[WoW] Mage Talk: Become the Magister
Eliot Dubois
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Haven't had a good old fashioned mage talk in quite some time. Maybe because unlike other classes we don't have anything to complain about. When the worst thing you can bitch about is constant whispers for food or water, you know you picked a winning class.
So discuss away.
So discuss away.
Eliot Dubois on
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Unless Frostbite is suddenly applicable to raid mobs or Int doesn't exist on Raid gear as well as Arena gear there's no reason to spec frost, the DPS is too low.
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One frost dungeon and a mage overhaul later, and suddenly frost mages are the ones getting the cold shoulder.
I hope we get some awesome new places to port in the expansion.
My talent tree for seventy is all set.
Every single Fire Talent -Improved Fire Ward.
I did read somewhere we'll get portals to Outland :^:
Mana Efficiency? Frost Barrier? Ice Block? General "being-able-to-surive-more-than-one-hit-ness?"
I dunno, my mage is frost and she kicks so much ass. I don't have to sit around and drink as much as fire mages and I can survive much better because I don't have to rely on fucking mana shield for protection from hits. Speaking of hits, since my frostbolt snares so often, I also wind up taking less hits than a fire mage, which means less repairs and the aforementioned better survivability.
And it's not like the DPS is abysmal. Even as frost, I still top damage meters in groups.
Yes, but can you set stuff on fire? Make people fall down with the big numbers? (Yeah, actually, you can, but no fire!)
It seems to me as someone who dislikes raiding and detests guilds that getting high end gear with big fire numbers is a hell of a lot easier. Plus with a few points in the early ranks of arcane and frost you can get better spell penetration, and a few days of AV will give you that nice ring and that awesome, awesome book. I'm 58 right now and the second I hit 60 my fire damage will go up almost 120 points.
I've got, like, +250 frost damage.
Yeah, so do I, it'll go up another 120 points when I hit 60.
Too much damn PVPing...yet it gets me all the phat lewts.
however, i cant wait for the expansion so i can level to 70 and get me a frickin Water Elemental. thats going to be so kickass no matter where i am.
There could still be changes, yes, but the widening gap will only continue to be a problem unless there are.
Better gear will help Fire more because of Fire's multipliers, and the gear also increases mana efficiency somewhat through Master of Elements. Frost gets less DPS increase from the same gear, and no increase to mana efficiency.
well im certain people will always respec to the raid friendly specs just so its easier.
I just want both specs to be viable.
....I play a warrior
Many arguments over this one; there are advocates for Fire single target, Fire/Arc multi target, frost single target and Frost AoE. Personally I think Frost AoE is the best option, but I'll give you the low down on each.
Fire single target is exactly what you expect it to be. Fireball, fireball, nova, fireball, fireball. Over and over. You kill fast, but you also drink a lot.
Fire/Arc Aoe is basically best done in camps of mobs, start with the Casted AoE Fire spell (forgot the name of it), and basically just Arcane explosion them down. Maybe chuck a blast wave in there. This method is fast, but you have to drink after every pull. This is the only method that really benefits from dragging a priest along with you.
Frost Single target is pretty much Frostbolt spam x 6 or 7 per target. Nova if you want. This method is the slowest killing you can do, but I found myself only drinking once in between Evoc's.
Frost AoE is increadibly situational. There's only really 5 or 6 places in the game that it works really well for. Consists of kiting many (sometimes 10+) same level mobs using Imp Blizzard, Frost Nova, Ice Block and Mana shield. I can scrounge up a video if you are so inclined.
I would suggest refraining from frost AoE grinding until you hit 34 as Horde and 38 as Alliance, due to pure lack of places to do this beforehand.
I'm playing a mage at the moment, and I'm really, really tempted to go and all-out arcane spec him.
Not because it's a particularly good build for damage, or for control, but just because I *can*. I was just spending talent point here-and-there for the longest time, and evended up with 5 in subtlty and improved missiles. There's something really nice about being able to support-nuke something and be pretty confident of drawing no aggro for your trouble. Or if you're soloing to be able to actually *cast* something whilst getting hit.
Don't get me wrong, I'm thinking about re-speccing when the time comes that I need to, but at the moment arcane's being nice to me. Amour bonus of half your int? That's just lovely.
None of this stops me getting beaten up by warlocks, mind. Hey look, I'm afraid, I can't do anything...I'm taking loads of damage... I'm dead without getting to do anything. Bastards!
I'm assuming you have less than 300 spelldamage or you don't raid. Frost is amazingly easy and relaxed to play in raids, and it kills in MC and BWL, but once you get into naxx...fire just destroys, so hard. When you hit 600 spell damage, and you get a 17/31/3 spec, you'll find scorch outdps'es and outDPM's frostbolt, and then you realise there's no real reason to spec frost anymore. I was crazy about frost, but excited when we went into naxx, cause i knew fire kicks so much ass too. The fire talent tree for BC is (in my opinion) a lot spiffier than the frost tree as well, so I'll just go for a deep fire raid spec, and see how it turns out.
But man, 20% more damage to fireballs with empowered fireball = 2k hits in raids. It's...it's so good.
Yeah I was kinda suprised with that myself.
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You must not have ever gotten any good at it.
It's very fast xp to be made.
I've been playing a frost mage with all my talents aimed towards improving my blizzard aoe. I usually start with shield, gather them up, CoC, Nova, Blizzard, CoC, Nova, Blizzard, CoC and/or Arcane Explosion. When this works, experience is almost too easy. However, I'm finding it tough to find enough places to use it. There was sticky post on the official forums awhile back that listed all the places that people liked to AoE grind. I can post it here if you want, as I think I saved a copy of it somewhere.
As Alliance, the first place I found that worked awesome was in Arathi Highlands at the farms. There's 8 peons in each fenced yard. I started by grabbing 3 or 4 at a time, but after about 3-4 levels of this I was tough enough that I could grab all 8 at once. I would pick off the pats while I was waiting for the yards to respawn. I got tons of coin and silk this way too. I'm currently level 43 and started working on the pirates in Tanaris. I hear this is the prime place for doing this since they are clumped up so tightly with no casters, it's almost unfair.
And it does help to have a priest when doing this. I can take on twice as many mobs with a priest popping a shield on me before I start and giving a quick heal if I get into trouble. This tag team is unstoppable.
Edit: Forgot a nova.
Is there any point in getting Frost Nova past skill 1? They all do the same thing, right? Freeze mobs in place? The higher skills cost more mana and only do marginally more damage. The damage is incidental compared to the tactical utility of the freeze. The only thing I can think is that higher level mobs might have a better chance to resist the rank 1 spell.
Edit: If there's another mage around you may want to use max rank if you're re-nova-ing the same mobs/players
Level 52-58 can be done in a minescular amount of time compared to other classes on the 50-51 undead in WPL.
That's a hard one. Mish'Undare is an incredible hat, and the NW hat is pretty average... if your guild is far off from farming the hat dropper in Naxx he may be ready to give up his 8/8 set bonus (which is hit or miss in its effectiveness) and optimize further.
NW lacks in % to hit, he may want to take some Enigma so he isn't being resisted 9 gajillion times in Naxx.
People say this, and it may be true, but for actual farming fire is, I believe, much better. With fire I can solo a majority of the 55-60 elite mobs in the game world without much effort, and some of them drop pretty damn good items.
I personally enjoy one and two shotting non-elite mobs at my level, it would seem alot easier, but not necessarily faster, to grind that way.
The official mage forums bitch so much about the 41 points, I don't understand.
Slow-PvP=Yes. If it works on raid bosses, bonus. People say it isn't as good as rank 1 frostbolt, but I say an instant cast makes a big difference.
Dragon's Breath-More instant casts for pvp will be awesome. Especially if it disorients. People say that it breaking on ignite damage will make it useless. Even if it does, it will still be good for spell interrupts, and for stopping melee folks to get a little more range on them.
Water Elemental-Well, I don't know about this one. It seems to change often, and I wasn't even sure what it would do in the first place.
I wish Imp. Blink would lower the cooldown instead of the mana cost.
Well according to the wowwiki, magic resistance is based on the difference between your level and the mob's level, and the difference between your level and the mob's {that school of magic} resistance. Hence, I would conclude that what level spell in general does not affect your ability to use it against a mob.
Which explains why mobs higher in level than me seem to break/resist the frost nova most often.
i raid, but not a lot. I'm mostly a PvP mage and I've been in Naxx on the test servers and i was still specced frost. but you have to facter in all the modifiers that a mage gets, spell damage, spell crit, chance to hit with spells, etc. i have a very high chance to crit (+11%), and a decent amount of spell damage. hell, most of the time, just for fun i spam fireball on some mobs in MC, just to mess with the other mages and rogues competing for top spot on the damage charts.
in the end though, all specs are viable for raiding, like i can just use someone else's fire vulnerability just like most mages use my Winter's Chill.
Oh Hell Yes.
I was destroying large portions of those spawns all by my lonesome, with my just- hit 60 gear and an elemental spec. My god it was amazing.
Also, Elemental Spec. Shatter + Ignite = Win.
For world PvE and pre- raiding, at least. For mob grinding I'd go no other way.
Instant is nice, I think Arcane is the sleeper hit, with the new arcane spell coming out, I would go deep into arcane just for the 25% of Intellect -> Spell Damage... if I didn't like Fire so much
Yes, Ignite interrupt is kinda silly, I would rather the spell just not apply ignite at all.., but reasonably low cooldown w/ scatter shot effect = win... this combined with invisibility, the +50% run speed talent, among other things, mages will have alot of survivability they didn't have before
Well if the leaked abilities for this mob end up being true, then +100% spirit will equal ZOMG regeneration, think of the evocates.
The biggest thing I am looking forward to in the expansion is Molten Armor, -10% crit on all incoming attacks ftw.
You shouldn't break 8/8 NW for 1 piece though, its just not worth it. Of course he could be saving it for later, but that just seems greddy to me and he probably should have waited so others can get a dps upgrade. Also unless they changed something resists in Naxx are no different than in BWL or even MC, last I heard every boss except C'thun is level 63 for calculating resists.
I'm sorry, but just no your wrong. Fire out damages frost by so much that its not even a contest for raid specs past the end of BWL. Frost at that point is primarily a PvP spec where the extra survivability of ice barrier and ice block come into play. The extra survivability however is almost useless in raids, for the most part you should never be getting hit to begin with and if you do get hit consistently due to something out of your control then so is everyone else. This isn't to say that you can't be frost or that a raid in naxx with frost spec'ed mages can't go anywhere, but the dps of frost is not even close to fire, nor is the dpm. When you get past the end of bwl there is very little reason to spec frost if your trying to maximize your raid effecieny.
The dragon's breath affect is closer to gouge than scattershot, isn't it? Maybe they could change Ignite to be 40% of damage DoT on all spells, ecept for Dragon's Breath, which gets a 30% critical strike damage bonus (like a mini-ice shards). Or just remove ignite mechanics from breath entirely, would be okay too.
Did they change how invis was going to work becuase last time I looked it took 8 seconds or whatever to actually go invisible which is pretty much way to long to be useful.
I believe its the same effect as scatter shot as both have pretty much the exact same wording at this point.