TBC Classic Fire Mage Spec, Builds, and Talents

Fire Mage talents aim to maximize single target and AoE damage.

If you were looking for a leveling oriented build please refer to our Mage leveling guide.

Fire Mages can focus on a Arcane Concentration / enhanced Arcane Explosion build with Dragon's Breath, also called "Fire Clearcasting spec" or go for a more Mana intensive Icy Veins / control spec. The Icy Veins spec, commonly referred to as "Fire IV", is considered to deal more damage, but also use more Mana and has riskier AoE due to missing out on Arcane Subtlety.

The first talent build will focus on Arcane Concentration and is more Mana efficient and safer AoE. It is recommended, if you do not have access to a Shadow Priest and struggle with Mana in general. This spec deals more damage and gives less threat when using Arcane Explosion. With Arcane Concentration, you will need a bit less Mana and spend less time drinking, which is an invisible DPS increase.

The second of the two talent builds leans more towards burst DPS and control, but also higher Mana consumption. For this spec, it is advised to be in a Shadow Priest group to get your Mana restored with Vampiric Touch. The spec also gives your spell Blizzard the ability to slow down groups of enemies to an extreme degree in dangerous situations with Permafrost and Improved Blizzard. The key feature of this build is to use all your cooldowns during the last 20% health of a boss.

As almost all Fire talents are very important, here is a brief explanation of what the most important talents do.

Improved Fireball decreases the cast time of your Fireball by 0.5 seconds, which makes your Fireball go from 3.5 to 3 seconds cast time. This talent is a massive DPS increase.

Ignite makes your targets burn after suffering from a Critical Strike with Fire spells. This burning leaves a DoT on the target that deals 40% of the spell's total damage over 4 seconds in increments of 2 seconds. If you crit for 1000 damage, the Ignite DoT would do a total of 400 damage. 200 damage are dealt after 2 seconds, another 200 after 4 seconds. If you do crit again before any of these ticks, the Ignite DoT duration is reset to 4 and the damage from the new crit is added to the Ignite damage of the first crit. This is the most important Fire talent.

Incineration increases the Critical Strike chance of your Scorch and Fire Blast by 4%.

Pyroblast is basically a stronger Fireball with a 6 seconds cast time. This talent is only chosen as it is required to reach the Blast Wave talent.

Burning Soul reduces the threat of Fire spells 10% and gives Fire spells a 70% chance to not suffer spell pushback from damage.

Improved Scorch gives your Scorch spell the chance to apply a debuff on the target, which increases Fire damage taken from all sources by 3% per stack, stacking 5 times (so 15% more Fire damage). This debuff falls off after 30 seconds and its application can be resisted. To refresh the duration of the Scorch debuff, simply cast Scorch again. Improved Scorch is very important to keep up in any boss fight and essential if there are other players besides you in the raid that do Fire damage.

Master of Elements returns 30% of a Frost/Fire spell's base Mana cost, if it crits. AoE spells that crit multiple targets only return the Mana once per cast.

Playing with Fire increases all spell damage caused and taken by 3%. Doing 3% more damage at the cost of taking 3% more is worth it.

Critical Mass gives all your Fire spells a 6% higher chance to crit.

Blast Wave is your first out of 2 possible Fire AoE spells and deals massive amounts of Fire damage. This ability has a 30 second cooldown and has to be used with care, as Fire spells only get a 10% threat decrease. Only use this spell, if your tank has a good threat lead to avoid pulling aggro and dying to enemy attacks.

Fire Power increases Fire damage done by 10%. This is also one of the strongest talents the Fire tree has to offer.

Pyromaniac increases the chance to crit with Fire spells by 3% and decreases their Mana cost by 3%.

Combustion is your big Fire cooldown. When Combustion is activated, it increases the Critical Strike chance of your Fire spells by 10% each time you hit one of your foes, until you have crit three times. After scoring three crits, the 3 minutes cooldown of this talent starts. Combustion should be used with all other cooldowns during the last 20% health of a boss, in conjunction with the next talent on this list.

Molten Fury is a passive and massive talent, which increases the damage of all your spells with less than 20% health by 20%. This is also called the Fire Mage's execute talent, as it refers to the Execute ability of Warriors. During the execute phase, you should use all available cooldowns to gain as much damage from this talent as possible.

Empowered Fireball increases the spell damage scaling of Fireball by 15%. That means, if you have 1000 spell damage with raid buffs, your Fireballs will not get 1000 bonus damage, but 1150. This is drastically increases the value of the stat Spell Damage for Fire Mages.

Dragon's Breath bathes enemies in front of you in a frontal cone of Fire and disorients them for 3 seconds. Any direct damage (that means DoTs, notably Ignite, are excluded from this rule) will break the disorient effect. This ability does very high AoE damage and paired with Combustion and Blast Wave, you can add good Ignite damage to your targets. Use with caution though, because of the high threat Fire spells do.

Elemental Precision increases your chance to hit with Fire spells by 3%.

Permafrost and Improved Blizzard are responsible for a 75% slow on Blizzard that lasts for 4.5 seconds. In addition, all your Frost slow effects last 3 seconds longer and give a 10% higher slow effect.

Icy Veins increases your casting speed by 20% and gives you a 100% spell pushback protection for 20 seconds. Does not protect from Counterspell effects or stuns.

Cold Snap resets the cooldown of all Frost abilities and allows to use Icy Veins twice in a row.

Arcane Subtlety makes your Arcane Explosion spell the safest AoE spell in the whole game and decrease the target's resistance to all schools of magic by 10. This talent is key for doing maximum AoE damage without dying to pulling aggro.

Arcane Concentration gives you a 10% chance of entering a Clearcasting state after any attack goes off. This gives you an average 10% reduced Mana cost on your damaging spells.

Arcane Impact gives your Arcane Blast and most importantly your Arcane Explosion a 6% increased Critical Strike chance.