Hey everyone,
So I have a question about fire mage and when to use phoniex flames. I know it spreads ignite but in most AoE you’d likely be using flame strike which applies ignite anyway right?
Assuming I’m right about that, I’m not sure when you’d want to use phoniex flames aside from maybe only a fighting 2 mobs? So when do you want to use it?
Thanks
In it’s current state, it’s meant to be ur method of spreading ignite, which is a terrible idea and needs to be changed to how it was in Legion.
In Legion it was basically ur AoE fire blast since it guaranteed 1 crit for hot streak and helped make combustion smooth af to the point where you didn’t have to worry about having enough fire blast charges to make the most out of combustion.
Flamestrike should be adding ignite, but phoenix flames will spread ur current ignite from the main target to the others, whereas flamestrike just starts a new one which probably won’t be as high as the main target’s.
Fire mage mastery needs to be reverted to where it spreads automatically. Having it spread only from a 30s cooldown makes absolutely no thematical sense for fire, which should be spreading over everything, and I’m fairly certain this is one of the main reasons why fire mage in its current state is horrible compared to arcane and frost.
You single target pew-pew until you get a solid ignite dot , then, assuming there are other targets to cleave, you would phoenix flames your single target to spread the ignite dot.
In a mostly single target encounter, I suppose you could just use it as filler for when fire blast is on cooldown (it can crit and proc a hot streak).
As the other poster stated, you would wan’t to prioritize spreading your primary target ignite on multi targets over a flamestrike ignite. In PvP it’s important to note , flamestrike applies an aoe 20% slow, which can be useful in some situations.
Granted I have very little fire experience, is it supposed to feel so clunky in aoe situations? By the time the ignite is worth the spread I feel like everything has already died.
Between that and using hot streak on Flamestrike, the whole thing just feels… uncomfortable I guess? Is this just how fire is outside of single target and cleave?
I’m just coming back to the game so I could be wrong, but last I saw ignite builds upon itself so the more single target dmg you pump into a target the bigger the ignite will be. thats why you want it to spread because that 1 large ignite will do more dmg spread out than just applying a weaker ignite with only flamestrike.
Yes, in almost all situations where your ignite is worth spreading, everything is already dead, so your mastery stat becomes less impactful.
The exceptions would be raid boss fights like hive mind where you have so many adds, you’d just add Phoenix flames into your rotation and hope for the best.
But yes the spell is garbage.
To me, it’s mostly for the combustion phase. You want to use at least 1 phoenix flames at the tail end of combustion to spread ignite. I argue that you actually want to use 2 charges during combustion though. One charge at 6 seconds, the second charge as combustion ends. Depending on your combustion window timings, you have 1-2 free use phoenix flame charges left to use when you need to (such as during a Sun King’s Blessing’s combustion phase or a Firestorm proc).
What I mean by combustion window timings is that talents like kindling or the night fae class ability reduce the cooldown of combustion. With a 45 second charge time you need to allow for phoenix flames to reset twice for a 90 second window if you’re planning on using 2 during combustion.
Honestly, I don’t see where you’d use phoenix flames outside of combustion though Doesn’t seem worth it when the value during combustion is so high compared to the value when you get lucky with a short burst of crits.