Noob Fire Mage Talent Ideas

[Bolty]

Bored, I'm playing alts. I have a Mage alt named Bolty (wow, so original) who back in pre-TBC days was frost. Having not played him in so long, he still didn't have talents selected since the last Mage talent reset. I decided to have some fun with a fire mage and spec'ed him thusly.

Fire mages are oodles of fun - lots of maneuverability, huge damage crits, and plenty of CC options with Blast Wave and Dragon's Breath make him what I'd expect from a Mage. Running around blasting the hell out of things. With crappy gear from quests only, he still 3-shots most mobs. Must be a sight to see an epic'ed out fire Mage blow things up.

Anyway, this guy's probably not ever going to raid, so he's just enjoying soloing talents. But I'm in a situation here where I can't see where else to spend my talent points (9 to go) that'll have significant benefit.

My options seem to be between:

1) Improved Scorch. I look at this talent and think, "pure raiding talent." No soloing mob lasts long enough for it to be worth me applying Scorches to it when I'd rather open with a Pyroblast. By the time I've stacked up enough Scorches to get the 15% benefit, the mob will be beating on me, and it's just not efficient. It's a group talent. In 5-mans, nothing but bosses live long enough for me to get that benefit, and depending on the length of the fight it may still be more worth it for me to straight up nuke.

2) Playing with Fire. Probably a good soloing talent. Most mobs when soloing don't use magic effects, so in the long run getting the 3% damage boost is a good tradeoff for taking 3% more damage occasionally. Counterspelling casters also helps mitigate that downside. Ok, so that's 3 points there.

3) Molten Fury. I look at this talent and think, "pure raiding talent." Raiding bosses at less than 20% health still live a long time, but nothing else really does. When you're 3-shotting mobs solo, you don't think "ooh boy, he's close to death, now I do 20% more damage!" It's more like "lol he's at 40% health, time to blow him away with a fireball keke." In other words, when a solo mob is at < 20% health, he's dying in one shot anyway.

4) Improved Flamestrike. Hmm, 15% more crit chance on a spell I don't use too often, but combined with Ignite it would be phat when I do. Little help?

5) Frost tree. Mmm, nothing really looks that great. I use Frostbolt when I'm facing a fire immune mob. I've already got the key Elemental Precision talent.

6) Arcane tree. Improved Arcane Missiles is tempting, as it would make AM my alternate spell when facing fire immunes instead of Frostbolt. It could also open up Arcane Concentration if I wanted to dump more points in Arcane to pick up Clearcasting.

So potentially I could dump 5 points into Arcane and then use 4 points into Playing with Fire, Improved Flamestrike, Molten Fury, and Improved Scorch. Else, I dump all remaining 9 points into fire talents only.

Either way, what do you think I should go with?

-Bolty

[Taelas]

There are several choices, though most of my ideas would require a respec.

10/48/3, Scorch build. You basically ignore Fireball and use Scorch instead. It's more mobile, but it's also a bit less DPS (though DPM is probably better).

Personally, as long as you're soloing, I'd probably respec to Frost. There's simply nothing that makes up for the degree of control you're capable of as Frost. (Though soloing 2-man bosses won't be possible; they're ususally immune to Chill effects, whereas you might have enough damage output as Fire to pull it off -- if you're careful.)

[Lissa]

6) Arcane tree. Improved Arcane Missiles is tempting, as it would make AM my alternate spell when facing fire immunes instead of Frostbolt. It could also open up Arcane Concentration if I wanted to dump more points in Arcane to pick up Clearcasting.

-Bolty

I doubt you'll ever use AM, so specing into that may be a waste of points, however you do want to get to Arcane Concentration (10% chance to have clearcasting for next cast with 5/5 talent points). You might want to consider the 5 filler points in Tier 1 to go to 2/2 in Arcane Subtlety (reduce resistance of target by 10) and Arcane Focus (3/5 lowering resistance to Arcane spells by 6%, yeah, it's filler, but you may use Arcane Blast) and then put the last 4 points into Arcane Concentration until that is filled.

[dawnstrider]

if you aren't going to get improved scorch, why get Incinerate? That would be 2 more points to play with.

if you go 7 into frost, you can get improved frost nova to take 4 seconds off of its cool down, that's pretty handy.

If you were to go 10 into frost you could get improved frostbolt, improved frost nova and permafrost so that you can kite well when necessary.

Another option, which you probably aren't going to be interested in, is to drop enough points to put 20 into frost and go for shatter so you can get an extra 50% crit off of frozen targets for your fire spells. It was changed awhile back to give the crit boost to all schools of magic, not just frost.

If none of those ideas are appealing, until you start running out of mana, I'd put it back into fire. There is something to be said for having all the talents in one tree at some point just so you have the opportunity to play around with them and see what you like for yourself.

[Tsunami]

I agree with Frost about Incinerate: Fireblast is frequently used, but if you are looking for more points to put into arcane, this could be the first to go.

Putting any more points into Frost for dealing with fire immunes is a waste. Arcane Blast can take care of the few you cannot avoid, and Manashield takes care of the casting time loss.

I like Improved Arcane Missiles very much, because it gets you a spell that is immune to casting time loss. But if you are not going to spend much more points in Arcane (like 17, for Improved Counterspell), it's a waste. Arcane Concentration is real money, though.

[LavCat]

I'd go with Improved AM myself, although in this thread:
Mage build advice sought
Improved AM was not well thought of.

I was glad to see you picked up Elemental Precision. Lack of chance to hit is one thing I am unhappy about with Roquefort. I agree, fire mages (assuming you can hit something) are a lot of fun.

[Bolty]

Thanks for all the advice, everyone. I was wondering, though: if I go for Improved Scorch, does that basically mean that Fireball gets "retired" from my arsenal? I admit I like the idea of the increased mobility Bolty would have from using a 1.5-second cast spell as the primary attack over a 3-second cast spell. High mobility is one of the nice perks fire mages get as a balance to frost's crowd control.

Also, patch 2.3 is going to remove the damage coefficient penalty, so that's a factor in it. I was wondering if anyone has crunched numbers, however, on how Scorch vs. Fireball plays out, especially factoring in how Incinerate gives me 4% more crit on Scorches. This is probably common knowledge to all dedicated mage players, but not to a nub like myself. :)

-Bolty

[Taelas]

Yes, you'd essentially retire Fireball (though there will be a few situations in which you'd be better off using it; such as right after a Frost Nova).

I haven't researched the subject since pre-TBC, I'm afraid, so I don't know how well Scorch performs versus Fireball. I believe that it used to be almost the same DPS as Frostbolt, though.

[Skandranon]

Also, patch 2.3 is going to remove the damage coefficient penalty, so that's a factor in it. I was wondering if anyone has crunched numbers, however, on how Scorch vs. Fireball plays out, especially factoring in how Incinerate gives me 4% more crit on Scorches. This is probably common knowledge to all dedicated mage players, but not to a nub like myself. :)

There are no reasonable circumstances where Scorch will outdamage Fireball, even now. With the tax removed it won't even be a question. That said, there's a persistent rumor on the WoW mage forums that Scorch beats Fireball if you have the Lightning Capacitor; it's not true, but stamping it out has become nearly impossible.

Improved Scorch is mainly for raids and 5-man bosses, and Incinerate is just a nice bonus. Neither should impact your play style that much.

[Taelas]

The question isn't really if Scorch beats Fireball (it won't, not under any reasonable circumstances, like you said). The question is whether the loss in DPS is made up for in DPM and mobility (which I think it is).

[Magicbag]

Having been in love with the fire tree since my D2 sorceress filled the screen with firewalls, I can say that fire is super for raiding and fun (sometimes scary!) for leveling. You have little control but a lot of damage.
As others have suggested for pure leveling or other solo work, you'll want to have a variety of good tools.

Depending on the mob, you can use FB or PB as an opener followed by FB before the mob gets to you. FB should be able to finish it off, but if it doesn't, you have a lot of good finisher options in scorch/blastwave/dragon's breath. I only use scorch on caster mobs or mobs that can close the distance before they're out of finisher range.