by Hald Twinpack

May 6, 2024

Cataclysm Classic Fire Mage PvE Guide

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This Cataclysm Classic Fire Mage PvE Guide is a consolidated resource for Fire Mages. It will address all key points Fire Mages need to understand or be aware of.

At various points in this post, we’ll make reference to “Patchwerk Style Fights”. This refers to fights that have little-to-no movement, no adds, and nothing else of note other than simply “Stand still and DPS the boss.” Argaloth is a good example of a Patchwerk-style fight for Cataclysm.

Firstly, why play a Fire Mage? Let’s answer that by taking a quick look at the strengths and weaknesses of the spec itself.

Cataclysm Classic Fire Mage: Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths

Excellent DPS Mobility. You can cast Scorch, Living Bomb, Pyroblast!, Blastwave and Flamestrike all on the run. Make sure you take maximum advantage of this, it’s a key strength of a Fire Mage on movement heavy encounters. Always cast something while moving: while moving to position, while grouping up or spreading out, while avoiding boss mechanics, while kiting – even while mid-air after being knocked back. Just don’t stop casting something!

Strong AOE Power. Impact, Impact-Combustion, Blastwave, Improved Flamestrike, Pyromaniac: They all work together to make you a powerful AOE caster. Even while nuking a single target, Impact will allow you to splash your DOTs to nearby targets. Take advantage of this whenever possible.

Ability to cast even while OOM. Improved Scorch makes the spell totally free, so you can always cast it regardless of your mana level. A Scorch rotation isn’t optimal DPS, but it’s much better DPS than an OOM caster who can’t cast anything.

Weaknesses

Crit Dependency: Crit is the heart of the Fire spec: Hot Streak Pyroblasts are the result of crits, Master of Elements restores mana after Crits, Flashburn mastery is more useful when spells Crit and leaves an Ignite, Combustion is a more powerful/easily used cooldown when you crit. Crits make Fire Mages strong, but it’s also our Achilles Heel. Without many Crits, especially in Cataclysm, when Combat Ratings are much lower across the board, the Fire spec suffers.

Vulnerable to RNG and a higher DPS Variance: Due to the aforementioned notes regarding Crit Dependancy, Fire can have a high DPS variance. It can be greatly affected by strings of bad RNG, especially when getting unlucky with Crits.

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Cataclysm Classic Fire Mage PvE Guide: The Basics

Gearing a Fire Mage in Cataclysm Classic

The most important initial step to correctly gearing a Fire Mage is to understand how we value various Combat Ratings. Our understanding of Combat Ratings will influence the gear we choose to wear, enchants, gems, meta-gems… everything.

Combat Ratings

At level 85, the following values reflect how much of a given rating is required for +1%:

Notes: Hit Cap, Meta-Gem, Enchants

While gearing, you’ll need to be aware of the following situations outlined below.

Enchants and Item Enhancements

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Gemming

Intellect is always at the forefront of our mind when it comes to Gemming: Fire Mages aggressively prioritise gemming for Intellect on gear. The following gems are at our disposal:

So, should we always just gem for pure +40 Intellect? Not necessarily. Sometimes the socket bonus will indeed be strong enough such that +20/20 gem combinations will be superior. Lets look at three examples:

In every example above, notice how Intellect is always present. Intellect is always at the forefront of a Fire Mage’s mind when it comes to Gemming. No non-intellect gems are even considered. The “Relative Stat Values” table above will help players ascertain whether any given combinations of X stats will beat Y Intellect. Sometimes they will, sometimes they won’t. There is one exception for Engineering Helms, which use Cogwheels. Given that there is no Intellect Cogwheel, you can use a Hit Cogwheel instead. (Or Crit / Haste / Mastery if the Hit is unnecessary).

Cataclysm Classic Fire Mage PvE Guide: Speccing a Fire Mage

Improved Scorch was picked up, though be mindful that the talent is now classified as “Situationally Recommended” instead of “Essential”. The value of this talent now largely depends on the type of content you’re doing: Longer heroic encounters, encounters with heavy AOE-mana demands, or encounters where Evocation can’t be used or is difficult to use – will render Improved Scorch still desirable. For other encounters or content, this talent could be safely skipped.

Arcane Concentration was skipped. While this talent was a minor DPS gain (at best) prepatch, it’s arguably not worth any points at all now – after recent mana spell cost reductions.

No points in Improved Fire Blast were taken. This means you’ll need to be within 30 yards to use Impact, which is the base Fire Blast range. Whether players deem this range to be unacceptably low for AOE fights is highly subjective.

Blazing Speed is skipped. PvP talent.

Molten Shields is skipped, but you may wish to allocate spare points to it. Situational, minor talent. Might seem some very limited use in specific encounters, but nothing of note.

Cauterize is picked up. During new Heroic and Progression content, this talent is extremely useful. Cauterize is not only passive, but on a 1 minute cooldown. Remember that Cauterize can also situaionally be used for DPS, in addition to its survival passive.

Pyromaniac is picked up, but be mindful that it’s still a very situational talent.

Advanced Gearing Notes

Haste: Additional DOT Ticks

Many Spell DOT’s gain additional ticks at specific levels of Haste. For Fire Mages, the levels of Haste required are:

DoT spells get their first extra tick when you have an amount of haste that would theoretically grant you only half an extra tick. For every extra tick after the first, you need the additional amount of haste which would grant you an extra DoT tick. As an example: Living Bomb and Pyroblast each tick 4 times. That means they require 12.5% for their first additional tick. For the 2nd, 3rd and 4th additional ticks they require: 37.5%, 62.5% and 87.5% haste respectively.

The first additional tick of Living Bomb, Pyroblast (Dot) and Frostfire Bolt (Dot) requires 516 Haste Rating. This is only ~4.022% from gear. You might be thinking, “You just said we need 12.5% Raid Buffed. So why do we only need ~4.022% from gear?” The answer is two-fold:

1: Haste Raid Buffs and Haste Talents: During raids, you’ll have 5% extra haste from any caster hybrid and 3% haste from the Netherwind Presence talent.

2: Haste is Multiplicative: You might be thinking, “The numbers don’t add up. If you need 12.5% Haste Raid Buffed for an additional tick – why isn’t the calculation simply 5% from Raid Buffs + 3% from Talents + 4.5% from Gear = 12.5% Raid Buffed?” The answer is: You cant simply add Haste together liks this, because Haste is not additive. This is how the value for Haste Required from Gear is derived:

Haste is is multiplicative. To solve for how much Haste Rating is needed from Gear to reach 12.5% Raid Buffed:

1.03 (Netherwind Presence Talent) x 1.05 (Hybrid Haste Raid Buff) x 1.xx (Haste Required from Gear) = 1.125

Gear = 1.040221914008322

1% Haste = 128.057 Rating required

4.0221914008322 x 128.057 = 515.06976 or 516 rating required

Due to Haste being multiplicative, we indeed only need ~4.022% from gear after factoring in Raid Buffs and Talents, not 4.5% (such as if it were additive).

The table below displays the Haste values required for additional ticks of Living Bomb, Frostfire Bolt (Glyphed) and Pyroblast (Dot) in a variety of Scenarios:

The table below displays the Haste values required for additional ticks of Combustion using the most common scenario only:

The “Soft Haste Cap” is a term thrown around often that Fire Mages should be aware of. The term “Soft Cap” itself has been taken out of context by many players and is now a source of misinformation. It refers to the specific level of Haste required such that a given fire DOT gains one additional tick over its duration. However, Haste still has a similar value before and after the ‘soft cap’. It’s just that reaching the soft cap itself results in an additional free tick – and thus a small increase in DPS. The % of Haste required varies, depending on the DOT in question and the amount of additional ticks being referred to.

When players use the term “Soft Haste Cap” – they most commonly are referring to the amount of Haste rating required from gear to reach +12.5% Haste raid buffed in the most common scenario: With 3/3 Netherwind Presence and the 5% Raid Haste Buff. This value is 516, when LB / Pyroblast (Dot) and FFB (Dot) gain one additional tick.

Players may also use the “Haste Cap” term for a variety of other applications. For example, the term “Second Combustion Soft Cap” would refer to 15% Haste – which is the Haste value needed to gain a second additional tick of Combustion.

Crit: Ignite Munching

The oft-referred to “Ignite Munching” is a phenomenon that results in less (or in rare cases, more) Ignite damage than would be otherwise predicted.

There are three reasons for its occurance: simultaneous criticals, criticals that occur shortly before an ignite tick, and criticals that occur when the ignite debuff’s remaining duration is greater than four seconds. The two former causes are caused by old, nigh-unfixable limitations within the game engine, and the latter is to do with a recent change in how DoT effects are refreshed.

As the name states, simultaneous criticals is when two spells crit simultaneously on a given target – usually, these times are logged as the same to a thousanth of a second. Most commonly, the spells responsible are either a fireball with a queued hot streak, or a scorch with a queued fire blast. The result is that only the second logged spell’s damage being considered for ignite – the first spell’s damage is completely ignored with respect to ignite. In a log, this might look like:

[00:16.414] Spell Crit #1 on Target 
[00:16.414] Spell Crit #2 on Target

Here, ignite would be calculated only considering Spell Crit #2’s damage.

An obvious solution would be to prefer against queuing spells with identical travel times, but since a fire mage’s myriad or DoTs can crit, it will still happen. Indeed, with relatively low crit rates (compared to late-WotLK where this munching was the majority of lost ignite damage) this is not as prominent as it was – but it is still a hefty chunk of damage lost.

As long as simultaneous events are problematic in the game as a whole, this type of munching will always occur. However, it could be alleviated by changing the travel time on certain spells – if pyroblast was slightly slower or faster than a fireball, for example.

The next cause of munching is based on ignite’s ‘talent delay’ – a small delay between a given spell critical and the actual ignite application. In a log, ignite applying might look something like this:

[00:23.409] Spell Crit on Target [00:24.158] Ignite Refreshed on TargetThe time between the actual crit and the ignite applying is the server verifying that, yes, your character has the talent necessary before actually applying the debuff. Proc-based talents from all classes suffer this ~0.5s delay. This delay isn’t a huge problem for other class-based procs, but strange things with ignite happen with certain sequences of events:

[00:13.872] Spell Crit on Target 
[00:14.381] Ignite Tick 
[00:14.461] Ignite refreshed on Target

In this situation, the Ignite Tick is a ‘free’ tick – since it falls between a valid crit refreshing the ignite (verifying that the mage has the ignite talent and then calculating its damage pool) and the actual refresh event, the damage it deals isn’t subtracted from the total – or, more accurately, the total is ‘rolled back’ to when the crit occurred.

There is a rarer variation of this where the following happens:

[00:30.064] Spell Crit #1 on Target 
[00:30.097] Spell Crit #2 on Target 
[00:30.512] Ignite refreshed on Target (from Spell Crit #1) 
[00:30.902] Ignite Tick 
[00:30.902] Ignite refreshed on Target (from Spell Crit #2)

The difference in this situation is that there’s a crit and refresh sandwiching the crit in the last example. The result is that the Ignite Tick does damage as calculated considering Spell Crit #1 – then ‘rolls back’ the total to before either crit occurred and adds Spell Crit #2 instead.

Both of these scenarios are unavoidable, especially with DoTs ticking. I believe the first bug adds a non-trivial amount of damage, but I can’t say much about the second—it is quite rare and a favorable outcome when the alternative would be the next type of munching.

The last type of munching is a side-effect of the new Cataclysm DoT system.

Ignite extends past four seconds because of the new DoT refresh mechanic. This mechanic is present on other player-cast DoTs like living bomb and corruption, and was implemented to make clipping the DoT impossible. For example, if, before 4.0.1, if you were to refresh living bomb right before it was about to tick, perhaps at 3.1s, living bomb would refresh to 12s, and would tick 3s later at 9s – the time between those two ticks was effectively 5.9s; after 4.0.1, the duration of living bomb would refresh to 12.1s, tick at 12s, and continue to tick as normal.

Following this new system, ignite’s behavior is as follows:
– Ignite’s initial application will be 4s in duration: 2 ticks, one at 2s, one at 0s. Ignite’s total damage pool is divided between these two ticks.
– Any refreshes at any time will refresh ignite to 6s in (max) duration (current duration is ignite’s current duration mod 2 plus 4s): 3 ticks, one at 4s, one at 2s, one at 0s. Ignite’s damage pool is divided evenly between these three ticks.
– Ignite must be below 4s in current duration to accept any new refresh events.

To Illustrate:

[00:54.436] Spell Crit #1 on Target
[00:54.819] Ignite Refreshed on Target 
[00:55.163] Spell Crit #2 on Target 
[00:56.354] Ignite Tick on Target

Spell Crit #2 is munched in this situation.

This means that ignite will, on average, accept only one crit every two seconds. This is the other major source of ignite munching – DoTs critting at inopportune times and multiple crits in a small time-frame.

It is possible to diminish this effect by attempting to space spells out, but DoTs will make this form of munching inevitable.

This ‘limitation,’ while seemingly arbitrary, is more about how ignite evenly splits its damage between its ticks and how the new system requires a DoT tick every period without interruption. To further refresh ignite would require that either the duration be set to 6s or the duration to arbitrarily lengthen as crits occured.

Two possible solutions might be to only add the new damage to ignite without affecting its duration when the current duration is over 4s, or to have its ticks not spread evenly, but each one representing only crits that happened in the past four seconds. As most other systematic problems in WoW, I’m keen to believe this is either old and hard-to-update, or not a high priority (or more likely, both).

There is one final anomaly. When spells simultaneously crit on a target without ignite present:

[00:16.414] Spell Crit #1 on Target 
[00:16.414] Spell Crit #2 on Target 
[00:16.938] Ignite #1 Applied to Target 
[00:16.938] Ignite #2 Applied to Target

The resulting ignite, as expected, only considers Spell Crit #2. However, because of the simultaneous ignite application events, it ticks as hard as a 4s ignite would (damage pool/2) over 6s – an extra tick – 50% more damage than expected.

Do note that this is still a damage loss so long as Spell Crit #1 is more than 50% of Spell Crit #2.

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Playing a Fire Mage: Finer Details

Combustion

Managing Combustion well is an important part of optimal play for a Fire Mage.

How does Combustion actually work? The tooltip states, “Instantly deals X to Y Fire damage and creates a new periodic fire effect on the target, lasting 10 sec and dealing the same damage per time as all your existing periodic fire effects”.

Combustion sums up the individual DPS of all your existing DOTs on a target, creates a new debuff with that value, and has the new debuff tick every second for a 10 second total duration. Remember that the wording in DOT tooltips, or what a DOT ticks for, is not necessarily its DPS value. If a given DOT does “1500 damage every 3 seconds” or “5000 damage over 10 seconds” – they still both tick for value: 500 DPS. This DPS value is what Combustion combines when consolidating DOTs, and to calculate the new consolidated DOT’s value. Example below:

ombustion example. If you have:

• Ignite ticking for 500 dps
• Pyroblast ticking for 200 dps
• Living Bomb ticking for 300 dps
  = Combustion would create a new DOT which ticks for 1000 dps over a 10 second period, for 10 000 total damage.
• Combustion can be spread via Impact. Impact-Combustion can be incredibly powerful.
• Combustion damage is modified by the Flashburn Mastery.
• Combustion consolidates DOT’s from: Pyroblast, Ignite, Living Bomb, Glyphed Frostfire Bolt. The damage-over-time portion of Flamestrike does not leave a debuff on affected targets, therefore it does not interact with Combustion.

When should you use Combustion? Firstly, be mindful that a strong Ignite is the most important contributor to a strong Combustion.

Use Combustion when an Ignite is on the target – at the very least. The ideal Combustion, however, will have all Fire Dot’s present: Living Bomb, Pyroblast (Dot), Frostfire Bolt DOT (only if FFB is your primary nuke) in addition to a strong Ignite from Pyroblast or Fireball crits. At level 85 with lower crit ratings, however, it can be difficult to get all these stars to align: Sometimes those spells just won’t Crit when you need them to. And you might not have the luxory of being able to wait, either.

With this in mind: Avoid using Combustion without Ignite present, even if it means you cast fewer Combustions over the course of the fight. The preferred Ignite is one from a big Pyroblast or Fireball crit. However – if you’re desperate for an Ignite and running out of available time to wait – you can even try to fish for one via Scorch. Ignite is what make Combustion worth casting, even if you need to wait a while after each 2 minute cooldown to get it up. How long should you wait? Should you hardcast Pyroblast, Fireball? Should you fish for Ignites via Scorch? All of that is dependant on the unique needs of the given encounter you’re referring to. Some encounters give you plenty of time to set up optimal conditions for AOE (Heroic Halfus Wyrmbreaker). Other encounters give you very little time to set up optimal conditions for necessary AOE (Heroic Maloriak: Green Phase).

Be mindful that Combustion can be susceptible to “Ignite Munching”. Read the Ignite Munching section carefully for more details on why and how this happens. Simply getting a big Crit and using Combustion shortly thereafter – might not give the Combustion results you expected – if said Crit has been munched.

Mana Management

Preface

At the start of Cataclysm: The Fireball spell cost 16% of Base Mana. This has since been lowered to 9% several months after release. That initial, high 16% cost of Fireball required Fire Mages to very carefully manage their mana or risk running OOM only several minutes into an encounter. Thus, this rather lengthy “Mana Management” section was needed. Many of the points and behaviour below may no longer be necessary in standard practise now, as Mages can simply spam Fireball without fear of running OOM. However, it will still benefit readers to be familiar with exactly how Fire Mages managed their mana during the first few months of release. Several situations can and still will require you to do the same, even if they aren’t too common. These may include:

• Any time Evocation is interrupted
• Fights with Mana Drains
• Fights with unusually heavy AOE requirements
• Unusually Long Fights

Be sure to familiarize yourself with the section below. This is your backup plan for when things go wrong or don’t go to plan. You want to ensure that your Mana can last under even the most trying of circumstances. The original “Mana Management” section is below.

Fire Mages in Cataclysm need to manage their mana carefully.

Failure to do this will result in going OOM early, often – and poor DPS performance. This section will go into thorough details on Mana Management. This is one of the most important parts of this post that readers need to come away with an understanding of.

Fireball is the high DPS nuke, yet unsustainable to cast for long periods of time. You’ll OOM yourself after several minutes if you try, long before the encounter ends. Scorch can be cast indefinetely due to its free mana cost, but it’s lower DPS. So you can’t just cast Scorch forever either. So what do you do? The answer is: Use both. Somewhere between these two extremes you need to find the balance for a given encounter. If you get the balance right – you’ll make your mana the necessary duration and avoid going OOM – and still deliver maximum DPS possible.

This is the basic idea: Get used to casting Scorch and Fireball. But there’s a few finer details on how best to actually go about this. The differing Fire Mage rotations can be described as the following:

To play like a Fire Mage, good advice is to start thinking like an Arcane Mage. Mana is DPS. More Mana means more DPS. Unused Mana means wasted DPS. Spend your mana in the most effective way.

With more mana is available, you can cast your Burn Rotation for longer and more frequently. This means we should be using every mana resource available. Use Mana Gems on cooldown. Use Evocation. Accept innervates from any friendly Druids. Every ounce of mana you get will let you cast your Burn Rotation a bit longer.

Your goal is to end each fight with exactly zero mana. However, it’s not always possible to achieve this in practise. This doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve failed or done something wrong: Unique encounter needs might mean the optimal way to end a fight is indeed with excess mana, simply because you had no other way to burn it off.

Readers might be thinking, “Can I just cast my Burn Rotation until i’m OOM, then use Scorch to regen to full again – then alternate between the two?” The answer is you can most certainly try this, but it’s not possible nor optimal in many situations. Here are several scenarios which won’t allow you to do this:

• Myriads of Encounter specific mechanics. (Running a debuff out, AOE’ing adds, running to stack up or spread out, jumping between platforms, avoiding obstacles, Boss weakened phases)
• Movement
• Adds may spawn, requiring Burn Rotation immediately (You don’t want to be stuck on the Scorch regen side at the time)
• A Boss might apply a powerful spellstealable buff at random times. You want to have a Mana Reserve ready to immediately switch to Fireball.

Encounter mechanics will force you to constantly swap between Burn and Hover rotations. You cant plan around simply having the perfect rotation mapped out beforehand, which would only work on a “Patchwerk style fight”. But lets try: Lets walk through a Hypothetical 5 minute Patchwerk style fight. We’ll try to map our Mana and Rotations out perfectly beforehand:

For our 5 minute fight, with all these unrealistic conditions attached, our strategy might work. But can we rely on doing this for the majority of encounters? No.

If this boss had a movement phase, adds that spawned, a debuff you had to run out, void zones you had to move from, AOE that was required, a “Weakened Phase”, and if we’re using powerful On-use trinkets, glove/cape enchants – suddenly all our neat plans go out the window. There’s just so many variables which could force your plans to change. Therefore:

Fire Mages need to react dynamically to the unique needs of each encounter, and even to differing attempts on the same encounter. A static, pre-planned rotation must only be treated as a guide – be ready to deviate at any moment – for a magnitude of reasons.

There are several other ways one can attempt to approach mana at 85:

Primary Nuke: Fireball VS Frostfire Bolt

Fire Mages can cast either Fireball or Frostfire Bolt as primary nuke in their rotation. The DPS difference is minor, but Fireball is theoretically superior by a small margin. Why’s the difference rather small?

• Fireball and Frostfire Bolt cost the same amount of mana
• Fireball and (Glyphed) Frostfire Bolt do the same amount of initial damage

The only other difference stems from Glyph of Fireball and Glyph of Frostfire. Glyph of Frostfire Bolt adds a 3% damage over 12 seconds DOT (stacks 3 times) whereas Glyph of Fireball adds 5% crit.

The periodic damage of Glyphed Frostfire Bolt can crit, which leaves an Ignite. This is a very important point in practise because of Ignite Munching. More frequent Crits from minor, weak DOT’s such as FFB – result in more opportunities for Ignite Munching. Be sure to read the Ignite Munching section for an understanding of why this can be very detrimental to Fire Mages. Theoretically, FFB vs Fireball might be deemed as an “X% difference” by sims – but remember that Ignite Munching can and will exacerbate that difference – which many sims do not account for.

Therefore, we can sum up the primary nuke debate by saying: Fireball as primary nuke is better. Not by a huge margin, but enough to convince most players seeking Optimal Play to use Fireball over FFB.

Flame Orb

Flame Orb is a Cataclysm Mage Fire spell that can be learned . All mages learn Flame Orb at level 81. The Tooltip reads, “Launches a Flame Orb forward from the Mage’s position, dealing X Fire damage every second to the closest enemy target for 15 secs. 1 minute cooldown, 40 yard range.”

Flame Orb has a high spell coefficient, which makes it a powerful 1 minute cooldown.

Flame Orb does not AOE as it travels, instead it attacks the single closest target. At the end of its travel path, it can be talented to explode via Fire Power. The Flame Orb spell is more accurately described as a single target DPS cooldown which can provide a single AOE pulse at the end of its duration.

When cast, Flame Orb travels directly forward 40 yards then dissappears if no target was in range to attack. The Flame Orb travels forward very fast initially, but slows down greatly when it begins to attack a target in range. Flame Orb takes roughly 5 seconds to travel 40 yards. If cast with an object in the way, such as a wall, Flame Orb will still exist for the same 5 second duration, but will still dissappear afterwards if no target was in range to attack.

Although Flame Orb does steady damage per second, it’s not considered a DOT. Therefore, it does not directly interact with Flashburn or Combustion. However, the damage Flame Orb does can critically hit, leaving an Ignite, which can interact with those mechanics. It does not gain any additional ticks with increased levels of Haste.

Cataclysm Classic Fire Mage PvE Guide: Talents and Glyphs

Fire Talents

Arcane and Frost Subspec Talents

Glyphs

Additional Notes on Specific Talents

• Hot Streak VS Improved Hot Streak: What’s the difference?
  • How does Tier 3 Hot Streak work? The non-mathy answer: It ‘smooths’ Hot Streak out, by making sure it’s not too rare at low levels of crit, but isn’t too common at high levels of crit. The bonus from T3 Hot Streak scales inversely with your crit. For example, if you have a low 10% crit chance, “Hot Streak” may have an 80% chance to proc on a single crit. But if you have a high 30% crit chance, “Hot Streak” might only have a 5% chance to proc on a single crit.
  • As your Crit rate increases (Via gear upgrades, raid buffs etc) the bonus from Tier 3 Hot Streak is steadily reduced. This is a hidden mechanic, neither the game nor talent pane tells you “Hot Streak” scales dynamically like this.
  • Although the T3 Hot Streak bonus scales down with increasing crit, the chance of a T4 Hot Streak scales upward with increasing crit. The two talents complement each other, working together to “smooth” Hot Streak out for all levels of crit.
• Pyroblast VS Pyroblast! – What’s the difference?
  • Pyroblast! (With the “!” at the end) is another version of the spell with the same name. Pyroblast! is what you cast when under the effects of the the Hot Streak or Improved Hot Streak talents. Pyroblast! has a 0 mana base cost and is instant cast. Two important points to note:
    • Because Pyroblast! has a 0 mana base cost, it gives no mana back via Master of Elements.
    • Pyroblast! does not consume Clearcasting (via Arcane Concentration)
      If you attempt to hard cast the 3.5 second version of this spell, you’re casting “Pyroblast” instead.
• Pyromaniac
  • Pyromaniac is a highly situational talent. It’s potentially excellent for encounters where you have 3+ mobs present, and completely useless on encounters with 1 or 2 mobs only. This is why you’ll sometimes see builds or players suggesting Pyromaniac be skipped from the standard talent build. Those builds essentially state the talent is too situational for ‘standard build’ consideration. For any fight where Pyromaniac gets compelling use, however, those builds will respec to include it again.
• Cauterize
  • Cauterize can be extremely useful. The first use is obvious: It can save you from Death, like Guardian Angel. A one minute cooldown is very short for this type of effect, and useful during difficult heroic and raid progression encounters. Being passive makes it even more powerful.
• The other, perhaps surprising use of Cauterize, is for DPS. You can use the talent aggressively for a surprisingly large DPS gain. Three examples of where this is possible are Algalon, Festergut and Sapphiron. All of these fights have ‘Big Bomb’ type mechanics which will instantly kill you, unless you perform various mechanics (Enter Black Holes on Algalon, get Spores on Festergut, LOS behind Tombs on Sapphiron). However you can use Cauterize to ignore all of these mechanics completely. On Festergut, there are 2 Pungent Blights, and you could Iceblock one and use Cauterize for the other. On Algalon, there are several Big Bangs and you can ignore them all and just let Cauterize save you while you continue to DPS. Even fights such as Sapphiron (Back in Naxx) you can ignore every Frost Bomb and let Cauterize handle your survival, and continue to happily DPS while everyone can’t – because they must perform survival mechanics dictated by the encounter. On Kel’thuzad, don’t bother moving from Void Fissures – let Cauterize handle it. You’ll still want to use Mage Ward and/or a Healthstone to help survive afterwards, as Cauterize will take you to low levels of health as you burn.
• Impact and Improved Fire Blast
  • Impact spreads DOTs with their current remaining duration. If you have 1 second left on your Ignite and Impact Fire Blast spread it, all affected targets will also receive an ignite with 1 second left.
    Most Fire Spells in Cataclysm have a 40 yard base range, except Fire Blast, which is 30 yards
    Impact relies on Fire Blast to spread DOTs
  • You need to be mindful of what range you deem is acceptable for Impact usage. If you place 0/1/2 points in Improved Fire Blast, you’ll need to be within 30/35/40 yards to take advantage of Impact. Both points in Improved Fire Blast are required if you wish to bring Impact use range in line with other Fire spells.
  • You’ll notice that some talent builds will place any of 0, 1 or both points in Improved Fire Blast. When talking about range talents: what players deem necessary will be very subjective.

Cataclysm: Key Mage Changes

Current Fire Problems and Concerns

Conclusion

By understanding the nuances of spell priority, cooldown management, and resource conservation, Fire Mages can unleash devastating firepower upon their foes while maintaining efficiency and adaptability. We hope that this guide serves as a steadfast companion on your journey to mastery and ignites the flames of success in every encounter!

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