FIRE MAGE ADVANCED TIPS

COMBUSTION

Now let's go over exactly why Combustion is so strong, so you can fully understand how to utilize this powerful cooldown.

Now with a baseline CD of 2 minutes, although often far shorter due to several cooldown reduction effects, Combustion allows all of our spells to critical strike, meaning we can chain Pyroblast over and over and over again, while also benefiting from that 150% increased damage from critical strikes on all our other abilities as well.

And because of our talents of Unleashed Inferno increasing our damage by 60% on a ton of our spells, as well as the Fevered Incantation talent increasing our overall damage by 8%, all our buttons in Combustion are hitting far harder than usual.

Now because of this, we only want to be using Combustion when we know we can get value from it, be it with Crowd Control on the healer, or in a healer swap allowing us to get maximum damage out without the enemy healer being able to heal through it or move out of Meteor.

Or, alternatively, if Crowd Control is too hard to come by, we can just flat out deal massive damage with our partners early on and brute force cooldowns regardless. The important factor is that you know you're going to be able to force cooldowns no matter the situation.

And although we do want to use Combustion early on in the match to maximize the amount of uses per game, it's also often going to be a good idea to do something like Gelu does here, where instead of sending Combustion as soon as possible, he waits just a little bit to get fully diminishing return and then, then Combust, meaning that no one can shut him down after.

Now, other than playing around Crowd Controls, there's going to be a few other checks that we should meet before using Combustion to get the most bang for our buck.

The first of these is to try and spend as many Fire Blast and Phoenix Flames as possible before bursting, which is going to be important as, thanks to the talent Spontaneous Combustion, we're going to be refunding these charges anyway, so not using them is a waste of damage.

However, more importantly here, by using these beforehand, we're going to be able to get a lot of damage out of them.

So, before we do that, we're going to be building up our Fevered Incantations damage bonus, as well as giving ourselves more chances at building up our Severe Temperatures, allowing our next Frostfire Bolt to be absolutely massive, while even giving us a chance at proccing an Instant Frostfire Bolt before we enter our burst window, meaning we can get two of them instantly in our Combustion, increasing our burst dramatically.

Lastly, another important factor of our Combust is our Meteor timing. This is because Meteor is a projectile.

So, by using it and then Combusting on the next Global with our Frostfire Bolt, we can make both spells hit at the same time while also benefiting from Combustion's Critical Strike bonus.

GLASS CANNON

In Shuffle, some games just feel impossible to win due to the RNG aspect of random comps. Well, with this talent, we can add a few cheesed victories to the mix and level the playing field.

Now, it's no big secret that Fire Mage damage is pretty pathetic compared to, well, literally every other caster in the entire game, and because of this, we're more of a crowd control bot rather than the high damage dealer of the past.

Now, fortunately though, we can remedy this in some Shuffle lobbies by picking Glass Cannon, increasing our damage drastically while reducing our health at the same time.

Now, while this is a pretty risky move, if you're paired with a class that can't be left alone either, like an Affliction Warlock or an Assassination Rogue, then this can actually work out in your favor pretty well, as no matter who the enemy team go on, they're going to die to the pressure of the other player.

It can also be good when you're at that point in the Shuffle, where everyone just kind of settled on that one player to tunnel. Here, the Frost Mage was getting targeted every game, so Gelu specced Glass Cannon as he knew the enemy team were likely to tunnel his partner, allowing him to just dominate on damage instead.

Now, we're not saying to run this talent all the time, mind you, as the trade-off is very, very painful, but more often than not, you can sneak it into at least one of your Shuffle rounds and get some pretty good results. I mean, after all, what idiot would choose to lose 30% of their HP?

If that was the case, I would have picked Frost Mage instead, as he's a pretty good dealer, and a good trade-off for me. So, I guess that's where it's at for now.

I'm going to leave that up to you guys. If you guys have any questions, I don't mind, but if you guys have questions, I'm going to send a link to my video description where I'll answer them.

I'll see you guys in the next video, and until then, thanks for watching. I'll see you guys in my next video.

I'll see you guys in my next video. Take care.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

ICE WALL TIPS

While Ice Wall may be strong for all the mage specs, it's particularly broken for fire mages.

Now, since we're playing the Frostfire Hero tree, Ice Wall, like all our other frost abilities, actually has a 30% lower cooldown due to the elemental affinity talent, leaving us with an incredibly powerful tool every one minute, and that's before we even get our shifting power reduction into the mix.

Now, because of this, we should be looking to get as much value from Ice Wall as possible by using it very, very frequently, and honestly, even a wall that only gets a few seconds to line of sight is better than not using a wall at all, as the cooldown is just that low.

Now, obviously, the best walls are the ones that trap healers away from their DPS for extended periods of time by splitting up the map, which we can actually manipulate healers' positioning into by using Blast Wave instead of waiting for them to organically wander into the worst places on the long.

Think of Ice Wall as an extension of your crowd control chain, and you're going to start landing far more kills.

RING OF FROST

In this video, we're going to cover how the best mages use Ring of Frost. So, similar to Ice Wall, Ring of Frost also has a reduced cooldown thanks to the elemental affinity hero talent, dropping it down to a 32-second cooldown.

This means that we literally have Ring of Frost for every Dragon's Breath go, which means we can consistently land Cross DC on the healer while shaping one of their DPS at the same time.

Now, however, unlike Frost, we don't quite have enough haste to do that old kicked-on Ring of Frost and Cast Sheep after trick, although doing it can free up our Arcane School afterwards, so it's not the worst thing to do regardless.

Moving on, Ring of Frost is also excellent when combined with our Blast Wave as we can knock targets into it. This is particularly good to do to trap healers in the ring and then knock them into it after some time, effectively increasing the duration of our crowd control.

Here, the Priest wasn't able to fear due to the ring and root. Ring of Frost also becomes a great healing tool when, as it has a built-in 65% snare, so casting this on targets that are tunneling us can give us some breathing room in a pinch.

Now, outside of these more obvious ways to use Ring, there's also a pretty cheeky interaction we can abuse with it where the cast is invisible before it lands. This allows us to constantly fish targets into our Ring of Frost that are out of line of sight, creating crazy crowd controls without committing our shimmers.

Top mages actually do this all the time to land CC from far away, so you should be too. In our next video, we're going to be covering what exactly you should be looking for before crowd controlling, so don't go anywhere.

LANDING OFFENSIVE CROWD CONTROL

Here, we're going to be explaining the five fundamental rules of playing for crowd control. Now, it's no secret that Fire Mage damage is pretty low compared to the other Mage specs, and because of this, as Fire, we're forced to win with crowd control chains far more often than the rest.

However, before we go for crowd control, there's a few mental checks that we have to go through to see if our CC is actually going to stick the landing. These are, do I have damage to back up my crowd control?

A full polymorph when you have no Fire Blast or Phoenix Flames to actually deal damage to your target really isn't going to achieve anything. Always make sure you have at least some damage before you commit to a CC chain so that your efforts are rewarded.

We then need to know if we have an initiation crowd control available to land the Sheep. More often than not, you're going to need to try and land polymorph out of a Dragon's Breath, as more competent healers will be trying to shut you down with either Line of Sight or CC breakers like Death.

Or Sack. Although if you're really on the ball here, initiation CC isn't always necessary as we can just fake out these cooldowns too, be it with good timing like catching the healer on Global Cooldown, or just by winning the mental game of them not thinking you're going to finish your cast.

Now for our next check. We're going to want to make sure that we have the mobility to enable our crowd control.

Walking at the healer for a Dragon's Breath can sometimes be a workout, although it is a pretty poor idea in general as it makes your go very obvious and easy to shut down.

Now because of this, you're going to want to be utilizing your shimmers to land crowd control by crossing the map and polying off an initiation CC on the healer, be it your own or your partner's, and then follow up with a Sheep.

But as we mentioned earlier, you don't always need these initiation CCs if you have enough mobility, as you can shimmer after healers and avoid them breaking your Line of Sight on the cast.

This is very common when facing double melees, as by using shimmer we can both chase the healer and avoid kicks and stuns at the same time from their DPS. Which, once again, leads us into our next check.

Will we have enough survivability if we commit our mobility to this go? Often as a mage, you're going to be targeted, which does result in higher damage specs like Frost blinking backwards a lot to stall out the game and win on overwhelming pressure.

However, as fire, even though we're the target, we're going to be playing for CC. Because of this, it's very important that before we push in for that chain, that we can prevent incoming damage as we kite away from our healing.

A very common play is to alter time and then push in, as this essentially makes us immune to damage while we push in aggressively, allowing us to freely damage once the CC lands and get back to safety after the setup ends.

Moving on to our final check, we then have to make sure that we can actually get our crowd control off without being kicked. So to do this, we can either obviously wait till the enemy has used their interrupt at an earlier point, a situation that doesn't always present itself.

We can also fish for a kick on a high priority spell like Ring of Frost or Shifting Power, which are likely to get kicked, freeing us up for when we actually want to land CC. Or we can utilize Cross CC by using our Ring of Frost as showed in our previous video and covering either the healer or DPS with Polymorph.

SURVIVING AS A FIRE MAGE

Let's be honest, living as a Fire Mage can be pretty difficult. You're squishy, Melee absolutely love you, and unlike Arcane or Frost Mage, you don't even have a proper snare.

But in this video, we're going to break down every mobility and defensive tool in your entire kit, allowing you to live like the pros do. So we're going to go over a simple, repeatable strategy that you can follow in almost every single game.

This is how top players survive, and once you get it down, you're going to stop feeling like a training dummy and start playing it like a real threat. So, first things first, Fire Mages don't have a snare baked into the kit.

Yeah, technically you could Frostfire Bolt, but if you watched our priority video, you already know we're not hardcasting unless we absolutely have to. That's why the very first defensive move from Gelu is applying Slow to both Melee targets.

This instantly takes the edge off the opener and really lets him kite it out and create space. Slow, as Fire is actually super strong in the game, is a good way to get the most out of the game.

So, let's get started. And if your team doesn't already have a consistent Slow, you should be maintaining it as much as possible.

Following this, once the enemy connects, you should look to use a Shimmer. Since we're in the opener, you often want to use this in a defensive way to drag Melees out and away from their healer.

By doing this, Gelu makes himself a non-target and forces the enemy to swap to his partner. And here's where it gets even better.

That Shimmer also sets him up for a clean displacement if the enemy decides to commit yet another gap. The Shimmer also sets him up for a clean displacement if the enemy decides to commit yet another gap.

The Shimmer also sets him up for a clean displacement if the enemy decides to commit yet another gap. Giving him that positioning advantage while also healing him.

The big takeaway in this, whenever you become the target in a game, especially versus Melee Cleaves, you need to think in terms of mobility trading. Trade one tool at a time, and that's it.

Don't panic and dump everything, or you're going to quickly just be overrun. So, after this initial Shimmer, next you're going to want to use your Alter Time, as this is going to give you a safety net to deal damage or push in without having to play two to three times.

While in this Alter Time, it's also very important that you use a Shimmer to force enemy mobility, as thanks to the Master of Time talent, you're going to always get a Shimmer reset when altering back.

Alter Time is one of our most powerful defensives, so make sure every time you're going to take damage, you're using this ability as much as humanly possible. The best mages have this on cooldown constantly throughout their games.

Next up, we then have Blazing Barrier, which because of overpowered barrier is now a massive absorb that also redirects damage to our attackers.

Now needless to say, we want to try and time this when we're going to take the biggest hits, but most importantly, you should be using it to bridge those moments when you run out of mobility, allowing you some breathing room while your Shimmer or your Alter Time comes back off cooldown.

Which leads perfectly into Greater Invisibility, our two minute, 60% damage reduction wall. Think of this as kind of your last line of defense when all other tools are out of your way.

So, if you're going to use this ability to bridge those moments when you're running out of mobility, you should be using it to bridge those moments when you're running out of mobility, allowing you some breathing room while your Shimmer or your Alter Time comes back off cooldown. All other tools are on cooldown.

Well, except Ice Block. Just like Blazing Barrier, you want to use Greater Invis before things get out of control.

In this clip, Gelo uses it to completely avoid the Hunter's Volley while every other defensive is down. It's smart, it's clean, and it keeps them in the game.

Now, like Alter Time, Greater Invis should be used at high health to minimize risk and much like other walls in the game, damage reduction is not going to do anything if you are already 10% health. So, use it as early as possible to counter cooldowns.

That leaves us with Ice Block, probably one of the most misused abilities in the whole game. As Fire, you actually want to hold your block for as long as you possibly can.

Why is this? Because of Cauterize.

When you hit zero health, you automatically get a second chance. That means you can afford to be greedy with block and with a little RNG, you could survive on a Razor's Edge.

But don't get too greedy. There are plenty of specs that can execute you through Cauterize, like Hunters and like Warriors, so if you see those kill conditions coming, just make sure not to hesitate.