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I've started this thread again with the intention of giving mages of all skill levels a better understanding on how to be successful as fire in PvP. Whether you are just getting started or you have been fire for a while, I am certain there will be something you can walk away with.

Link to original capped thread with Q&A throughout:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2711932054

Credibility
For those of you who do not know me (aka Bloowoogle), I play fire at a 2500+ 3v3 rating and 2400+ RBG rating (S11). I have lead over 350 RBG games and helped teams of all skill levels succeed and have a good time. I'm consistently over 2400 rating this season with compositions of all types. With that being said, let's get to the real content.


Maximizing your character and being a threat:
Fire relies heavily on you consistently doing damage or crowd control abilities to create pressure. It's also your own self-created form of dispel protection. Simply put, healers can not keep up with dispelling things if you are interrupting them or spreading damage everywhere.

To start off, one of your greatest tools by far is impact. It's also important to realize you should never be instantly using it when it is triggered. Here's the sort of things you should be looking to do with impact:

- Interrupt a focus target
- Create a gap between you and your target
- High chance critical strike on a frozen target (upwards of 90+ with PvP gear)
- Shatter with scorch + fire blast or fireball + fireblast
- Spread damage, especially with combustion
- Switch and annoy healers

Working for a kill is not simple and often comes down to a well used combustion. Be patient, be strategic, and wait until you crit with pyroblast first. This alone, especially if spread, creates ridiculous pressure for the opposing team to deal with.

Dragon's breath is also incredibly useful when you begin to learn how to take full advantage of it. To start off, it does not break on any sort of DoT or channeled damage. So if you were playing with a shadow priest, he could chain mind flay into a player that is disoriented. It also is a great way to buy 5 seconds of movement and setup a polymorph or hard cast a pyroblast in somethings face. Make full use of it and never break it instantly with something weak.

Although rather difficult to get used to, fire is a very in-your-face sort of playstyle. You need to be close to your opponent in order to build up damage but you also need to be wise enough to move away when you lack tools to prevent damage. And with the ability to CC and do damage with all 3 schools of magic, you should never be sitting around and waiting to cast. Force your opponent to interrupt you so that landing critical spells is possible when you need it.

Taking it to the next level:
I do not intend to dive into the math and numbers behind everything that I choose (profile for example). You can make use of any sort of stat as fire and nothing is set in stone as the way to go. Find what suits your playstyle and go with it. Here's how I approach gear and stats:

- Hit to 4%
- Spell penetration to ~200
- At minimum 5% haste (1 more tick of combustion and quicker playstyle)
- As much intellect as possible then
- As much crit/haste as possible then
- As much resilience as possible (at least 3000)
- Reforge out of mastery

You should never be skipping socket bonuses because every stat is beneficial. Having 10 more intellect is not going to change the outcome of any PvP encounter.

Arena
These are just words of advice more than anything. It's too complicated to explain everything and you are best off learning through experience yourself.

- Constantly be looking to do optimal damage and AoE CC
- Dragon's breath into Ring of Frost is incredible if used correctly
- Flame orb + combustion together
- Switch targets often to keep everyone on their toes, especially healers
- Don't be afraid to blanket CS healers in order to CC the rest of the team
- Open with a wall of flamestrikes against stealth teams or at the very least make sure you enter combat
- Play with a large focus frame in order to watch focus buffs and focus spell steal if necessary
- Be on the outlook for your partners at all times, don't tunnel because you are free, something is probably not going well on their end

Rated Battlegrounds:
I prefer to station myself on defense in CTF like maps. The aoe damage and aoe peeling is incredible when protecting your flag carrier. I often will kill 4 things simultaneously with a time warped combustion. You should also be aware that your class is more than capable of carrying the flag. Triggered blazing speed and wards make it very difficult for an enemy team to keep up with your movement.

In capture the node sort of games I tend to focus on being offensive. Your CC is crucial to capturing places and if you are confident enough in your playing ability, very few classes can beat you 1v1. However, as a mage in general, you always need to be adapting to what your enemy is doing. Creating a road block at a cross-road can buy your team 15-45 seconds and basically save the match.

Advanced:
- focus spell steal
- focus impact to spread damage from target to further distances
- impact does not stun a target if you are not currently in combat with it. You'll also notice that impact does not spread damage to targets not in combat with the mage either.
- utilize ring of frost not only to CC, but pyro shatter as well
- switch from kill target to healer when combustion goes out in order to pressure him away or interrupt heals (other option is land CC on him)
- /stopcasting macros involved with multiple spells so that scorching does not get you pummeled
- strategically move your character and station yourself where your team can help (running aimlessly is useless)
- mage ward before cauterize
- mind necrotic on yourself if you are about to die, it negates the 'heal'[/quote]

Give it a shot:
The best way to become better and learn is to do it yourself. Sit in front of target dummies and make sure everything is fluent and then run into chaotic battleground situations and see what you can do.

But most importantly, you need to work with your team in order to improve. Find ways they can help you or what you can do to help them and go from there. Mindlessly queueing over and over again without discussing what went right or what went wrong will get you no where.

4.3 Update:

Now that we no longer hit like wet noodles with our best spells, the only concern I have at this point is from another patch change dealing with CC:

• Spells which have an effect broken by taking damage past a threshold (Entangling Roots, Fear, Frost Nova, etc.) now count damage that was prevented by damage absorbs or other damage reducing effects.

This drastically impacts the time you have to shatter frozen targets. Couple this in effect with our damage buffs all around, you'll come to notice that a living bomb crit is practically enough to remove the nova. Just be aware that your frost nova / cone of colds will be breaking much easier and plan accordingly.


The talent selection is still exactly the same if you are looking for an all-around spec that incorporates AoE damage, survival, and solid single target pressure.

Quick link to talents: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/magtheridon/Bloobungle/talent/primary

Easily obtainable PvE gear!

Hood of Hidden Flesh
Seal of the Grand Architect
Bottled Wishes

Enemy gameplay anticipation:

Knowing how every class works is a great way to bring your game play to the next level. It takes a lot of experience, questions, or if you are really feeling crazy... a level 85 of that class. Once you start start to learn how other classes optimize their damage or how they ramp up damage, you can start to predict when things will get hairy. If you see a new spell that makes no sense to you, ask a friend, ask a guildmate, ask trade chat, whatever. Just letting it slide by won't help you in the long run.

In the current state of the game, every class is designed to ramp up a set of damage to do a high burst or they'll have a major indicator (buff) that should be an alarm to you as bad (OH BOY RAIDING TRINKETS). Obviously you can not avoid everything so this is where you need to practice and start baiting unnecessary cooldowns to gain the upper hand.

What should be going through your head:

• How can this class CC me? Where does he need to be to do this? Should I stay away or stay close? How threatened will I be if they switch to me?
• Can my team mates get me out of it? Communicate it is coming
• What happens when X and Y open on me? What happens when X and Y open on my partner?
• How can I help him and reassure him that he is safe to fight back? I stress here that it is important to say that you are going to CC prior to actually doing it. It's much easier to play off something that will happen rather than reacting on the fly (dragon's breath in 3, 2, 1..).
• What can interrupt me? When will I be interrupted? Can I juke it? Can I cast a different school of magic so he lockouts a non-critical spell? Should I cover it up so I can cast anyways?
• Can my healer see me where I am? Am I extending too far? Do I have cooldowns to negate damage if my healer gets tied up? Why is the enemy baiting me over here?

What it results to:
This may seem like a lot to be concerned with especially when you look at it in a game-paced scenario. Like all sports though, deductive reasoning becomes instinctive and you learn to trust your judgement. In essence, these questions will pretty much set a foundation on how you should be playing your character in any scenario.

What the beef:

A lot of questions have arose recently regarding my choice behind using haste rather than stacking crit, resilience, or mastery. I will do my best to make it clear as day as to why haste in my opinion, is the best PvP stat for fire after you reach a certain crit percentage. Here we go

1.) Haste increases the frequency of your DoT ticks and also adds more ticks when you reach certain points. Living bomb and pyroblast gain an extra tick at 12.51% and 37.51%. Combustion gains an extra tick at 5.01%, 15.01%, 25.01%.... N5.01%.

more haste = more ticks = more damage
more haste = faster ticks = more DPS

It also only requires 134 haste to gain 1.0%. Mastery and crit require 178 rating.


2.) Haste makes every spell cast faster. THIS IS HUGE for fire. Billy Fuccilo huge. Let me explain...

A good majority of your game play revolves around moving and casting while moving. Without having a handful of snares at your disposal, opponents that are intelligent will just move behind things and prevent you from landing your cast (assume reaction times increase the further you progress in rating). So, in order to land your cast, you need to be quicker and in general, smarter about where you position yourself. If you don't want to think about where you are, haste becomes even better. It will give you room for error.

Casting spells such as polymorph or hardcasting a fireball/pyroblast really sets the tone of matches. Players react when they see these alarming spells and are forced to interrupt you. And the best part about it? You still can cast 2 different schools of magic and be effective. Your team will love you for eating interrupts because they can do what they please and you're also still fighting back.

Add in the fact that you will be making the match 2v3 or 4v5 just by landing a polymorph... It's pretty game altering by getting more of these off. Just think about random bgs where players let 5 people just mow you over. Don't you wish someone was casting something to stop them?


3.) Crit beyond 23% makes absolutely no sense for fire in PvP (unless you play without shatter - which makes no sense either).

I again refer you to fire mage math by guys who clearly take the game much more seriously than anyone ever should (just kidding, thanks).

http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t110326-cataclysm_fire_mage_compendium/#Fire_Talents

Click show spoiler to see a graph of pyroblast procs.

The biggest thing to take home here is that T3 hot steak will dimish rapidly as you obtain more crit percentage. This basically means that by obtaining more crit, you are reducing your chance to get a pyroblast with 1 crit. The sum of both T3 and T4 is almost no difference from 20 to 30% crit. So why bother? Your talents give you crit as do your glyphs. These play no role in these calculations.

So why 20% crit?
Fire blast: (20% + 8% from Improved Fire Blast + 5% from Critical Mass) X 3 from Shatter = 99% crit on a frozen target

Which in turn, referring to the graphs again is ~45% chance to get a pyroblast from that critical hit alone.

Now I'm sure you're thinking, what about outside of fire blast? What about free casting scorch or trying to actually crit with pyroblast? Look again back at number 2.) and think about how many more casts you'll land. High school probability tells me that the guy landing more spells is more likely to get something going. 23% crit is great if you want to ensure pyroblast crits but I dont find it absolutely necessary. 9 times out of 10 it will work in my favor so thats a sacrifice I'm willing to make.


4.) Mastery is rubbish. The damage benefit you gain from it is nearly nothing when you factor in resilience. I assume fire mages that go this route tab living bomb and rely on their partners to do most of the work. Just remember, 12.51% haste basically adds in another 5000 damage with a DoT which takes 20% DoT increase or 7% mastery.


5.) Stacking resilience won't get you anywhere. I'm sure by now you realize that everything in this game hits incredibly hard when they are on you. 10% reduction against a 30k crit makes it 27k. Big whoop?! I still just chunked 1/5 of my health pool!



Short version: Use your tools to prevent opponents from having the chance to unleash the fury. Haste makes it easier to land your spells and keep them from fighting back. It also increases your damage. Stacking anything other than intellect and haste has next to no benefit in PvP as fire.




Also, send me an in-game letter Bloobungle - Magtheridon if you are interested in playing BG's or RBG's on a 7/8 mage team. All alliance welcome! I will check and add you through this thread as well if you don't want to go out of your way

GAMES 7PM EST ON WEDNESDAYS

Between LFR insignia of corrupted mind and bottled wishes (assuming haste stacking gear)...which would u pick?

Awesome start to a new thread.

This season I'm actually leaning Resil > Crit > Haste > Mastery on my secondaries.

With full pvp gear one hits 25%+ baseline crit reforging... and as I play with a rogue in 3's, that 30% is more than enough to guarantee crits. The crazy damage going out this season makes me want to just stack resil as much as possible so I can live through burst.

So I sent your friend request but I forgot to tell you it was me. I'll send it again I guess?

edit: jk your mail disappeared.

<3

And dragonheart, if you like to bg for fun add me and we'll party (by which I mean I will leech knowledge from you while you carry me <3) :D

It would be nice if they stickied this.

Requested for sticky, very nice thread. That tidbit about impact not affecting targets not in combat with you was especially nice :P

Any chance of getting some info on your current haste stacked gear. I feel I might be gearing wrong by stacking all crit.

Also, what do you think is the ideal 2v2 teammate for a fire mage. I have not had luck with eh-sham or ret pally. I heard fire isn't that good in 2v2. I went back to frost to try some 2v2 and while BGing for a refresher course I afk'd out to go back and respec fire because I was not having fun at all. Maybe I just gotta tough it out in 2's, it is just for points cap after all.

Thanks!

Any chance of getting some info on your current haste stacked gear. I feel I might be gearing wrong by stacking all crit.

Also, what do you think is the ideal 2v2 teammate for a fire mage. I have not had luck with eh-sham or ret pally. I heard fire isn't that good in 2v2. I went back to frost to try some 2v2 and while BGing for a refresher course I afk'd out to go back and respec fire because I was not having fun at all. Maybe I just gotta tough it out in 2's, it is just for points cap after all.

Thanks!

Crit is better to stack than haste. Fire mage damage doesn't revolve around spammable abilities. We have better damage from casting than frost, but not enough to justify prioritizing haste over crit.

And fire is amazing in 2's. I don't know who would tell you that. You play with a healer. Fire/DPS is pretty bad.

I've been having a lot of fun with Insignia of the Corrupted Mind especially when coupled with Time Warp. Groups just melt at my feet when I get that perfect Combustion impacted. :D

Huge response regarding haste added above:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/4038554207?page=1#5

There is an abbreviated version in bold at the bottom for those like myself who don't want to read the life story of a local post-man.

Anyways, enjoy. I believe I tackled every reason why haste is #1 and why you should invest in haste.

And be sure to like and follow us on twitter. It makes me all warm and fuzzy on the inside when I have lots thumbs pointing up

@perkynipz:
It may be a playstyle difference but I'd be even more gung-ho haste if I had someone adding an additional static 5% crit. Then again, you do play a super-offensive comp with smoke bomb so I could be wrong.

Stick with what works for you and i'm sure you'll excel either way

Bloobungle! I kind of model my fire mage after you so I'd like to thank you for the guides and informative posts. It's nice to see someone with experience take a real interest in teaching the community. I've tried many comps lately and I'm till trying to find regular 3s partners...it's tough cause not many people seem to want to partner with a fire mage long term. Oh well fire is so fun I don't think I've lost a duel without beating that person back the next round in months.

My question is what PvE piece should I go for next for a haste heavy build? I started late in the season so I don't have much cataclysmic gear but I'm fully upgraded other than that..
I'm thinking my valor ring but I"m not sure what off piece to go for for maximum haste.

Also you said:
"And the best part about it? You still can cast 2 different schools of magic and be effective. Your team will love you for eating interrupts because they can do what they please and you're also still fighting back."

What do you personally do when you fail a juke and get spell locked out of fire or just silenced in general? I understand you'll still do things such as snare and root with your frost spells and shield/blink with your arcane spells, but do you ever use things such as frostbolt/ice lance? I use ice lance every once in a while but I'm usually busying myself with mitigating damage when I'm spell locked. I saw one high rated fire mage with glyphed ice lance and I found that curious O_o. feel like maybe I'm missing something that I should be doing.

Anyways thanks again.

(p.s. Also Billy Fuccilo HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGAH lmao where are you from XD)

@Graycyn:

The valor ring / helmet are your best bet. Personally I'd get the ring since your 2nd is a little outdated.

And as for being interrupted, the first thing I typically do it judge where I am and where I should be moving to. Can I run into the enemy and setup some CC after? Can my healer still heal me? Is rogue all up in my grillhouse and can I back against a wall to keep my back from him? Stuff like that

I definitely utilize frostbolt to try and bait spell locks. Try running in a game and standing still casting scorch and then going into a frostbolt. You'll be amazed how many people freak out. Ice lance is also pretty beast, even as fire. If I can't use fireblast during a shatter, I'll use that

Out of curiousity, was that fire mage also using Early Frost talent? Because with that I can have a 1.1 second frostbolt shatter with ice lance. I used to do it all the time but I find it hard to use properly in 3's


Your local upstate New York dwarf fire mage,
Bloobungle

(P) Bloobungle - Magtheridon
(C) Bloojiggle - Magtheridon
(F) Bloobubba - Magtheridon

Thanks man, you helped a lot what I had to figure out 100% about this spec. I do argue one of your stat priorities though. I think SOME mastery in pvp is better than little because it increases our overall periodic damage. Thus making living bomb that much stronger & I emphasized giving crit more than haste because my dps more than doubled when I dropped both my resilience trinket (that increases spell power) for the crit one. I dont regret going with crit one bit though I will test out haste again and dim it down some.

What do you personally do when you fail a juke and get spell locked out of fire or just silenced in general? I understand you'll still do things such as snare and root with your frost spells and shield/blink with your arcane spells, but do you ever use things such as frostbolt/ice lance? I use ice lance every once in a while but I'm usually busying myself with mitigating damage when I'm spell locked. I saw one high rated fire mage with glyphed ice lance and I found that curious O_o. feel like maybe I'm missing something that I should be doing.

FFB also works when fire is locked out

when locked out of fire, impact procs sometimes bug and allow you to use fire blast before lockout is up. Impact procs are easily generated in RBG situations with 1 or 2 AE's (another reason haste is better IMO because AE's have potential to generate on demand impacts in certain situations. The quicker gcd's allow smoother uses of these mechanics).