(I apologize in advance for the comparison Master Pants, but your fears of Warlockian style spells are worth discussing).

From a lore stand point, Warlocks are (generally) Mages that have tampered too much with particularly dangerous powers. It makes sense from a lore standpoint to have a tree actually sort of tread ever so lightly on the Warlocks toes. IF you want to use that line of thought, then we can assume that Fire Mages might generally be the ones to tamper with demonic powers, given the demonic affinity for fire.

While it's true that the DoT will likely be a significant portion of damage done, fire is still going to be a direct damage tree (Living Bomb aside). Here's the difference in philosophy with Immolate and Fireball. Immolate has a direct damage component, but you cast it for the DoT. Fireball has a DoT but you cast it for the direct damage. While we might see a rotation to get all types of DoTs rolling (assuming the DoTs are unique to each spell cast) I can't see any mage tree RELYING on DoTs. Just like Demo specs are the most mage-like, Fire hits closest to home for a lock.

As for the Health>Mana flavor, Warlocks are extremely different about how they go about this. Having to cast to get the mana makes the amount of health more manageable but makes the mana less available in a combat situation. The fire mage way of doing things (I take it as you can go to 0 mana, and keep casting with your healthbar replacing your mana bar without skipping a beat) means it will probably be super easy to go overboard with it, but the resource is available right away in a fight when it's crucial (say, the last 10% of Putricide where stopping to evocate could mean death for you and/or the raid for any number of reasons).

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