Playstyle & Rotation
Opener:
- Pyroblast at 3 Seconds before the pull.
- Press Potion, Bloodlust and Immediately Fireball
- Halfway through that fireball cast activate Combustion and press double Fireblast to reach Double Pyroblast sequence, that pyroblast will generate another pyroblast and we can continue chaining pyroblast during combustion
- Once you are out of fireblast charges continue to chains hotstreaks via phoenix flames
- Once you reach 10 stacks of Sun King’s blessing you can hardcast pyroblast and enter Sun Kings Blessing Window (cast shifting power if you are at low charges of Fireblast or Phoenix flames before)
- If for whatever reason you have nothing to press inside combustion or Sun King’s Blessing fill with Scorch.
- Continue to fill with fireball, don’t overcap on fireblast charges
- Save at least 2 fireblast charges before entering combustion/SKB window
- After combustion ends we enter our Hyperthermia window, we want to spend as many hotstreaks as possible during that window, based on our spheres and phoenix the time of hyperthermia can vary. Nonetheless, we want to only cast pyroblast non stop for the entire hyperthermia window.
For unleashed Inferno, the opener mostly stays the same, you just ignore the SKB part.
Multi Target:
The AoE rotation is the same as Single target via Ignite spreading. We essentially press the same buttons.
However, if you are doing lower difficulty content, such as lower level keys, and you are specced into Flamestrike, it should go like this:
- Cast phoenix flames
- Cast flamestrike, and halfway through flamestrike activate combustion
- Cast flamestrike again from another hot streak from previous flamestrike in combustion
- fire blast
- phoenix flames
- Meteor (inside combustion to benefit from combustion)
- flamestrike
- Fire blast
- Dump any remaining fire blast charges you have into flamestrike
- Dump any free phoenix flames charges refunds from Fire 4p tier set
- Shifting power if you are out of Fire blast charges
- Flamestrike
- Scorch to fish for Hot Streak for the last Flamestrike
- Continue to consume hotstreaks until Your Sun king’s blessing is ready, hard-cast flamestrike
- Repeat step 3 onwards
Playstyle
In general, your playstyle and especially cooldown use should be modified on a fight-by-fight basis. This has historically been one of the best strengths of Mage in cutting-edge content. Our CD timing is variable, and the damage we do in short bursts can overcome difficult parts of an encounter.
With that being said our positioning and understanding of what we are about to pull or face in a boss encounter is crucial for our success as a Fire Mage. Get familiar with the dungeons or encounter and understand how it can affect combustion, maybe there are pulls that we want to not use combustion to make sure it's available for a bigger pull that is coming up next.
Get comfortable with fire, memorize the combustion rotation and priority and you’ll see massive success in no time.
Get used to stutter stepping between your GCDs. You want to only use your blink charges for large movements. If you only have to move 10 yards and you have a few seconds to get there, do it by stutter stepping in your rotational down time.
Lastly, Mage is one of the tankiest DPS classes in the game, but nearly all of our defensives are proactive buttons and not reactive. Blazing Barrier, Alter Time, Mirror Images, and Ice Block all do no good if you haven’t pressed them before a damage event happens. Get used to studying damage patterns of encounters and knowing ahead of time when you are about to take a big hit. Your healers will be able to feel the difference if you are playing well defensively, and they will thank you for it.
General Playstyle Rules
- Use Combustion on CD.
- Don’t overcap on phoenix flames.
- Don’t overcap on Fireblast.
- Always follow up Fireball with Pyroblast to chain Hotstreaks together.
- Never cap on SKB - as soon as you are on 10 and ready you should start hardcasting that pyroblast and enter a SKB Window - this is THE most important thing.
- Pay attention to Phoenix reborn refunds as they give you a chargeback and deal extra damage.
- A.B.C - Always be Casting. If you notice there is a lot of movement that prevents you from casting, consider Ice Floes as an alternative. And remember, even some damage is better than no damage at all, you can cast fire blast or scorch or even phoenix flames on the move until you are able to stand still again and start casting your regular rotation.
- Don’t be too aggressive with Fireblast, always have 1 in your pocket incase you need to convert heating up to hot streak, and don’t sit on fire blast charges for too long since fireblast is tied to our Living bomb, so it’s important we track Lit Fuse with a Weakaura so we know we need to press Fireblast in the next 8 seconds.
Cooldown Usage
Generally speaking, Fire is a cycle spec, which means we build SKB Stacks via hotstreaks and we enter SKB Window outside of our normal combustion.
This means we don’t really want to hold off using combustion, because it’s just going to delay us further from our next SKB Window. So, unless you ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO hold combustion for something in the Raid, like an important damage phase or an add you have to burst down, then always press combustion on CD.
Defensives
As mentioned above, Fire has excellent survivability and good Mobility with Mirror Images, Alter Time, 2x Shimmer, Ice Block, Greater Invis (which also increases our movement speed if talented), Blazing Barrier and our Cheat Death, Cauterize.
Rotating our defensives properly can significantly increase our chance to live, even when there is a high amount of incoming damage!
Note: Don’t be afraid to be aggressive with a defensive CD, since shifting power reduces all our CDs by 10 Seconds, while on 1 minute CD.