MoP Fire Mage Guide

[Tarakio]

The thing is that i do not really care of the nerf because nerfs is always going to come in this game. But the thing is that they nerf this spec after 2 months . I have been stacking Fire gear and now in the middle of the Tier i need to start stack haste+mastery gear it really suck. Now i need to wait even longer for me to get the BiS items. Is not fire mages very good on Sha of fear HC ? Would it not change the outcome of the fight when they nerfing fire mages ?(i think about last phase, aoe adds) Because i have seen some guild stack fire mages just to nuke those adds very quick.

[Astorash]

It's a large nerf, but it isn't making our DPS terrible, I guess time will tell if Arcane is going to pull ahead DPS wise.

To be honest, I don't think fire is as bad now as people are making it out to be, it's still a decent spec but there is just a bigger fluctuation in DPS now. Arcane looks promising but I'd like to do some more testing with Arcane and Fire next reset to get a good overview, it is too soon at the minute to give a definite answer on which spec is best all round.

I just have a question, since you say fire isn't as bad, and it's still a decent spec, may I ask this: with your current gear, why did you choose to go frost for your last raid? I mean even with full haste reforge and gemming the gear is deffinately subpar for frost dps, was it because even so the current fire dps is so low that even frost with subpar gear is on kinda the same level?(i found that myself testing it last week). Anyway, I just posted this to clear things a bit out, there's a friend of yours that keeps nagging me that i should still be topping dps as fire according to you, even with lower gear than yours. He just keeps nagging that it's my own fault that i am not on the top of dps meters anymore and that the nerfs to fire were not that bad to change anything for us fire mages. Could you please just point him out the obvious?

[Vykina]

Hey, I was just testing out frost overall, I don't really think that it makes a huge difference in Frost DPS that I have pieces with crit, since the Shatter cap is the secondary priority anyway, and I had boat loads of haste, but it still wasn't performing brilliantly, I was usually 9th or under on DPS.

In my previous posts I didn't really mean that fire was still *amazing*, I mean you can still play fire if you enjoy it, but you definitely won't be coming top on a majority of fights unless the stars align. Last night in HoF I pretty much started out as fire because I was hoping that it would still perform within the top DPS even with average procs, needless to say fire did pretty bad so I just decided to test out frost for the remainder of the raid.

It is still pretty early to give a definite answer, but it is looking like Arcane is the clear winner in my eyes at least, I'll be testing it out next raid most likely, and I think Kuznam is testing out frost some more tonight, but I wouldn't expect amazing results from that spec.

[Vykina]

Updated the guide to reflect the changes from 5.1 and the recent nerfs:

Patch 5.1 Changes:

Recently the Fire spec has been slapped with a huge damage nerf, our Combustion now does 50% less damage and Critical Mass is only a 1.25x multiplier instead of 1.5x. While this does not change the gameplay of Fire at all, our DPS has taken a huge hit and Fire is no longer the dominant Mage spec, I will be updating this guide soon covering both Frost and Arcane specs, so be sure to check back every now and then.

Combustion - No longer takes Mage Bombs or Pyroblast into account and is solely 50% of your current Ignite.
Critical Mass - Now multiplies our crit chance with main spells by 1.25x.

Hopefully I'll get some time soon to extend this guide to cover all 3 mage specs since Fire is far from the most optimal spec now.

[Abbeydawn]

Hi, I currently have

Heroic LotC, Relic of Yulon and Essence of Terror LFR. Which 2 trinket do you think I should go for with fire and which ones with arcane?

[Vykina]

Hi, I currently have

Heroic LotC, Relic of Yulon and Essence of Terror LFR. Which 2 trinket do you think I should go for with fire and which ones with arcane?

Essence is pretty much awful unless you have the heroic version, so for both specs I'd run LotC HC & Yu'lon.

[Vykina]

Updated guide with today's hotfixes:

Critical Mass now multiplies the critical strike chance of Fireball, Frostfire Bolt, Pyroblast, and Scorch by 1.3 (was 1.25).
Inferno Blast now spreads Ignite, Pyroblast, and Combustion to 3 surrounding targets.

In BiS gear the Critical mass buff adds around 2% critical strike rating. Inferno Blast now spreads DoTs to one extra target. This should help out Fire a little bit, but the other specs are most likely still ahead by a significant amount.

[aoxdc]

Hey vykina. First of all i'll like to thank you for such an informative guide.
secondly , I would like you to take a look at my armoury and suggest me a spec that would be best with the gear I have.
My nick is Frostboltz and realm is Eu-Kazzak ,
For some reason the site was not allowing me to link the armoury and there was some kinda error saying " Post denied. New posts are limited by number of URLs it may contain and checked if it doesn't contain forbidden words. "

your rapid response would be highly appreciated.
Thanx.

[Vykina]

Hey vykina. First of all i'll like to thank you for such an informative guide.
secondly , I would like you to take a look at my armoury and suggest me a spec that would be best with the gear I have.
My nick is Frostboltz and realm is Eu-Kazzak ,
For some reason the site was not allowing me to link the armoury and there was some kinda error saying " Post denied. New posts are limited by number of URLs it may contain and checked if it doesn't contain forbidden words. "

your rapid response would be highly appreciated.
Thanx.

Hey,

You should probably be good to go Arcane already, aim for the 3056 haste breakpoint and then stack mastery after that (any excess haste is fine though).

-Vyk

[aoxdc]

thanx alot for a quick reply :)