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[WoW] [Mages] sheep moon
Walt
Waller Arcane EnchantedFrozen ElectrifiedRegistered User regular
Waller Arcane EnchantedFrozen ElectrifiedRegistered User regular
Mage Thread for Mages
Welcome to the mage thread, wherein things are turned into sheep and monkeys and penguins and turtles and stuff.
From the official guide:
Blizzard wrote:Mages demolish their foes with arcane incantations. Although they wield powerful offensive spells, mages are fragile and lightly armored, making them particularly vulnerable to close-range attacks. Wise mages make careful use of their spells to keep their foes at a distance or hold them in place. Also they are better than Warlocks.
If you want to blow up things and be a wonderful source of crowd control Mage could be the class for you! Mages are dynamic and fun to play and offer 3 different DPS specs for you to destroy things with. Fire is all about blowing things up and lighting things on fire. Frost is all about blowing things up and freezing them in place or slowing them down, as well as making people angry about PvP balance. Arcane is all about being incredibly bori- I mean blowing stuff up with magic missles and managing mana! (AND BEING BORING UAGH ITS SO BORING SERIOUSLY)
Mages are the only class that can make sweet portals to cities, and they can also conjure food so that you don't have to wait a half an hour for the healers mana pool to recover between pulls. Everyone loves having mages in their group.
Example Specs and How2Play
Check the spoiler underneath to learn 2 play (courtesy of Oghulk)
These specs are for a guideline, not as a statement of fact! These are all more or less PvE oriented. Use your imagination! Mages aren't as locked into cookie cutter specs as other classes can be. You may find different specs to be optimal for different fights.
Special note on gemming: ALWAYS GEM FOR INT. The rules for gemming are:
Red -> Int
Blue/Yellow -> Int/Secondary stat ONLY IF the socket bonus will account for the loss of int
Example: Two socket item with 1 Red and 1 Blue gem, with a +20 int socket bonus. Gem pure Int into Red, and gem Int/Hit into Blue, since the +20 int bonus from the socket gives you a "free lunch".
Example 2: Another two socket item, 1 Red, and 1 Blue, with a +10 int socket bonus. Put pure int gems in BOTH slots, since losing 10 int for 10 hit is a net DPS loss.
FIRE -> http://www.wowhead.com/talent#oohZrfhbkbRRsfoc:oczoMkVm0
Fire works quite similar to arcane in that you have a burn phase and conserve phase, the only difference being that your burn phase will last quite a long time depending on the mana regeneration of your raid composition.
The priority rotation works like this:
Is Critical Mass up? Scorch (or Pyroblast depending).
Is Living Bomb up? Living Bomb
Is Hot Streak proc'd? Pyroblast
Is Ignite up along with the above DoTs? Combustion
Fireball
The stat weights for Fire is:
Hit to 17% > Crit >>>> Haste TO ~5% HASTE FOR EXTRA DOT > Mastery > Haste after 5%
Crit is your strongest stat as fire right now, so the more the better.
The priority rotation works like this:
Is Critical Mass up? Scorch (or Pyroblast depending).
Is Living Bomb up? Living Bomb
Is Hot Streak proc'd? Pyroblast
Is Ignite up along with the above DoTs? Combustion
Fireball
The stat weights for Fire is:
Hit to 17% > Crit >>>> Haste TO ~5% HASTE FOR EXTRA DOT > Mastery > Haste after 5%
Crit is your strongest stat as fire right now, so the more the better.
FROST -> http://www.wowhead.com/talent#o0bZfcZffMosIszMo:aMRkMq0mc
Frost's priority system:
Is Fingers of Frost up? Is Deep Freeze off Cooldown? Deep Freeze
Is Freeze (Pet's Ranged Frost Nova) off Cooldown? Is DF off Cooldown? Deep Freeze
Is Fingers of Frost up? Ice Lance
Is Brain Freeze up? Frostfire Bolt
Frostbolt
The stat weights for Frost are:
Hit to 17% > Crit to 33% > Mastery > Haste
Is Fingers of Frost up? Is Deep Freeze off Cooldown? Deep Freeze
Is Freeze (Pet's Ranged Frost Nova) off Cooldown? Is DF off Cooldown? Deep Freeze
Is Fingers of Frost up? Ice Lance
Is Brain Freeze up? Frostfire Bolt
Frostbolt
The stat weights for Frost are:
Hit to 17% > Crit to 33% > Mastery > Haste
ARCANE ->http://www.wowhead.com/talent#ohIMrRMRrRRorZc:s0Va0ozmV
The basic play style for Arcane includes two different phases; your burn phase and your conserve phase. You'll start off the beginning of the fight in your burn phase, going through Abx4Abarr then mana gemming for the spell power buff and subsequently using Arcane Power and trinkets and everything to spam Arcane Blast till roughly 40% mana, at which point you'll want to evocate and then switch to a conserve phase of ABx2Abarr/ABx2AM or something similar to that depending on mana pool.
TL;DR:
Fight Start --> ABx4AM/Abarr -- > Mana Gem/AP/Trinket/Images --> AB till 40% mana --> Evocate --> ABx2Abarr/AM --> Refresh.
I'm not sure about the stat weights right now but I assume for arcane it goes something like this:
Hit to 17% > Mastery(?) > Haste(?) > Crit(?)
TL;DR:
Fight Start --> ABx4AM/Abarr -- > Mana Gem/AP/Trinket/Images --> AB till 40% mana --> Evocate --> ABx2Abarr/AM --> Refresh.
I'm not sure about the stat weights right now but I assume for arcane it goes something like this:
Hit to 17% > Mastery(?) > Haste(?) > Crit(?)
Excellent Mage resources
Elitist Jerks Mage subforum - http://elitistjerks.com/f75/ - Go here for up to date information about Specs, Gemming, Gearing, Priorities, anything and everything related to PvE
Arena Junkies Mage subforum - http://www.arenajunkies.com/forumdisplay.php?f=48 - PvP stuff!
Walt on
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Posts
I guess using polymorph emasculates tanks or something? Also emasculates hunter pets.
Also, I highly endorse mages as my caster class of choice. Fire spec makes my pants excited, always has, always will.
It's not that, it's an issue of trust. For a long time we tanks have had to pick up all those adds and AoE-threat the bejeezus out of them. Those loose adds are horrible, horrible things to us and we feel we must pick them up. Sometimes this impulse causes a delay in noticing that our friendly mage way over in the back has taken care of it for us.
Steam (Ansatz) || GW2 officer (Ansatz.6498)
No, it's just even more RNG that Blizzard has insisted they don't like.
You have to wait for:
Pyroblast! procs (Because 2 crits in a row with under 30% crit rating is hell, and it seems the "activating" pyroblast like Arcane Missiles just plain stops working.)
Ignite is up (which is frustrating, as 2 crits that proc Pyroblast! also means that you probably just screwed over most of your ignite)
Living Bomb (not difficult, but I've had times where Living Bomb was at .5s left, and in the 1.5s or whatever it took me to recast it, Ignite fell off and refused to go back.)
It's very good when it's up and running, and even better when we can Impact (Yay, RNG again!) it all over the place. But for the most part, it's Blizzard feeding us a load of shit about "Not liking RNG heavy classes".
Well, not entirely.
They don't seem to like Mages.
Still loving Frost. I am still dubious about the changes coming in the patch...
I like my deep freeze crits where they are at 90k, thank you very much! In this raiding content where burst damage is magnified by fight mechanics the control of frost is very welcome.
Agreed, there are some heroic bosses where I end the fight feeling like I didn't do enough because I got maybe 2 or 3 hot streaks the entire fight and I end up below the other DPS.
Then there are fights where I get more than one hotstreak chain where nobody else can touch me.
On another topic, do other people use teleport tol barad so they don't have to run across the entire island to turn quests in? :P
No no it's totally okay now because they made it do damage aside from the DOT when you cast it!
/not-being-serious
Hells yes. Also use it to get to Org.
The best description of combustion I've seen so far (I think this was in the fire mage issues thread on the official forums):
Combustion adds up all of the fire dots you have on the target (Ignite, etc), and gets a figure. This figure is then thrown out and /random is done to find out how much damage it's actually going to do.
I benched my mage till the patch other than porting people for gold since I felt I was not hitting as hard as I should be with fire spells
Freeze > Icy Veins > Frostfire Orb > Deep Freeze > Cold Snap > Deep Freeze > Frostfire Orb.
Does that mean hit trumps int trumps crit A WHOLE BUNCH OF LOTS over mastery and haste? In other words, worry more about the former and then the latter?
Edit - Well... okay actually nevermind.
I've seen two out at once, but it's something to look into. If it does disappear, it's getting about half its ticks off, maybe not the most efficient use.
Thanks for raising those questions.
Actually because of how buggy ignite is combined with the reduction in mana cost in the next patch, haste will be better then crit.
http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t110326-cataclysm_fire_mage_compendium/p9/#post1853966
It's also wrong.
If you gear for Hit at the expense of Int you're doing it wrong.
Also, people screw up their gemming pretty often.
Turns out it dissapears. A shame, but its just a 15 second wait.
Not getting any new spells from 58 to 68.
Outlands is already boring enough.
<Head explode!>:shock: I seriously didn't know this! I thought reaching the hit cap was highest priority. My item level is about 334, I think, and I've been gemming and enchanting for hit this whole time! So now I better replace all my gems and enchants (if applicable) with +int or +int/hit, as stated in the OP.
I'm Arcane Spec. Is lightweave embroidery (+~500 spell power proc) on cloak considered to be better than the +50 int enchant? The elitist jerks page seemed kinda ambiguous on that subject. The numbers were "assuming maximum up-time" which is kinda silly.