PvE Fire Mage Rotation, Cooldowns, & Abilities

PvE Fire Mage Rotation, Abilities & Cooldowns

Fire Mages have a fairly simple-to-follow rotation for both single-target encounters and AoE pulls.

Buffs to Maintain

  1. Arcane Intellect or Arcane Brilliance for increased mana
  2. Molten Armor for increased DPS or Mage Armor for additional mana regeneration

Single-Target Rotation

  1. Ideally, we want to use Scorch 5 times (If you are the only Fire Mage in the raid – if not, coordinate with the others to get the Improved Scorch debuff to 5 stacks)
  2. Since Improved Scorch lasts for 30 seconds without you having to use Scorch before then, we are able to use Fireball, with a 3.0 second cast time with Improved Fireball, a maximum of 9 times before we’d have to use Scorch again to maintain the debuff. The actual number of casts you’ll be able to perform depends on your latency.
  3. Rinse and repeat!

Ideally, we want to use Combustion and Icy Veins in conjunction with any on-use trinkets we have to increase our damage output to the maximum potential.

Area of Effect Rotation

  1. It’s best to start with Flamestrike since it has initial damage followed by a Damage-over-Time (DoT) effect for 8 seconds
  2. Follow this up with Blizzard
  3. Rinse and repeat!

Note: While Blizzard is affected by the AoE cap in TBC, Flamestrike is not. While it does have a 30-second cooldown, it’s also worth noting that Blast Wave can be a great addition to your AoE damage on a pull-by-pull basis. As well, Dragon’s Breath can be a great addition to an AoE pull – just keep in mind that if you jump into melee range to do this, and your tank doesn’t have sufficient threat, you are likely to pull aggro and be attacked, and in heroics or raids, that means you’re likely going to die, painfully.

 

About the Author

Kurathis

Long-time WoW enthusiast who can't say no to a good-old poutine.
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arcsine
arcsine(@arcsine)
2 years ago

I’d suggest 7 or 8 fireballs then 1 scorch, just in case the scorch is resisted…. 9 puts you on a fine line with the GCD to be able to get that last scorch off (and if you have lag, forget about it). For AOE, Flamestrike + Blastwave + Arcane Explosion Spam if you can stay close enough…. that should be higher dps than flamestrike + blizzard.

arcsine
arcsine(@arcsine)
Reply to  Kurathis
2 years ago

I agree with the melee threat issue you’re talking about. 😉 But the fireball rotation can be tricky even if you have to move just once, the 9 fireballs might cause the scorch to drop off (27 seconds if you are a perfect caster, which most aren’t). I’ll stick with my 8 -> 1 scorch, rinse & repeat. Hit cap means there is still a 1% chance to resist and my luck in WoW is terrible… so I’ll get that at the least opportune time. The punishment for accidentally dropping the stacks off is pretty high. Thanks for the guide thus far. Very useful.

mellyor
mellyor
Reply to  Kurathis
2 years ago

Casters still have a 1% miss chance even if hit capped.
You can still get a Scorch resisted, thus loosing the debuff

Mmurrggll
Mmurrggll
2 years ago

Just curious, where does Dragon’s Breath come into play? It’s recommended to spec it but not mentioned in the rotation. Thanks!

Jinkees
Jinkees
Reply to  Kurathis
2 years ago

Should you downrank scorch to keep it active (Rank 1 to maintain Imp Scorch) or is that a notable loss in dps?

Khaedwyn
Khaedwyn
Reply to  Jinkees
2 years ago

Scorch doesn’t suffer from increased cast time through higher ranks – Rank 9 scorch (max rank) has a 1.5 second cast time. This is the same as Rank 1 scorch, which also has a 1.5 second cast time. Any haste/cast time modifiers that affect Rank 9 scorch will also affect Rank 1 scorch, and so it is NEVER worth it to use R1 scorch over max rank.

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