General Information
On this page, we present the viable talent and glyph choices forFire Mages in World of Warcraft MoP 5.4. We detail what each of the talents andglyphs do and in which situations they should be taken.
The other pages of our Fire Mage guide can be accessedfrom the table of contents on the right.
1. Talent Choices↑top
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- Performance-enhancing
- Survival
- Crowd Control
- Movement
- Utility
- Situational
There is no longer such a thing as a default build. Most of the talents arenow viable. They can easily be changed, thanks to 
Dust of Disappearance(and 
Tomes of the Clear Mind from level 86 to 90).You will frequently find yourself changing talents and glyphs betweenencounters, in order to adapt your play style to different mechanics.Therefore, it is important to understand what each of your talents does andhow they affect your play style.
2. Tier 1 Talents↑top
Tier 1 talents have been designed with mobility in mind. You have the choicebetween:
Presence of Mind, which grants you an instant-cast for the spell of your choice every 90 seconds;
Blazing Speed, which suppresses slowing effects and increases your movement speed by 150% for 1.5 seconds (on a 25-second cooldown);
Ice Floes, which allows you to cast a spell while moving (the spell has 3 charges, with a recharge time of 20 seconds).
Use Presence of Mind in every encounter. It gives you a significant DPSincrease when combined with 
Pyroblast,which you can make you use of during your opening sequence and then every 90seconds. Note that an already instant-cast Pyroblast will not consume Presenceof Mind.
The other two talents are lackluster compared to Presence of Mind becauseFire Mages already have a lot of mobility through 
Blink and theirnumerous instant-cast spells.
3. Tier 2 Talents↑top
Tier 2 talents have been designed with survivability in mind.
Temporal Shield which offers 15% damage taken reduction for 4 seconds, on a 25-second cooldown.Every time you take damage while this damage reduction is active, it is healed back overthe course of 6 seconds.
Flameglow grants you a passive shield that always absorbs a bit ofthe damage you receive.
Ice Barrier absorbs a quantity of damage (the absorption effect scales with Spell Power) andprevents spellcasting from being delayed, while active.
Temporal Shield should be the default choice here, because it is off the globalcooldown, meaning that using it is not a DPS loss. Use it before taking large hits.
Ice Barrier is useful when you need the extra life it provides to survivean attack that would otherwise kill you.
Flameglow is not as powerful as Temporal Shield or Ice Barrier, but it provides itsshield passively, which may be more suited to the occasional player.
4. Tier 3 Talents↑top
Tier 3 talents have been designed with crowd control in mind. Whichevertalent you will choose will depend on the encounter, but we think that thesetalents are mostly for PvP and will be most often be irrelevant in PvE. You havethe choice between:
Ring of Frost, which summons a 10-yard ring that lasts for 10 seconds andthat freezes, for 10 seconds, enemies entering it (up to a maximum of 10 enemies);
Ice Ward, which causes all enemies within 10 yards of a friendly targetto become frozen for 5 seconds when the target is struck;
Frostjaw, which silences and freezes the target in place for 8 seconds.
5. Tier 4 Talents↑top
Tier 4 talents have been designed with survival in mind. You have thechoice between:
Greater Invisibility, which improves 
Invisibility,giving it an instant effect and making you take 90% less damage whileInvisibility is active (and for 3 seconds after coming out of Invisibility);
Cauterize, which causes an attack that would otherwise kill you toinstead bring you to 50% of your maximum health, after which you will burn for40% of your maximum health over 6 seconds;
Cold Snap, which finishes the cooldown of your 
Ice Block,
Frost Nova, and 
Cone of Cold while also restoring 30% of yourmaximum health.
Greater Invisibility and Cauterize are your two options, here.Whichever you will choose mostly comes down to personal preferences.
Greater Invisibility is a great damage mitigation tool, which you can also useto remove DoTs and effects, such as 
Mark of Arrogance, from theSha of Pride.
Cauterize can be used to maximise your DPS by standing still insteadof moving away to avoid a damaging boss ability. You can also simply considerit as an extra life for whenever you mess up. Remember to follow it up with Ice Block, if you feel that your healers will not manage to heal the DoTthat Cauterize leaves on you (it hits pretty hard).
6. Tier 5 Talents↑top
Tier 5 talents provide you with abilities that will become an integral partof your rotation.
Nether Tempest deals damage over time to a target. Each time it ticks,Nether Tempest also deals half the damage to a random target within 10 yards.
Living Bomb deals damage over time to a target. When it expires or thetarget dies, Living Bomb also deals damage to up to 3 other targets within 10 yards.Living Bomb cannot be applied on more than 3 enemies.
Frost Bomb deals delayed damage to a target, also dealing half of that damageto all other targets within 10 yards. In addition, affected targets are slowed by 70% for 2seconds.
Living Bomb is the talent of choice. Nether Tempest can beused for encounters in which there are adds that do not last the wholefight and that have cleave potential (so that Nether Tempest can dealits damage to 2 targets). Frost Bomb is only worth using if thereare at least 5 enemies stacked for at least 90% of the fight(Wind Lord Mel'jarak in the Heart of Fear is a good example).
In Siege of Orgrimmar, here is what Vykina advises:
7. Tier 6 Talents↑top
Tier 6 talents are mana management talents.
Invocation removes the cooldown of 
Evocation. Aftercompleting an Evocation, you gain Invoker's Energy, which lasts 1 minuteand increase your spell damage by 15%. While Invoker's Energy is active, youpassively regenerate 50% less mana.
Rune of Power summons a rune which causes you, when standing in it, toregenerate 75% more mana and to deal 15% increased spell damage. You alsoregenerate 1% health every second if you have 
Glyph of Evocation. This spellreplaces Evocation and the rune that it summons disappears after 1minute.
Incanter's Ward passively increases damage done by 6%. When used, it places an absorption shield on you for 8 seconds. Whenthe shield disappears, you gain up to 15% increased spell damage for 25 secondsand you restore up to 18% mana. The strength of the effect depends on the amountof damage that was absorbed. The effect is maximised when the shield disappearsbecause it has been entirely consumed. If the shield disappears because the 8 secondshave run out, then you will only get a fraction of the effect.
Invocation and Rune of Power are your two options as a Fire Mage.Take Rune of Power in fights with no movement, because it has a shorter cast timethan Evocation. Take Invocation the rest of the time.
Incanter's Ward is not viable, because even if you could proc it on cooldown,it would still not outweigh the other two talents.
8. Major Glyphs↑top
None of your major glyphs will be mandatory. Some will increase your DPS invery specific situations, others will improve your survivability or makesome spells more useful.
DPS-increasing glyphs are listed below.
For Tier 16 encounters, Glyph of Combustion, Glyph of Inferno Blast, and Glyph of Cone of Cold are advised.
The other potentially useful major glyphs are listed below.
- Glyph of Armors can be useful to Fire Mages, as it improves thedefensive bonus given by
Molten Armor (the armor that Fire Mages use)against physical damage.
- Glyph of Blink increases the distance you travel with Blink by 8 yards.
- Glyph of Counterspell grants the ability to cast
Counterspellwhile channeling or casting another spell, at the expense of increasing its cooldownby 4 seconds. This glyph will be beneficial every time you will be on interruptduty.
- Glyph of Evocation adds a self-healing component to Evocationand Rune of Power. This will be a default major glyph when none of theothers can provide anything useful for the encounter(s) you are progressingon.
- Glyph of Frostfire Bolt can be very useful if you need to add a slowin your rotation. This glyph will line up the cast time of
Frostfire Boltwith that of 
Fireball, making it possible to swap Fireball forFrostfire Bolt in your rotation (both spells do the same damage).
- Glyph of Ice Block causes Frost Nova to be automatically cast,at no mana cost, when Ice Block terminates, after which time youare granted a 3-second immunity against all spells.
- Glyph of Rapid Displacement causes Blink to now have two charges, on a 15-secondrecharge time. This is an extremely beneficial glyph, because it basically allows you touse Blink twice in a row. The downside is that Blink no longerfrees you from stuns and bonds.
- Glyph of Remove Curse is a nice glyph to have in a fight where youmust use
Remove Curse. That said, the temporary damage boost it providesdoes not compensate for the global cooldown it costs to cast Remove Curse.
9. Minor Glyphs↑top
Among the minor glyphs, only 
Glyph of Momentum is of interest.It will allow you to blink in the direction where youare going. It can be very useful if you are moving sideways and want to keepfacing the boss.
10. Changelog↑top
- 03 Mar. 2014: Updated Tier 5 and 6 descriptions, as well as glyph sections, following Vykina's review.
- 04 Feb. 2014: Updated Tier 5 advice on Blatty's advice.
- 10 Sep. 2013: Patch 5.4 update.
- 15 Jun. 2013: Living Bomb is now the advised Tier 5 talent for Megaera.
- 05 Jun. 2013: After 2 weeks of Patch 5.3 raiding, explanations for Tier 5 talents have been fixed.
- 25 May 2013: Living Bomb is nowthe best single-target Tier 5 talent, but more testing is needed for other situations.
- 20 May 2013: Patch 5.3 update: need to wait for a few days before updating Tier 5 talent recommendations.Updated explanations for Incanter's Ward.
- 17 Apr. 2013: Update after Blatty's review of the guide.
- Improved advice for choosing your Tier 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6 talents.
- Improved advice for choosing your Major Glyphs.
- 01 Apr. 2013: Improved conditions for choosing Blazing Speed, Ice Barrier,and Invocation.
- 07 Mar. 2013: Patch 5.2 update.
- Rewrote explanations for Tier 1 talents, as
Scorch has been replaced with Blazing Speed.Scorch is now always available to Fire Mages.
- Ice Floes' cooldown has been reduced to 45 seconds.
- Rewrote explanations for Tier 2 talents, as Flameglow has replaced Blazing Speed.
- Rune of Power now increases mana regeneration by 75% (was 100%).
- Modified description of Invocation to reflect the changes from 5.2.
- All Tier 6 talents now perform similarly.
- Glyph of Fire Blast has been replaced with Glyph of Inferno Blast, whichcauses
Inferno Blast to spread DoTs to an additional target.
- Glyph of Evocation restores less health than previously.
