Cataclysm Fire Mage PvE Guide

[Skippy]

Not a lot of Mage mains in HDL, but many people have got Mage alts that perhaps have not been practiced or geared much yet, so I thought I'd write something to help anyone considering a fire spec out.

Quick Facts:

Hit rating needed for Horde raid cap: 1742 or 17%.  
Haste rating required for raid soft cap: 516 or 4.022%.  This gives you an extra DoT tick with the netherwind presence talent and the 5% buff from a shadow priest, moonkin, or shaman wrath of air totem.
Intellect>Spellpower>Hit>Crit=Haste>Mastery.  I suspect Crit will be better than haste in the upcoming patch.  Reforge mastery for Crit or haste, whichever you prefer.
When you get to the hit cap, there is no reason to get any more hit.

Why go Fire?

We don't have a lot of cooldowns like other Mage specs, but constant steady single target damage with very heavy AoE damage if done right is our specialty.   We can also do the most damage of the three specs while on the run.  And while we lack an extra ice block and ice barrier that frost brings, the option of taking cauterize goes a long way for our survivability.

Talents and Glyphs

A good starting build would be http://www.wowhead.com/talent#o0hZfchbkbRRscoc:cozkMZz. This leaves four points to play with. Personally I grabbed cauterize and pyromaniac in the fire tree, but you could get improved counterspell and improved blink in the arcane tree.  I really love having Cauterize, though - staying alive when you'd otherwise perish on fights like chimaeron can make the difference between a raid wipe and success.  An iceblock or mageward/mana shield combination will also keep you alive from cauterize damage with no healing.  Improved scorch could also be dropped, but I prefer to keep it over other available fire spells.

The glyphs I included are the best to increase your dps - open slots can be filled to your liking.

Rotation

The second thing to know when playing your fire mage is the optimal spell rotation.  First of all, use Molten Armor at all times.  When standing still it will look like this:

Scorch - always first to apply critical mass.
Flame Orb - get the cooldown moving and give your tanks some agro time.
Living Bomb - get the timer moving.  If the boss is still moving into position you can put this on before Flame Orb.
Fireball or Frostfire Bolt - whichever you prefer.  Fireball currently has an advantage due to a latency bug called Ignite Munching - more on that later.
Pyroblast when Hot Streak procs - if you can't get a proc and want to put combustion on you can hard cast this occasionally.
Combustion when all dots are on the mob.  I will save this for add phases in certain fights, but on something like Atramedes you want to get the cooldown going ASAP.  Seek out the Combustion Helper addon to know the opportune time for a combustion.
Refresh living bomb after it expires, for the explosion effect.

This entire rotation aside from fireball is usable on the run - just substitute scorch for times when you can't stand still.  You can ALWAYS cast scorch - living bomb about to explode before you can cast fireball?  Throw out a scorch first.  You can always be doing something.

There is no point in saving mana gems or evocation. The only times I run low on mana is in very heavy AoE fights like Magmaw.  Use a gem as soon as you've lost enough mana to gain full benefit, and on every cooldown. Use evocation when you hit 40% mana.

Remember to use any cooldown ASAP - it's doing you no good sitting there.  Just don't use it frivolously - no point in using Combustion with only a living bomb on the mob, no point in using flame orb if the boss is seconds away from an immunity phase or some such.

The most important thing about your rotation is to keep all your dots moving as much as possible. If you have trouble keeping track on your unit frames, something like the DoTimer addon can help.  Your dots add a huge amount of DPS - after fireball, ignite and living bomb will usually be your top damage spells.

I try to save my combustion cooldown for adds for fights with quick add phases - Magmaw, Maloriak, and Halfus whelps being the most obvious examples.  This leads into the fire Mage AoE rotation!

Start with a scorch and living bomb. Try not to lose this target by misclicking or some such.  Then launch a blastwave.  You will most likely have an impact proc, and hopefully an ignite on your current target.  If you do not have an impact proc, throw out a flamestrike and you should have one unless you're horribly unlucky.  Put out your combustion with all dots but pyroblast going, and spread it around with impact. Watch the numbers fly.  Dragons breath and blink to the tank/through the mobs if they get too close.  Mirror Image if you've got threat.  After all that you're locked out by cooldowns, but you can continue flamestriking if you need to dish out more damage.  This is horribly mana inefficient, but you gotta do what you gotta do.  You can always switch to Mage armor if you have no mana cooldowns on the near horizon.

Gems/Enchants/Reforges

As I said earlier, intellect is your best stat.  Every gem should have an intellect part to it.  If the socket bonus for a blue or yellow socket is weak (10 mastery, for example) just put in a brilliant inferno ruby (40 int) anyways.  If the bonus would outweigh a flat 40 intellect buff, gem for it.  20 int, Crit, and haste is better than 40 int.  Keep in mind you will likely have to gem, enchant, and reforge for hit to make the cap - just make sure to get as much int as possible along the way.  The Burning Shadowspirit Diamond is your meta gem of choice.  Guardians of Hyjal have your helmet enchant at revered.  Hurricane is your cheap weapon enchant - Power Torrent is the best but is expensive right now.

Gearing

First and foremost, spirit does nothing for you.  Higher ilvl spirit items are generally not better than what you've got.  Leave that to the priests, boomkins, ele shaman and healers.  Claw and grasp for as many +hit items you can get in heroics and from reputations.  The same can be said for the current raid tier, though trinkets can be reforged for large hit boosts, allowing a little flexibility in choice.

The choice between haste and Crit is mainly up to you.  The current problem with too much Crit is Ignite munching. This happens when a weak crit occurs very close to a large one, and due to latency, ignores the large ignite you should have gotten.  This is why fireball is preferred to Frostfire bolt, and why haste has a fairly high value.  The next patch removes ignite from DoT spells, so I imagine the value of crit will go back up.

Success will come with practice and repetition.  Don't expect to top the meters at low gear levels, and expect to go oom often in heroics.  Any questions, feel free to ask!  

[Frosti]

Thanks Skippy! I am considering getting sucked back in, LOL and this will be very useful to educate me =)

[Iridisia]

I can't believe you were bored enough to write all that from your phone.

[Winchcombe]

sum times i think maybe i would like to be a mage is arcane still the best spec?

p.s. i heard they r buffing blizzard (lol blizzard is buffing blizzard HAHA) does this mean it will b the new frostbolt

[Skippy]

The one button wonder that is arcane has suffered severely from the mana costs and the affect of mastery on it.  It's the worst spec on the move as literally all you have is arcane barrage, and has melee oriented AoE talents.  With the blizzard buff even frost will have more useful AoE.

The only thing arcane gives you is the ability to put out some very stupid high burst dps.  You'll be oom and have to evocate after like 20 seconds, and your damage falls as your mana does (which is why I really hate this spec) but yeah.  Perhaps by the end of the expansion when heroic bosses die in 20 seconds again it'll be the heroic spec of choice.

I would much rather raid as fire or frost over arcane.

PS they are also buffing frostbolt so it will remain frosts primary nuke :O