Talents

Deep Fire is recognized as the highest Mage DPS spec, and it's currently the only one we'll be working with here. ZOMG ARCANE ROX WTF??! - I'm not saying you can't do good DPS with other specs, but Theorycrafting puts Deep Fire at the top. If you're not convinced, here are a couple places to start your own research: Theorycraft-O-Matic by LHivera, Visualizations by Tachyon, Excel Model by Vontre.

Deep Fire builds generally come in one of two flavors:

2/47/11 + 1: Deep Fire with Icy Veins
This is the best build for raid damage. 7 of the Frost points can be allocated however you like, and most will put the extra point into Improved Flamestrike or Improved Fireblast.

10/47/3 + 1: Deep Fire with Clearcasting
Also good, with slightly better mana efficiency, but less DPS without Icy Veins. Again, most will put the extra point into Improved Flamestrike or Improved Fireblast.

Statistics (Hit, Haste, Damage, Crit)

Understanding the nuances of these stats is key to making smart gear choices and maximizing the DPS potential of your existing pieces. You can get breakdowns of the relative values from either MaxDPS.com or LHivera's Theorycraft-O-Matic. Everyone's situation is a little different, but the relationship should look like this:

Hit (until cap) > Haste > Damage > Crit > Spell Penetration

Hit Rating: You can't do damage if the mob is resisting your spells. Increasing your Hit Rating can bring you up to a maximum 99% chance to land the spell. 12.6 Spell Hit Rating = 1% increased chance to hit at level 70, and for Fire Mages with 3 points in Elemental Precision, you'll need a Hit Rating of 164 to reach that 99% for Bosses (considered level 73). Note that after the hit cap, additional points of Hit Rating are worthless. More Information at WoW Wiki

Haste Rating: This increases your casting speed (which is different from reducing the cast time of your spells) and shortens the global cooldown. Consequently, it will also cause you to burn through mana quicker. 15.7 Spell Haste Rating = 1% increase in casting speed at level 70, meaning your New Casting Time = Base Casting Time after Talents / (1 + (Spell Haste Rating/1570)). Haste is good in all amounts - here's a decent explanation. More Information at WoW Wiki.

Spell Damage: The amount of damage applied to a particular spell is subject to the following multiplier: (Untalented Cast Time of Spell) / 3.5. Fireball gets 100% of your spell damage while Scorch and Fireblast (instants are treated as having 1.5 second cast time) get only 42.86%. More Information at WoW Wiki

Crit Rating: Everyone loves critical hits. 22.1 Spell Crit Rating = 1% increased chance to crit at level 70. Stacking Crit can be fun, but DPS-wise you're always better with Hit, Haste, or straight Damage. More Information at WoW Wiki

Other stats like Spell Penetration and Intellect play only a minor role in DPS.

Gear, Gems, and Enchants

This is where magelings make the most mistakes. Fortunately, you don't need to fully understand itemization - this excellent site will handle all of the DPS comparisons (both gear and gems) for you: MaxDPS.com.

All of your Gems should have either Hit, Haste, or Damage (Crit, Penetration, and Intellect gems are inferior for DPS). The exception is the Chaotic Skyfire Diamond, which is by far the best Meta gem option.

For enchants, the options are very straight-forward:

Head: Requires Revered with Sha'tar
Shoulder: Requires Exalted with Aldor or Scryer
Cloak: Subtlety > Spell Penetration
Chest: Exceptional Stats
Wrist: Spellpower
Hands: Spellpower > Fire Power > Spell Stike
Legs: Runic Spellthread
Feet: Extra movement speed can be useful
Ring: Requires Enchanting, and Honored with Keepers of Time
Weapon: Sunfire (expen$ive) > Major Spellpower

Professions

If your guild isn't clearing BT/MH regularly, you should really be a Tailor. Power-leveling to 375 really doesn't take that much time or money and you won't find better gear for most slots until end-game.

You don't need to be a tailor to wear the Spellstrike Hood or Spellstrike Pants, but you'll get the Spellstrike Infusion which works out to be about 15 bonus damage. You'll wear your Spellfire Robe, Spellfire Gloves, Spellfire Belt for a long time. The Wrath of Spellfire bonus will grant you around 20 DPS. You can get the Belt of Blasting and Bracers of Nimble Thought without tailoring, but not the Mantle of Nimble Thought. Then the shiney Sunwell loot: Sunfire Robe and Sunfire Handwraps.

Jewelcrafting (BoP gems) and Enchanting (+12 damage to rings) are excellent second professions, each having ways to boost DPS.

Spell Choice

As a Fire Mage, Fireball is your bread and butter for single-target DPS - spam it on bosses and trash alike.

Scorch does significantly less DPS than Fireball, and is used primarily for its delicious stackable debuff (+15% Fire damage). You'll want to make sure that it's always stacked to 5 during boss fights (or arguably on any mob that stays up longer than 20 seconds). It also comes in handy in situations where you don't have time to complete a Fireball cast before the mob dies.

Some may choose to work a Fireblast into rotations, but I've only found them useful as finishers, and when on the run.

For prolonged AOE, you should generally use Arcane Explosion over Flamestrike.

If you can safely get within range, use Arcane Explosion for its flexibility as an instant cast (allowing you to be mobile), its threat reduction via Arcane Subtlety, and its larger radius (10 yards). Make sure to use Blastwave whenever it's available.

If you can keep the mobs tightly clustered and/or need to stay at range, spammed Flamestrike has an edge in terms of DPM. Theorycrafting gives it similar DPS, but in practice it's hard to achieve those results. Mobs won't always stay in your 5 yard radius to receive the dot, and the cast time makes it inconvenient (interuptable) in situations where you'll receive periodic damage. Make sure you bind it to a key for quick/easy targeting.

Buffs and Consumables

A good raid leader understands the impact of class composition on DPS. Here are several party buffs you should be aware of: Moonkin Aura, Totem of Wrath, Wrath of Air Totem, Heroism (or Bloodlust), Heroic Presence.

Now that Curse of Elements applies to Shadow as well (patch 2.4.3), you can finally expect Warlocks to start using this consistently. Also noteworthy: Misery, Power Infusion, and the Troll racial: Berserking.

In a raid, you should generally have 3 consumables active: flask/elixir, oil, and food.

Flasks are relatively expensive, but persist through death: Pure Death, Supreme, and Unstable Sorcerer (only works in Blade's Edge). If you're strapped for cash, you can substitute a Battle Elixir: Major Firepower, Greater Firepower, Greater Arcane, or Adept's, but they're obviously not as good and you'll lose the buffs if you die.

Wizard Oil comes in Superior or Brilliant varieties - both of which persist through death.

Food buffs from several tasty snacks will increase Spell Damage by 23 and Spirit by 20 for 30 minutes.

Destruction Potions are excellent for quick bursts, but often considered too expensive to use outside of a special attempt. Flame Caps also stack, but share a cooldown with Mana Gems. There are also a few other options.

Mana Management

You can't do much damage if you're OOM. With the recent changes to Mana Gems, Evocation, and Spirit mechanics, Fire Mages shouldn't have much trouble with mana efficiency on most fights. Use your gems as early and often as possible (don't wait until you're running low) and supplement with mana pots as necessary. Situationally, you might see a need to use Mage Armor instead of Molten Armor, but this should be avoided as you'd be missing out 3% Crit (66.3 Crit Rating).

Being grouped with certain classes can also do a lot for mana management, like having a Shadow Priest for Vampiric Touch, or a Shaman for a Mana Spring Totem. Having a Paladin apply Judgement of Wisdom is also a big boost.

Threat and Staying Alive

Mages are fragile, and you can't DPS when you're dead. Aside from a couple encounters, Stamina is an ignorable stat - you'll be just fine with around 7000 unbuffed health. Use a Healthstone or a pot if your health gets low (bandaging eats into your DPS time), and don't pull aggro.

If you're doing great DPS, you'll need to be extra careful with Threat. Use Omen to make sure you don't surpass the tank on the hate list. Outside of melee range, you need 130% threat of the monster's target to pull aggro. The Mage's only aggro-dumping ability is Invisibility, which eliminates 10% of your Threat each second, with a full wipe after the 5 second fade - making it useful even without waiting the full period. If you're pushing the threshold, rotate in a few Threat-reduced Arcane Blasts. For more information, see Caribou16's guide to Threat.

Don't forget to keep Ice Block bound to a key in case you do pull aggro.

Knowledge of Encounters

You'll be able to squeeze in more and more damage as you become familiar with each encounter and get a better handle on your role. Make sure you're prepared. Knowing when to start AOEing, or pop trinkets, or switch targets can do a lot to increase your DPS.

Most raids require it anyway, but install an add-on like DeadlyBoss Mods, or BigWigs. The timers and alerts will make all the encounters much easier. For strategies, check out Boss Killers, World of Strats, or run searches on YouTube for demo videos.

Timing

Doing good damage means paying attention and maximizing the time you're actually casting rather than looking around, switching targets, deciding which button to click, or repositioning in fights requiring movement.

Your mouse is slower than your keyboard. Bind your most used abilities, and use Tab and Shift-Tab to switch targets. The mouse should be used for turning, and leisurely clicks while you're waiting for the global cooldown. Developing interface quickness will also serve you well in PVP.

Latency is the lag time that exists between you and the server, and minimizing it and its effects can greatly impact your DPS. If you're lucky your latency is around 200ms, which means that instead of getting off a Fireball every 3 seconds, it's really more like every 3.2 seconds. You can mitigate this with the Quartz add-on, which will replace your casting bar with one that also displays latency. The section at the end of the bar is like a DPS tax, which can be avoided by mashing your cast button as you approach the red section to ensure your spell queues as soon as possible.

Practicing intelligent cooldown management, is a huge part of Fire Mage DPS. When considering when to use your trinkets and abilities, keep these things in mind:

• Get as many uses as possible - Pop early in the encounter to increase the chance of additional uses
• Take advantage of multiplicative synergies - Stacking most trinkets > popping them separately
• Save a use for the last 20% of the fight - Molten Fury time

Creating Macros to save you clicks when activating trinkets and/or abilities is another great way to increase DPS. No matter how quick you are with a keystroke or mouse click, this method is faster. I have several of these for various scenarios. Here's a simple example:

#showtooltip
/cast Icy Veins
/cast Fireball

Control Freak is more of a utility add-on. It allows you to set a mob as your focus for sheeping, then resheep it later without targeting it. Not having to change your target is hugely convenient and will improve your DPS on fights where you're on crowd control duty.

Example

To help illustrate the above points, here's an overly simplified tank-and-spank example (No movement, AoE portitions, aggro-wipes or other complications).

Beforehand, you make sure you're fully buffed (oil, food, flask, party buffs, etc.). You've read up on the strategy, and know where to position yourself and what to expect from each phase.

The tank runs in and starts building up aggro. You know from your experience with this tank that you can start DPS after about 5 seconds (X amount of threat), and begin by Scorching. You're the only Fire Mage, so after 5 Scorches the debuff is fully stacked. By this point Omen tells you the Tank is well ahead in aggro, so you use a macro to simultaneously use a trinket, cast Ivy Veins, cast Combustion, and cast Fireball - all with a single click. It's important to use these abilities early on so that you'll get a second/third use before the end of the encounter. You continue chain-casting Fireball, reapplying Scorch when necessary (after about every 8 casts).

Your priorities in a fight this simple are:

• Don't pull aggro
• Don't die
• Don't run out of mana
• Keep the Scorch debuff alive, and otherwise...
• DPS as hard as you can

The boss hits 30%, and you notice Combustion and Ivy Veins are ready to use again. They'll be much more effective to pop once the boss hits 20% (Molten Fury bonus), so you wait. At 25% you make sure you have enough mana to finish, and a fresh Scorch debuff. At 20%, you pop trinkets/abilities one last time, throwing a Flame Cap and Destruction Potion into the mix as well.

Analyzing your Progress

As with anything, the key to progress from n00b to l33t is continuously looking for places to improve. Recount and Wow Web Stats are useful tools to let you compare and analyze your DPS and look for weaknesses to work on.

For testing out new techniques, macros, gear, etc. it's also handy to head over to Netherstorm and spend some time barbecuing Dr. Boom. He doesn't fight back, making him the ideal victim of your research.

Please send any feedback, corrections, or suggestions to: brockzilla at gmail dot com.