Once your gear is accounted for and you’re all prepped and ready to go, it all comes down to how well you push your buttons! The most important thing to remember is ABC: Always Be Casting. As far as what you should be casting, I’ll cover that below with the optimal Fire Mage rotations for both single-target and AoE encounters.
Single-Target Rotation
- Cast Scorch to apply or refresh Critical Mass if needed
- Cast Pyroblast whenever you get a Hot Streak
- Cast Living Bomb if it’s not already up (but don’t refresh before it explodes!)
- Cast Combustion on cooldown while all three of your DoTs are on the target
- Ignite, Pyroblast!, and Living Bomb
- Cast Flame Orb on cooldown
- Cast Fire Blast if you need to move or the target will die before you can finish casting Fireball
- Cast Scorch if you need to move and Fire Blast is on cooldown
- Cast Fireball otherwise
The single-target rotation for Fire Mages in Cataclysm revolves around maintaining your DoTs and taking advantage of Hot Streak procs. You will only need to worry about applying Critical Mass if you don’t have a Warlock in the group who will be maintaining Shadow and Flame. Even then, you will usually refresh it with a Pyroblast unless you get unlucky with Hot Streak procs.
AoE Rotation
- Cast Living Bomb if it’s not already up and the targets won’t die before it goes off
- Cast Pyroblast whenever you get a Hot Streak
- Cast Combustion when Pyroblast crits
- Cast Fire Blast when you proc Impact to spread your DoTs
- Cast Blast Wave on cooldown
- Cast Dragon’s Breath on cooldown
- Cast Flamestrike otherwise
Your AoE rotation involves setting up your DoTs on one target and using Fire Blast to spread them, then substituting your AoE abilities for your single-target “filler” spells.
If you’re fighting weak mobs who will die before your DoTs can be effective, you can skip #2-4 and just cast your AoE spells. You should skip Living Bomb as well if you don’t expect it to explode before the mobs die.
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