Ultimate Fire Staff Guide (Updated Up To Patch 1.3.4)

The Fire Staff is mana using weapon that heavily focuses on Area of Effect Spells and Damages over Time effects.

If you’re good at prediction, you’re good at calculating how the battle is going, and playing around with mobility, then that might be the build for you. The weakness of Fire Staff is lacking the crowd control effects, limited self-healing, and pretty hard leveling due to the mana managing.

Attributes

This Weapon scales with Intelligence, so focus on obtaining as much Intelligence as possible to unlock passive skills on 50 points breakpoints.

First of all, you need 200 Intelligence, as then you get 10 mana after a dodge. You’ll get used to a playstyle where you’re dodging very often, and this is one of the best ways to regenerate mana, particularly in earlier stages of the game.

Constitution is a decent secondary Attribute, especially for PvP, 50 points will be enough to unlock 20% effectiveness to all health consumables, but you can get those 50 points with your gear or using +40 Consitution food.

Minmaxing your character for endgame PvP you can also reach 200 Constitution breakpoints for a 20% armor increase, but this is a pretty arguable build for Fire Staff.

Builds For Fire Staff

1. The Diving Comet Build:

This build is more PvP oriented, but it also can be used for leveling or PvE, focusing on the use of Fireball, Incinerate, and Burn Out. It fits more for pairing with Rapier so you could escape if something goes wrong.

The whole purpose of this build is to get on top of someone and nuke them for a large part of their health. It’s a very high-risk style that also works in both PvE and PvP, though it particularly excels in PvP.

Leveling:

While leveling first, get the Spell Focus; it will allow you to at least attack for free. From there, you would go down to Clear Mind. The third ability is Fireball, which will be your main damage dealer. 

In the Pyromancer tree, you take Pyromania, and then you would grab Incinerate and Burn Out. 

Next, we’ll upgrade Fireball and grab all the Fire Mage passives. Prioritize Flare, Spellslinger, and Prophet of a Fire God in that order, as these make up the core of our damage passives. Then we clean up by grabbing Clear Casting, Singe, and Fiery Restoration, in whichever order you prefer. Then, we finish off the Fire Mage Passives by grabbing Runes of Helios.

Basic Rotation:

Burn Out will always be our opener but can be used as an escape as well when Runes of Helios is on cooldown. The goal is to Burn Out into an enemy or, at the very least, near them to hit Incinerate. If we hit, it’s more burst damage into our combo; if not, it’s a fair amount of damage loss but usually doesn’t impact things too much.

Incinerate should always be second in line of priority, as with short-range, it’s easy to escape, at least for light armor. 

Fireball is last since it actually has range. This means even if an enemy re-positions after getting hit by Incinerate, you’re still able to follow up with this.

2. The Pillar Of Fire Build:

This build is more ranged-oriented but requires practice on placing the Pillar of Fire. With this build, you will be opening up with Pillar of Fire and Fireball and then spamming heavy attacks to help keep your mana high.

You can swap Clear Casting with Singe for PvP since you’ll probably get hit by other players more often than 3 secs.

For leveling this build, take Pillar of Fire, Spell Focus, and Fiery Restoration. Next, get First Strike and Arson’s Advantage to empower your Pillar of Fire. After that, grab Fireball, Spellslinger, and Flare. Having both Flare and Spell Focus, you will be able to gain mana with every heavy attack. Next, go over to the Pyromancer tree and get Pyromania, Let it Burn, and Burn Out to finish up your Ability kit. After that, we empower our Fireball by taking Scorched Earth and Catch. Take the Ultimate Mastery Runes of Helios next for an occasional damage boost. After that, finish upgrading Burn Out with All In and Heat it Up!. Clear Mind, Clear Casting, and Prophet of a Fire God round out our build.

3. Flamethrower Build:

In case you have ping over 100, hate PvP, and love to play clicking one button sitting in the armchair drinking beer, but still want to play a Fire Mage, there is an interesting build. Or, maybe, you’re participating in mass PvP, where you can find multiple enemies close to each other without getting yourself killed in a moment.

Combining it with Void Gauntlet, the only thing you actually have to do is throw Oblivion and switch on your Flamethrower to destroy everything in front.

Optional Passive Skills

Most passive Fire Staff skills are useful in almost every situation and give a constant boost, but some of them are pretty optional.

1. Clear Casting:

In PvE and especially in group content, this will be up most of the time. In PvP, there’s a bit of risk, as you’re less likely to dodge everything, but it can give your attacks and spells a boost fairly often when spacing properly.

2. Heat Up:

Blocking can still be used on occasion in PvE. For PvP, however, you’re more likely to dodge away or use Burn Out to create distance from your opponent.

3. Trial By Fire:

Generally, this low of damage on that long of a cooldown isn’t great. In PvP, however, if you’re engaging someone with Burn Out, there’s a good chance you’ll take damage in the process. This will contribute a little extra damage to your full engagement but is still often not a meaningful amount.

4. Reheat (Pyromancer Ultimate):

The only time when this would be useful is if it triggered while your Fire Staff isn’t your active weapon. It could end up being a more supportive passive for another Magic Weapon or even let you recover mana while using a melee.

If Light and Heavy Attacks didn’t interrupt it, it’d bring a lot of consistency to the Fire Staff, reducing the need for Spell Focus’s mana on Heavy Attack for mana management. If it were to work with other weapons active, it’d be a nice support for Ice Gauntlet.

The one unique thing to mention, which does make it quite strong situationally, is that skills like Flamethrower and Meteor Shower can still allow this to trigger during their casts, meaning you can use Flamethrower for an exceedingly long time.

Fire Staff Active Skills

1. Pillar Of Fire:

This Ability has a rather small area of effect, requiring some practice to land it. However, you can hit a single target two, sometimes even three, times with a single-use. This ability has an inner and outer pop of damage, and if you hit somebody off-center, then they’re going to get hit with both the inner and outer rings to take double damage.

2. Meteor Shower:

This Ability is nice for clearing out large groups of foes and is commonly seen being used on the capture points in Wars; otherwise, it’s pretty useless in PvP due to its short range. It’s hard to make good use of it when solo if you’re not building a heavy loadout with a high Constitution. In group content, it’s extremely powerful but does require a good tank to use without risk.

This ability costs five mana per second lasts for a  total of six seconds and has nine ticks of damage. The very first tick is going to be for 34% of weapon damage, and the other eight are for 20% for a grand total of 194 percent weapon damage. The cooldown is initiated at the beginning of the cast, so you really only have 10 seconds of a cooldown.

3. Fireball:

The high impact damage and burning field make it great against one or many foes in terms of PvE, but the direct hit and the area damage do not double up. For PvP, the high burst potential of this skill makes it worth using. Add it to the fairly strong and long-lasting ground AoE and it doubles as a zoning tool.

4. Incinerate:

Each new enemy adds two more burn ticks to all targets hit. This Ability requires you to be rather close to foes and has a bit of a windup time. It is nice in a group but somewhat risky while soloing. While Incinerate is one of your shortest range skills, it’s one of your hardest hitting skills. Its short range doesn’t even hold it back in PvP as many weapons are melee and will be in range, and you can execute them.

5. FlameThrower:

When combined with Reheat, you can channel for over 6-seconds and activate Reheat’s mana regen. The regen will not be strong enough to fully offset the mana cost of Flamethrower. It is unique in the fact that it can backstab for guaranteed crits.

While it is not the most impressive skill for PvE, with the upgrades it has, it becomes a bit of a versatile skill for weaving in when other skills are on cooldown to maintain any Burn stacks. 

In PvP, this skill slows you down far too much, even on quick usage, but Flamethrower builds are extremely nice in mass PvP, where you can find multiple targets staying close to each other and not get yourself killed in a moment.

6. Burn Out:

Burn Out tends to mostly be used for Mobility and positioning, as if you charge at an enemy, they can block it, stopping you in your tracks because it goes in a straight line. Once you take Heat it Up!, you can steer the direction of the Ability. While dealing fairly decent damage, it’s not a particularly strong option. 

Despite being blockable, the mobility this provides makes it a must-have in almost any PvP build. It’s not something you’d ever really want to be without, as you’re limited in mobility, and usually, your other weapon tends to be something to fill that melee range better.

7. Runes Of Helios:

This is not actually an active skill, but it’s also worth mentioning. It’s one of the biggest damage increases you have access to if you get a full rotation off every time. In PvP, it’s still great, but you have to stand in a small area to use it.

If you have a dash ability – Burn Out in the Pyromancer skill tree, this rune will appear wherever you land. Other people can use your rune, and you can use other people’s rune. Your light and heavy attacks are spells and will get the damage boost.

Gear

Light armor gives you a +20% damage bonus and the best amount of movement with a quick roll since normally you’ll keep the distance and don’t take damage. Medium armor is also a nice option as a compromise between offense and defense.

Armor Type	Light	Medium	Heavy
Head	1,5 lbs	2,6 lbs	4,7 lbs
Chest	3,5 lbs	6,2 lbs	11,0 lbs
Gloves	1,5 lbs	2,6 lbs	4,7 lbs
Pants	2,0 lbs	3,5 lbs	6,3 lbs
Boots	1,5 lbs	2,6 lbs	4,7 lbs
Shields	2,7 lbs (Round)	5,4 lbs (Kite)	11,0 lbs (Tower)

Also, you can combine different types of armor, light with medium, staying under 13 kg, or medium with heavy, staying under 23 kg. You can change your armor type by simply replacing 3 parts.

Maxed Medium Armor 22,9 lbs build (1L + 2M + 2H): Heavy Chest, Light Pants, 2 Medium and 1 Heavy piece.

Alternative Maxed Medium Armor 22,9 lbs build (2L + 1M + 2H): Heavy Chest, Heavy Pants, 1 Medium, and 1 Light piece.

Maxed Light Armor 12,7 lbs build (4L + 1M): Light Head, Medium Chest, Light Gloves, Light Pants, Light Boots.

Maxed Light Armor 12,6 lbs build (3L + 2M): Light Chest, Medium Pants, 1 Medium, and 2 Light pieces. If you need more in-depth information, how tankier you would be wearing a certain kind of armor of a certain Gear Score, feel free to use the New World Calculator by Mixed Nuts.

Look for Armor with Intellect on it for the best results, or with Intellect and Constitution, if you need 50 points to unlock 20% effectiveness to all health consumables.

Gems

You should become comfortable switching between different Gems depending on the situation.

1. Cut Pristine Onyx:

Start the fight with a high DPS ability, like Fireball or Pillar of Fire. The best use for the Onyx gem is on Tanks within wars, throwing your fireball into a group of tanks standing in healing circles on the objective. Where this gem lacks is small group PVP, unless you are the first person in your group to tag an enemy.

2. Cut Pristine Emerald:

This gem is very useful in wars; two or three coordinated shots are enough to wipe the entire enemy team. Also, your AoE spells are more than capable of finishing off enemies attempting to flee.

3. Cut Pristine Opal:

Since the intelligence attributes have a node that gives mana every time you dodge, which is located at 200 Intelligence, you will find yourself on low stamina quite often.

4. Cut Pristine Diamond:

Since you are likely to be in full health while fighting at a distance.

If you’re fighting mostly against one enemy type, for example, farming something, you can use to convert your damage:

1. Cut Pristine Amethyst to fight against Ancients:

2. Cut Pristine Aquamarine against the Lost:

3. Cut Pristine Sapphire against Corrupted:

4. Cut Pristine Topaz against Ancients:

Damage Effectiveness	Slash	Thrust	Strike	Fire	Ice	Nature	Void	Lightning	Arcane
Ancients	-15%		+20%	-40%			+15%	+30%
Corrupted		+20%	-15%		-40%	+15%			+30%
Angry Earth	+20%	-15%		+30%				-40%
The Lost		-15%	+10%		+15%	+30%	-30%
Beast		+20%

For Armor gems, you can use Cut Pristine Emerald for PvP while fighting mostly against Bow and Musket users:

If you’re already at level 60 and farming chests or mobs for gear, you need a Lucky Gem:

For other situations to provide generic damage absorption:

1. Cut Pristine Onyx:

2. Cut Pristine Malachite:

3. Cut Pristine Diamond:

Equipment Perks

1. Fire Staff Skill Perks

These perks can be found on armors and weapons but often slotted on Armor, as Weapons have access to better perks overall.

Refreshing Pillar Of Fire:

Arson’s Advantage makes Pillar of Fire recover more mana than it spends when you hit two or more foes, so you can never run out of mana in an area of effect situation. For PvE, this Perk is a priority, especially when it is a group play. As for PvP, this Perk is only really great for Wars.

Empowering Fireball:

If you are using Fireball, then grab this Perk – more damage is always nice.

Siphoning Incinerate:

If you are running Incinerate, then this is a nice Perk for you to have, but getting back just slightly over the cost of the Ability is not really great.

Accelerating Flamethrower:

Pretty useless perk, even with a 20% bonus.

Efficient Burnout:

This perk can be useful but definitely not as great as other options.

Empowering Meteor Shower:

If you’re using Meteor Shower, you can take this one, but since the initial Meteor Shower impact is only 34% weapon damage, that doesn’t give a large damage boost.

2. Armor Perks

Refreshing with Resilient could be a useful universal choice depending on your secondary weapon:

Refreshing Evasion is useful because you’re dodging a lot.

Physical Aversion is useful for PvP against Musket and Bow users:

3. Weapon Perks

Keen and Vicious are still a strong pair of go-to perks:

The third can be Enchanted (if you actually use light and heavy attacks) or Keenly Empowered if you want more damage:

Refreshing Move and Siphoning Blow are both strong Utility options, reducing cooldowns or restoring mana:

For PvP against healers, you can use Plagued Crits. The maximum amount of healing decreasing is 24% for GS 600 weapons:

4. Amulet Perks

Slash Protection and Thrust Protection cover most PvE and PvP incoming damage:

Health and Mana Recovery are nice, generally applicable options to fill the last slot:

Divine will give you more healing:

If you really want to heap on the defenses, Fortified Recovery grants a fairly strong 30% Fortify for 5 seconds when hit below 50% health, but it has a 90 cooldown for the effect:

5. Earrings Perks

Focused is a strong option for helping with Mana regen, with Mana Toast being a pretty close second:

Purifying Toast and Refreshing Toast are both great utility options for open-world PvP where health consumables tend to be used more. These all help in PvE as well:

Beloved and Evasive can both help you mitigate aggro, making you less likely to pull aggro in expeditions:

6. Rings Perks

Keen Awareness is a strong option for higher burst damage potential and Fire Damage, being a small damage boost in general:

Refreshing is also a decent Utility with the lowered cooldowns, but that’s also available on armor:

Brilliant also could be a good choice if you’re running out of mana fast:

Thrust Protection can be useful against Bow and Musket users:

Hearty will add you enough Stamina for one more additional dodge. If the player has 109.5 total stamina and each dodge takes 40 stamina (with 150 Dexterity attribute bonus), they can dodge twice, leaving the player at 39.5 stamina. Wait a fraction of a second for stamina to regenerate to 41, then dodge twice more for a total of 4 dodges:

Consumables

In this chapter, you can find information about endgame consumables because you don’t really need most of them on low levels. You can easily find the low leveled versions of them because the names only differ by one word, except food. 

1. First of all, you need Health Regeneration Food:

Mana Regeneration Food:

Health Potions:

Mana Potions:

Regeneration Potions:

And Focus Potions:

2. Attribute Food.

As a mage, you want to increase your Intelligence first. This food gives you an option to put 40 points to another Attribute like Constitution for PvP:

You can use food with both Constitution and Intelligence bonus to increase your health and damage at the same time:

Constitution combination with more Intelligence is also available:

Also, you can use Constitution food to maximize your health:

To find more food, for hybrid builds please check our Cooking Guide.

3. Powerful Honing Stone will increase your damage and, as a result, threat level. They can be bought or crafted at Smelter if you reach 170 Weaponsmithing level:

4. Powerful Gemstone Dust can be also bought or crafted at level 170 Jewelcrafting:

5. Powerful Oakflesh Balm can be bought or crafted at 170 Armoring level as well:

6. Powerful Incense requires 170 Furnishing level to craft. Otherwise, it can be bought for cheap from the Trading Post:

7. Weapon Coatings give a 15% damage bonus against certain types of enemies. These coatings are usually used in dungeons, where you’re fighting mostly against enemies of the same type, for example:

8. Ward Potions increase your damage absorption against certain enemy types. They can help you mitigate heavy incoming damage:

9. Absorption Potions can help you not only in dungeons but also in PvP against mages. They increase absorption by 15% against certain types of elemental damage, for example:

10. Corruption Tincture and Blight Tincture remove afflictions and give 97,5% resistance to these afflictions for 5 minutes:

11. Infused Encumbrance Potion will help you a bit with bringing your sack to the nearest warehouse. It lasts 3 minutes and increases the Encumbrance Limit by 100:

I know that feeling, bro, even one Flint or Green-Wood must not be discarded.

Weapons To Combine With

1. Ice Gauntlet sets up foes to be hit by the Fire Staff’s abilities, gives you some utility, and, very importantly, a lot of crowd control and mana regeneration. The downsides would be that you do not have a melee option if you’re out of mana.

2. Rapier provides great mobility and damage. You can use the Rapier to disengage or use Riposte to set up a devastating Pillar of Fire. Thanks to gems, you’ll be able to focus on Intelligence to scale the damage of both weapons. One downside of this combo is that you have limited crowd control.

3. Life Staff also can be mixed with Fire Staff if you place the Cut Pristine Amber in it, making the damage to your Fire Staff scaling with Focus. It’ll give you lots of AoE offensive skills and high survivability. The main drawback of this build is the lack of crowd control and fast running out of mana since you don’t have mana regeneration like in the Ice Gauntlet combination.

4. Void Gauntlet provides great utility, lots of buffs, and debuffs for you and your team. Even more, it gives you fast mana regeneration, the ability to cool down your skills fast, and close-ranged options. The main downside of this build is the lack of crowd control.

FAQ