Focus Magic: Fire in the Disco

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Fire, Fire, Fire! Hello, Mr Pyroblast, what do you have for us today! A burning hot edition of Focus Magic, by jove! This week it’s all about Fire Mages! Goodness Gracious, great balls of Fire! Just like last weeks edition of Focus Magic, we’ll be covering everything from glyphs, PvE, PvP, levelling and how YOU can make a helpless monster explode into oblivion.

But first things first. Destruction Warlocks are often compared to Fire Mages. I personally fail to see how in any way a Destruction Warlock comes close to the awesomeness of a Fire Mage. Let’s be honest, giant inferno balls of impending fiery doom or slithery winding trails of leftover campfire embers? Yeah, thought so.

So let’s start slowly. Levelling. Often quite a slow business and honestly, being a Fire Mage can’t really help your chances. Fire mages aren’t referred to as “glass cannons” for no reason. They have incredibly low survivability and quite high downtime. I levelled my Mage from 60-70 as Fire and boy, was it fun. Fire is a great spec to level as purely because it’s ridiculously fun. Usually you can put a http://www.wowhead.com/spell=55360 on a mob, cast a few Fireballs and the mob should be close to, or if not dead. http://www.wowhead.com/spell=39001 and http://www.wowhead.com/spell=37289 are great spells for helping a Fire Mage’s survivability, and certain talents like http://www.wowhead.com/spell=31642 are really useful to help get you out of those tricky situations you may often find yourself in. If you’re not careful you can find yourself dying a lot as a Fire mage, but this is only when questing. If we look at levelling as a Fire Mage via instancing… well, it’s probably the best spec to level with. Ridiculously high single target damage compared to the other 2 specs at lower levels, and at higher levels Fire Mages become the best AoE Mage with Living Bomb.

But moving on to PvP, Fire Mages although packing a mighty strong punch are very hard to manipulate in PvP. Battlegrounds such as Alterac Valley can be where a Fire Mage prove to be very powerful. Rushing to protect your factions sub-general spamming Living Bomb on all who enter your sanctum of fiery hell is not only a great way to slay the opposing faction, but also, there is a great deal of satisfaction from watching all those helpless enemies blow up. Try it. All I’m saying. In arena however, Fire Mages are quite weak against burst damage as their only ways of absorbsion are the various Wards, and Mana Shield. So unless you have either a very good healer for a partner or you’re able to stun the opposition and nuke them down within a few seconds,  you’ll struggle to perform well in arenas as a Fire Mage. If you do decide to try out PvP as a Fire Mage, you’ll want to base your talent build on something similar to this (http://www.wowhead.com/talent#of0frzMZfVMfoGhuwur0st).

For your Major Glyphs you’ll be wanting http://www.wowhead.com/item=42738, http://www.wowhead.com/item=42751 and http://www.wowhead.com/item=42747. For your Minor Glyphs, mirror the Glyphs mentioned in the previous Article.

Gems for a Fire Mage specializing in PvP will be the same to those mentioned in Last week’s Focus Magic.

For a full PvP enchant list, you guessed it, check out last weeks Focus Magic.

Before we move on to the PvE aspect of a Fire Mage, Jerry Lee Lewis is going to remind us what it is to be a Fire Mage.

So, we’ve outlined PvP and Levelling, but the true power of a Fire Mage lies in their PvE prowess. Firstly, you’ll want a good spec to raid with, if you’re planning on bring a Fire Mage in the depths of PvE. A good outline would be something like this (http://www.wowhead.com/talent#of0Vck0cZ0EcbRhIhVubhct) however, feel free to tweak this spec to something you’re most comfortable with and so it matches your playstyle. If you prefer to have Blast Wave and Dragon’s Breath in your arsenal a good place to get the points for that is the 2 points in Flame Throwing.

The advantages of raiding as a Fire Mage are that you only have one cooldown to manage, high single target damage, especially in prolonged boss fights, great AoE abilities and the rotation is relatively simple. However, everything has it’s bad points. Fire has an extremely high Hit Cap being 446, which can be quite difficult to obtain without lowering your other stats too drastically. It is also heavily reliant on procs, as Instant Pyroblast from http://www.wowhead.com/spell=44448 is a huge part of a Fire Mage’s DPS.

Your stat hierarchy as Fire should mirror every stat hierarchy from each Mage spec. Hit Rating (until capped) > Spell Power > Haste Rating > Crit Rating.

The normal rotation for a Fire Mage on single targets is to apply Scorch for the debuff, and spam Fireball. Make sure Living Bomb is always up, and whenever you get a Hot Streak proc chain cast an instant Pyroblast with a Fireball.

Your Major glyphs should be http://www.wowhead.com/item=42739, this reduces the cast time of your main spell, thus increasing your damage and removing the small, insignificant DoT from Fireball actually increases your DPS. http://www.wowhead.com/spell=55360 is also mandatory as this makes another one of your primary spells even more powerful. Finally, http://www.wowhead.com/item=42751 will grant you more Crit which will increase the chances for your Hot Streak procs and the more you crit, the more DPS you have. For your minor glyphs, choose whichever 3 you think will suit you and your raids.

Remember to view last week’s article for the list of enchants which will benefit you the most as a Fire Mage.

For your gems you’ll want the exact same gems as mentioned in the Frost column last week. Keep an eye out for Socket bonuses and Meta gem requirements and gem accordingly. Remember if you’re short of gold, you can always get your uncut gems from Badges or Honor as most gems are usually ridiculously overpriced.

A lot of the main points mentioned in this article relate back to the previous week’s Focus Magic. So use this link to navigate your way around that article and discover the information needed!

http://www.crusaderscoliseum.com/mage-blog-focus-magic/2764-focus-magic-everything-tastes-better-with-frosting

Finally, you want to watch your enemies helplessly explode? Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you achieve that.

1. At Level 60 or higher, make sure you have Living Bomb trained and talented.
2. Find a helpless mob such as a Beast, Humanoid, Undead…
3. Cast Living Bomb.
4. Wait a few seconds.
5. ?????
6. PROFIT!

So, that leaves us with one spec left. Tune in next week as we explore the depths and wonderful insanity of Arcane! Until then…BOOM! Living Bomb all those Warlocks to a fiery oblivion.

Got any mage related screenshots? Send them to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and they could be featured in the next edition of Focus Magic! The more dead Warlocks involved the better! Remember to include your character name and Server. Please title the e-mail "FM Mage" or the e-mail my not get through.

Last Updated on Tuesday, 03 August 2010 17:23 Written by Kuurg Tuesday, 03 August 2010 00:52