4.0.1 Fire Mage Guide

I was typing an email to Acturon today in an effort to help him with some mana efficiency troubles on his mage and he recommended I write a mage guide. I'm not interested in doing an entire website for it, but I thought this might help anyone reading this that is a fire mage or considering it.

The information that I used as research comes first from Totalhalibut's YouTube mage guide:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjhdJedV4-Q

and secondly from simply reading the talents myself. I took Total's recommendations and scaled them down for lower leveled mages and then I will build it back up for level 80 and finish up with the full Cataclysm rotation that he finishes the video with.

Before we begin, I want to list the talents that you will not be taking. Please keep in mind that this entire blog is directed towards PvE gameplay and not PvP. Here's the list:

• Blazing Speed - b/c this isn't pvp and your talents can be better spent elsewhere
• Improved Scorch - b/c you won't be casting it much anyway
• Molten Shields - again, more pvp related
• Firestarter - this one you may want to take when you start doing Cataclysm instances that require you to be on the move a lot more, but you can wait to decide on that later on.

Level 25

To begin with, at soon as you hit level 25, go to the AH and get yourself the Glyph of Fireball. This glyph adds 5% crit to your fireball spell. This is massively valuable to you because at this point you should already have two talents that are directly affected by your spell crits. The first one gives you back mana and the other one turns your spells into free dots. So more mana and more damage.

Level 29

By level 29 you will begin to use what I consider the most valuable talent in the fire tree: Hot Streak. At this time your talent tree should look something like this:

http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#oZdf0bz

You can see the two talents that benefit from spell crit. Master of Elements returns 30% of your base mana every time you crit. And Ignite take your spell crits and make 40% of your damage become additional damage over time. Spell Crit is your friend, indeed. ^_^

Feel free to put your 2 points of Impact into Fire Power instead, but I figure at these levels your tanks are probably pulling multiple targets and you'll want the extra aoe dmg potential, but that's your call. The important point here is that if you limit yourself to only 5 points in the first tier and 5 points in the 2nd tier, then you can put that 1 point you get at level 29 into Hot Streak.

Also, Total recommends putting your 3 points all into Burning Soul instead of 1 point and 2 in Improved Fire Blast like I recommended. Later I recommend the same thing, so if you don't want to spend the gold on respecing later, then go ahead and do it Total's way from the start. However, bear in mind that you will then no longer have the 8% Fire Blast crit that I reference below. Overall you may consider that a non-issue.

What's so special about Hot Streak? Every time you crit with fireball, you have a chance of procing Pyroblast, making it instant cast and mana free. There are other spells that trigger it also, such as Fire Blast. If you follow the recommendation link above, you'll have an 8% chance to crit with that. So 8% with Fire Blast and 5% with Fireball = increased chances of a free and instant Pyroblast. So here is the rotation I recommend at this stage of the game:

1. spam Fireball
2. Fire Blast whenever it's up
3. on hot streak only: Pyroblast

Level 39

As early as level 39 you will be able to put your first point into Improved Hot Streak, which essentially increases your chances of procing Pyroblast, which is fabulous. So now, when you get two non-periodic crits in a row, you have a 50% (and at level 41 it becomes 100%) chance to proc Pyroblast. BTW non-periodic means that your crits from dots don't count for inducing a proc. The following is the talent setup that I recommend (obviously at 41 you use that talent point to complete your Improved Hot Streak):

http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#oZdfhbk0z

Notice that I took a point in Blast Wave. This is great for aoe damage on trash pulls and you should definitely add it to your rotation. So your spell priorities should look pretty much the same, but for the one additional spell:

1. spam Fireball
2. Fire Blast whenever it's up
3. on hot streak only: Pyroblast immediately upon procing
4. if more than one mob: Blast Wave

Even if there are no other mobs around to spread your dots, Fire Blast is still good to cast because it adds to proc potential for Pyroblast. I believe at the later levels hot streak will proc more frequently and you will not need Fire Blast anymore, but we'll get to that later.

Level 59

At level 59, Scorch finally has a valuable purpose to in your rotation thanks to a talent called Critical Mass. Here is the recommended talent tree:

http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#oZdfhrk0RMcz

You will eventually want to take Dragon's Breath because it's required to get Living Bomb, but there is no use in investing those points now. Total said the spell is a waste of your time. The new talents that we've picked up include Combustion, which turns all those nice crit-induced buffs back into direct damage and creates a new dot that lasts 10seconds. Total recommends that you wait on using Combustion until you have a high crit on Pyroblast or Fireball. This is because the dot from Ignite is based on 40% of your crit damage. So, the more you crit for, the more damage your Ignite dot will have. The more your Ignite dot has, the more your Combustion dot will do in turn.

In addition to Combustion you'll have Molten Fury which increases the amount of damage you do when your target is near death. More damage is always nice. :) You will also pickup Improved Flamestrike. This talent is really awesome for aoe/trash pull damage. Not only does it turn your Flamestrike into an instant cast spell, it will be automatically cast every time that your Blast Wave hits more than one target! Awesome, right? :)

In order to access all these lower tree goodies, I also grabbed Cauterize from the third tier. Hopefully you will never need this, but it's nice to have the instant and free reincarnation just in case.

Okay so all of this so you can get to Critical Mass. Here's what's so awesome about that talent. It does make your Living Bomb and Flame Orb do more damage, but at this stage of the game you don't have that yet so that doesn't matter right now. What matters is the 5% extra crit it produces from the target that has your Critical Mass debuff. Remember, we love crit because it not only means more mana and more dots, but it also means more hot streaks! You will be getting this extra crit initially by casting scorch. At level 59 you only have a 33% chance of procing the debuff on your target, so you might have to cast it more than once until you reach level 63 and then it becomes 100% chance upon casting scorch. Until then, you will continuously cast scorch until it procs OR if you're lucky enough that your scorches induce a hot streak, then throw in a Pyroblast because Pyroblast also has a chance to induce the Critical Mass debuff. But again, at level 63, your first scorch will be all that it takes. Once you have that debuff, continue with your rotation.

Okay so without further ado, here is your new rotation:

1. Scorch (until you get Critical Mass, which will take only 1 casting at level 63 when you make it 100%)
2. spam Fireball
3. Fire Blast whenever it's up
4. on hot streak only: Pyroblast immediately upon procing
5. Combustion: save for when you have a nice, high crit from Pyroblast or Fireball
6. if more than one mob: Blast Wave (flamestrike will go down automatically)

At this time, if you feel you are getting enough crits with Fireball to induce Hot Streak and no longer want Fire Blast in your rotation aside from spreading your dots, you may wish to swap your talents to Total's recommendation in that top tree - giving yourself full points in Burning Soul and no points in Improved Fire Blast. That is of course assuming that you didn't already make it that way from the start.

Level 69

Moving on, level 69 is the earliest point that you can get Living Bomb.

http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#oZdfhrk0RMsso

Living Bomb is a dot that lasts 12 seconds. When those seconds are over, it explodes and does aoe damage to nearby enemies. To get to it, you'll need to pick up the Dragon's Breath as we discussed at the top and 1 point in Pyromaniac. Once you have Living Bomb, your rotation grows into this:

1. Scorch (only once now b/c you have it at 100%)
2. Living Bomb
3. spam Fireball
4. on hot streak only: Pyroblast immediately upon procing
5. Combustion: save for when you have a nice, high crit from Pyroblast or Fireball
6. if more than one mob: Blast Wave(flamestrike will go down automatically)/Fire Blast

Your final rotation change will come at level 81, when you finally get Flame Orb. At this stage, Total's video of rotation recommendation comes into full effect:

1. Scorch (only once now b/c you have it at 100%)
2. Living Bomb
3. Flame Orb
4. spam Fireball
5. on hot streak only: Pyroblast immediately upon procing
6. Combustion: save for when you have a nice, high crit from Pyroblast or Fireball
7. if more than one mob: Blast Wave(flamestrike will go down automatically)/Fire Blast

Level 71 and beyond

The following is a list of the remaining talents I recommend beyond level 69.

Put your last point into Pyromaniac.

3 Points - Arcane Concentration (Clearcasting!)

3 Points - Piercing Ice (Spell Crit!)

2-3 Points - Netherwind Presence (Spell Haste!)

Depending on your preference and experience when Cataclysm comes out, that final variable point for spell haste can be used to pickup Firestart and allow you to cast Scorch while moving.

This concludes my Fire Mage Guide. Please bear in mind that I am in no way an expert on mages. Not only is a mage not my main class, my highest level mage is still running Burning Crusade content. This is simply my logical recommendations based on the research I have done from watching Totalhalibut's video and reading the talent trees. I may be completely wrong about a lot of things, but it's a great place to start if you are new to the game or simply just want to try something different to see if it will work better for you.

If you have any questions, particularly an explanation of some of the geek terms that have been abbreviated or simply left undefined, feel free to put it in a comment. Hope some of you found this useful! If this proves successful, I may post another one for Frost Mages.

Hearty-Enough Beef Stew & Bread

I actually made this stuff like a month ago, took the pictures and all and then completely forgot to blog about it. I came across the pictures while I was uploading a video I was recording and was like "oh yeah!" hah. I make no pretenses here, this meal was by no means easy for me to make. I'm a weakling, I guess. As I made this I got a blister on my finger and I was starving so I was almost entirely devoid of energy (like maybe 5% of a 100 scale of energy rating) by the time I was finished with all of it. Which incidentally, is the reason this is the "hearty-enough" beef stew. Because it's actually supposed to have like a couple of more things added to it but by the time I was done cooking it I had completely forgotten about the final steps and wanted only to dig in. It was well hearty enough as it was, anyway. :P Ok so here are the recipes that I used. Both of them come from The Pillsbury Cookbook and I couldn't tell you what year it is because I don't see that information on here anyway. But, I think this may be the ISBN number for it: 0-385-23867-3>2295. Yes it has a ">" in there and I have no idea what that is for, either. lol

Ok so first the recipe for the stew:

Hearty Beef Stew

1 1/2 to 2lb. boneless beef stew meat, cut into 1 1/2-inch cubes

1/4 cup all purpose flour

2 teaspoons salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

3 tablespoons oil

2 cups water

8-oz. can (1 cup) tomato sauce

2 beef-flavor bouillon cubes or 2 teaspoons beef-flavor instant bouillon

2 stalks celery, cut into 1-inch pieces

2 medium onions, quartered

1 bay leaf

6 carrots, cut into 1-inch pieces

4 medium potatoes, cut into pieces

2 tablespoons flour

1/4 cup water

1 cup frozen peas or cut green beans

Chopped fresh parsley, if desired

Coat beef cubes with mixture of 1/4c flour, salt and pepper. In 5-quart Dutch oven, brown meat in oil. Stir in 2 cups water, tomato sauce, bouillon cubes, celery, onions and bay leaf. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer 1 1/2 hours or until meat is tender.

Remove bay leaf. Add carrots and potatoes. Cover; simmer an additional 30-40 minutes or until vegetables are tender. In a small jar with lid, add 2 tablespoons flour to 1/4c water; shake well. Stir into stew mixture. Stir in peas. Cook over medium heat until mixture boils and thickens, stirring frequently. Garnish each serving with parsley.

The italicized stuff is meant to highlight all the things I forgot to do which left the stew being less than hearty. lol But it still came out delicious so no one was complaining. :) Okay now for the bread:

French Bread Braids

4 3/4 to 5 3/4 cups all purpose flour

1 tablespoon salt

1 tablespoon sugar

2 pkg. active dry yeast

2 cups water

2 tablespoons shortening

1 tablespoon water

1 egg white

Grease large cookie sheet. In large bowl, combine 3 cups flour, salt, sugar and yeast. In small saucepan, heat 2 cups water and shortening until very warm (120 to 130°F). Add warm liquid to flour mixture. Blend at low speed until moistened; beat 3 minutes at medium speed. Stir in 1 1/2 to 2 1/4 cups flour to form a stiff dough.

On floured surface, knead in 1/4 to 1/2 cup flour until dough is smooth and elastic, about 8 minutes. Place dough in greased bowl; cover loosely with plastic wrap and cloth towel. Let rise in warm place (80 to 85°F) until light and doubled in size, about 1 hour.

Punch down dough several times to remove all air bubbles. Divide in half; divide each half into 3 parts. Roll each part into a 14-inch rope. Braid 3 ropes together; seal ends. Place on prepared cookie sheet. Repeat with other half of dough. In small bowl, combine 1 tablespoon water and egg white; beat slightly. Carefully brush over loaves. Cover loosely with greased plastic wrap; let rise in warm place until light and doubled in size, about 20 to 30 minutes.

Heat oven to 375°F. Brush loaves again with egg white mixture. Bake at 375°F for 25 to 30 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from cookie sheet immediately. Cool on wire racks.

Okay first I am going to give props to Acturon for helping me peel the vegetables and for helping me with a number of other things while making this recipe. He's an awesome husband. ^_^ Second, don't do what I did up there. Put your carrots with your potatoes and your onions with your celery because that's the order they go into the stew. Don't be like me and fail at reading ahead. lol Actually I did read the whole recipe several times, but I didn't retain that detail, I was mostly trying to work out how the downtime of the stew with the downtime of the bread. By downtime I mean things like "simmer for 1 1/2 hours" and 'let rise until double in size, about one hour" .. see? I can sorta multi-task. :P

Okay so yeah obviously make your life easier and chop everything up ahead of time (and plate them together appropriately ~_~) so that when the time comes for the item you can just drop it in. Yes I know some of you have the ability to chop things super fast and not take one hour to chop stuff (yeah I think I really did), but for the rest of us, it's a good idea to chop and sort ahead. I was lucky enough to have beef from my mother-in-law that was already pre-cut at the store. I don't normally buy beef so if it's normal for stew beef to come already cut then .. oh well laugh it up. :P

Okay so as per instructions - flour mixture and beef. I always mix all my flour stuff together first before adding the next type of ingredient. For example when baking cake/cookies, I mix my flour and sugar together before adding milk/eggs whatever. In this case, before adding beef. Yeah I know that's probably exactly what it says in the instructions and I'm likely stating the obvious here, but you never know. Maybe someone doesn't know that. :P Also, I mix it all with my hand/fingers. I doubt that makes a difference, but it would at least let you feel how distributed your grainy salt/sugar is in the mixture. Ok so then you mix it all together. Professional probably toss the bowl to do this and manage to not have everything end up on the floor. For entirely unprofessional me, however, I just used my hands. :) Yes, I got clumps of gooey flour stuff when I was done, but hey that's what soap and water's for, am I right? :P

This is the meat all browned and stuff. I guess it doesn't look particularly appealing in this picture, but it sure was appealing in my mouth when it was all done and over with. :P (The whole stew I mean, not this stage). BTW I did brown this meat for a considerable length of time, making sure it got like, well, brown. I don't just mean flour-turn-brown, I mean like where it does that like "searing" looking kind of browning. El Oh El at me and my technical terms. Anyway I didn't go out of my way to get everything 'seared' or whatever, just some bits. The picture's blurry if you enlarge it so it's not a very good help for clarification purposes. You'll just have to take my weirdly descriptive word for it. :)

Okay, so here we are with the water and bay leaf and bouillon cubes and what not. I tried my best to mix up that bouillon good before moving onto the next stage. I know most people probably wouldn't bother because it will all melt down and mix up eventually anyway. But I personally do not trust my mixing skills ever so I tend to mix things in tinier early phases (like the flour deal) rather than relying on my ability to mix it all properly when it's done. I just feel that I lack the strength and coordination to do it properly later, so I compensate by doing it earlier and between each phase. It's a good compromise, I think. :)

Okay so here we have added the celery and onions. Again, please don't be like me - having to sort though the plate so that no carrots or potatoes accidentally drop into the pot - or having to pick out onion/celery from under a potato/carrot. Put your bloody onions and celery on the same plate and make your life easier so you can just drop the whole dang plate into the pot at this stage without all that stupid hassle that I went through. lol Okay so this is like Phase One of the Stew and the overall cooking. Time to move onto the bread part!

I have bad news overall regarding the bread photos. I forgot to take pictures for most of the middle part of this bread making process, which incidentally is the hardest part of the process. Boo me for forgetting :( But I'll still commentate for ones I did take pictures of. Here I have the flour mixture with the yeast (and sugar/salt whatever else the recipe calls for up there). Again I mixed it with hand and tried to make sure the yeast bits were evenly distributed. I tried to get the detail in the picture, but unless you have a careful eye and know what you're looking for, you probably won't see the yeast bits in there.

Okay so here is my measured shortening. I smush the shortening into the measuring spoon and then level it off with the flat edge of a butter knife to make sure I have an accurate measurement. I don't think they sell shortening in pre-measured sticks, do they? Maybe they do, but I always get it in the can anyway.

Okay here is what the shortening looks like when it's melted. Now unfortunately this is the last picture I took of the bread making process until after all the rising was completed. I'm not sure whether I was just exhausted or if I was actually relying on Acturon for remembering to take pictures because I know in this process there would be a lot of pictures missing if he hadn't popped into the kitchen and asked if I was/did taking/take a picture. I'm also willing to guess that this process was messy and I just couldn't have been bothered to take pictures after cleaning myself up.

Either way, I totally forgot so here's a quick verbal description. I had no way of measuring the temperature of anything so I just tried to reason it out in my head. The bread wasn't perfect, but it came out alright/good enough for us. Honestly I don't know what a perfect french braid bread would come out like anyway, but I'm assuming it would be fluffier than what mine was. Anywho my measure of 120°F was "I saw steam coming from the top of the pot" lol and my estimate of 80°F was "stick it on the counter next to the pot of stew that's being cooked in this air conditioned apartment" lol! Love it? haha So anyway I did what the instructions said and like took a note of the time so I'd be sure to be back in an hour for the bread - and then went on to play WoW or something probably until my stew timer went off. lol

Okay so when the stew timer came off this is what my onions and celery looked like (after 1.5hrs of ... stewing.. lol! I crack myself up). Looking yummy already right? Now they said to remove the bay leaf, but I'll be honest - I couldn't find it. hahaha And Acturon didn't care so I just left it in and then added the carrots and potatoes. Hey, it can only add to the flavor right? >.> HAHA :P
Putting in the carrots and potatoes was a lot easier with the onions and celery out of the way. *sigh* lol Stirring this was a bit of a hassle but not a big deal. Just take your time and more like "rotate" the pot of stuff rather than "stir." I learned that trick from my friend Amanda. ^_^ Well I guess normal people call it "turn" instead of rotate, but whatever, I'm weird.

Okay so again more phases of the bread stages missing. At this point I've already let the dough rise and did this neat little trick that Acturon looked up online that involves punching your two fingers into the dough. When the indentation stays, you know you let it rise long enough. That was fun, but not as fun as punching the dough entirely "to get the air bubbles out." Not gonna lie, I had a lot of fun turning my bread into a mini punching bag. lmao I wasn't THAT brutal with it, but I had fun without a doubt. :) Perhaps this may have something to do with my bread not being fluffy. lmao Hey life's all about making mistakes and having fun .. or something.. right? lol Oh yeah btw, the above picture is one half of the dough used to make the loaf below.

Ta da! One French Bread Bread dough complete.. and then I realized I should have demonstrated how it was done. lol

But before my demonstration, I decided to photograph the greased bowl.. lol I think this was me realizing I didn't take hardly any pictures of the bread process and I was trying to make up for it. Because at this point the bread had finished rising in said grease bowl and were already punched (haha) and divided. Ignore the stuff scattered on the table, please. ~_~*

Okay so NOW I decided to show something of the process, but again I was taking the pictures myself and I didn't want to get my camera dirty so there aren't like pictures of it mid-braid. But you take one half of your dough and turn into 3 and roll them into ropes. I didn't use anything to measure my rope length as you will observe in a later picture. lol And to be honest I had difficulty rolling these ropes. It kept like .. not wanting to roll and like slide instead or something. Really annoying. Which reminds me of something else I had difficulty. Y'know that phase you read about blending it? At first when I was blending I was like "oh my god, there is not a dough forming here - I messed up." Then suddenly not only was there dough, but it kept crawling up blender and sh*t. It was crazy and nuts like it had a life of its own. And sh*t, it's yeast which is a living organism or something so I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Creepy though, still creepy. *nod* lol
Let me just say, I truly suck at "sealing" my ends. I mean it wasn't terrible, but let's just say a professional baker would not want me to be his/her representative french braid bread person. lol Mostly my braid stayed together as you will later see, but the end bit came undone some - not unlike my own hair if I don't end it with a ponytail holder. So yeah.. maybe they should make bread tail holders. *nod* lol no, I'm not serious. haha

Ta da! See what I mean about me not measuring my ropes? SIGNIFICANT size difference, eh? lmao And pst, shh don't tell anyone but at one point I got tired of trying to "roll" out my ropes and just pulled the two ends until it was longer. LMAO NOT professional. Did I mention this was my first time making bread? LOL Not my first time working with yeast, though. I've made Cinnamon Buns and Dinner Rolls before, which came out great actually. But this .... was good, but definitely not great. lol Perhaps I can blame the different counter.. yeah that sounds like a good scapegoat. lmao :D Oh yeah these are the already egg white washed loaves, I think. I'm not sure if that pan is considered a cookie sheet officially or not, but whatever, it worked. I think it might be what they refer to as a "shallow baking pan." I don't really know if I'm correct on that or not.

And here we have the finished product! Pretty, right? :) And it tastes like a homemade yeast bread. lol AND it wasn't a piece of rock the next day either! *pats self on the back* lol

And here's my finished stew. Remember, you're actually supposed to do some like flour mixture to thicken the stew and add your peas and green beans. But the bread was done, I was hungry, and the potato added enough thickness to the stew for me. And as you can see, it was plenty hearty enough as it was. lol

Hope you enjoyed reading this and that I inspired you to someday make your own stew and bread. I'll bet yours comes out even better than mine. ^_^ It sure tasted delicious! =D