Fire Mage Going for the Gold in the Proving Grounds

A Silver Achievement will be required to enter Looking for Raid (LFR) and for random heroics in Warlords of Draenor, coming “on or before” Dec 20, 2014. The Warlords of Draenor expansion pre-order has just been announced and along with it comes an “instant 90” token.

Hopefully this page will help you Fire Mages to burn you way to that silver and beyond. (Also see our Fire Mage DPS and Fire PvP pages and our Mage leveling guide if you’re not yet 90.)

How do you get to the Proving Grounds? Just ask your trainer. What are the rewards? Just the achievements and possible bragging rights.

The big weakness for Fire is getting enough Crit to allow enough Pyro procs to do the damage. It might be helpful to pray to the Fire Gods and offer up sacrifices to be able to get some crit streaks. While this page won’t help with the prayers it will lessen the need for them a bit. Fire can get the Gold and can make headway through at least a few of the Endless Waves. Yes, Frost might be better for the PGs, but where’s the challenge in that? 😉

Gearing for the Proving Grounds

All of your gear is downrated to 463, so this really is a test of skill, rather than just killer gear. All that mighty raid gear you have will be down to 463. Also, set bonuses are not active. Note that lower level gear is not scaled UP, so make sure all of your gear is at least 463. (Nothing stopping you from doing this with lower level gear, as a challenge.)

There are only three boosts you can get, gems, enchants, and reforging.

Regular gems, since they require 417 gear, are not downrated. Legendary gems are. Consider gemming for Hit (if you need it) and Crit. You can also get Hit from foods and flasks.
Enchants are also retained at full value.
Try to have at least 9% Hit and as much Crit as you can get. In wave 5 of your Gold attempt you will see level 93 mobs and you will need 15% Spell Hit to make sure everything hits. (9% Hit for level 91 mobs, 12% for level 92.) You will retain any Hit rating you had prior to entering the PGs, though you might want to reforge it anyway.
Int flasks and 300 Int food are nice buffs and will help. Potions do not work.

So make sure your gear is fully enchanced. Other than that, it’s just you.

Getting those Pyro Procs:

A big portion of your damage is from those Pyroblast procs. Here’s how you get them:

Get two crits in a row
Get a Crit and use Inferno Blast = Pryo proc
Freeze the opponent then use Scorch or fireball to get the crit, then inferno blast for the proc.
Freeze to Living Bomb (or Nether Tempest) to Deep Freeze gives you a chance to get more crits on a target.
- Deep freeze to scorch (crit #1) to Inf. Blast (#2) to Pyro Proc into Deep Freeze (another crit) to Combustion.
- Alter Time right before launching the Pyro Proc gets another one in a few seconds.
Your Shatter works on the full duration of your DOTs (EG: Living Bomb,) so you get a lot of critical ticks on those DOTs. Frost Nova + Flamestrike or Blizzard will result in a lot of crits throughout the duration of the spell. (This seems to be the desired action, not a bug.)

Talents and Glyphs

You won’t have to worry about taking damage, but you will want to be mobile.

Presence of Mind for insta cast Pyroblasts every 90 seconds or so, though consider Blazing Speed if you prefer movement, such as when kiting amber globs and placing them on the opposition. The glyph of Rapid Displacement will give you back to back Blinks, which should be enough.
Tier 2 doesn’t matter here. Pick what you like.
Ring of Frost, when placed well, can freeze groups for your Shatter. FrostJaw is single target, faster to cast, and has a silence. Very handy for Banana Throwers.
Cold Snap is the only useful talent here, as resetting some cooldowns will be nice at times.
Nether Tempest does some damage to nearby targets as it ticks and can be applied to any number of targets. Living Bomb does more damage in the DOT phase and then blows up, damaging nearby targets. It can be applied to three targets. LB is better for single targets, which will be what you will be working to burn down. Experiment with NT, but I’ll go with LB. (Just as an aside, NT’s extra damage, as it ticks, will break CCs.)
Invocation is the “go to” talent here. Evocate between each wave and you’re good. You’ll be moving around some, so Rune of Power isn’t so hot. Nothing will be breaking your Incanter’s Ward so you won’t get much of a boost from that.

Glyphs

Glyph of Combustion should be taken practically 100% of the time.
Glyph of Inferno Blast allows you to spread Ignite, Pyroblast and Combustion to an additional target.
G. of Rapid Displacement gives you two blinks (normal cooldown, though) for added mobility.
Glyph of Cone of Cold increases the damage of Cone of Cold, making this spell your highest damage AoE blast.

A Few Tips for Proper Burning

Arcane Brilliance and Molten Armor. You will also get a bunch of raid buffs and the mobs will get some raid debuffs.
Save your damage CDs for the bigger things that have to be burned down fast. Trinkets with “on use” abilities are included here. PvP types might want to drop the escape trinket in favor of a DPS trinket. .
Amber Weavers throw globs which you will want to avoid, hence the Burning Speed talent, and you can position yourself such that those globs hit your target. Those amberized targets then take +50% damage from all of your attacks.
Banshees and Mystics (healers) need to be burned down fast. You will want to interrupt (or CC) the healers.
Get behind Guardians to burn them down. If you are in front then their shields will stop all attacks.
The Sha needs to be burned down, but save your CDs for when the shield drops. There is a berserker buff available in the latter stages of the gold challenge (you’ll see it in the videos.) Save this for the burn phase.
Frost Nova groups before any A of E attack (eg: Flamestrike,) all the mobs will take critical damage for all the DOT ticks.
Evocate before fights, for the buff from your Invocation talents
Mirror images for burn phases.

Fire Mage Gold in the Proving Grounds

Little in the way of tips here, but some nice sounds effects and is fun to watch. Don’t know why he doesn’t use his freezes much, but he gets the gold anyway.