Mote of Fire

Since Motes have a use function, you can drag them to your Action Bar to easily track how many you got while farming.

I made a quick outline of where all the best places to farm motes are. Very useful if, like me, you are farming many of them for a recipe of some sort.

Layout:
(Zone) NPC name - Coordinates - % drop rate - link to page at Wowhead

Mote of Air:
(Nagrand) Storming Wind-Ripper - 69.21 (Throne of Elements) - 33.9% - http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=22310

Mote of Fire:
(Nagrand) Raging Fire-Soul - 69.21 (Throne of Elements) - 34.1 - http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=22311

Mote of Water:
(Terokkar Forest) Crashing Wave-Spirit - 63.17 (North-Western Throne of Elements) - 33.7 - http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=22309

Mote of Earth:
(Blade's Edge Mountains) Sundered Rumbler - (Basically above and all below Area 52) - 18.8 - http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=18881

Mote of Mana:
(Netherstorm) Mana Wraith - 36.60 and 31.73 (Anywhere above Area 52 and more below. While you're at it, kill the Nether Rays as well, they have just as good of a chance to drop and are mostly in the same area) - 25.8 - http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=18864

Mote of Life:
(Zangarmarsh) I didn't find any specific place to farm for these because the zone is just rich with them. But I would suggest farming the Bogg/ Starving Bogg Lords and Fungal /Starving Fungal Giants because they are all very close. - The Spawning Glen (SW Zangarmarsh) and East of there is the Quagg Ridge - Very similar drop rates on all 4 mobs that I pointed out, 18.2 to 18.8 - http://www.wowhead.com/?item=22575#00Rmz

Mote of Shadow:
By far the most commonly found mote. This is dropped in almost every zone and can be easily farmed anywhere. But there may be a few exceptional areas just because npcs that drop them are close together, non-elite, and easy to kill. Here's one spot in a few that are exceptional:
(Nagrand) Voidspawn - Again, no specific coords, but all around Oshu'Gun, the bigass crystal SW Nagrand. - 18.4 - http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=17981

I had to get 8 Primal Fires for my turbo charged flying machine so I looked here for good places to farm it.

I can easily say that the Incancdescent Fel Sparks at the Throne of Kil'jaeden in hellfire peninsula are the best mobs to farm motes of fire at level 80. I tried Elemental plateau at first, but after doing 3 aoe pulls I had to wait for over 5 minutes for them to start respawning again ... waste of time.

However, at the throne of Kil'jaeden there will always be fel sparks to kill. It seems like they are forced to respawn if all of them are about to die. The drop rate seemed to be the same as Elemental Plateau but you have 0 downtime (apart from the little flying between each mob). Just bind your flying mount button to a easy to reach key and start killing those fel sparks. I had my flying mount bound to the middle mouse button while I was at this so I could mount easily and fast after each mob.

I got my 8 primal fires in about 20 minutes at the throne of kil'jaeden.