Fire Mage DPS Rotation & Cooldowns

DPS Rotation & Cooldowns

A general priority guide for Fire Mage abilities and cooldowns. Helpful for understanding the spec's fundamentals and getting comfortable with core synergies. Updated for the latest patch in World of Warcraft: Midnight (12.0.1).

Single Target

Ensure Arcane Intellect and Blazing Barrier are active before combat.

Activate during burst phases or when target is above 90% health with Firestarter.
Use if <2 Pyroclasm stacks or during Combustion.
Use with Hot Streak!.
Use to convert Heating Up into Hot Streak!.
Use as filler or when target is below 30% health.
Use as filler when no other abilities are available.

Start with Combustion for guaranteed crits, prioritize Meteor and Pyroblast with Hot Streak!. Use Fire Blast to convert Heating Up and Scorch or Fireball as fillers.

AoE

Ensure Arcane Intellect and Blazing Barrier are active before combat.

Activate during AoE burst phases.
Use before Combustion or during AoE.
Use with Hot Streak! at 4+ targets.
Use to convert Heating Up into Hot Streak!.
Use as filler or when target is below 30% health.
Use as filler when no other abilities are available.

For AoE, activate Combustion and prioritize Meteor and Flamestrike with Hot Streak!. Use Fire Blast to generate Hot Streak! and Scorch or Fireball as fillers.

Cooldowns

Use during burst phases or when target is above 90% health with Firestarter.
Use in tandem with Combustion or during AoE.

Utilize Combustion for guaranteed crits and Meteor for high-impact AoE or single-target damage.

New to Class? Try Assisted Rotation

Patch 11.1.7 introduced new features that make it eaiser to pick and play new characters. These new settings can be enabled from settings » gameplay enhancements:

Single-Button Assistant
Assisted Highlight
Cooldown Manager

If you are new to World of Warcraft or a certain class, enabling Assisted Highlight and Cooldown Manager can help you learn which abilities to prioritize and use.

While the Single-Button Assistant can be a much easier and more accessible way to play the game, it does come with a slight performance hit due to a small GCD penalty, as you will have to wait 25% longer in between spells and abilities.

To see which specs are best with the Single-Button Assistant feature, you can check out our DPS Rankings which uses SimC to sim every class using this feature.