The Fire Mage Guide for Cataclysm

Author:admin　Date:12/16/2011　Source:http://www.cheap-powerleveling.com

 

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Fire Mages are among the flashier types of mage, whether you’re an avid fan of raiding or maybe more akin to the daring PvPer, either one might find you posting up your fair share of ‘big numbers’ throughout your tenure.

Of course you’re not the only one with big numbers, notably warriors, hunters, and practically any class out there has the ability to and will do everything possible to bring you down, likely with some big numbers of their own.

That’s why fire mages take skill, finessse, amongst the highest, if not the number one, skill based class in the game because of the fine line between total domination and utter annihlation by the hordes of melee and high damage attackers who cut through armor like butter.

Frost has all the glory nowadays, especially in PvP. Fire is for people who want to play a more challenging class.

Nerfs/Buffs: Depending on the current state of the patch, Fire may be awesome or not so hot. For the purposes of this page I’ll concentrate on providing good basics and leave the “Flavor of the Minute” arguments for the forums.

Race choices

These days just nearly every class may become a mage. The one exception being the Tauren, through an obvious act of Bovine discrimination.

The racial abilities aren’t huge, but having an escape (Humans, Gnomes) is always nice.

• Humans have an escape, which Fire mages need. This also enables the use of a second DPS or Resilience trinket in PvP. Diplomacy is nice for faction grinding.
• Gnomes also have an escape, though not as good as the Human’s, and theri small size makes them harder to target (for clickers.) They also have an increased mana pool.
• Night Elves have their Shadowmeld which will allow you to lurk in wait before popping out and blasting away. They are also 2% harder to hit, which is extremely useful 2% of the time.
• Dwarves have Stone Form, which washes away bleeds and reduces damage.
• Draenei have a small self-heal, which is always useful. They also have a +1 to hit which helps, especially with end-game gearing.
• Worgen have a “Sprint” type ability, which only adds to a Fire mage’s movement capabilities. They also have an increased crit chance, which is nice for crit-happy fire mages.
• Orcs can Enrage to increase Spell damage, which is yummy, and they have some resistance to stuns.
• Undead can remove Fear, Sleep, and Charm that might give you time to burn down that Warlock.
• Trolls can increase their casting speed, via Berserk, and have decreased duration of motion impairing effects, which has some small use. Doing more damage to beasts is great for leveling, some PvE situations, but useless in PvP. Worgen don’t really couint as beasts.
• Blood Elves have their Arcane Torrent, which would be nice except that it’s a melee range effect and you don’t really want to be in melee range of anyone. The torrent also restores some mana.
• Goblins can Rocket jump, which is a nice escape (much like a cheap Blink.) They also have a bit of Haste and an increased effect from their own potions.

 

4.1 Patch Notes for the Fire Mage

• Arcane Blast cast time has been decreased to 2.0 secs, down from 2.35 secs. In addition, the stacking effect of Arcane Blast now raises the damage done by Arcane Explosion, and Arcane Explosion does not consume that effect.
• Arcane Explosion damage has been increased by 30%.
• Arcane Missiles damage has been increased by 13%.
• Blizzard damage has been increased by 70%.
• Frost Armor has been reworked:
  • It now reduces physical damage taken by 15%, instead of providing 20% additional armor.
  • The Chilled proc from Frost Armor can no longer proc Fingers of Frost.
  • The attack speed slow from the Chilled proc is now 20%, down from 25%, but it also affects ranged attack speed.
  • Frost Armor no longer raises Frost resistance
• Frostbolt damage has been increased by 10%.

Talent Specialization: Fire

• Combustion no longer has a global cooldown.
• Ignite is no longer triggered from periodic critical effects.

Glyphs

• Glyph of Frost Armor (new glyph): Frost Armor also causes the mage to regenerate 2% of maximum mana every 5 secs.

Mage Bug Fixes

• Brain Freeze can now proc from Frostfire Orb (Rank 2).
• Flame Orb is now replaced with Frostfire Orb in the Spellbook and action bar when a mage selects the Frostfire Orb talent. This is purely a UI change.
• Pathing for Flame Orb and Frostfire Orb has been improved in certain situations.
• Molten Armor damage can no longer break Polymorph.
• Spell damage granted by Incanter’s Absorption has been increased to match its tooltip.

Mage Known Issues

• Flamestrike’s initial damage does not trigger Ignite.
• Ritual of Refreshment is placed on cooldown even if the ritual is not completed.

 

Fire Mage Talents

With the new (4+) talent system youre tied to one spec until 31 points have been spent in that spec. After that time you can move into the other specs, though you will only have 10 points to spend there at level 85.

Every spec of every class now has certain special abilities which are unique to that spec. For example, Frost and Arcane mages will not be able to cast Pyroblast, ever.

Fire’s special abilities are:

1. Pyroblast – Has a 3.5 second base cast time.
2. Fire Specialization – Special plus all Fire Mages receive. Increases the damage of your Fire spells by 25%
3. Mastery:Flashburn – Increases the damage done by all your periodic fire damage effects by 20%. Every point of Mastery raises periodic damage done by an additional 2.5%.

Level 85 Fire Mage DPS Build (3/35/3)

This is a great build to start from, thouigh not perfect for all situations. Feel free to adjust to suit. For example, the Pyromanic talent. If you’re never fighting 3 or maybe more mobs, then it’s useless.

Consider utilizing the dual-build ability to have a second fire build for certain sitations, or even PvP.

Fire Mages should use Molten Armor at all times.

(view)

Fire (35 Points)

1. Master of Elements – Rank 2/2 – Your spell criticals will refund 30% of their base mana cost.
2. Burning Soul – Rank 3/3 – Reduces the casting time lost from taking damaging attacks by 70%.
3. Ignite – Rank 3/3 – Your critical strikes from Fire damage spells cause the target to burn for an additional 40% of your spell’s damage over 4 sec.
4. Fire Power – Rank 3/3 – Increases the damage of your Fire spells by 3% and gives your Flame Orb a 100% chance to explode for 1134 to 1336 damage at the end of its duration.
5. Impact – Rank 2/2 – Gives your damaging spells a 10% chance to reset the cooldown on Fire Blast and to cause the next Fire Blast you cast to stun the target for 2 sec and spread any Fire damage over time effects to nearby enemy targets within 12 yards.
6. Cauterize – Rank 2/2 – You have a 100% chance that an attack which would otherwise kill you will instead bring you to 40% of your maximum health. However, you will burn for 12% of your maximum health every 1.5 sec for the next 6 sec. This effect cannot occur more than once per minute. Cauterize is a DPS talent, believe it or not. It lets you eat the Boss’s insta-gib and survive to keep DPSing while the other group members have to dive into whatever mechanic is provided to avoid that nuke. Keep an eye on your HP as it gets low.
7. Blast Wave – Rank 1/1 – A wave of flame radiates outward from the target location, damaging all enemies caught within the blast for 851 to 1003 Fire damage and are slowed by 70% for 3 sec.
8. Hot Streak – Rank 1/1 – Your spells no longer trigger Arcane Missiles. Instead, your critical strikes with Fireball, Frostfire Bolt, Scorch, Pyroblast, or Fire Blast have a chance to cause your next Pyroblast spell cast within 15 sec to be instant cast and cost no mana.
9. Improved Scorch – Rank 2/2 – Reduces the mana cost of your Scorch spell by 100%. With the 4.06 mana changes this talent is no longer essential. There are still a few situations where mana is tight and this talent is useful.
10. Combustion – Rank 1/1 – Combines your damaging periodic Fire effects on an enemy target but does not consume them, instantly dealing 955 to 1131 Fire damage and creating a new periodic effect that lasts 10 sec and deals damage per time equal to the sum of the combined effects.
11. Improved Hot Streak – Rank 2/2 – At any time you score 2 non-periodic critical strikes in a row with your Fireball, Frostfire Bolt, Scorch, Pyroblast, or Fire Blast spells, you have a 100% chance to trigger your Hot Streak effect.
12. Firestarter – Rank 1/1 – Your Molten Armor enables you to cast the Scorch spell while moving instead of reducing the chance youre critically hit.
13. Improved Flamestrike – Rank 2/2 – Reduces the casting time of your Flamestrike spell by 100% and gives you a 100% chance that your Blast Wave spell will also automatically Flamestrike the same location if two or maybe more targets are affected by the Blast Wave.
14. Dragon’s Breath – Rank 1/1 – Targets in a cone in front of the caster take 1195 to 1387 Fire damage and are Disoriented for 5 sec. Any direct damaging attack will revive targets.
15. Molten Fury – Rank 3/3 – Increases damage of all spells against targets with less than 35% health by 12%.
16. Pyromaniac – Rank 2/2 – Increases spell haste by 10% if 3 or maybe more targets are taking Fire damage over time from your spells. Pretty situational, but happens often enough to be useful.
17. Critical Mass – Rank 3/3 – Your Living Bomb and Flame Orb spells deal 15% more damage, and your Pyroblast and Scorch spells have a 100% chance to cause your target to be vulnerable to spell damage, increasing spell critical strike chance against that target by 5% and lasts 30 sec.
18. Living Bomb – Rank 1/1 – The target becomes a Living Bomb, taking 1600 Fire damage over 12 sec. After 12 sec, the target explodes dealing 400 Fire damage to up to 3 enemies within 10 yards. Limit 3 targets.

Frost (3 Points)

1. Piercing Ice – Rank 3/3 – Increases the critical strike chance of your spells by 3%.

Arcane (3 Points)

1. Netherwind Presence – Rank 3/3 – Increases your spell haste by 3%.

Glyphs

1. Glyph of Molten Armor (Prime Glyph) – Your Molten Armor grants an additional 2% spell critical strike chance.
2. Glyph of Pyroblast (Prime Glyph) – Increases the critical strike chance of your Pyroblast spell by 5%.
3. Glyph of Fireball (Prime Glyph) – Increases the critical strike chance of your Fireball spell by 5%.
4. Glyph of Evocation (Major Glyph) – Your Evocation ability also causes you to regain 40% of your health over its duration. Helps take a load off your healers and might just save your behind.
5. Glyph of Polymorph (Major Glyph) – Your Polymorph spell also removes all damage over time effects from the target. Makes for a much greater chance that your poly will stick.
6. Glyph of Blink (Major Glyph) – Increases the distance you travel with the Blink spell by 5 yards.
7. Glyph of Conjuring (Minor Glyph) – Reduces the mana cost of your Conjuring spells by 50%. Helps when conjuring Mana Gems, and so can save a chunk of mana over long fights.
8. Glyph of Arcane Brilliance (Minor Glyph) – Reduces the mana cost of your Arcane Brilliance spell by 50%. Good for times once you need to rebuff people.
9. Glyph of Slow Fall (Minor Glyph) – Your Slow Fall spell no longer requires a reagent. Saves a bag slot.

Notes:

• Improved Fire Blast – this talent is not taken so that points can be used into more efficient talents. If you need the range (and the fireball crit) than grab a point or two from something you don’t use as much.
• Blazing Speed is a PvP talent and is skipped.

Cataclysm Fire Mage PvP Build (2/36/3)

Fire is far from an ideal PvP spec. It has no special crowd control and few survivability talents. Still, it’s great for people who like a challenge and are perhaps bored with Frost.

Frost is the PvP king right now, Fire is for people who like a real challenge.

4.0.6 helped Fire by allowing the Firestarter talent to permit Scorch casts while moving and while using anyarmor. This enables to you keep Mage Armor up, which is a big help with mana issues.

Fire (36 Points)

1. Master of Elements – Rank 2/2 – Your spell criticals will refund 30% of their base mana cost.
2. Burning Soul – Rank 3/3 – Reduces the casting time lost from taking damaging attacks by 70%.
3. Improved Fire Blast – Rank 2/2 – Increases the critical strike chance of your Fire Blast spell by 8% and raises its range by 10 yards.
4. Ignite – Rank 3/3 – Your critical strikes from Fire damage spells cause the target to burn for an additional 40% of your spell’s damage over 4 sec.
5. Fire Power – Rank 3/3 – Increases the damage of your Fire spells by 3% and gives your Flame Orb a 100% chance to explode for 1134 to 1336 damage at the end of its duration.
6. Blazing Speed – Rank 2/2 – Gives you a 10% chance when hit by a melee or ranged attack to increase your movement speed by 50% and dispel all effects that prevent movement. This effect lasts 8 sec.
7. Impact – Rank 2/2 – Gives your damaging spells a 10% chance to reset the cooldown on Fire Blast and to cause the next Fire Blast you cast to stun the target for 2 sec and spread any Fire damage over time effects to nearby enemy targets within 12 yards.
8. Cauterize – Rank 1/2 – You have a 50% chance that an attack which would otherwise kill you will instead bring you to 40% of your maximum health. However, you will burn for 12% of your maximum health every 1.5 sec for the next 6 sec. This effect cannot occur more than once per minute.
9. Blast Wave – Rank 1/1 – A wave of flame radiates outward from the target location, damaging all enemies caught within the blast for 851 to 1003 Fire damage and are slowed by 70% for 3 sec.
10. Hot Streak – Rank 1/1 – Your spells no longer trigger Arcane Missiles. Instead, your critical strikes with Fireball, Frostfire Bolt, Scorch, Pyroblast, or Fire Blast have a chance to cause your next Pyroblast spell cast within 15 sec to be instant cast and cost no mana.
11. Combustion – Rank 1/1 – Combines your damaging periodic Fire effects on an enemy target but does not consume them, instantly dealing 955 to 1131 Fire damage and creating a new periodic effect that lasts 10 sec and deals damage per time equal to the sum of the combined effects.
12. Improved Hot Streak – Rank 2/2 – At any time you score 2 non-periodic critical strikes in a row with your Fireball, Frostfire Bolt, Scorch, Pyroblast, or Fire Blast spells, you have a 100% chance to trigger your Hot Streak effect.
13. Firestarter – Rank 1/1 – Your Molten Armor enables you to cast the Scorch spell while moving instead of reducing the chance youre critically hit.
14. Improved Flamestrike – Rank 2/2 – Reduces the casting time of your Flamestrike spell by 100% and gives you a 100% chance that your Blast Wave spell will also automatically Flamestrike the same location if two or maybe more targets are affected by the Blast Wave.
15. Dragon’s Breath – Rank 1/1 – Targets in a cone in front of the caster take 1195 to 1387 Fire damage and are Disoriented for 5 sec. Any direct damaging attack will revive targets.
16. Molten Fury – Rank 3/3 – Increases damage of all spells against targets with less than 35% health by 12%.
17. Pyromaniac – Rank 2/2 – Increases spell haste by 10% if 3 or maybe more targets are taking Fire damage over time from your spells.
18. Critical Mass – Rank 3/3 – Your Living Bomb and Flame Orb spells deal 15% more damage, and your Pyroblast and Scorch spells have a 100% chance to cause your target to be vulnerable to spell damage, increasing spell critical strike chance against that target by 5% and lasts 30 sec.
19. Living Bomb – Rank 1/1 – The target becomes a Living Bomb, taking 1600 Fire damage over 12 sec. After 12 sec, the target explodes dealing 400 Fire damage to up to 3 enemies within 10 yards. Limit 3 targets.

Frost (3 Points)

1. Piercing Ice – Rank 3/3 – Increases the critical strike chance of your spells by 3%.

Arcane (2 Points)

1. Improved Counterspell – Rank 2/2 – Your Counterspell also silences the target for 4 sec.

Glyphs

1. Glyph of Fireball (Prime Glyph) – Increases the critical strike chance of your Fireball spell by 5%.
2. Glyph of Pyroblast (Prime Glyph) – Increases the critical strike chance of your Pyroblast spell by 5%.
3. Glyph of Living Bomb (Prime Glyph) – Increases the damage of your Living Bomb spell by 3%.
4. Glyph of Blast Wave (Major Glyph) – Increases the duration of Blast Wave’s slowing effect by 1 sec.
5. Glyph of Evocation (Major Glyph) – Your Evocation ability also causes you to regain 40% of your health over its duration.
6. Glyph of Dragon’s Breath (Major Glyph) – Reduces the cooldown of your Dragon’s Breath by 3 sec.
7. Glyph of Armors (Minor Glyph) – Increases the duration of your Armor spells by 30 min.
8. Glyph of Slow Fall (Minor Glyph) – Your Slow Fall spell no longer requires a reagent.
9. Glyph of the Monkey (Minor Glyph) – Your Polymorph: Sheep spell polymorphs the target into a monkey instead.

 

Frost is a better spec for Arenas, but that doesn’t mean that fire is worthless, especially if you like the challenge. In the BGs FIre is more competitive. You probably won’t kill a lot of people, but you can do a lot of damage. Contant movement is a key as is using your A of E abilities to spread damage all over the place.

Leveling a Fire Mage

Fire throws out enough DPS to level easily enough. It doesn’t have the survivability of Frost, but for Questing that just means you will have to be a little more careful.

• Keep a stack of mana potions and one of health potions handy.
• Keep a stack of Int buff potions, too
• Keep a stack of smart food
• Lots of foods add Stamina
• If you’re enchanting gear as you level then go for Int > Hit > Crit/Haste

PvP Leveling- Only if you’re a masochist or really want that challenge. Nice XP if you lose, very nice if you win. Spend the honor gained on gear or save for later.

Dungeon Leveling- Do you like groups? Do you like a fast pace with your groups? Do you have a thick skin for those times once your fellow players are … iffy? Leveling in the dungeons might be your game. Fast leveling, nice gear, far fewer visits to the Spirit Guide than in PvP. You’re DPS/Damage, and sometimes the queues take a while. You are able to read something while waiting or mix it up with your questing.

Our Mage leveling page has builds and lots more info.

Are you familar with WoWhead.com? You may have noticed that this site references it a lot. The former CEO of WoWhead has applied his skills to making a slick leveling guide that will have you covered if you quest a little or a lot. Check out the video on his homepage and grab yours.

 

Fire Mage Stats

With 4.0 & Cataclysm FIre Mages are intended to be mobile and with Cataclysm the fire mage requires crits for maximum efficiency, but it’s hard to get much of a crit rating with the way the numbers scale. When the crits and stars align the DPS can be massive, otherwise it’s somewhat hit and miss.

So on average while Fire’s DPS will be high there will be dry spells where the rest of the team is wondering if you’re awake. The you get a crit streak and remember why you like fire.

If you have a ton of gold you can gear up quickly off the Auction House. There is some very nice purple gear appearing, but it ain’t cheap. If you don’t have the cash you can either earn it or do the standard dungeon > heroic > raid progression and gradually acquire it.

PvP hear (honor gear) might be a great way to go if certain pieces aren’t dropping off the mobs.

Fire Mage notes – How some things work

(source)

Combustion: Say you have three DOTs currently ticking on the target: Pyroblast is ticking for 500 damage every 3 secs (167 DPS), Living Bomb for 1900 every 3 secs (633 DPS), and Ignite for 1000 every 2 secs (500 DPS). When you hit Combustion, a new DOT is created that will tick for the total DPS value (1300 DPS) for 10 secs. The Combustion DOT ticks once per second. Check out the Combustion Helper addon.

Orbs: After you cast an orb, it travels fairly quickly in the direction you were facing. As soon as a hostile or neutral target is within range of its beams, the orb slows down, begins firing, and begins its 15-second timer. It can fire up to 15 times. It will always fire at the closest target within range, so if it is passing by multiple targets or the targets are moving around, it may split its damage between two or maybe more targets.

It is basically treated as the Mage’s own spell, even though the Orb is firing on its own. It should hit and crit at the same rate as the Mage’s spells do. The ticks are not, however, accelerated by Haste. Flame Orb ticks that score critical strikes will trigger Ignite.

Hot Streak and Improved Hot Streak: The idea is to stabilize, within reason, the value of Hot Streak so that it isn’t terrible at low crit rates or overpowered at high crit rates. The first talent has a sliding proc rate, higher once your crit rate is low, and declining as your crit rate raises. To keep it brief: you want both talents, as the first will get weaker as the second gets stronger. If you want the grisly details, read this

Impact DoTs: DOTs spread by Impact use the remaining duration, not the full duration, of the originals.

Living Bomb: When you get the talent Impact, allowing Fire Blast to spread your Fire DoT spells, it ignores Living Bomb’s timer. If there are more than three targets, it will attempt to apply Living Bomb to all of them; since the spell is limited to three targets, one or maybe more of them (which can be your primary target) will fail.

Master of Elements:The mana refund from Master of Elements is always based on the spell’s base mana cost. It is not affected by talents, buffs, or debuffs in any way. If the spell’s base cost is 1000 mana, you will always get back 300 mana, even if you have talented the cost down to 900, or if you have Clearcasting making it free, or if you have an Arcane Blast buff tripling its real cost.

Mirror Image threat reduction: Mirror Image does not permanently eliminate or reduce any threat. While active, it sets your threat to zero, thus effectively making it impossible for you to pull aggro from a tank while the Images are active (note: if it’s just you and your images, you can still pull aggro from your images). However, you continue to accumulate threat, and when the Images expire, your new threat total will include the threat you generated while they were active. It is very useful for buffering spike damage, or for dropping threat to give yourself time to use Invisibility for a more permanent solution.

Pyroblast: There are two Pyroblasts. The one you cast normally and Pyroblast!, (not the exclamation point) which is the instant cast version that procs from Hot Streak.

The Primary Stats

1. Int – Int is all powers. It adds directly to your Spellpower (this is new with 4.0,) adds directly to your mana pool , and adds a tiny amount to your crit. It is, by far, your most important stat.
2. Spirit – Completely useless
3. Strength – Completely useless
4. Agility – Completely useless
5. Stamina – It depends…
   1. If you’re pulling mobs off the tank you might want to have some extra
   2. If you’re a great player and you let the tank keep the mobs then you don’t need as much.
   3. For leveling you want enough to stay alive.
   4. For PvP you’ll want a lot. Plan on having enough to survive the opener of that Rogue who’s just popped in behind you…

Other Stats – more or less in order, depending on how close youre to any caps.

Use reforging to change mastery and haste into hit and crit, saving the gems and enchants for Int (as much as you can. )

1. Hit, to the 17% cap (1741.58 rating.) You are able to’t do damge to what you can’t hit. Draenei have a 16% (1639.14 rating) cap.
2. Spellpower – found on some trinkets and enchants. Since it’s direct damage this is a powerful stat.
3. Crit – Fire is built around Crit, so the more you can get, the better. But… there is something called “Ignite Munching,” which is basically Ignite doing significantly less damage than it should due to various weirdesses in the game engine’s math. This effectively makes crit somewhat less valueable since it cannot increase damage as much as it should. If this is ever fixed then Crit will have a significantly higher value.
4. Haste – Due to ignite munching Haste is, in some gear settingss, as good as Crit.
5. Mastery – Reforge into Hit (to the cap,) then crit
6. PvP: Spell Penetration – Aim for around 200 points.
7. PvP: Resilience
   1. For PvP you’ll want as much as you can get without gimping yourself.
   2. Outside of PvP this stat is useless.

Ratings

This is the number of rating points you will need to achieve +1% in a given stat. Numbers are rounded off to the nearest 10th.

Level	60	70	80	85
Spell Hit Crit Haste Mastery Resilience	8 14 10 14 21.6	12.6 22.1 15.8 22.1 34.0	26.2 45.9 32.8 45.9 70.7	102.4 179.3 128.1 179.3 276.1

 

Gems

• Meta
  • Burning Shadowspirit Diamond – 54 Int, +3% crit. Expensive.
  • Chaotic Shadowspirit Diamond – 54% Crit, +3% increased crit damage
  • Ember Shadowspirit Diamond – 54 Int, 2% increased mana
• Red
  • Brilliant Chimera’s Eye – 67 int, self-only Jewelcrafting gem
  • Brilliant Inferno Ruby – This should go into all slots unless some requirement has to be met or the slot plus is really good.
• Yellow
  • Reckless Ember Topaz
  • PvP – Mystic Chimera’s Eye – 67 Resilience rating, self-ony Jewelcrafting gem
  • PvP – Mystic Amberjewel – 40 Resilience
• Blue
  • Veiled Demonseye
• Green (fits blue or yellow socket)
  • PvP – Steady Dream Emerald – 20 Res, 30 Stam
• Orange (fits a red or yellow socket)
  • PvP – Willful Ember Topaz – 20 Res, 20 Int

Enchants for the Fire Mage

They are pretty much the same enchants that any caster would want. Crit enchants are included in this list, even though Int is better.

• Head:
  • Arcanum of Hyjal – 60 Int & 35 crit (Guardians of Hyjal revered).
• Shoulders:
  • Felfire Inscription – 130 Int & 25 Haste, Inscription 500 self-only
  • Greater Inscription of Charged Lodestone: 50 Int/25 haste (Therazane exalted).
• Back:
  • Enchant Cloak – Greater Intellect – 50 Int
  • Enchant Cloak – Greater Critical Strike – 65 Crit
  • PvP – Enchant Cloak – Greater Spell Piercing – 70 Spell Penetration
• Chest:
  • Enchant Chest – Peerless Stats – 20 to all stats
  • PvP – Enchant Chest – Mighty Resilience – 40 Resilience
• Wrists:
  • Draconic Embossment – Intellect – 130 Int, Leatherworking 500 , self-only
  • Enchant Bracer – Greater Speed – 65 haste
  • Enchant Bracer – Greater Critical Strike – 65 Crit
  • Enchant Bracer – Critical Strike – 50
  • Socket Bracer – Self-only Blacksmithing slot for a 40 Int gem
• Gloves:
  • Enchant Gloves – Haste – 50 haste
  • Enchant Gloves – Greater Mastery – 65 Mastery
  • Socket Gloves – Self-only Blacksmithing slot for a 40 Int gem
• Legs:
  • Powerful Ghostly Spellthread – 95 Int & 55 Spirit
  • PvP – Powerful Enchanted Spellthread – 95 Int & 80 Stam
• Boots:
  • Enchant Boots – Haste – 50 Haste
  • Enchant Boots – Lavawalker – Slight run speed increase & 35 mastery
  • Enchant Boots – Mastery – 50 Mastery
  • PvP – Enchant Boots – Earthen Vitality – 30 Stam & Slight run speed increase
• Weapon:
  • Enchant Weapon – Power Torrent – Sometimes gain 500 Int for 12 secs
  • Enchant Weapon – Hurricane – Sometimes gain 450 Haste for 12 secs
• Offhand:
  • Enchant Off-Hand – Superior Intellect – 100 Int
• Rings:
  • Enchant Ring – Intellect – 40 Int, Jewelcrafting 475 self-only enchant
• Belt :
  • Ebonsteel Belt Buckle – Extra socket for a 40 Int gem

Professions

All of the professions provide some benefit for Mages, though clearly some are better than others. Even the gathering professions have some value, though you might be better served by building a larger gold stash through other means.

• Tailoring – Lightweave Embroidery sometimes raises Int by 580 for 15 secs. The issue is that you can’t count on that proc at any given instant, much less activate it on call. Still, the average Int increase over time makes this the best of the DPS professions. You will also be able to make your own Emberfire/Fireweave gear for PvP.
• Leatherworking provides the best increase with its 130 Int enchant compared to the next best, which is 65 Haste
• Jewelcrafting is a thin hair better than the others, being able to create three +67 Int, self-only, gems for a mighty 81 point total Int gain.
• Enchanting will allow you to enchant both rings, for a total +80 Int gain.
• Inscription has a +130 Int shoulder enchant which is an 80 Int gain over the next best item.
• Alchemy has a variety of useful potions and the Mixology plus is worth 80 Int.
• Engineering has lots of interesting toys, some of which have situational use, and Synapse Springs, which raises Int by 96 for a short period of time. If you take this use a macro to activate it along with other short term buffs.
• Blacksmithing gives two extra gems slots for +40 Int gems, 80 Int total.
• Skinning provides 80 crit rating, which is far below 80 Int in value, even for Fire mages. If you have to take skinning for the cash flow then work it hard and do a lot of it.
• Herbalism provides a small self heal and 240 Haste rating for 20 secs.
• Mining provides 80 Stam and so has little benefit for Mages since Int is so much superior.