Pyrobast!!! The ins and outs of Mages.

There is a little bit of information that might make your life a bit easier when it comes to playing a mage in the TBC timeframe.

Talent Specialization and Ability Rotations

As a TBC mage there are many specs but there is 1 current one that beats all and that is Arcane/fire 40/21/0 and it out dps's others by far in comparison due to the high sustained damage of the fire tree paired with the burst and extra spellpower of the arcane tree here is a link to the spec.

As you see in the spec you go into arcane to maximize possible damage and mana  regen because you will need it for most raids but we do not spec into Arcane Potency because it does not work at this moment if it were ever to be fixed you should take out the filler points from prismatic cloak and 1 from magic attunement. As for the first side of the tree we basically go just far enough for the fire essentials to have max dps and dont put points in pvp talents for  example dragons breath or blastwave because they are not viable sources of damage for raid bosses though the major weakness to this  spec is you need 14% Hit to have max hit with a spreist or boomkin hit buff so keep in mind to either have a dual box boomkin or have a boomkin freind or else you will need 17% hit because we get nothing from talents. Next is the rotation for the begining of the fight ( the end of the fight is complex and i will explain this later in the guide in the section Ignite and You) As A fire mage you must start out with scorchx5 and maybe more if your not hit capped make sure you have your 5 stacks on and form then on you will cast aproximitely depending on haste fireball x6-8 untill you need to renew scorch and it is pretty simple that is all you will cast no fireblasts unless you are moving and you will pop cooldowns only after you have your scorch stacks x5 and  you will pop them in this order -  scorchstack x5>AP>possible trinket 1>possible trinket 2>PoM>Pyro>fireball x7 ( or untill scorch renew) Remember to synergize this when the shaman will bloodlust and do not pop this untill the boss is under 90% or else you may pull aggro and i will explain this later in the guide.

Viable Gems Enchants and Consumables

As a dps you will want to max out your damage in anyway possible so that's where gems enchants and consumables come into play.

To start out with we will look at the various gems that you can use it depends on your current gear set for example for a starting mage with low hit you will want to use all 10+ hit gems for a mage that has full hit you will want to socket 14+ spell power or critical strike depending on how geared you are you essentially want a crit rating to max so that would be 70% if you are absolutely max geared your best bet is to socket critical strike. as for meta gems hands down the Mystical skyfire diamond is the best and remember you do not need its set bonus to get its haste proc. Now for enchants this will be breif because they are simple. For your weapon you will want Sunfire, for your head enchant you will need Shatar rep so have a freind run you through Botanica for it, For you leg enchant Runic spellthread is the best for your gloves get  +15 hit rating, for you  cloak get +20 spell penetration,, for your chest grab +6 stats,and lastly for your bracers get + 15 spell damage.. Now to consumables as a mage you will want the Flask of Pure Death and make sure to have many mana injectors on yourself for boss fights unfortunately unless your very geared you cannot use haste pots you will need the mana. Now for Food Buffs for mages who are undergeared Spicy Hot Talbuk is the best and it is a recipe drop from the Crate of Meat from Lower city daily quests. for higher geared mages Blackened Basilisk is from an inkeeper from Terrokar forrest. 

A Mages Duty

As a mage you have duty's such as Making water for healers, on certain boss fights determining to give amplify magic to the healers  or the tank ( if the boss is all physical damage ) or dampen magic to certain group members, as well as buffing your group with intellect and most importantly getting every curse off of every raid member and being able to prioritize who do dispell first depending on the debuff. These are all rules essential to be considered useful because any class can dps, if you do not do all of these things you are failing as your class and re-roll because these are some of your main use's. However when these are not in play your job is to blow up the boss without a doubt and play smart iceblocking debuffs when healing is tight / fireward and frost warding yourself to help healers on certain boss fights and if need be mana shield ( in instances that are not WE because you instantly  spawn back so don't mana shield or u will just be alive with a low mana pool).

Ignite and You

Ignite is a very complex spell because each time you crit you do 40% of the spell damage over time but if you crit while the buff is still active it will refresh the buff and add to the spell power so 'proper' ignite management and assumes pretty much that every fireball will deliver its ignite dmg. In other words, it ignores the possibility of the boss dying before your ignites have had the time to run their full course. As a contention point there are many strategies for managing that, which are being somewhat contested. The possible options are roughly AB spam, AM, scorch and fireblast for the final 3-5s of a fight (in a context where you do not know how much time is left on a boss and yet have a huge buildup ignite). You know its somewhere between 0s left before boss dies and 5s. This also deals with travel time due to an indirect effect, basically, you want to avoid casts with travel time at that point in time because you want to be sure to maximize how much dmg you can deal given an unknown future. I believe only 1.5s casts should be used for that context, but again, this is debatable. Personally I finish fights with scorch/fireblast spam as a mechanism to lower this, but the practice is very much debatable but it will increase your dps to stop firespells and let ignite run off at 3% for a huge amount of damage.

Threat the Death of The Fire Mage

As a fire mage you should wait to dps untill the boss is at 95% preferably but you can start at 97% just don't go balls to the wall or you most likely will pull aggro from the tank because to be honest if you don't know the MT is skilled at threat generation you may need wait the 5% cause dying is never good for dps but if you think you are getting high on threat pop invis to reset threat or if u pull aggro iceblock so the tank can re taunt.