February 22, 2024 2 min to read

Filler

Practice This!

Filler is simply when we are not inside Combustion or Sun King’s Blessing. We’re looking to achieve 3 objectives while in filler:

Using Shifting Power as long as Combustion has 16 seconds or more left on its cooldown and you wont overcap Fireblast charges. We want to get this used as close to on cooldown as possible in filler.
Building Sun King’s Blessing stacks. We do this via entering a loop of chain casting Fireballs waiting for Heating up’s to occur. We do not wait and see if the previous Fireball generated one, we continue to chain cast. We will get a Heating up mid-cast of a Fireball at which point we convert it to Hot Streak with a Fireblast and queue a Pyroblast or Flamestrike into the end of the Fireball cast. This is commonly known as “fishing.”
“Pooling” of Fireblasts for our next Combustion or Sun King’s Blessing. Pooling is simply saving them at the appropriate time to meet the minimums required to perform a full Combustion and/or Sun King’s Blessing. We need 1.8+ Fireblast charges for Combustion and 1.8+ Fireblast charges for Sun King’s Blessing. We achieve this by stopping spending Fireblasts to convert around 6 SKB stacks, and/or 7-10 seconds out from Combustion coming off of cooldown. So we maintain our Fireball chain casting, but simply stop spending Fireblasts until we either get a natural double crit, or we’ve saved enough charges to convert and meet our pooling requirements.

With Alexstrasza’s Fury talented we have two additional generators to use in Filler. Phoenix Flames and Dragon’s Breath

Phoenix Flames we simply use before or after our Fireball filler chain loop. We do not cast Phoenix Flames directly after a Fireball, but instead use it either before we enter the chain cast loop, or use it after a consumed Hot Streak. This prevents us from munching or creating gaps in our DPS
Dragon’s Breath is situational. If it needs to be held for a stop, like in Mythic+, you would hold it for the stop. Otherwise you can use it in filler to generate a Heating up or Hot Streak following the same rules as Phoenix flames
The caveat to AF filler, you don’t have to Fireball with every Hot Streak. If you have enough resources between Fireblast, Phoenix Flames, and Dragon’s Breath to reach your next Sun King’s Blessing while still meeting Fireblast pooling requirements, you can just send them swiftly without the need to Fireball

While in Searing Touch we no longer use Fireball or Phoenix Flames in filler, and simply use Scorch and Fireblast to generate Heating up and Hot Streak then consume it with Pyroblast or Flamestrike. We do still follow pooling requirements and use Shifting Power as normal.