Fire Mage DPS Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities - Dragonflight 10.2.7 (2024)

Welcome to our Rotation page for Fire Mages. On thispage you willfind everything you need to know about actually playing the spec in Raidingscenarios.

The primary focus on this page is on raiding scenarios. Although the rotationis going to give pretty good results in Mythic+ as well, for a more Mythic+oriented rotation, see our Mythic+ page.

If the rotations below seem overwhelming to you, or you would like toread a more simplified version of the rotation, you might benefitfrom visiting our Easy Mode page, which outlines a close-to-optimalrotation in simpler terms.

The content on this page is purely PvE-related. If you are looking for PvPRotation Tips, please visit our PvP page below.

Use the switches below to tailor the rotation to the talents you are using orsituations you expect to be facing, and it will populate the rotation prioritylist appropriately:

• Mage Fire 10.1 Class Set 2pc Equipped
• Sun King's Blessing Talented
• Fiery Rush Talented
• Shifting Power Talented
• Temporal Warp Talented
• Searing Touch Talented
• Dragon's Breath Talented
• Improved Scorch Talented
• Flame Accelerant Talented
• Alexstrasza's Fury Talented
• Hyperthermia Talented
• Meteor Talented

1. Cast Time Warp whileunder the effects of Temporal Displacement (or similar effects), rightbefore you plan to use Combustion, stacking 2 Time Warp effects.
2. Cast Combustion while you are inthe middle of a Fireballcast. Then follow our Combustion rotation below.
3. Cast Shifting Power when Combustion is on cooldown, and you do not currently have itactive. Lastly, ensure you do not have 3 charges of Fire Blast.Generally, this means using it right after your Combustion phase ends.
4. Hardcast Pyroblast when you have a Sun King's Blessingproc.
5. Cast Pyroblast when you have a Hot Streak proc.
6. Cast Scorch if the target is below 30% health and Improved Scorch is timing out withina couple of seconds, and you do not currently have Hot Streak.
7. Cast Fire Blast when you have Heating Up.
8. Cast Phoenix Flames when Charring Embers(The 2-set bonus) has 5 seconds or less left on the duration, and you do not have Hot Streak.
9. Cast Phoenix Flameswhenever Feel the Burn is close to running out, and you do not have Hot Streak.
10. Cast Dragon's Breath / Phoenix Flames to generate Heating Up or convert Heating Upinto Hot Streak. Ensure there are no spells in flight toward the targetwhen using Dragon's Breath or Phoenix Flames.
11. Cast Scorch if the target is below 30%Health to generate Heating Up.
12. Cast Fireball to generate Heating Up.
13. Cast Scorch if you have to move and have no instant casts to burn.

The core component of this specialization is chaining as many CriticalStrikes together as possible to maintain large Mastery: Ignites. Fire isan extremely reactive specialization, meaning most optimizationsoccur moment to moment rather than planning a large damage dump minutes.

It is highly recommended you read the "Combustion Usage" section as it is ofcrucial importance to the Fire specialization.

Combustion should be used on cooldown whenever possible. Youshould always overlap Combustion with other damage boosts that allow for alarge overall Mastery: Ignite, such as Meteor, trinkets, andracials.

Since Combustion makes every spell critically strike, you want to get as manyhard-hitting spells in the window as possible. To facilitate this, you shouldsave at least one charge of Fire Blast and Phoenix Flames,though preferably, all chargeswill be available for both of them. This is the case for normal Combustions, and Combustions gained via Sun King's Blessing.

During Combustion, we will be casting a lot of instant Pyroblasts.Since Combustion guarantees a crit, this will always cause your Pyroblast toproc Heating Up or Hot Streak. Because of this, you only need oneother spell to generate Hot Streaks. During Combustion, this will be Fire Blast, Scorch (or Fireball with very high haste)and Phoenix Flames (unless you have talented Alexstrasza's Fury, in which case you only use Phoenix Flames outside ofCombustion).

First, we want to enter Combustion in any of the following ways:

1. Cast Fireball.
2. Depending on your Hot Streak / Heating Up status, executethe option listed below:
   • If you already have a Hot Streak proc: cast Combustion nearthe end of your Fireball cast
   • If you already have a Heating Up: cast Combustion + Fire Blast near the end of your Fireball cast.
   • If you have neither: cast Combustion + Fire Blast halfwaythrough the Fireball cast, followed by either a Scorch, or a Fireball.Use Fireball during Time Warp, Scorch otherwise.
   • The end result of any of the above 3 steps, is that you end up with a Hot Streakproc, and a Fireball in the air.This allows you to cast two Pyroblasts in a row after finishingFireball. One from the Hot Streak, and one from the first Pyroblast landing+ the Fireball landing.

Follow the priority list below while Combustion is active.

1. Instant-cast Pyroblast whenever you have Hot Streak.
2. Hardcast Pyroblast when you have Sun King's Blessing 8thstack.
3. Use Fire Blast and Scorch for generating Heating Up / Hot Streak while keeping Feel the Burn buff up.Cast Fireball instead of Fire Blast/ Scorch when Flame Accelerant is up.
   • If you have very high haste (100%+, only achieved during double Time Warp effects),use Fireball instead of Scorch.
   • This is done because at these high haste levels, Scorch will havea shorter cast time than the global cooldown, which would cause downtimeduring which you are casting nothing.
4. Cast Dragon's Breath if Combustion if there is less than 1 second left on Combustionand you do not have any Hot Streak procs.

It is important to note if you proc the 8th stack of Sun King's Blessingduring Combustion, you should hardcast Pyroblast to extendyour Combustion by 6 seconds. Make sure to keep up your Feel the Burnbuff during it.

Worth noting, activating Combustion while you have Sun King's Blessing'sCombustion active will NOT add 12 seconds to Combustion. Instead, it will resettheduration. So never cast Combustion during Sun King's Blessing's Combustion.

If you are not running Firestarter, you just immediately go intothe Combustion rotation afterpre-casting Pyroblast.

The opener below assumes the standard talent setup containing Feel the Burn and Sun King's Blessing, combinedwith the less standard but still commonly used Firestarter.

You always pre-cast Pyroblast 4 seconds before the pull timerfinishes.

1. Chain Pyroblast and Fire Blast until you are out of Fire Blasts.
2. Cast Shifting Power to get 3 Fire Blast charges again.
3. Cast Fireballs and Fire Blasts and consume your Hot Streaks as you get them until 8 stacks of Sun King's Blessing.Keep your Fire Blast charges at or above 2.
4. Once at 8 charges of Sun King's Blessing, hardcast Pyroblast(even if the target is still above 90% health). Near the end of the cast,cast Combustion. Ensure you press Combustion before the Pyroblastcast finishes, or you will lose the Sun King's Blessing Combustion.
5. Continue the standardCombustion rotation like normal.

There are two primary ways to do AoE damage as a Fire Mage.One way is to simply do your single target rotation and spread Mastery: Igniteto additional targets passively. This allows you to optimize your priority targetdamage while still doing decent cleave and AoE DPS. The other strategyis to opt into a more Flamestrike oriented talent build, allowingyou to do significantly better AoE damage on high target counts, but at the costof single target and priority target DPS.

This means you do not have Fuel the Fire / Flame Patch talented.

Do the standard single target rotation. Avoid target switching whenpossible, as it will reduce the overall damage of Mastery: Ignite.Only target switch for Searing Touch or when required due tofight mechanics.

This means you have Fuel the Fire / Flame Patch talented.

Even with the Flamestrike build, you should generally only cast Flamestrikewhen there are 3 or more enemies. Technically, in some situations, it is a smallDPS increase to use it on 2 targets, however, if the enemies even move out of Flame Patch for a tiny portion of time, or Flame Patch does not tickfor the entire duration, it is already better to use a standard single targetrotation.

The Flamestrike AoE rotation is very straightforward: Instead ofcasting Pyroblast with Hot Streak, you use it to instant-cast Flamestrike. You still generate Heating Up / Hot Streakvia Fireball (or Scorch below 30% health or in Combustion), but instead of Pyroblasts, you cast Flamestrikes.All of the standard single-target optimizations still apply.(e.g., keeping Feel the Burn up as much as possible)There is one exception for when you do hardcast Flamestrike:

• Hardcast Flamestrike to activate Sun King's Blessing.

In this section, we list some tips that apply to both the Mastery: Igniteand the Flamestrike builds.

If you have Alexstrasza's Fury, use Phoenix Flames only when you do not have a Hot Streak.

Cast Living Bomb if there are 3 or more targets stacked, and at least 1 ofthe targets will live for at least 8 seconds.

Cast Dragon's Breath if there are 3+ targets present or at any target count with Alexstrasza's Fury talented, and you do not currently have Hot Streak.

If you have Meteor talented, only cast it within Combustion, either a standard Combustion or Sun King's BlessingCombustion.

The Season 4 Tier set ( Mage Fire 10.1 Class Set 2pc + Mage Fire 10.1 Class Set 4pc) is the same set as we had in Season 1.It impacts the rotation in some small but meaningful ways.Mainly, you want to make sure you keep Charring Embers upat all times. Other than that, you do not really need to play around itactively, and just use Phoenix Flames as you would normally, to generate Heating Up / Hot Streak with Alexstrasza's Fury.

When playing Alextrasza's Fury, you already really want to avoid capping on charges,but with the Season 4 Tier set equipped, this becomes even more important, so ensureyou do not sit on max charges and you use them a little bit before they cap.

Lastly, on the flip side, you want to make sure you do not throw outall of your Phoenix Flames in very quick succession and then have noneleft to refresh Charring Embers. Generally, as long as you just usePhoenix Flames at a point where Charring Embers has less than 5 seconds left,you will be more than fine on all of the other points automatically.

Understanding how to generate Critical Strikes as efficiently as possible iscrucial in utilizing Fire effectively. This specialization is designed tocrit more often than not, so it is easy to understand why learning to executethe right combos to create a chain of crits is paramount.

Whenever you get a Heating Up proc, you should convert it to a Hot Streak using Fire Blast. Generally, you willthen want to cast a Fireball and immediately spend yourHot Streak on a Pyroblast as your Fireball cast finishes. Both ofthese spells will strike simultaneously, giving a chance of animmediate follow-up Hot Streak if both critically strike.If only one of the spells critically strikes, Heating Up willproc, and you can immediately Fire Blast and repeat this process.

There is a 0.2-second grace period where Heating Up will notbe canceled if two spells impact simultaneously and only one criticallystrikes.

This is known as "Pyroblast Fishing" and is the best way to create a largechain of crits. The exception to this rule is during Combustion,where all spells will crit, allowing you to chain together various combosthat will be covered in more detail later in the guide.

• Dragon's Breath (unless talented into Alexstrasza's Fury)
• Blast Wave
• Living Bomb
• Meteor
• Frost Nova
• Flamestrike (unless talented into Fuel the Fire
• Any non-damage spell, such as Blink or Ice Block

This can be cast when you have to reposition slightly. It lasts for 60seconds, but it only has a 25-second cooldown. You can and should cast it beforethe start of every engagement.

Scorch should be used in place of Fireball while Combustion is active. The reasoning is pretty straightforward:

• Faster cast time
• Guaranteed Critical Strike
• No travel time

In contrast, Scorch is very weak outside of Combustion for the same reasons. Because it has no travel time, youcannot efficiently fish for Pyroblasts.

Scorch can be cast while moving and will also grant you a speedbuff when talented into Frenetic Speed. Wherever possible, try toinstead rely on Shimmer before relying on Scorch. Combined with Frenetic Speed, this spell can benefit extendedmovement if your charges of Shimmer are unavailable. However, try tolean less heavily on this spell as a movement crutch, as it willdeflate your damage due to its lack of potency. The only exception is when youhave talented Searing Touch, and your target is under 30% Health,as you can then use Scorch freely instead of Fireball.

Fire Mage is an elementary enough specialization to perform on a targetdummy. Still, a few key factors will separate the good from thegreat. Learning to focus on what is important and mastering the core concepts ofaspecialization is what leads to overall solid performance on the damagecharts. 3 major concepts form the central trinity of optimizingfor success:

1. proper use of Combustion;
2. critical Strike chains;
3. movement management.

Managing movement is a fundamental skill shared by all the caster classes inWorld of Warcraft. The highly mobile nature of the Mage class allows flexibleand creative ways to move during combat, making it of supreme importance thatyou give this the proper respect.

We talked about "Pyro Fishing" earlier in the guide, so there is no need togo over it in detail again here. It should be considered, however, howimportant properly chaining together your abilities is and its overall impact on your DPS. This is especially true on cleave, as building a smooth andpowerful Mastery: Ignite will determine how much cleave and AoE you canoutput. Get used to properly chaining your spells by practicing ontarget dummies or in LFR.

While it is difficult to describe the best ways to position and move duringa dungeon or raid encounter, it is essential to your success as a FireMage.

Try and use Shimmer for "urgent" movement — when you needto travel from one place to another as quickly as possible. Blazing Barrier is a good choice when you only need to take a fewsteps, as it only costs a single global cooldown.

Ice Floes is an incredible talent that allows you to not have to worryabout interrupting the long Pyroblast hardcasts when using Sun King's Blessing.You should always keep 1 stack ready for Sun King's Blessing to ensure you do notneed to interrupt it for movement.

Always try to position yourself in a location central to fight movement.For example, if the boss is being moved in a circle, try to stay on the insideof the kite path to ensure minimal movement.