Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Tips for Fire Mages 2: Electric Boogaloo!

Okay! So last post we talked all about rotations for a fire mage roaming the World of Warcraft (or talked a little about them). Today it's all about what you need to get into those rotations with maximum efficiency.
First up, talent points. Now since this is a PvE spec, we won't be needing the primarily PvP talents that lay in the Fire tree, namely Molten Shields and Blazing Speed. The movement boost is nice, but we're already mobile enough with a castable-while-moving Scorch. That said, here's my spec:
Altradine [Nathrezim, US]
A few words about my spec. There's a bit of wiggle room with this tree, but there's also a few necessary talents. I've grabbed Cauterize, because it gives me a bit more utility in various situations in raids and dungeons, as well as soloing. The best way to use it is as soon as it pops, it'll take any blow that kills you and brings you back to 40% health, but for the next 6 seconds you'll tick for a total of 48% of your health. That's 8% you need to mitigate or heal. In a raid or dungeon situation, that's no problem - your healer will notice your health is dropping quickly, and should heal you through it. When soloing, however, it's best to throw your DoTs on targets, get Cauterized, and then pop Ice Block; this will negate all the damage you'll take. I know a lot of people skip over this, but for the time being it's incredibly useful. Often it leaves me the only DPS alive.
And obviously, we're going to grab Improved Hot Streak, after grabbing Hot Streak, of course. Then we're going to grab the various AoE talents that make our class so damn awesome. Impact is necessary for this, as it facilitates our DoT spreading, especially tossing around Living Bomb ;)
So that's my talent spec, and like I said, a bit of wiggle room, but it's necessary to get a few key talents. You can throw a few points into the speed boost talents, or you can toss more into Burning Soul, but I just put my last throwaway point in there for a bit of utility.
Then there's the other trees. We'll just throw a few points into Piercing Ice for some extra crit, and then some points in Netherwind Presence for a bit of extra haste. Nothing else in these trees really helps more, so feel free to dump the rest into Fire talents.
So that's our spec!
Let's discuss glyphs quickly...
Prime Glyphs:
Glyph of Fireball - 5% increased crit with fireball, our main nuke. Good for building more Pyroblast!s.
Glyph of Pyroblast - 5% increased chance to double damage with our best spell? Yes please.
Glyph of Molten Armor - blanket 2% crit to just boost our damage and our Hot Streak procs.

Major Glyphs:
Glyph of Dragon's Breath - nice CD on our best AoE, plus useful for soloing, as it keeps your enemies disoriented.
Glyph of Polymorph - removes all DoTs from our polymorph'd target. Great for CC'ing in dungeons (next post!), as well as PvP, as it keeps your target free from damage when sheeped.
The others are optional, and pick as you see fit, I have Evocation for some self-heals. You can pick Blast Wave or Mana Shields, but they aren't that important otherwise.
Minor:
Trivial. I usually always have Glyph of Slow Fall so I don't have to use a reagent, and it lets me survive some falls (obviously). You can reduce your mana cost for some meta spells but that's all flavor!

I hope this was helpful to you, let me know if you have any questions or suggestions!

12 comments:

  1. lol i love the title of this post. made me laugh.

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  2. Nice tips man! keep em coming!

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  3. Ya nice tips! What do u think about cata pvp? Ill be following for future tips too!

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  4. I didn't know most of this. Love you so much right now xD

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  5. Haven't played my Mage since TBC. I should really give him another try.

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  6. never really got into this stuff. Maybe it's time.

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  7. In game its little harder :)

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  8. @Maki: I'll throw down some Cata PvP tips in another section! My off spec is frost so there'll be some of that too :)
    @Tieran: If you do let me know! The world always needs more mages!

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