one of the copies to be removed. These copies can not be controlled, but they do have a health bar and can die. Although the copies do some damage, it is primarily a defensive ability, as the damage they do is very low.

Aside from the basic toolkit, you will come across new abilities via your Talents, depending on the ones you choose. We will outline the active abilities here.

Blast Wave deals a low amount of damage around yourself, knocking them back and slowing them by 70%. Although this ability does do damage, it is not a DPS tool, but purely a crowd-control / defensive tool, due to how little damage is does.

Focus Magic can be used to put a buff on a friendly player that will cause that player to have 5% increased critical strike chance. Whenever they critically strike, your own critical strike will also be increased by 5% for 10 seconds.

Rune of Power places a small zone on the ground, which increases the damage you do by 40% for 10 seconds. This ability has a 40-second cooldown. Additionally, it also drops automatically when you cast Combustion. The size of the damage buff is a bit larger than the circle under your character, and can be identified by the glow around the rune.

Ring of Frost allows you to spawn a relatively big Ring of Frost in a targeted location, that will incapacitate enemies for 10 seconds. Only enemies in the actual outer section of the circle get incapacitated.

Living Bomb puts a damage over time effect on the primary target, exploding when it times out. When it explodes, it spreads to all nearby enemies. This spreading effect cannot spread further than once. Since Living Bomb spreads to nearby targets, and all targets explode dealing damage to all targets, Living Bomb scales extremely well into high target counts, but is generally weak on low target counts.

Meteor calls down a meteor that after a short delay will land at the targeted location, dealing initial damage and leaving a pool of fire on the ground that deals damage over time. The initial hit splits damage between all targets it hits, but the damage over time effect does full damage to every target.

Kyrian: Radiant Spark does some initial damage and applies a DoT that does damage over 10 seconds. Additionally, it causes your direct damage spells to do 10% increased damage, stacking every time you hit the target with a direct spell, up to 40%. After reaching 4 stacks, the effect ends.

Venthyr: Mirrors of Torment applies a 3 stack debuff to the target for 25 seconds. Whenever the target does a normal attack or casts a spell / ability, it removes 1 stack from the target and does a relatively small amount of damage, slowing their movement speed and cast speed by 15%. This can trigger at most once every 6 seconds. When the final stack is removed, the target takes a larger hit, rooting them and silencing them for 4 seconds. Additionally, every time a stack is consumed, the cooldown of Fire Blast is reduced by 4 seconds.

Necrolord: Deathborne is a 3 minute cooldown that transforms you into a skeletal mage for 20 seconds, causing Fireball (and Frostbolt) to hit up to 2 additional targets. Additionally, it also increases your spell damage by 10% while active. The extra Fireballs spawned from Deathborne can crit, and contribute to Heating Up / Hot Streak.

Night Fae: Shifting Power is a channelled spell that deals average damage to all enemies around you for 4 seconds. Additionally, it reduces all your cooldowns by 2.5 seconds every second, for a total of 10 seconds. This works for pretty much every single cooldown, including talented abilities like Meteor and Rune of Power. It does not work for items, however.