Warning for Charsx: Your Mom called to say you're terrible

Juice · 08/04/09, 8:39 PM

Post: [Mage] The PVP Thread
User: Charsx
Infraction: Your Mom called to say you're terrible
Points: 0

Administrative Note:

Message to User:

This is a warning. Vyk already infracted you for not knowing your audience on these boards, so this is just to make sure it's clear. You've played 12 games in 2s (PR500) and 317 games in 3s (PR1000). You don't know competitive arena. The "conviction" you claim to have for Fire spec is known by another name as "bullheaded stupidity."

If you want to advocate why Fire spec is good, be my guest. Keep the posts clean and on point. Don't tell us stories of what you're doing and when, cause you don't know what to do, nor when to do it. You aren't ready to give instructions.

Original Post:

I saw the discussion about using fire in pvp, and I figured I’d comment. I have pvped fire since I started playing (near the end of BC) and have always been fire aside from testing out frost and arcane to see what they had.

I think one reason there are so few people who pvp fire, is because everyone always says that you absolutely must pvp as frost (or maybe use arcane now). This also kills the amount of information out there on how to pvp as fire because so few people do it, which in turn further keeps people from really trying fire pvp because they can‘t find help. I sadly can hardly ever find info on pvp fire.

I’ve always loved fire and never been willing to give up on it. I also think I enjoy the challenge of trying to make something work that so many won’t try and say can’t work. But I really think fire, especially now in Wrath, is viable in arena when played right. I’m newer to arena, but I’ve BGed a ton and fought in all kinds of situations and know how to work fire for most situations.

It’s hard to find a good place to start, but I guess I'll describe my current spec and tactics.
Here is my armory: The World of Warcraft Armory
And my current pvp spec (19/52/0): The World of Warcraft Armory
Glyphs: Major - Evocate, Imp Scorch, Polymorph | Minor - Frost Ward, Fire Ward, Slow Fall

Arcane tree selection is pretty simple so I will start there. From what I read, I can’t believe what little emphasis was given to the importance of imp CS. This is the sole reason I go into arcane. Its primary use is to help finish off a healer. Those 4 seconds of silence, or 8 if you get them during a cast, are generally all that is needed to finish the kill. Also very nice against a caster dps. The other talents are picked because they are the most useful way to spend the points required to get to imp CS. In short, more armor is nice, more spell resist is nice, dampen magic is always on, and Spell Impact is a no brainer. The 2 points in arcane shielding are there because as a fire mage, I need to have mana shield up almost constantly, but I'm no good alive if I'm OOM.

The fire tree is obviously more in depth, but I'm trying to be as concise as possible, so I'll leave most of my fire choices up for questions if you don't understand them after I describe my fighting style. Real quick, a few of the ones I feel aren't such obvious choices, have already been debated on here, or I didn't pick: Blazing Speed doesn't work half the time (much like Blink), but it can be a life saver if it actually works; Fiery Payback is ABSOLUTELY worth it for the damage reduction below 35% health alone. I never try to or get to use the pyroblast aspect; Spell reflects (from Molten Shields) after using a Ward are nice (especially reflecting a reflected fire spell back at a prot warrior); Didn't use Firestarter because I don't like Flamestrike, but after reading some comments on here (and other sources), I'm considering picking it up; Burning Determination is worthless; I don't cast non-instants unless I'm safe so Burning Soul is pointless.
I think I saw some questioning about Living Bomb, but it is a must for pvp fire. The explosion is a guaranteed Hot Streak proc 75% of the time I'd say, and putting it on a rogue/druid to help prevent restealthing is great.

As for my fighting style, I use instant casts about 85% of the time. I never want to stop moving and I rarely want to sit and cast anything. Let's say I am essentially going heads up with someone, I will start with Living Bomb, or if they are close already I will either Dragon's Breath or Nova > run > sheep > pyro > LB. If they are range/caster, I will get close as much as possible. Open with DB, cast scorch, fire blast, then whatever instants make sense. Frost Nova then Ice Lances. Cone of Cold when they get loose. Blast Wave if they attempt to cast. Then silence and another scorch. Fire Blast whenever it is up. By then DB is back up and I can reset my attack. If I really need to nuke them, I can pop Combustion and Mirror Images. Obviously casting Pryoblast whenever Hot Streak procs.

For melee, it is usually easier. Rogues are still a nightmare for me (I'm getting better), but Warriors are a treat. I love Warriors. Ret Palis can be bad due to their unreal bursts, but usually you just kite them and they are cake. Feral druids are usually a joke. I can usually spend a little more time casting when it is against melee.

As far as mages go, it depends on the mage for sure. I can take about half of the frost mages and arcane mages I face. Against a frost mage, I just spellsteal Ice Barrier, reflect some of the frost spells, and blink out of freezes. Arcane mages are hard soley for the fact that they have Slow. If an arcane mage can use slow then LOS me, it's really hard, but in open terrain it is pretty easy. I pretty much only cast instants so the slowing effect on cast time doesn't bother me too much. As for fire mages, I've never met a fire mage I didn't beat.

I never cast fireball ever, FFB once in a blue moon. Scorch is pretty much the only non-instant damage spell I cast so that makes up about 10-15% of my attack.

My 2v2 team is Mage/Rogue. My 3v3 team is RPM. The rogue and I do well together and usually only lose because we make a mistake or because we don't have the right strat yet. We are both new to arena so knowledge of arena is our current downfall. We go about 50/50 W/L or a little better currently. The RPM team is really new so we are just getting started on how we are supposed to play in arena. We go about 50/50 with that team too.

Gear wise, I stack crit. All the crit I can get. I'm at about 31% crit rating with AI on and have started using Ice Armor instead of Molten Armor since I can spare the crit loss and the slowing effect on melee and frost resistance is nice. I'm thinking I need to just pick it on a game by game basis, but I'm still learning the art of scoping out your opponent in those first few seconds. The crit resistance of Molten Armor is equivalent to about 411 resilience, so I'm still testing which armor provides the most benefit.

I saw talk of set bonuses and the 4 pc set bonus of pvp gear. For a fire mage who doesn't stack haste, the 1.5 sec reduction on sheep time is pretty helpful.

And for the record, I know of at least one fire mage who has gotten above a 2350 rating using a similar spec and similar gear, so it IS possible.

As someone else put it, sorry about the novel haha. I'm pretty passionate about pvp fire.