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Fire Mages have a fairly simple-to-follow rotation for both single-target encounters and AoE pulls.
Buffs to Maintain
- Arcane Intellect or Arcane Brilliance for increased mana
- Molten Armor for increased DPS or Mage Armor for additional mana regeneration
Single-Target Rotation
- 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)
- 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.
- 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
- It’s best to start with Flamestrike since it has initial damage followed by a Damage-over-Time (DoT) effect for 8 seconds
- Follow this up with Blizzard
- 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.
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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.
9 Fireballs would be the maximum that you could get away with before we would have to reapply the debuff from Scorch. “Resisting” spells is equivalent to missing your physical attacks – as long as you are hit capped, that won’t happen.
Blast Wave is a great tool for AoE damage, undeniably. However, due to its 30-second cooldown, we’re unable to place it in a spammable rotation, but it definitely is a good note to make in the guide. I’ve updated the guide to reflect this.
Arcane Explosion will often times see the Mage within melee range since in the heat of the moment, most players don’t remember what’s considered melee range. The problem this presents is that within melee range, we’re only allowed to exceed our tank’s threat by 110% which we will surpass through constant spamming and in Karazhan, for example, trash mobs can one-shot clothies. By using Blast Wave, Flamestrike and Blizzard, we sacrifice approximately 2,000 damage over 8 seconds (250 DPS) but we are able to stay outside melee range, allowing us to exceed the tank’s threat by 130%, thus ensuring we have the best chances for survival. This is especially important when running without a Paladin tank, since you’ll have a much, much harder time staying under the tank’s AoE threat in that case.
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.
Since players play with such a wide range of latencies, it’s hard to pinpoint an exact number of spells to cast during certain debuffs, so I find that it’s best to offer up the maximum number and allow players to see how close they can get to that without dropping a debuff because they know their connection best, and when they will have interruptions, disconnects, etc.
Casters still have a 1% miss chance even if hit capped.
You can still get a Scorch resisted, thus loosing the debuff
It’s very true that casters can technically only reach 99% Hit Chance, leaving room for 1% miss, no matter how much hit rating they stack.
However, with a 1% chance to miss their target(s), Mages won’t often find themselves losing out on that precious debuff. Especially if they’re not the only Fire Mage in the group.
Just curious, where does Dragon’s Breath come into play? It’s recommended to spec it but not mentioned in the rotation. Thanks!
Thanks for the great question! I’ve updated the guide with a note regarding Dragon’s Breath.
Should you downrank scorch to keep it active (Rank 1 to maintain Imp Scorch) or is that a notable loss in dps?
From my experience, I did notice about a 50 DPS difference between Rank 1 and Rank 9 Scorch over the course of 1.5 minutes.
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.