Unless you feel comfortable you have mastered the mechanics of the Combust rotation and acquired the muscle memory needed to execute it perfectly. Both of these are not easy and will require a good deal of practice and effort on your part and even then there is no guarantee you will be able to do it well enough for the switch to make a significant difference in your DPS output.
A decided to write about this because over the past few weeks I have seen many exasperated Mages make the switch to Fire only to hit that brick wall because they are simply not quick enough with their fingers to make Combust work and then end up worse off than they were before and now significantly behind on legendaries, renown, etc. on top of everything else.
The switch from Frost or Arcane to Fire is not as simple as say switching from BM to MM Hunter and I don’t think a lot of people realize it. This applies not just to Mages who are thinking about making the switch but also raid leaders who simply look at the logs and encourage folks to switch to the best performing specs not really understanding the reality of the situation.
There are a lot of players who mastered Fire when it was broken and stupidly powerful towards the end of BfA and as a result make it look easy. This is especially true if you are looking at popular Twitch streamers or YouTubers but keep in mind that this is literally a job for them and they have devoted the corresponding time and effort required to learn that skill. You may not be in a position to do that yourself.
It’s bad enough feeling pressured to switch to a spec you may not enjoy and frankly that should be reason enough not to make the switch but as you can see it’s actually even more complicated than that.
I hope this helps out fellow Mages who are struggling right now with what choices to make not to fall into a trap through no fault of their own.
P.S. Keep in mind that this may not apply to you at all and that you might very well turn out to be quite good at Fire but please take my word of warning and try things out for yourself carefully before committing.
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Unless you are doing the fireball double fireblast opener its actually really easy to play fire. And in combust you have about 1.25s for each global to press the next ability so thats not really that fast if you have the abilities near each other. For instance my fire blast is on 2, pyro on 3, and phoenix flames on 4.
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Like I said, this certainly doesn’t apply to everyone but if you’re like me and have the reflexes of a potato it’s just not worth the hassle. Fire is a younger man’s game.
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Hopefully the frost buffs bring it decently up to par.
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Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. I main priest and mage is my only alt, I’ve been trying to go FIre but I don’t exactly find it hard yet, it just doesn’t fit my style (I have enough hassle as shadow thank you very much). Will try to continue being arcane, however difficult it might be to run Torghast alone as a mage 
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I switched to fire. i would argue its even more simple than frost.
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While it is indeed harder to play fire than frost, the combust window is something you shouldnt messed up unless you press the wrong buttons.
The gcd helps a lot in managing your spells aside from fire blasts.
Dont be discouraged in trying out different specs.
I do love frost rotations though. By far the simpliest and easiest
I agree with this. actually. I would much prefer to play frost over fire and probably will switch over if the buffs end up being strong enough. Fire just seems like it’s way more convoluted than it should be and its easy to mess little things up in the rotation if you aren’t paying close attention.
As a warrior I feel like they do a good job making every button press feel like something meaningful. As a fire mage it feels like you’re doing absolutely nothing without procs and crit trains going.
They are thinking about giving it a flat 9% buff with the next reset.
If that were true, the spread between the higher end and the median for frost would be wider than fire.
And objectively its not based on WCL data.
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Some people just click with certain specs. I did really well with Frost in WoD, and I normally played Frost. This is the first time I am playing fire. I can’t say I like it. But I can understand someone who thinks Frost is easier because to some it just is.
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Good post OP, my sentiments exactly
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Fire mage might be my alt. I’ve got one slowly leveling so that the rotation is more rote memory.
I like how bursty it is
Definitely agree with you there. I switched to Fire and managed to get a decent dps increase, with parses similar to my Arcane ones. At the end of the 3 hour raid though my hand was legitimately sore.
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I get it’s pretty much on par with frost as rotation goes it’s really forgiving as long as your casting combustion on cool down and using pheonix scorch and fireblast to there full extent… get a proc cast blast then pyro? it’s like 2 buttons until combustion then it becomes 3. Frost is easier for perfect play but you can be playing fire far from ideal and still out dps a perfect frost. as long as your doing combustion right and using your pyro procs.
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I’m kind of in this situation except I started Fire as Frost looked grim, however with Frost now getting these buffs I’m contemplating making the switch. Fire is very bursty and I don’t hate it but the combust rotation really does require quick precision or it’s very easy to fall behind on damage which isn’t fun. It doesn’t help that I’ve been rolling with RoP which I hate but afaik it’s recommended for Frost as well.
I am sorry but I would disagree on this. BfA’s iteration of fire mage had a $hit ton of buttons to press during the combustion rotation (13 pyros if not mistaken on normal combustion, 9 on minute mage). To me it is much easier now. I would say sit on a dummy for a few hours and you will get the muscle memory for it
Right, that’s all I am saying. I encourage people to spend the time at the dummy to see if they can get the rotation down before they commit to switching covenants/crafting new legendaries etc. instead of just flipping the switch and expecting to see an instant DPS increase which is actually not an unreasonable expectation to have since for other classes it works exactly like that (see BM to MM). Just a PSA because it’s a little more complicated for Mages.
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I switched to fire and there is a lot of muscle memory involved. I’m a half clicker(bad hand coordination) but with fire so far I can keybind more than Frost due to the instant cast and a macro. It does take practice and I agree to test it out on the dummy before going out in the world. I must of spent a good 2-3 hours getting the rotation down and timing combustion and I still make mistakes. 
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