The Sudden Yet Predictable Return of Fire Mage

A little history for you before we begin.

Just hit this here if you don’t really care about all that

Mage was the first class I ever “mained” in WoW. I started as a carefree Tauren hunter, found my love for the game as a Human Warlock, and settled on an Undead Warrior to begin my raiding career, tanking a raid for the first time in Wrath of the Lich King.

However, I was pretty bad.

But tanking was easy. So I kept getting invited to groups, sliding along and climbing higher in the scene. At the same time, I was an avid PvPer and world content enjoyer. And you know what I hated more than anything?

Mages.

Frost mages, to be exact. They were the bane of existence. I couldn’t ever catch the rat bastards, no matter what I did. Play Spell Reflect perfectly, patiently use trinket, stance dancing—none of it ever worked (for me). So, in early Cata, after coming back from being grounded and stealing my mother’s credit card to start up a new account, without parental controls (a story for another time), this time I did what we all do.

If you can’t beat ‘em, join em.

And so began a multi-year journey of drinking the “Git Gud”. The class was overwhelming. I wasn’t much of a multi-classer at this point, but coming from a Warrior, it felt like my options were infinite. I could travel throughout game space with pure freedom, control whatever I wanted, and do big, big damage while doing it.

I started using addons beyond DBM, started actually researching my class (because I was obviously such an expert on Warrior that I never needed help, so I never sought it out), engaging in forum posts on MMO-Champion and Altered Time (which is now a shadow of its former self), and the results were damn near immediate.

In the Firelands, I finally became what children now call, “a Big Dick DPS”.

A Pumper.

A goddamn Piper.

I moved up throughout the years, one tricking mage (while still enjoying my share of alts of various flavors), getting higher in higher in the US raiding scene, achieving rank 1s and dominating damage meters until Legion, where the changes to Mage (which many now love) took away too much of the moment-to-moment decision making and skill expression that I had come to love about the class, and I began my multi-class FOTM reroll journey that I still ride today. But again, a story for another time.

But the one thing that has always remained true about Mage, from then until this very day, is that Blizzard Entertainment, and the incredible developer team behind it, has absolutely no f\*cking idea how to balance it.

And so history repeats itself.

Some data for you

”Alright, yeah yeah, you’re a washed former mage player. And you’re insufferable when you finally get proven right. Just tell me what I came here for, mage player.”

Aight. Dick.

Let’s check a snapshot of a fight that exhibits Fire Mage’s strengths.

This is Mythic Bloodbound Horror, a rather easy fight but one whose pain point is very simple. There is an add that spawns in Africa, relative to where you might have your team go down, and it usually requires separate people to go there and specifically only attack and CC the little adds that it spawns. Which, of course, is an overall damage loss, but it’s something you just kind of have to do.

Bloodbound Horror, being the second boss, isn’t a difficult fight at all, but this isn’t exactly a situation that just disappears—adds that aren’t exactly in optimal positions, and that require “burst” damage to die in time, exist in pretty much any raid ever. Now, there is a caveat before I continue that must be accounted for, which is that Fire’s efficacy has generally depended on a rather difficult variable to account for, that being model hitboxes and the inconsistency at which Ignite might be able to spread from such hitboxes, but this is a problem that exists with Arcane and Frost as well.

So, let’s look at some more pretty pictures.

Blood Horror Damage

Forgotten Harbinger Damage

Lost Watcher Damage

So, you’ll notice that the Blood Horrors are taking way more damage than anything else. This is because those mobs actually travel toward the boss, so it’s much more likely they’re catching aflame. I suspect that as tanks get more accustomed to tanking creatures next to the boss (they would need to move the Lost Watcher next to the Boss, so that Ignite could spread to it and then to the Harbingers), you will see this massively increase in damage.

But let’s talk about what’s going on here.

All this damage you see here? It’s basically “free”.

This is all from the Fire Mage just single targeting the boss and spreading Ignite. So, while they’re doing that, everything else is receiving the damage above.

You can see as soon as he goes down, and starts spreading his ignite, everything just kind of gets shredded. And this is well after the peak of his Combustion Ignite.

On fights where an add set particularly lines up well, or where it is not disadvantageous to hold Combust for adds, the power of FIre Mage is further exemplified.

Currently, the fights I suspect this would be most helpful on—Mythic Broodtwister and Mythic Silken Court—have no public logs, so we’ll have to wait a bit to see if it cooks as well as one might hope.

Another strong advantage Fire has over Arcane at least, is its supreme mobility and tankiness (although this is not as true as it once was for Arcane in regards to mobility, at least). Fire requires very little hardcasting, and its Cooldown Phase is entirely instant-casts. Sun King’s Blessing (SKB) has also been replaced by Unleashed Inferno (UI), so there is not even a need to hard-cast Pyroblasts anymore.

As well as this, the execute phase of Fire is incredibly mobile as well, what with Scorch providing increased movement speed and guaranteed critical strikes to speed up Hot Streak production. Cauterize is one of the best progression spells in the game, tied in with the wealth of defensive options available to mages.

All-in-all, if there is no significant damage difference, Fire is generally preferable on progression to the other two specializations.

And, there’s one last benefit to Fire we have yet to discuss, which again is quite important during progression.

Execute

In short execute phases, Arcane does pull ahead as it also has a formidable execute phase, but in longer phases, especially where movement is a concern where Arcane might have issues planting and hard casting Arcane Blasts, Fire does begin to shine.

Luckily enough, one of the bosses in the raid happens to have a nice way for me to demonstrate this.

Arcane and Fire both begin their execute phase at 35%, with Arcane Bombardment and Molten Fury, with Fire gaining another bonus at 30% with Scorch.

Here is what the top Arcane log looks like from 35% and on:

And here is what Fire looks like:

Combined with the benefits previously discussed, I think it’s generally a no-brainer to play Fire if execute is particularly important.

I think over the coming weeks, especially as the RWF closes and players stop hard-copying Liquid and Echo, we will see more and more Mage players swap to Fire, especially since most players prefer it (and find it easier) than Arcane to execute.