Fire Mage DPS Easy Mode — The War Within (11.1.7)
On this page, we explain how to easily play Fire Mage in World of Warcraft — The War Within (11.1.7), using the simplest rotation, talent tree, stat priority, gear setup, etc., without sacrificing performance.
This section is intended for players who are new to the game or class, have no intentions of raiding Mythic difficulty or simply want a more straightforward way to play their specialization without being overwhelmed by the numerous priorities and active abilities that need to be taken into consideration for optimal play.
The Basics for Fire Mage
Fire is a well-rounded specialization that largely relies on planning burst windows in advance. Generally speaking, it is not very keybind taxing, though the number of actions executed in short succession can easily overwhelm less seasoned players. In this section, we will be focusing on a setup that minimizes the number of buttons and reactivity necessary without unduly compromising overall damage output.
If you are completely new to Fire and need more information on the abilities available to you, you can check out our Spell Summary page.
Beginner's Guide to Fire Mage in The War Within
Beginner Single-Target Talents for Fire Mage
This build is a great starting point for pure single-target situations.
Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the best build directly into your game!
Note: This is not the strongest single-target build, as Frostfire
performs slightly better than
Sunfury. However, it is quite
a bit more difficult to play, so we recommend Sunfury for an easier playstyle.
For a more detailed approach to the best talents, check out our in-depth Talent page below.
Beginner AoE Talents for Fire Mage
The tree below is a tree focused on doing cleave and AoE damage.
You can easily import the talent tree below into the game by using the "copy export string" button below.
Beginner Fire Mage DPS Rotation
Our goal is to use our strong DPS cooldowns Combustion
and get as many critical strikes and instant cast
Pyroblasts
as possible. Below, we go over a simplified rotation on achieving this:
- 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.
In AoE, you use the same rotation as you do on single-target
and let Mastery: Ignite do all of the work
for you in terms of AoE damage.
Keep in mind that this is a simplified rotation. If you want to learn how to get the most out of your character, check out our full rotation page below.
Combat Assistant For Fire Mage
Patch 11.1.7 introduced two new combat related functionalities, the Assisted Highlight, and the Single-Button Assistant. For a full overview on how to enable these features and all of their details, check out our Combat Assistant page.
The Assisted Highlight rotation is a relatively good rotation, so following it
can be a good way to learn the rotation, but you will be giving up
a decent chunk of damage, around 10-20% compared to following the rotation on this page.
Note that Fire is unique in that it can cast spells while using other spells, like Fire Blast.
Due to this, seeing the next spell is sometimes not enough, as you need to
also know when exactly you should cast it during the current spell.
Due to this, I highly recommend you also read the basic rotation when using
the Assisted Highlight so you know when to cast the spells that are highlighted.
The Single-Button assistant unfortunately has some issues for Fire, causing
it to be around 30-40% less damage than the rotation on this page.
The global-cooldown penalty applied is a large issue for Fire, because Fire
relies on queueing certain spells at the same time (like Fireball into
Pyroblast),
which the single-button assistant does not allow you to do. Additionally,
Fire simply has very many instant-cast spells, which are also hurt by the
global-cooldown penalty, leading to this ~30-40% damage loss when using the
Single-Button Assistant.
The Single-Button assistance can be useful to use, especially when you are new to the spec, or when learning new boss mechanics, as it will allow you to focus fully on the boss mechanics instead of the rotation. However, if you want to maximize your damage, I recommend you either follow the Highlighted rotation, or the rotation on this page due to the Single-Button rotation's 30-40% damage loss.
Note that neither the Single-Button rotation nor the Assisted Highlight rotation
will cast/highlight Combustion, racial cooldowns, or
items, like trinkets, so you will have to use these manually.
Tips for using the Combat Assistant as Fire Mage
- Make sure to use
Combustion on cooldown, as the Combat Assistant will not use/highlight this.
- Use your trinkets, potions, racial cooldowns (like
Berserking) or other on-use cooldowns during
Combustion.
- If using the One-Button Assistant, make sure to press the button a lot,
as
Fire Blast can be cast while casting other spells, so you will have to press the button twice to cast both the Fire Blast and the spell after it.
Gearing a Fire Mage
Stat Choice for Fire Mage
You will want to prioritize stats as follows for both single-target and AoE:
- Intellect;
- Haste (a lot better than the rest);
- Versatility;
- Mastery;
- Critical Strike.
All stats aside from Haste are very close in value regardless of how they are ordered on this list, generally making it so that you will favour Haste gear over other stats. However, even with Haste being better, item level is still generally more important than whatever secondary stats you have on the item, so you will usually want to equip the highest item level gear you can find.
While the stat priority for classes is normally the same for both the Beginner Mode page and our full guide, subtle differences can still occur. If you want to see the full explanation of the stat priority, as well as the absolute top choices for the priority, head to our full stats page below.
If you are interested in finding out about the specific best-in-slot items from the current tier or want more information on how to gear, we suggest reading the full gearing page below.
Changelog
- 17 Jun. 2025: Updated Combat Assistant damage gains/losses based on latest updated numbers.
- 15 Jun. 2025: Added Combat Assistant information and tips. Clarified stats in more detail.
- 21 Apr. 2025: Added note that the Frostfire talent build is stronger, but more difficult to play.
- 24 Feb. 2025: Updated for 11.1: Updated optimal rotation, stats, talents and hero talents for 11.1 changes and tier bonus.
- 15 Dec. 2024: Updated for Patch 11.0.7.
- 21 Oct. 2024: Updated talents for 11.0.5. changes.
- 09 Sep. 2024: Reviewed for The War Within Season 1.
- 21 Aug. 2024: Updated for The War Within.
- 23 Jul. 2024: Updated for The War Within Pre-Patch.
- 07 May 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.7.
- 22 Apr. 2024: Updated best talents for Season 4 due to new tier set.
- 19 Mar. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.6.
- 15 Jan. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.5.
- 06 Nov. 2023: Updated suggested talents and stats due to changes in patch 10.2.
- 04 Sep. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.7
- 10 Jul. 2023: Updated Talents and Rotation for the 10.1.5 Fire rework.
- 01 May 2023: Updated the suggested talents and rotation for the 10.1 set bonus.
- 20 Mar. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.7.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Reviewed for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 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 has been playing Mage since 2009 and writing guides and theorycrafting since 2012, with many top 20-100 world kills and rank 1 parses under his belt. He is the owner of the official Mage Discord server Altered Time, where he is involved in Mage Theorycrafting and everything else Mage. You can reach out to him directly for questions or feedback about the guide there.
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