◊ Vontre

Much props to the board admins for putting up a pvp forum. I'm an avid pvper now, and I think there are a lot more of us out there as well who will end up posting some very good thoughts here. I wanted to start by making a thread for mage-specific tactics and discussion.

I'll start with this question that I've been contemplating for months now. How badly do they have to nerf ice block before heavy arcane or fire specs become viable? Or alternatively, how much stamina/resilience would you need to make up for it?

Specifically, does anyone out there pvp with reasonable success as an arcane fire or fire mage? I would qualify reasonable success as not being the first person on the team to die, as that seems to be the major fear with non-ice specs.

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Raiding is full of challenge. Sometimes there is fire. You have to not be in the fire.

 

Crystael

There's nothing more frustating than a mage popping Ice Block as a multi shot is about to land on them. It effectively prevents them from being focused fired, and of course with cold snap it's not even a one trick pony. I certainly wouldn't go into an arena without it, where staying alive is the most important thing.

In an interstellar burst, I am back to save the universe.

 

• Groglox

I think the other trees are okay as is for pvp. They all offer their bonuses. Imp. Counterspell, AP/PoM (and slow to a lesser extent)in arcane, blast wave and dragons breath (a second interrupt is amazing in arena) in fire, and ice block / cold snap and elemental in frost.

Now, of course one would go for ice block because it gives mages more of what we lack most: survivability, and I think that is what I would like to see most in the other trees. I would love to see arcane fortitude higher in the arcane tree and give stamina equal to 15-25% of intellect or so instead of the joke it is now.

Not sure what I would do with fire, but possibly an eye for an eye style talent. Perhaps chance when critically struck for your next spell to be instant?

 

• frmorrison

When Ice Block is nerfed, it will still be the best PvP spec for 5v5. AP PoM Pyro is very handy in 3v3 and 2v2 (as long as there isn't an evil grounding totem around).

As to making Fire a good Arena spec, making the next spell instant is too good because of Pyro, so I don't know how to fix the tree.

My pet macro includes a line to kill grounding totems because I hate it so much.

 

• Groglox

Well just make next spell under 6sec cast instant.
Or make it instant but at 40% power.

 

◊ Eej

I just thought I'd mention that as a person whose primary job in Arena is to shut down Mages, Hypothermia doesn't change anything at all. A good mage who can kite melee and LoS ranged DPS will take a while to even get down to the first block and will definately survive for 30 seconds afterwards.

I would imagine, though, that an Elemental build with both Blazing Speed and Ice Block would have some ridiculous survivability, although I don't think I've seen anyone do well with it.

 

aureon

I'm going to differ with the general opinion here and say timer mages are very valuable in all arenas if your group can be sustainable when that mage is gone. The way I look at it for 5v5s is if you can take down a key class of another group, such as a healer or even an ms warrior (not likely but I've seen it a few times), then your glass cannon has done its job so its effectively a 4v4 where the opposing team is missing a key class; compared to your missing a barage that has already been unleashed. The key to make that arena group successful, however, is to have the other four members of your group effective in themselves.

 

Chri

I think it's getting to the point where you can viably play a non-ice block spec and expect to survive in arenas, assuming you have a team that isn't retarded and you gear correctly. I haven't tried it myself, but from talking with a few other people and running a bit of theorycraft, it seems to me that you can get pretty decent survivability out of an AP/fire spec assuming you have solid hp/resil (taking Blazing Speed would probably help a ton as well). Especially with an AP/fire spec, you can stack stam/resil (aka: 9.8-10k hp unbuffed, 230+ resil) and still put out pretty solid damage.

I don't think Ice Block will really start to be passed up until they A) completely demolish early tier frost tree, or B) put an effective, non-proc based survivability skill somewhere else either as a trained skill or talent.

I've really been enjoying my current spec (0/38/23) as it's got a pretty solid balance of mobility,damage, and survivability. In PvP, I can drop someone from 4k hp->dead in about 3 seconds, and in PvE, I can regularly stay near the top of the DMs. I don't really see any compelling reasons to get away from an Ice Block spec anytime soon with how good early tier frost tree is for PvP, and how unimpressive deep arcane/fire are for anything.

Bottom Line: you can probably live decently well these days without Ice Block, but why would you want to?

 

◊ Yes

I've been surprised a few times recently at how fast prebuild rage warriors with a rogue could drop me. I'm sitting at 11~k unbuffed hp, 200-230~ resiliance (+5% from molten armor depending on situation), devotion aura, and depending on who is playing this turns into 13-14 k hp (commanding shout/ kings/fort ~)

I have been burned from full to dead many times in three seconds right after getting intercepted with blink on cooldown . Now, of course, in bgs or vs silly teams, I can stand there and tank quite well (2000 crit? My hp bar barely moved)

The game still feels very burntastic even when wearing full gladiator / pvp epic gear with random raid crap.

 

Vhad

I only really pvp seriously in my 3v3 team, we hover around 2200 rating so I would say we are relatively succesful. I pvp with my pve build, 10 arc 48 fire 3 frost and it works out really well. Our usual setup is an arc/frost mage, healpriest and me, dragons breath and blastwave is amazing when timed correctly. I often die first, but rarely without having killed one and caused severe damage to the other team.

I have 89xx something health 143 resillience and just around 800 spell dmg in pvp gear. The burst I can put out when I always have combustion to begin with is very effective. I think the key thing is to not forget your role as a mage in pvp, and that's regardless of your spec. Mages have alot of skills to control the situation, and while a mage in iceblock might get saved he really ain't doing much. This only really counts for 3v3 where I have found fire to be really great (impact, blazing speed, dragons breath, burst dmg) in 5v5 I don't think I would ever play unless I could somehow have a pve spec that had iceblock too.

What!?

 

Papajan

I think it'd be really tough to provide something as good as Ice Block/Ice Barrier for PvP. Maybe if Invisibility could have a talent that would proc when you cast it to reduce damage taken by 50% for 5s (that wouldn't fade when the Invis buff is removed due to taking damage). That would make Invis more useful in PvE too since you could use it reactively if you pull aggro and it would have an increased chance to keep you alive in that situation.

 

Viktus

I don't believe nerfing ice block in any way would make a fire mage more viable in 5v5, it only serves to make bringing a different class more viable.

Once you realize an enemy mage can't iceblock, he's basically a massive mana sink to the other team. The standard MS warrior with a paladin to keep the mage from kiting or sheeping him just makes the mage way too expensive to heal. He can gear for extreme stamina and resilience, but once his crit starts to drop the opponent's resilience will really hurt him.

There's also a bit of the rogue/warrior syndrome at work here. An elemental shaman generally brings more to the team than a fire mage. Bloodlust and totems are big factors, and the shaman can play the .5 healer role in a pinch.

 

• Maligne

With the current mechanics I can't see doing any type of serious PVP without ice block. Like Viktus said, a nerf (hypothermia or worse) wouldn't make any other spec more viable, it would just make 21+ frost less.

It's true that a fire mage can put out more damage, but in my experience he can only do it once. We fight maybe 10 unique teams a night out of 20+ games, and all the fire mages we see only get to live past first assist the first time we see them. After that, they drop like rocks.

In 5 man stuff I could see a fire mage flying under the radar against low rated teams. But every high level team I would think would put a warrior/hunter on mage duty, and without block or barrier it's going to be really hard just keeping the mage alive.

What better cc is there for a druid than polymorph?

 

Leto

An ability like "fire bomb" would be pretty cool for a fire mage... something that when used and they die, deals substantial dmg to whoever kills them, or something else along those lines that might deter an assist train because most likely it'll kill one of your players too.

Rogue at heart.

 

• Maligne

What's the consensus on the best PVP meta gem? It seems like at first all the top mages were using the +18 stam/stun resist, but now it looks like they've all switched to the half cast time gem.

Once the patch hits and I make my goggles I'll probably be using the cast time reduction gem because of blink in regards to stun.

What better cc is there for a druid than polymorph?

 

◊ Shadowed

The only way you'll make and sustain a good rating is with a group makeup and a repeatable strat, burst damage teams are only really useful for a couple of wins before people start to learn how to counter it or start massing resilience, once 2.1 hits, will have the option of doubling up our GM/Gladiator sets and (Warriors at least) could hit 270-300 without sacrificing that much in damage.

Grounding Totem, Silences, CC, Spell Reflect, Resists, Purges and so on make a 3M Mage generally worthless, being able to make the fight 4vs4 right at the start is far less effective then you think when you consider you can be potentally making it 5vs4 because your damage/cooldowns were spent on a failed nuke attempt.

That'd be overpowered, all it would do is encourage Mages to stack mass amounts of dmg/crit and not worry about Resil/STA since they know best case they take 2 people out, worst case one.

Not really much else to add, the change to Ice Block isn't going to effect Mage specs the ones who want damage will still go Fire, and the ones who want utility will still go Frost...even with 30 seconds they can wait out 10 seconds of it in block and worst case can be BoPed to help last the rest of the time.

 

Leto

I was thinking something closer to best case take one person out, worst case gets whoever killed the mage to ~half health then they just get healed back to full. It would be an interesting dynamic to re-assist after your mage dies.

Sort of a porcupine defense instead of a turtle.

Rogue at heart.

 

Chri

I'd rather not have mechanics based on me dying, thanks.

 

Bibdy

Improved Death doesn't stop people nuking down Priests, though. Does it?

There's always free cheese in the mouse traps, but the mice there ain't happy.

 

Viktus

If they didn't have mana burn, it might =/

You can't leave a priest alone to deal massive ammount of effective damage by preventing heals later in the game unless your strategy is to simply gib someone else. You can't really assign a warlock or other cc to interrupt them while you go after someone else either, the chances of imp concentration/talisman of the breaker/unbreakable will completely boning you are relatively high.

 

◊ Shadowed

It's usually pretty rare that we lose somebody or a match because the Spirit of Redemption in 5vs5, if we lasted long enough to kill the Priest we're probably in good enough shape it wont matter anyway. If you had something on Mages do damage you could abuse that easier then something like SoR.

 

• Maligne

How bout the best of both worlds? Mages get a Phoenix form upon death where they can only cast fire spells. Make Pyro trainable and throw it in its place. =p

So about that meta gem...

What better cc is there for a druid than polymorph?

 

◊ Vontre

I use mystical skyfire (the haste proc) and I absolutely adore this gem. It procs a lot, it procs while I'm making food and water, off frost novas, when I counterspell, in pve nuking, etc. When it does proc, it's a pretty huge burst damage, frostbolt + fireblast in 1.5 seconds is no joke.

And I do so like my burst damage.

18 stam is nice, stun resist is nice although we have blink, but I feel my survivabilty generally trumps my damage output in most slots and as a heavy ice mage you have to get some damage in somewhere. I feel this meta gem is exactly the best slot for it.

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Raiding is full of challenge. Sometimes there is fire. You have to not be in the fire.

 

• Maligne

I tend to agree. I've been trying out lolelementalist and with barrier, block, blazing speed, blastwave, and MA impacts, my survivability is pretty damn good. I could always use more damage though, which is why I've also been trying to get quite a few potent nobles in my gear instead of all solid stars like a lot of mages.

What better cc is there for a druid than polymorph?

 

Drully