Burnout (mage talent)

Burnout is a Mage talent in the Fire tree. It increases the critical strike damage bonus on all Fire spells (similar to Spell Power) but incurs a mana penalty on every crit.

The fully talented 5/5 ability provides 50% and applies to the damage bonus or component derived from critical strikes. Since critical strikes hit for 150% of a normal strike, that critical bonus or component is 50%, half (50%) of which is 25%. Therefore, taking this talent makes your fire spells crit for 175% of their normal damage.

• Note that this talent has powerful synergy with Ignite (Classic). Since Ignite is not based on the critical bonus, but rather the total damage, Ignite provides an additional 40% of all Burnout's 175% critical damage. This raises total fire critical damage to 245%, compared to the untalented crit base of 150%, when both Burnout & Ignite talents are taken.

• The mana cost increase can be made up for and surpassed by the mana gains of specializing into Master of Elements.