I am still disappointed Frozen Orb isn't in WoW. That spell was so amazing in D2 and if there was a wow clone of it I would likely level a Mage (one of my I can't get past 30 classes)
Hey man, you're a few years late on the whole "Why isn't this more like Diablo 2?" dumbshit train.
I have not played Diablo 2 in years but what was the Frozen orb? I forgot
A big old orb of frost that shot ice in all directions as it spun towards the enemy, leaving only a frigid trail of death behind.
Indeed. It was a spell with a visceral feel. When you aimed frozen orb at something and all the spikes that spun off hit just that one dude... Multiple times... whoa. It was like shooting high velocity circle saw blades at baddies.
I don't even put stuff from other specs on my bars. When I'm frost, fireball, scorch, flamestrike etc are off; when i was fire blizzard, ice lance, and others gone.
i do keep arcane explosion on all the time, cuz its useful when you're lazy and aoeing things in melee range.
but big numbers are awesome. I just hit 78 last night, I was in Sholazar basin today and FFB crits for ~5k. And it crits A LOT. and then the ignites. oh man the ignites.
I don't even put stuff from other specs on my bars. When I'm frost, fireball, scorch, flamestrike etc are off; when i was fire blizzard, ice lance, and others gone.
i do keep arcane explosion on all the time, cuz its useful when you're lazy and aoeing things in melee range.
but big numbers are awesome. I just hit 78 last night, I was in Sholazar basin today and FFB crits for ~5k. And it crits A LOT. and then the ignites. oh man the ignites.
Wait till you get to 80. 10k crits all around.
Oh, and FFB on Malygos is pure madness. 20k FFB crits all the time. Tank can hardly keep up with aggro.
I don't even put stuff from other specs on my bars. When I'm frost, fireball, scorch, flamestrike etc are off; when i was fire blizzard, ice lance, and others gone.
i do keep arcane explosion on all the time, cuz its useful when you're lazy and aoeing things in melee range.
but big numbers are awesome. I just hit 78 last night, I was in Sholazar basin today and FFB crits for ~5k. And it crits A LOT. and then the ignites. oh man the ignites.
Wait till you get to 80. 10k crits all around.
Oh, and FFB on Malygos is pure madness. 20k FFB crits all the time. Tank can hardly keep up with aggro.
Fuck, I was tanking and had a FFB mage pull aggro without that, at the very start of the fight. I looked at the death log:
Scorch crit
Scorch crit
Pyroblast hit
FFB crit
FFB crit
Pyroblast crit
Boss Molests Mage hit
I wanted to ask FFB mages on two flavors of 0/53/18
Flavor 1
one has World of Flames 3/3
Flavor 2
World of Flames
1/3
Blast wave 1/1
Dragon's Breath 1/1
Is Flavor 2 more PVE friendly while Flavor is more boss/raid?
Horus on
“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go...”
― Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You'll Go!
Do folks still level with fire? (like from 10-30s?) With the option to AOE grind with frost builds later? With the changes to Arc, can you level with that now?
Haven't played in about 6 months, and a coworker of mine convinced me to re-open my account and reroll on his server.
Started leveling a mage with my gf's hunter. Right now I've gone arcane, purely because I couldn't decide which of the ellemental specs were more apealing to me.
But then it hit me, I don't know shit about mages. Any advice on lvling? What skills I should use etc? Most of the time I'm using arcane missile/wand spam because my gf and her pet just tears shit up before I can get a spell off.
Yes. Fire Blast is weak ass shit if you're frost spec. Also, I might be crazy here, and I haven't played my mage for a couple months now, but I could swear the GCD caused by the Brain Freeze fireball was shorter than the normal 1.5 seconds. It seemed more like a 1 second rogue/cat GCD. Anyone else notice that or was I hallucinating?
forty on
Officially the unluckiest CCG player ever.
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Magus`The fun has been DOUBLED!Registered Userregular
It's like the Flamestrike you cast before chain-casting Blizzard. While it might seem negligible your raid leader will notice if you don't have it when he compares your e-peen against the other mages.
Steel-Angel on
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kaleeditySometimes science is more art than scienceRegistered Userregular
Yes. Fire Blast is weak ass shit if you're frost spec. Also, I might be crazy here, and I haven't played my mage for a couple months now, but I could swear the GCD caused by the Brain Freeze fireball was shorter than the normal 1.5 seconds. It seemed more like a 1 second rogue/cat GCD. Anyone else notice that or was I hallucinating?
instant cast spells benefit from haste; the 1.5s gcd can be cut all the way down to 1.0 with haste gear/effects.
kaleedity on
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Magus`The fun has been DOUBLED!Registered Userregular
It's like the Flamestrike you cast before chain-casting Blizzard. While it might seem negligible your raid leader will notice if you don't have it when he compares your e-peen against the other mages.
As crit rates approach higher and higher rates I think giving up a GCD for Living Bomb over FFB may nerf your damage, not increase it. I could be wrong, though.
It's like the Flamestrike you cast before chain-casting Blizzard. While it might seem negligible your raid leader will notice if you don't have it when he compares your e-peen against the other mages.
As crit rates approach higher and higher rates I think giving up a GCD for Living Bomb over FFB may nerf your damage, not increase it. I could be wrong, though.
You start running into ignite munching when that happens anyways. IIRC priority should always go to keeping LB up.
It's pretty standard, you got all the right FFB components, and the last couple of points are kind of your preference.
Personally I left off Blast Wave (it's ok in PvE but this is basically a raid build, and knocking shit around can piss off your tank pretty easily) and took a point out of Frost Bite and went a point each into Improved Blizzard and Shatter for the AoE dps increase (imp blizzard procs frost bite procs shatter)
Yes. Fire Blast is weak ass shit if you're frost spec. Also, I might be crazy here, and I haven't played my mage for a couple months now, but I could swear the GCD caused by the Brain Freeze fireball was shorter than the normal 1.5 seconds. It seemed more like a 1 second rogue/cat GCD. Anyone else notice that or was I hallucinating?
instant cast spells benefit from haste; the 1.5s gcd can be cut all the way down to 1.0 with haste gear/effects.
My level 70 mage is wearing nothing but TBC quest/lower level instance drops, so he has 0 haste.
forty on
Officially the unluckiest CCG player ever.
0
AlectharAlan ShoreWe're not territorial about that sort of thing, are we?Registered Userregular
Started leveling a mage with my gf's hunter. Right now I've gone arcane, purely because I couldn't decide which of the ellemental specs were more apealing to me.
But then it hit me, I don't know shit about mages. Any advice on lvling? What skills I should use etc? Most of the time I'm using arcane missile/wand spam because my gf and her pet just tears shit up before I can get a spell off.
Go Deep Frost. Pretty much just fill up the tree as you level up. If I were to level to 80 again, I'd probably end up with something like this.
You might think about going deeper into Arcane for "Torment the Weak". You'd lose some stuff in Frost, but a 12% increase on snared targets is pretty good when your main nuke is a snare.
Additionally, I see absolutely no reason to complain about Living Bomb. Frostfire spec is stupid awesome, it's easily the most fun I've ever had Raid DPSing on my mage, and has a far more interesting rotation than I ever used when I was Fire. Also, when 3.08 hits, my understanding is that Living Bomb crits will proc Hot Streak, which is really, really cool.
Yes. Fire Blast is weak ass shit if you're frost spec. Also, I might be crazy here, and I haven't played my mage for a couple months now, but I could swear the GCD caused by the Brain Freeze fireball was shorter than the normal 1.5 seconds. It seemed more like a 1 second rogue/cat GCD. Anyone else notice that or was I hallucinating?
instant cast spells benefit from haste; the 1.5s gcd can be cut all the way down to 1.0 with haste gear/effects.
My level 70 mage is wearing nothing but TBC quest/lower level instance drops, so he has 0 haste.
That's me as Frost... note #4 on Sartharion without a flask above all the FFB mages and being fairly competitive throughout the raid. Frost is the real deal methinks.
That was with a Moonkin druid but no ele shaman.
We also got a 550th-ish ranked Instructor kill. Pretty damn good for only the second week.
That's me as Frost... note #4 on Sartharion without a flask above all the FFB mages and being fairly competitive throughout the raid. Frost is the real deal methinks.
That was with a Moonkin druid but no ele shaman.
We also got a 550th-ish ranked Instructor kill. Pretty damn good for only the second week.
Looks like you're pulling your weight just fine. A couple notes though :
1) Get a Patchwerk WWS. That's by far the easiest benchmark to compare since there aren't any extraneous variables.
2) Nice job on Sarth, but take a quick look at the breakdown - you did 364k damage w/ Blizzard and 235k damage w/ frostbolt. Deep frost is now awesome at AoE, so those fights should swing in your favor.
3) Your frostfire mages are probably a bit undergeared - I'm running around a 55-60% crit on Frostfire Bolt for a full Naxx clear (Loatheb skews the data slightly upward, which is why I prefer to look at Patchwerk). Raynefear was 47%, Antheus was 45%, and Kyah was 51%. Frostfire improves w/ crit far more than other specs.
4) Your frostfire mages may need to work on catching hot streaks and Living Bomb uptime. I'm seeing low numbers for both on a lot of fights. The hot streak results may just be low crit, but living bomb is pure paying attention.
5) Either WTF is your Loatheb strat, or Antheus and Raynefear are retarded. Antheus has 40% crit on your Loatheb kill, Raynefear has 64%. My last Loatheb I had 96% and my fellow mage had 93%. Anything less than 85% as Frostfire means you're not paying attention to your spore buff - Frostfire has no excuse not to own that fight.
I like the equaliation of the Frost and Fire (especially with FFB), but I was hoping for more items that weren't from the Sunwell. They'll probably come out with more, and I like how they distilled some stats into more generic ones, but I don't like how there isn't "Mage gear"; now it's just "caster gear".
Posts
I have not played Diablo 2 in years but what was the Frozen orb? I forgot
Indeed. It was a spell with a visceral feel. When you aimed frozen orb at something and all the spikes that spun off hit just that one dude... Multiple times... whoa. It was like shooting high velocity circle saw blades at baddies.
I was a bit lost, but I cobbled together a frost spec and I've been having a blast. Who knew how much fun big numbers could be?
The funny thing is my action bars are full and I only cast a few spells. I don't even know where I'm going to put all this stuff as I level up.
i do keep arcane explosion on all the time, cuz its useful when you're lazy and aoeing things in melee range.
but big numbers are awesome. I just hit 78 last night, I was in Sholazar basin today and FFB crits for ~5k. And it crits A LOT. and then the ignites. oh man the ignites.
Wait till you get to 80. 10k crits all around.
Oh, and FFB on Malygos is pure madness. 20k FFB crits all the time. Tank can hardly keep up with aggro.
Fuck, I was tanking and had a FFB mage pull aggro without that, at the very start of the fight. I looked at the death log:
Scorch crit
Scorch crit
Pyroblast hit
FFB crit
FFB crit
Pyroblast crit
Boss Molests Mage hit
I guess after 50 points I'll head over to arcane, or maybe top off some of the other talents in the tree.
Flavor 1
one has World of Flames 3/3
Flavor 2
World of Flames
1/3
Blast wave 1/1
Dragon's Breath 1/1
Is Flavor 2 more PVE friendly while Flavor is more boss/raid?
― Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You'll Go!
Do folks still level with fire? (like from 10-30s?) With the option to AOE grind with frost builds later? With the changes to Arc, can you level with that now?
Haven't played in about 6 months, and a coworker of mine convinced me to re-open my account and reroll on his server.
Thanks!
i didnt use fireball when i was frost. why would i? spamming frostbolt allows frostbite procs, which leads to shatter, and in the end more dmg.
If you're frost, you should've gotten Brain Freeze. A free instant fireball is pretty nice.
Xbox Live: Kunohara
I never saw the point. I did just fine without brain freeze, and after i got FFB i specced to mainly fire anyways.
But then it hit me, I don't know shit about mages. Any advice on lvling? What skills I should use etc? Most of the time I'm using arcane missile/wand spam because my gf and her pet just tears shit up before I can get a spell off.
And isn't Fireball more powerful than that? And free?
Have you seen the 51 Fire Talent? They gave us a shittier version of a NON-TALENTED Warlock skill.
Steam Profile | Signature art by Alexandra 'Lexxy' Douglass
Yeah but at least it's still a net DPS increase. Deep Freeze is utterly useless in any PVE environment since tanks will never lose aggro, like ever.
Steam Profile | Signature art by Alexandra 'Lexxy' Douglass
It was made just to give mages a pvp stun without praying for impact procs.
Deep Freeze is as bad a PVE talent as Living Bomb is in PVP.
Handy sometimes, way better in the other gameplay realm.
It's like the Flamestrike you cast before chain-casting Blizzard. While it might seem negligible your raid leader will notice if you don't have it when he compares your e-peen against the other mages.
instant cast spells benefit from haste; the 1.5s gcd can be cut all the way down to 1.0 with haste gear/effects.
As crit rates approach higher and higher rates I think giving up a GCD for Living Bomb over FFB may nerf your damage, not increase it. I could be wrong, though.
Steam Profile | Signature art by Alexandra 'Lexxy' Douglass
...what
Good? Bad? Should I stick to sucking it up as Arcane?
You start running into ignite munching when that happens anyways. IIRC priority should always go to keeping LB up.
Personally I left off Blast Wave (it's ok in PvE but this is basically a raid build, and knocking shit around can piss off your tank pretty easily) and took a point out of Frost Bite and went a point each into Improved Blizzard and Shatter for the AoE dps increase (imp blizzard procs frost bite procs shatter)
Go Deep Frost. Pretty much just fill up the tree as you level up. If I were to level to 80 again, I'd probably end up with something like this.
You might think about going deeper into Arcane for "Torment the Weak". You'd lose some stuff in Frost, but a 12% increase on snared targets is pretty good when your main nuke is a snare.
Additionally, I see absolutely no reason to complain about Living Bomb. Frostfire spec is stupid awesome, it's easily the most fun I've ever had Raid DPSing on my mage, and has a far more interesting rotation than I ever used when I was Fire. Also, when 3.08 hits, my understanding is that Living Bomb crits will proc Hot Streak, which is really, really cool.
Battle.net
icy fingers/bloodlust/totems/3% haste buffs?
http://wowwebstats.com/g2bssdulcc3se
That's me as Frost... note #4 on Sartharion without a flask above all the FFB mages and being fairly competitive throughout the raid. Frost is the real deal methinks.
That was with a Moonkin druid but no ele shaman.
We also got a 550th-ish ranked Instructor kill. Pretty damn good for only the second week.
Looks like you're pulling your weight just fine. A couple notes though :
1) Get a Patchwerk WWS. That's by far the easiest benchmark to compare since there aren't any extraneous variables.
2) Nice job on Sarth, but take a quick look at the breakdown - you did 364k damage w/ Blizzard and 235k damage w/ frostbolt. Deep frost is now awesome at AoE, so those fights should swing in your favor.
3) Your frostfire mages are probably a bit undergeared - I'm running around a 55-60% crit on Frostfire Bolt for a full Naxx clear (Loatheb skews the data slightly upward, which is why I prefer to look at Patchwerk). Raynefear was 47%, Antheus was 45%, and Kyah was 51%. Frostfire improves w/ crit far more than other specs.
4) Your frostfire mages may need to work on catching hot streaks and Living Bomb uptime. I'm seeing low numbers for both on a lot of fights. The hot streak results may just be low crit, but living bomb is pure paying attention.
5) Either WTF is your Loatheb strat, or Antheus and Raynefear are retarded. Antheus has 40% crit on your Loatheb kill, Raynefear has 64%. My last Loatheb I had 96% and my fellow mage had 93%. Anything less than 85% as Frostfire means you're not paying attention to your spore buff - Frostfire has no excuse not to own that fight.