Fire Mage PvP Guide for TBC Classic

Fire Mages are an unconventional specialization, which relies on its infamous "PoM Pyro" combo to win matches. They have great burst damage, but because it is tied to long cooldowns, wins usually have to be fast or a loss is inevitable, especially against teams with a healer. They fit into no-healer Arena compositions and are also great in Battlegrounds and World PvP.

This is the standard PoM Pyro build, which gets all pieces of the combo, as well as Slow, which can buy you a little bit of time and add some crowd control until you can Polymorph someone and use the build's namesake Presence of Mind with Pyroblast to end the game.

Make sure to get Magic Absorption, as Dampen Magic is a huge survivability increase for the compositions you are viable in.

Rather than a fixed rotation, Mage gameplay is about setting up crowd control chains, followed by bursting down a target with all of your cooldowns at once.

Use your spells accordingly to keep enemies under control, and try to find the best timing to burst them down:

• Keep yourself alive with Frost Nova, Mana Shield and Blink.
• Stay in control of the match with Polymorph, Counterspell, and Spellsteal.
• Burst someone down with Arcane Power, Presence of Mind, and Pyroblast. If you fail to kill the enemy within the Arcane Power timing, it is very likely that you will run out of Mana and / or Health before getting a second chance.

You can find our recommended gear, gems, and enchants for PvPing as a Fire Mage in the link below.

Fire Mages need to go into bursty compositions, where quick kills with their PoM Pyro can be achieved. Here are some suggestions:

In 2v2, Mage + Rogue is your best composition, as a Rogue can contribute extra burst damage and crowd control to make a kill in the opener much more likely.

In 3v3, Mage + Rogue + Disc Priest is your best composition, with Shadow Priest also being a viable spec, since you will run out of steam earlier than a traditional Frost Mage anyway.

In 5v5, PoM Pyro Mage can work with most compositions, and is a strong specialization to help burst someone down in the opener. Ideally, you would pair up with an Elemental Shaman which can do similar levels of on-demand burst and also brings the incredibly useful Bloodlust.

In order to become the best Mage possible, you should understand what your talents and spells are for. The amount of details that can go into this section of the guide is endless, but we will try to keep things brief in order to give you a general idea, which you can use to jumpstart your PvP experience.

Magic Attunement amplifies Amplify Magic and Dampen Magic by up to 50%. This is typically very useful to lower the damage you take from enemy casters, but will also reduce your healing taken, making it mostly useful in all-dps compositions.

Improved Counterspell makes your Counterspell silence its target for 4 seconds. This guarantees that you can stop your target's casting, even if they do not actually try to cast anything in the first place. It also guarantees full silence, rather than the school silence of baseline Counterspell.

Presence of Mind makes your next spell be instantly cast, but only once every 3 minutes. This can be used to burst very hard with Pyroblast, to instantly crowd control an enemy with Polymorph, and other, more niche uses.

Arcane Power increases your damage by 30%, but makes your spells also cost 30% more Mana and only lasts 15 seconds, with a 3-minute cooldown. This is a very powerful boost to your damage, but ultimately, it requires a heavy commitment to the Arcane tree that lowers your burst damage outside of the Arcane Power window.

Impact makes your Fire spells randomly stun an enemy for 2 seconds. Considering how often Scorch and Fire Blast are cast when Fire-specced, this is quite likely to happen at least once during a fight.

Ignite allows your critical strikes to finish enemies off by themselves, as they will take up to 40% extra damage from your critical strikes over 4 seconds. It can also be useful to keep Rogues out of stealth.

Pyroblast does huge damage, but also requires 6 seconds to be cast. This means it is usually used alongside Presence of Mind, or as an opener, before enemy players can react to your presence or while they are Polymorphed.

Spellsteal is expensive to cast, but when used at the right time, can turn a match around by stealing enemy buffs such as Ice Barrier, Power Infusion, and Icy Veins, or heals-over-time such as Lifebloom!

Against casters, Molten Armor is great in short, burst-oriented matches, while Mage Armor can give you an edge in prolonged matches. Ice Armor is the armor of choice against melee comps, as its slow reduces their damage and makes you a hard target to focus.

Finally, it is important to note that Polymorph shares diminishing returns with Gouge, Sap, Repentance, Freezing Trap, and Wyvern Sting.

Frost Nova shares diminishing returns with Entangling Roots.