Fire Mage DPS Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — The War Within (11.0.5)

The Fire rotation at its core is all about generating as many Hot Streak procs as possible to fire off instant cast Pyroblasts. There are many ways to do this, but the general rotation involves casting Fireball until Heating Up procs, and then converting it into Hot Streak via Fire Blast.

Since Fire Blast can be cast while casting, you always keep chaining Fireballs, and then when one of them crit, while you are casting the next Fireball, you cast Fire Blast to generate the Hot Streak. Then, as your Fireball cast finishes, you can fire off the Fireball and use an instant Pyroblast. Both of these spells will land at the same time, and if one of them crits, you immediately get a new Heating Up and the cycle continues into Fireball + Fire Blast -> Pyroblast.

Additionally, you have some other methods to generate Hot Streak, like Phoenix Flames and Dragon's Breath (if talented into Alexstrasza's Fury), These other spells exist to provide even further Hot Streak generation, as they are guaranteed critical strikes. (with Call of the Sun King)

This Fireball / Pyroblast cycle is alternated by Combustion phases. During Combustion, all of your spells are guaranteed critical strikes, so instead of casting Fireballs to trigger Heating Up, you chain Pyroblasts and Fire Blasts. You also tend to throw in Scorch (and Phoenix Flames with some talents) outside of Fire Blast and Pyroblast, for when you run out of Fire Blast charges.

Finally, you have various talents that provide multiple things to track. For example, Sun King's Blessing is another method of obtaining Combustion, making it very important that you do not waste these procs.

1. When Combustion is ready, go into the Combustion rotation below.
2. Cast Pyroblast while Hyperthermia is up. Keep up Feel the Burn during this. You want to only press Fire Blast when you have Heating Up, not when you have Hot Streak. Even though Hyperthermia makes all Pyroblasts instant, it still benefits from the Hot Streak Mastery: Ignite damage bonus, which is why you want to time your Fire Blasts around generating additional Hot Streaks.
3. Cast Meteor if Combustion is not ready within 45 seconds.
4. Cast Shifting Power when Combustion is on cooldown, and you do not currently have it active. Lastly, ensure you do not have 3 charges of Fire Blast. Generally, this means using it right after your Combustion phase ends.
5. Hardcast Pyroblast when you have a Sun King's Blessing proc.
6. Cast Pyroblast when you have a Hot Streak proc. Generally aim to cast Pyroblast immediately after a Fireball cast so both land at the same time. See our Pyro Chaining section below for more info on why.
7. Cast Scorch if the target is below 30% health and Improved Scorch is timing out within a couple of seconds, and you do not currently have Hot Streak.
8. Cast Scorch if you have a Heat Shimmer proc, and you do not currently have Hot Streak.
9. Cast Frostfire Bolt when Frostfire Empowerment procs and you do not have Hot Streak.
10. Cast Fire Blast when you have Heating Up to convert it into Hot Streak.
11. Cast Phoenix Flames or Dragon's Breath to generate Heating Up or convert Heating Up into Hot Streak. Ensure there are no spells in flight toward the target when doing this.
12. Try to keep up Feel the Burn by timing your Fire Blast and Phoenix Flames in such a way that you refresh the stacks as late as possible. Generally, this will work out automatically, but do keep an eye on it, and perhaps cast a Fire Blast earlier or later during a cast to ensure it refreshes Feel the Burn.
13. Cast Scorch as your filler if the target is below 30% Health to generate Heating Up / Hot Streak.
14. Cast Fireball as your filler to generate Heating Up / Hot Streak.
15. Cast Scorch if you have to move and have no instant casts to burn.

Combustion should be used on cooldown whenever possible. You should always overlap Combustion with other damage boosts to further increase your damage, such as Meteor, trinkets and racials.

Since Combustion makes every spell critically strike, you want to get as many hard-hitting spells in the window as possible. To facilitate this, you should save at least one charge of Fire Blast and Phoenix Flames, though preferably, all charges will be available unless you are specced into Spontaneous Combustion, in which case you should not pool any charges. Combustions gained via Sun King's Blessing do require pooling regardless of talents, as Spontaneous Combustion does not work for these Combustions.

During Combustion, we will be casting a lot of instant Pyroblasts. Since Combustion guarantees a crit, this will always cause your Pyroblast to proc Heating Up or Hot Streak. Because of this, you only need one other spell to generate Hot Streaks. During Combustion, this will be Fire Blast, Phoenix Flames, Fireball (with Flame Accelerant) and Scorch.

Cast Meteor into Scorch. Right at the start of your Scorch cast, cast Combustion.

We want to enter Combustion in the following way:

1. Begin casting Fireball.
2. Depending on your Hot Streak / Heating Up status, execute the option listed below:
   • If you already have a Hot Streak proc: cast Combustion near the end of your Fireball cast
   • If you already have a Heating Up: cast Combustion + Fire Blast near the end of your Fireball cast.
   • If you have neither: cast Combustion + Fire Blast halfway through the Fireball cast, followed by either a Scorch, or a Fireball. Use Fireball during Time Warp, Scorch otherwise.
   • The end result of any of the above 3 steps is that you end up with a Hot Streak proc, and a Fireball in the air. This allows you to cast two Pyroblasts in a row after finishing Fireball. One from the Hot Streak, and one from the first Pyroblast landing + the Fireball landing.

Follow the priority list below while Combustion is active.

1. Instant-cast Pyroblast whenever you have Hot Streak.
2. Hardcast Pyroblast when you have Sun King's Blessing final stack.
3. When Flame's Fury procs (the proc gained from Phoenix Reborn), cast Phoenix Flames to generate Heating Up / Hot Streak.
4. Cast Frostfire Bolt for generating Heating Up / Hot Streak when Frostfire Empowerment procs.
5. Use Scorch for generating Heating Up / Hot Streak when Improved Scorch has less than 5 seconds left, and you do not currently have Hot Streak.
6. If the target is above 30% health, and you do not have Hot Streak, use Scorch when you proc Heat Shimmer to apply Improved Scorch.
7. Use Fire Blast and Phoenix Flames for generating Heating Up / Hot Streak while keeping Feel the Burn buff up. When you run out of stacks of Fire Blast and Phoenix Flames, use Scorch. When Flame Accelerant is up, cast Fireball instead .

It is important to note if you proc the final stack of Sun King's Blessing during Combustion, you should hardcast Pyroblast to extend your Combustion by 6 seconds. Make sure to keep up your Feel the Burn buff during it.

Worth noting, activating Combustion while you have Sun King's Blessing's Combustion active will NOT add 12 seconds to Combustion. Instead, it will reset the duration. So never cast Combustion during Sun King's Blessing's Combustion.

If you are not running Firestarter: Pre-cast Pyroblast into Phoenix Flames. Then go into the Combustion rotation.

If you are running Firestarter:

1. Pre-cast Pyroblast.
2. Chain Pyroblast and Fire Blast until you are out of Fire Blasts.
3. Cast Shifting Power to get 3 Fire Blast charges again.
4. Continue your rotation as normal until your target is 90% health.
5. Go into the Combustion rotation when the target reaches 90%.
6. Cast Fireballs and Fire Blasts and consume your Hot Streaks as you get them until 10 stacks of Sun King's Blessing. Keep your Fire Blast charges at or above 2.
7. Once at 10 charges of Sun King's Blessing, hardcast Pyroblast (even if the target is still above 90% health). Near the end of the cast, cast Combustion. Ensure you press Combustion before the Pyroblast cast finishes, or you will lose the Sun King's Blessing Combustion.
8. Continue the standard Combustion rotation like normal.

There are 2 main AoE rotations. Either simply doing your single target rotation, and letting Mastery: Ignite do the AoE for you, or a Flamestrike based rotation.

The AoE rotation when running the Mastery: Ignite based build is exactly the same as your single target rotation. Mastery: Ignite will automatically spread, and various other talents will also do incidental AoE damage for free for you. Simply follow the single target rotation.

The Flamestrike based build is also relatively straight forward. It follows the single target rotation, with one very critical change: Any time you would normally use Pyroblast, you instead cast Flamestrike. This only applies on 4 or more targets. On 3 or fewer targets you do the single target rotation.