Fire Mage DPS Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — The War Within (11.1.0)
On this page, you will learn how to optimize the rotation of your Fire Mage in both single-target and multiple-target situations. We also have advanced sections about cooldowns, procs, etc. in order to minmax your DPS. All our content is updated for World of Warcraft — The War Within (11.1.0).
If you were looking for WotLK Classic content, please refer to our WotLK Classic Fire Mage rotation.
Fire Mage Rotation
Welcome to our Rotation page for Fire Mages. On this page you will find everything you need to know about actually playing the spec in Raiding scenarios.
Each of the sections below explain the rotation for Fire Mage at different target counts. Click the boxes to switch to the desired damage type.
Fire Mage Rotation
The buttons below can be used to select between curated Single-Target and AoE/Mythic+ loadouts. You can also use the switches below to add or remove individual talents you may also be using. Keep in mind, some talents are so critical to the spec to function correctly, or you must take them to be able to navigate the tree properly, in which case they will not have a checkbox below and will be assumed picked.
Hero Talents | |
---|---|
Talent Selections, etc. |
---|
Fire Basic Rotation
The Fire rotation at its core is all about generating as many Hot Streak
procs as possible to fire off instant cast
Pyroblasts. There are many
ways to do this, but the general rotation involves casting
Fireball
until
Heating Up procs, and then converting it into
Hot Streak
via
Fire Blast.
Since Fire Blast can be cast while casting, you always
keep chaining Fireballs, and then when one of them crit, while you are casting
the next Fireball, you cast Fire Blast to generate the Hot Streak.
Then, as your Fireball cast finishes, you can fire off the Fireball and use an
instant Pyroblast. Both of these spells will land at the same
time, and if one of them crits, you immediately get a new Heating Up
and the cycle continues into Fireball + Fire Blast -> Pyroblast.
Additionally, you have some other methods to generate Hot Streak, like
Phoenix Flames and
Dragon's Breath (if talented into
Alexstrasza's Fury),
These other spells exist to provide even further Hot Streak generation, as they
are guaranteed critical strikes. (with
Call of the Sun King)
This Fireball / Pyroblast cycle is alternated by Combustion phases.
During Combustion, all of your spells are guaranteed critical strikes, so instead
of casting Fireballs to trigger Heating Up, you chain Pyroblasts and Fire Blasts.
You also tend to throw in
Scorch (and
Phoenix Flames with some talents) outside of
Fire Blast and Pyroblast, for when you run out of Fire Blast charges.
This leads to the following basic rotation:
- During
Hyperthermia, cast
Pyroblast.
- Cast
Shifting Power when you have no
Fire Blast stacks remaining and are not currently inside
Combustion.
- Use
Combustion when available.
- During
Combustion, use
Fire Blasts to convert
Heating Up to
Hot Streak until you are out of Fire Blasts, after which you should use
Phoenix Flames to convert Heating Up to Hot Streak.
- Cast
Pyroblast when you have
Hot Streak.
- Cast
Fireball as a filler to generate
Heating Up. When the enemy reaches 30% Health or lower, replace Fireball with
Scorch (because of
Searing Touch).
- Use
Fire Blast to get
Hot Streaks when you have
Heating Up.
If you feel like you have a good understanding of the basics, we recommend checking out the other tabs for the full single-target and AoE rotations.
Single-Target Rotation for Fire Mage
- When
Combustion is ready, go into the Combustion rotation below.
-
Cast
Pyroblast while
Hyperthermia is up. Keep up
Feel the Burn during this. You want to only press
Fire Blast when you have
Heating Up, not when you have
Hot Streak. Even though Hyperthermia makes all Pyroblasts instant, it still benefits from the Hot Streak
Mastery: Ignite damage bonus, which is why you want to time your Fire Blasts around generating additional Hot Streaks.
- Cast
Shifting Power when
Combustion is on cooldown, and you do not currently have it active. Lastly, ensure you do not have 3 charges of
Fire Blast. Generally, this means using it right after your Combustion phase ends.
- Cast
Pyroblast when you have a
Hot Streak proc. Generally aim to cast Pyroblast immediately after a
Fireball cast so both land at the same time. See our Pyro Chaining section below for more info on why.
- Cast
Scorch if the target is below 30% health and
Improved Scorch is timing out within a couple of seconds, and you do not currently have
Hot Streak.
- Cast
Fire Blast when you have
Heating Up to convert it into
Hot Streak.
- Try to keep up
Feel the Burn by timing your
Fire Blast and
Phoenix Flames in such a way that you refresh the stacks as late as possible. Generally, this will work out automatically, but do keep an eye on it, and perhaps cast a Fire Blast earlier or later during a cast to ensure it refreshes Feel the Burn.
- Cast
Scorch as your filler if the target is below 30% Health to generate
Heating Up /
Hot Streak.
- Cast
Fireball as your filler to generate
Heating Up /
Hot Streak.
- Cast
Scorch if you have to move and have no instant casts to burn.
Combustion Rotation
Combustion should be used on cooldown whenever possible. You
should always overlap Combustion with other damage boosts to further
increase your damage, such as trinkets and
racials.
Since Combustion makes every spell critically strike, you want to get as many
hard-hitting spells in the window as possible. To facilitate this, you should
save at least one charge of Fire Blast and
Phoenix Flames,
though preferably, all charges will be available unless you are
specced into
Spontaneous Combustion, in which case you should not pool any charges.
During Combustion, we will be casting a lot of instant Pyroblasts.
Since Combustion guarantees a crit, this will always cause your Pyroblast to
proc
Heating Up or
Hot Streak. Because of this, you only need one
other spell to generate Hot Streaks. During Combustion, this will be
Fire Blast,
Phoenix Flames and
Scorch.
Entering Combustion
We want to enter Combustion in the following way:
- Begin casting
Fireball.
- Depending on your
Hot Streak /
Heating Up status, execute the option listed below:
- If you already have a
Hot Streak proc: cast
Combustion near the end of your
Fireball cast
- If you already have a
Heating Up: cast
Combustion +
Fire Blast near the end of your
Fireball cast.
- If you have neither: cast
Combustion +
Fire Blast halfway through the
Fireball cast, followed by either a
Scorch, or a Fireball. Use Fireball during
Time Warp, Scorch otherwise.
- The end result of any of the above 3 steps is that you end up with a
Hot Streak proc, and a
Fireball in the air. This allows you to cast two
Pyroblasts in a row after finishing Fireball. One from the Hot Streak, and one from the first Pyroblast landing + the Fireball landing.
- If you already have a
Rotation During Combustion
Follow the priority list below while Combustion is active.
- Instant-cast
Pyroblast whenever you have
Hot Streak.
- Use
Hyperthread Wristwraps if 2 out of your previous 3 spells are
Fire Blast, and you are out of Fire Blast charges. This generally means you use them in the following sequence: Fire Blast ->
Pyroblast -> Fire Blast -> Hyperthread Wristwraps.
- When
Born of Flame procs (the proc gained from
Phoenix Reborn), cast
Phoenix Flames to generate
Heating Up /
Hot Streak.
- Use
Scorch for generating
Heating Up /
Hot Streak when
Improved Scorch has less than 5 seconds left, and you do not currently have
Hot Streak.
- Use
Fire Blast and
Phoenix Flames for generating
Heating Up /
Hot Streak while keeping
Feel the Burn buff up. When you run out of stacks of Fire Blast and Phoenix Flames, use Scorch.
Opening Sequence for Fire Mage
If you are not running Firestarter:
Pre-cast
Pyroblast into
Phoenix Flames. Then go into the
Combustion rotation.
If you are running Firestarter:
- Pre-cast
Pyroblast.
- Chain
Pyroblast and
Fire Blast until you are out of Fire Blasts.
- Cast
Shifting Power to get 3
Fire Blast charges again.
- Continue your rotation as normal until your target is 90% health.
- Go into the Combustion rotation when the target reaches 90%.
Multi-Target Rotation for Fire Mage
There are 2 main AoE rotations. Either simply doing your single target rotation,
and letting Mastery: Ignite other cleave effects do the AoE for you, or a
Flamestrike
based rotation.
Cleave Based AoE Rotation
The AoE rotation when running the Cleave based build
is exactly the same as your single target rotation. Mastery: Ignite
will automatically spread, while
Living Bomb
(from
Lit Fuse and related talents) and
Firefall do significant
AoE damage as well, with various other talents also doing incidental AoE damage for free for you.
Simply follow the single target rotation.
The only exception is when there are low health enemies that are close to dying.
In these cases, you can use Flamestrike to quickly finish off
the low health enemies, and then go back to the single-target rotation.
Flamestrike Based AoE Rotation
The Flamestrike based build is also relatively straight
forward. It follows the single target rotation, with one very critical
change: Any time you would normally use
Pyroblast, you instead
cast
Flamestrike. This only applies on 5 or more targets. On 3 or fewer
targets you do the single target rotation even when running the Flamestrike
based AoE build.
Important Notes for Fire Mages
Effectively Chaining Critical Strikes
Understanding how to generate Critical Strikes as efficiently as possible is crucial in utilizing Fire effectively. This specialization is designed to crit more often than not, so it is easy to understand why learning to execute the right combos to create a chain of crits is paramount.
Whenever you get a Heating Up proc, you should convert it to a
Hot Streak using
Fire Blast. Generally, you will
then want to cast a
Fireball and immediately spend your
Hot Streak on a
Pyroblast as your Fireball cast finishes. Both of
these spells will strike simultaneously, giving a chance of an
immediate follow-up Hot Streak if both critically strike.
If only one of the spells critically strikes, Heating Up will
proc, and you can immediately Fire Blast and repeat this process.
There is a 0.2-second grace period where Heating Up will not
be canceled if two spells impact simultaneously and only one critically
strikes. This grace window is why it is so critical to always cast Fireball into
Pyroblast, because normally, if only one of them crits, and the other does not,
you will lose the Heating Up. But if you cast both at the same time, if only
one of them crits, you keep your Heating Up.
This is known as "Pyroblast Fishing" or "Pyroblast Chaining" and is the best
way to create a large chain of crits. The exception to this rule is during
Combustion, where all spells will crit, allowing you to chain together
various combos that are covered in more detail in the rotation section above.
Spells That Do Not Trigger or Cancel Heating Up
Dragon's Breath (unless talented into
Alexstrasza's Fury)
Blast Wave
Living Bomb
Meteor
Frost Nova
Flamestrike (unless talented into
Fuel the Fire)
- Any non-damage spell, such as
Blink or
Ice Block
Scorch
Scorch should be used in place of
Fireball while
Combustion is active. The reasoning is pretty straightforward:
- Faster cast time
- Guaranteed Critical Strike
- No travel time
In contrast, Scorch is very weak outside of
Combustion for the same reasons. Because it has no travel time, you
cannot efficiently fish for
Pyroblasts.
Scorch can be cast while moving and will also grant you a speed
buff. Wherever possible, try to
instead rely on
Shimmer or
Ice Floes before relying on Scorch.
The only exception is when your target is under 30% Health,
as you should then use Scorch freely instead of Fireball.
Changelog
- 24 Feb. 2025: Updated for 11.1 changes: New default setup set to sunfury, updated rotation for new optimal rotation due to changes, added a less complex basic rotation.
- 15 Dec. 2024: Updated for Patch 11.0.7.
- 26 Nov. 2024: Updated rotation to have Frostfire as the defaults now that it is better than Sunfury after the buffs.
- 21 Oct. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 11.0.5.
- 24 Sep. 2024: Updated AoE rotation to include a flamestrike based rotation now that it is more viable due to the latest buffs.
- 09 Sep. 2024: Updated for The War Within Season 1.
- 28 Aug. 2024: Fix a typo.
- 21 Aug. 2024: Updated for The War Within.
- 23 Jul. 2024: Updated for The War Within Pre-Patch.
- 10 May 2024: Updated the separate tier section to refer to the correct tier set.
- 07 May 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.7.
- 22 Apr. 2024: Updated rotation based on new tier set from Season 4.
- 23 Mar. 2024: Split Combustion rotation up into two distinct sections, one to enter Combustion, and one during Combustion, for readability. Additionally simplified the opener description.
- 19 Mar. 2024: Updated for Patch 10.2.6., added Flame Accelerant as default checked rotation checkbox, and added line for using Fireball in Combustion during it. Also cleaned up some typos.
- 15 Jan. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.5.
- 19 Nov. 2023: Updated checkboxes to by default has Alexstrasza's Fury enabled due to optimisations found make AF part of the default talent tree.
- 06 Nov. 2023: Updated rotation for new best talent builds in 10.2, and new tier set.
- 04 Sep. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.7
- 15 Jul. 2023: Updated AoE Flamestrike rotation due to the nerf to Flamestrike.
- 14 Jul. 2023: Updated AoE Flamestrike rotation based on latest optimisations.
- 10 Jul. 2023: Updated rotation for the Fire Mage rework of 10.1.5.
- 01 May 2023: Updated rotation pased on new tier set bonuses and new optimal talents.
- 20 Mar. 2023: Rewrote parts of the rotation to be easier to follow, and split the SKB/Pyroclasm into its own section. Reviewed for Patch 10.0.7.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 03 Jan. 2022: Add Shifting Power to the rotation.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Update AoE rotation to more clearly explain the AoE rotation when you are not talented into Flamestrike/Flamepath.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Added section explaining rotational changes due to the tier set.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
- 24 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
More Mage Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been written by Dutchmagoz. Dutchmagoz is a Mythic raider in one of the top raiding guilds, Turtles and the owner of the Mage Discord server, Altered Time, where he is involved in all things Mage, and you can reach out to him directly for feedback or questions about the guide.
- The Best Mythic+ DPS in The War Within Season 2, Patch 11.1: Post-Tuning Update
- Delves in the First Weeks of Patch 11.1: Undermine(d)
- D.R.I.V.E. Hot Rod Recreated in Real Life!
- Final War Within Patch 11.0.7 Nerub-ar Palace Raid DPS Log Rankings
- Patch 11.1: Undermine(d) Campaign Will Be Time-Gated—Here’s What to Expect
- Undermine(d) Patch 11.1 Update Notes
- Plunderstorm Rewards Going Away in 24 Hours!
- Last Chance to Get the Stonevault Mechsuit Before Season 2 Ends!