Fire Mage

Is Fire worth levelling?

Usable, but slower than Frost or Arcane, and the reasons are specific rather than vague.

Before level 30 you have "no reliable way to use Pyroblast other than a pre-pull cast." And the payoff talents sit deep: "at low levels, your Critical Strike chance is not very high… the bread-and-butter talents that make Fire work very well are deep down in the Fire and Frost talent trees." Those tiers are levels 25 through 40.

Forever also nerfed Fire's baseline damage. Fireball rank 12 hits for 425–541 where Classic gave 596–760; Scorch and Pyroblast were cut similarly. Ruin-style payoffs moved deeper.

It is not written off: "The AoE leveling potential of Fire is also respectable." But one published guide does not publish a level-20 Fire build at all, consistent with its own advice.

Your talent points

Level 20 — 0/11/0.

1. Improved Fireball, 5 points
2. Wake of Fire, 2 points
3. Ignite, 3 points
4. Pyroblast at 20

The reasoning behind the order is worth knowing, because it is counter-intuitive: "Your instinct might tell you to put talent points into Ignite next, but since on low levels we have such a low chance for a Critical Strike, the talent barely adds any dps. Instead, we will put two talent points into Wake of Fire." Wake of Fire grants +50% crit on your next Fire Blast after a kill — which then makes Ignite worth having.

Level 30 — 0/21/0, per-level: Improved Fireball 1→5 (10–14), Ignite 1→5 (15–19), Pyroblast at 20, Incineration 1→3 (21–23), Burning Soul 1 (24), Hot Streak at 25, Improved Scorch 1→3 (26–28), Burning Soul 2 (29), Critical Mass 1 (30).

Rotation

1. Fire Armor and Arcane Intellect up
2. Open with Pyroblast — before 20, Fireball — to land the damage-over-time component on the pull
3. Fire Blast if Wake of Fire is up
4. Fireball as filler
5. Fire Blast to finish anything non-trivial — that kill re-arms Wake of Fire for the next pull
6. Wand heavily at low level rather than spending mana

From 25: "Use Hot Streak as soon as it reaches 3 stacks", and keep the Improved Scorch stack up on long fights.

Multi-target. Tanked: Flamestrike, then Blast Wave, then Arcane Explosion. Solo: gather, Frost Nova, Flamestrike plus Cone of Cold, then kite with Arcane Explosion and Blast Wave. Only one Flamestrike can be active per Mage at a time in Forever — new, and not framed as a nerf anywhere, but it is one.

Stat priority

Spell Power and Fire spell power, then Hit, critical strike, spell Haste, Spirit, MP5.

Crit sits higher for Fire than for any other Mage spec — it is "a great damage increase for Fire Mages" because Ignite, Hot Streak and Combustion all trigger off it. That is also the whole problem with Fire below level 60: the stat it needs is the one low-level gear does not carry.

What defines Fire

What Forever changed for Fire

• Hot Streak is new and it changes the spec. The published summary: "This talent now allows Fire Mages to successfully incorporate Pyroblast into their normal gameplay besides cheesy PvP builds or pre-pulls." It lasts 20 seconds as of the September 24 patch — one site still says 15.
• Incineration (renamed from Incinerate) moved from tier 3 to tier 1 and now buffs Fire Blast, Ice Lance, Arcane Blast and Scorch — deliberately cross-school.
• Only one Flamestrike per Mage can be active at a time. New restriction.
• Combustion now lasts through 4 non-periodic Fire crits, up from 3. Blast Wave no longer requires Pyroblast and now dazes for 50%. Impact was cut from 5 ranks to 3. Burning Soul went from 2 ranks to 3 but is weaker per rank.
• No Mage area spell carries a target cap in its tooltip, and Forever does print caps where it means them — Paladin's Consecration names its first four targets. Whether damage falls off past some count is a separate and open question: one guide says there is no falloff, players report a reduction past the fourth or fifth target, and Blizzard has not answered. Do not build a farming plan on the falloff claim.

At level 60

Unknown, and for Fire the uncertainty is existential: every source ties the spec to a critical strike rate "you only gain… through gear at or near the Level 60 content", which is precisely the thing nobody has.