Hi guys, I’m an experienced frost and arcane mage and I just wanted to ask some things about fire to see if it’s worth getting into. What are the pros and cons compared to frost and arcane? Especially concerning single target, cleave, funneling, and mobility. And feel free to give any other tips for playing fire or its legendaries!
Check out Icy Veins or Wow head for decent guides for each spec. But you probably know that. Then swap specs and try out a training dummy.
Fire is the bursty mage. Huge dmg, then long cool down with moderate dmg. I like the mobility but of course runes ruins mobility. Runes is what keeps from playing any mage 100%. But still Fire is my fav of all classes. The burst can be unnerving on the receiving end, which is why I switched to fire to begin with.
Fire has worse cleave, no funnel. It has extremely high mobility during execute which is a huge advantage for it because that is typically the hardest part of a fight (in raid). Its cheat death is almost always more valuable than frost and arcane’s counter parts (those being a second ice block and greater invis). It currently is the strongest single target mage spec and benefits the most of the 3 from externals like power infusion.
Compared to frost arcane and fire share the same weakness imo, they are vulnerable to forced movement at critical points in their rotation where you need to be casting arcane blast or hard casting a pyroblast.
Essentially the niches right now are Frost- funneling and cleave, Arcane and Fire- burst aoe and single target damage (both better burst and generally better sustained single target).
That said it is easier to perform at a higher level as frost than the other 2 specs and frost is currently a far better m+ spec than either of the other 2 but that doesn’t really matter in any key below a 23.
Legendaries: sun kings blessing for single target and disciplinary command for aoe.
As someone else mentioned,
Sun King’s Blessing legendary for ST (raid), and Disciplinary Command for AoE (M+) Some people run SKB in M+ too, but it takes a lot more planning,
In terms of differences, you’ll find Fire has incredible on-demand burst, which can be really fun. When something interrupts your ability to make use of Combustion, your damage can really suffer, though (for example if a boss phases into an immune sequence, etc.)
Mobility it’s about as good as any of the other specs.
Our passive cleave has really diminished since BfA, but there is some there. Really in most situations, you have to decide whether you want to focus down priority targets or go full AoE. This also affects what conduits you’d want to take to make the most of it.
I’m not sure what content you prefer, but for PvP, Fire is king because of its potential to burst down a target very quickly.
In M+, frost is better overall because of its smoother damage profile, but it really only matters in very high keys. If you’re just going for Keystone Master, any mage spec is perfectly viable.
In raids, I believe Arcane and Fire are really close in terms of single target damage, with Frost pulling ahead anytime there is sustained AoE or cleave. (For example, Kel’Thuzad)
If you want to have great cleave, Frost is definitely the best at it.
In summary, I’d recommend reading/watching some guides and giving fire a try. It can be a lot of fun. Mages aren’t particularly OP right now, but they are in a great place considering every spec is viable right now for most content.
Enjoy the mage life!
1 Like
I swapped from arcane to fire mid patch because I simmed several hundred dps higher as fire even though my arcane gear is slightly better and also because of cauterize. I was getting low key annoyed getting clipped by the people with the circles on guardian is when I decided so having extra survivability is invaluable.
As far as flavor and tastes for specs on a high level, I feel fire as a more engaging playstyle since you will have to cast a lot compared to arcane. From my experiences it is debatable when using SKB leggo that fire’s APM is higher than frost. Unlike frost, the button presses for fire have stricter timing and rhythm when you are doing optimized rotations that involve double pyro with spell queuing.
I raided with an arcane and frost mage recently and I felt overall our performances were similar. They parsed better on the kills but I recall moments where I messed up and could have improved on execution. With SKB especially you will have to play the another mini game of micromanaging the stacks when you will want to convert from 7 to 8 to SKB combust and not letting it expire during encounters on top of other fire’s mini games of not letting your IC buff to fall off.