Focus Magic Mage Blog

Focus Magic: Cataclysm Talents - Part 3: Fire

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Last Updated on Thursday, 02 September 2010 19:53 Written by Kuurg Monday, 30 August 2010 21:36

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Focus Magic: Blink and you’ll miss it.

Welcome to the 7^th edition of Focus Magic, your weekly WoW Mage Blog, right here on crusaderscoliseum.com! As the release dates for the crusaderscoliseum articles have been confirmed with the staff, I have the wonderful news that Focus Magic will be released on a Monday! Perhaps the worst day of the week, but hopefully Focus Magic will give you something to look forward to every Monday. Screw a healthy breakfast to start off your week, how about a rather unhealthy over-sized portion of Focus Magic! Now we’re talking…

So as you can see from the image above, this week is all about the Fire aspect of Mages, come Cataclysm. We’ll be analysing the current beta build shown on wowhead, and seeing if things in Cataclysm will burn any better than the current roster of Icy enemies scattered around Northrend. The benefits you receive from choosing Fire are;

Pyroblast - Hurls an immense fiery boulder that causes X Fire damage and an additional 756 Fire damage over 12 sec. – Yay! Having Pyroblast available at level 10, while only being 10 levels earlier than the usual Fire Mage could pick it up, is still pretty awesome. And the fact that the Cataclysm version of Pyroblast has a 3.5 sec cast time. That’s faaaaaaaast. This will inevitably be a much more useful levelling tool than the current Pyroblast, due to the reduced cast time, as you’ll probably be able to cast 2 on the target before they even reach you. But they should be dead by then.

Fire Specialization – Increases the damage of your fire spells by 25%. Doesn’t take a genius to work out this is awesome. Frost and Arcane have copied versions of this, just respective to their own tree, and an extra 25% damage is a brilliant tool, from whichever perspective you look at it from.

As we delve into the actual Fire talents, it’s obvious to see a lot is subject to change from the lovely 51-point trees we’re used to in WotLK. The small, concise talent trees of 31-points will certainly get rid of most filler, useless talents we see so much in WotLK. So let’s see what we get from the new Fire talent tree… (Note: The number in brackets next to the name of the talent, is the amount of maximum talent points you can spend in that talent.)

Tier 1

Master of Elements (2) - Your spell criticals will refund 15/30% of their base mana cost. – Good to see this talent being moved up a few tiers, making it much more accessible for other talent specs to include it in their raid spec. This will also help solve an issue that Fire constantly battles with whilst levelling; mana management.

Burning Soul (3) – Reduces the casting time lost from taking damaging attacks by 23/46/70%. – Urgh, why does this talent continue to hang around?! Seriously, this talent annoys me quite a lot, as every other class has baseline protection from lost casting time when hit. But Mages still have to spend 3 talent points on it?! Pfft. Sort it out, Blizzard.

Improved Fire Blast (2) - Increases the critical strike chance of your Fire Blast spell by 4/8% and increases its range by 5/10 yards. – Always a nice talent for those who love the Instant awesomeness of Fire Blast, whether it be to add extra damage at the end of a boss fight, to finish off that mob on a slither of health, or just to add extra impact to your enemies in PvP. And increasing the range on Fire Blast will make this spell much more accessible and will be useful in many more situations.

Tier 2

Ignite (3) – Your critical strikes from Fire damage spells cause the target to burn for an additional 13/26/40% of your spell's damage over 4 sec. – Good ol’ Ignite. Great to see it practically unchanged from the current talent, as this contributes greatly to a Fire Mage’s DPS. You know the brilliance of this talent already, and if you don’t… well, familiarize yourself with it. You’ll love it!

Fire Power (3) – Increases the damage of your Fire spells by 1/2/3% and gives your Flame Orb a 33/66/100% chance to explode at the end of its duration. – A straight damage increase on your Fire Spells is neat, and the ability to have your Flame Orbs explode at the end of their duration instead of harmlessly dispersing is neater. More ways to deal damage, for the win

Blazing Speed (2) – Gives you a 5/10% chance when hit by a melee or ranged attack to increase your movement speed by 50% and dispel all movement impairing effects. This effect lasts 8 sec. – Quite a situational talent, especially for PvP, and even for levelling. Always fun to see your Mage zooming around the area at crazy speeds, but this talent can be quite useful for getting out of sticky situations.

Impact (2) – Gives your damaging spells a 5/10% chance to cause the next Fire Blast you cast to stun the target for 2 sec and spread any Fire damage over time effects to nearby enemy targets within 12 yards. – Oooh, this has been updated from the current Impact talent and I do love the update. A talent which seems good all round, whether it be spreading your DoT’s around to more enemies, or just for the extra stun from Fire Blast, this will be a great talent to use if you tend to AoE a lot. And Fire Mages already rock at AoE. Woo!

Tier 3

Blast Wave (1) – [15 sec cooldown] - A wave of flame radiates outward from the target location, damaging all enemies caught within the blast for X Fire damage and are slowed by 70% for 3 sec. – Seems relatively unchanged, Blast Wave is always nice for PvP and levelling with it’s knockback and daze effect. And a 15 second cooldown making this talent more efficient for when the situation calls.

Cauterize (2) – You have a 50/100% chance that an attack which would otherwise kill you will instead bring you to 40% of your maximum health.  However, you will burn for 12% of your maximum health every 1.5 sec for the next 6 sec.  This effect cannot occur more than once per minute. – WHAAAAAAT. So, Fire Mages effectively have a Cheat Death ability now?! Notice that 6/1.5 = 4, and 4*12 = 48. Which is more than 40. So, effectively the DoT would kill you. However, there are many ways this can be countered…an absorption effect, Health potion, bandage, Ice Block, maybe just a good old fashioned heal. Awesome talent.

Molten Shields (1) – Reduces the global cooldown of your Mage Ward spell by 1 sec and your Mage Ward triggers the Blazing Speed effect when it dissipates from absorbing damage. – A nice talent again, for helping survivability as a Fire Mage. Mostly in Levelling and PvP, this talent will grant great access for the Fire Mage to be able to get out of those uncomfortable situations. But fret not, if you should ‘die’, Cauterize will take care of that.

Improved Scorch (2) – Reduces the mana cost of your Scorch spell by 50/100%. – Earlier in the article, I opened my description...

Read more: Focus Magic: Cataclysm Talents - Part 3: Fire