I noticed that fire mage I guess isnt great until higher keys because of ignite? how about in normal and heroic raids or is a different type of mage still better?
The last discussion on ignite was a guy who wasn’t even doing M0. You can run almost anything in heroic or normal. If you’re playing at that level, just focus on having fun.
If you’re really curious what the top build is, just look at warcraft logs.
Yes, fire is like shadow priest, but with extra steps. Your main damage, supposed to be, from ignite dote, which scales from mastery. That why most guidies and mage’s discord recommend to stack versatility and avoid mastery xD. Which is kind of opposite to what you compelled to do, by class mechanics. On low levels you can just run versa-haste flame patch build, and will be fine. It just feels like you playing around your spec instead, of spec specific strengths.