Affix has a couple of alright points, mostly with the rogue/mage synergy being lessened weakening RMP. But also because RMP and WLD have been dominant for so long more and more double melee teams are rising. Starting with the druid/rogue/warrior but also in various hunter variations. Double melee just destroys mages and warlocks alike weakening those setups. And because mages haven't (currently) got many other viable combo's which would be strong against double melee your fighting a losing battle.

I've been looking through this thread, and while I might have missed a few pages, I can't seem to find any information regarding my issues. I mainly play battlegrounds at the moment to gear up for Arena, so these issues may or may not be valid for most people here, but I'll ask anyway.

As a frost mage (0/5/56) I hear about our splendid survivability all the time, though I can't seem to have the feeling that I might be missing something.

Issues (note: many of these might be gear issues however, I'm not really sure. Currently at around 8400HP, 230 resilience and +660 frost damage atm, though I'm obviously working on this):

Shamans
Enhancement - These guys seem to simply kill me without breaking a sweat. They eat through my ice barrier like nothing, or they just purge everything. I'm not even really sure how to handle them since they can still fire off some spells when I'm trying to kite them, and standing in melee with them is a big no no. Should I rebuff Molten Armor again after a purge? Or should I switch to Ice Armor perhaps for the slow effect?

Rogues - It just seems that waste blink and frost nova in the same cycle against them. They stun, I blink out and they use sprint to catch up and force me to use frost nova. Now they probably use CoS which forces me to ice block, meaning I've just wasted three cooldowns in 3-4 seconds. Am I missing something here? I try to use rank 1 frost bolt to get off a snare fast enough, but with them snaring me I just can't seem to get away from them (even though I'm a gnome).
Should I switch to ice armor even though molten armor stun will be effective against them and hope for a freeze?

Warlocks - If I have all cooldown up it seems I have a pretty good chance against them, but if I don't have cold snap it just seems to me I will die even if I remove all their dots after 5-10 seconds with ice block since I have no counter for fear anymore. Should I wait for the fear (and probably end up at 50% health or so) or remove the dots as fast as possible but without the possibility to remove fear?
Do people even try to kill their spell locking puppies from hell?

Hunters - I think I know the drill against hunters but most of the time it just doesn't seem to be enough. I try to blink close to them (if I don't get silenced before that, if so I'll be dead before I can blink again), frost nova and CoC to get my snare off, fireblast and arcane explosion till I have another instant up again. Ice barrier seems useless against these guys since they will just remove it anyway, but I refresh it whenever I can to force them to at least use their dispel. I iceblock whenever I see their pet grow and try to wait out it, but most of the time I end up dead with the hunter at 40-50% HP left.

Warriors - Always thought I had the upper hand against warriors but a good geared warrior eat through my defense like butter. Here again I seem to waste blink and frost nova on a single cycle since I try to blink out on charge so they can't land the hamstring, frost nova on their intercept but they always seem to have trinket counter for this and I end up trying to kite them with CoC which most of the time isn't enough since they keep spamming hamstring.
Is it a good idea to use mana shield against warriors perhaps to rage starve them combined with ice barrier? (that would be around 1600 damage without rage I think unless of course it disappear on a single mortal strike. Should I perhaps wait for the first mortal strike before I use ice barrier and mana shield?).

Last but not least, do people use mana shield at all as a frost mage? I just can't seem to find a good use for it since I'm so dependent on having mana for all my instants since getting a frost bolt off these days seems almost impossible in most situations. Perhaps I'm missing something, and I would really love to be able to use mana shield but it just seems to be a bigger loss than I can afford at the moment.
And if people use mana shield, which shield gets eaten first? Ice Barrier or Mana Shield? Does it makes a difference which buff you use first perhaps?

Sorry if I brought up any questions that have been answered before.

For melee classes remember one general rule - BEST DEFENCE IS NOT BEENG THERE.

Class list :

Shamans enhancement - kite them like a warrior , if they are 20+ yards away from you they cant hit you. Dont use ice barrier unless they come close and you can time their hits with the barrier. Destroy any grounding totems , i usualy just shoot the shaman , if there is grounding it changes direc

Warrior - ice lance when running AWAY from them so they dont get the charge , then everytime he intercepts you blink.
A simple rule - if you start casting something and he gets shield on + spell reflect - stop + hit ice lance and root again with rank 1 frost bolt if that nova you just broke was the only thing that was stopping him from smashing your head with the stables flag :P

Warlocks - send your rogue in serious - one on one against sl/sl you hardly have a chance , esp if the felly is on you.
I admit i beat them if they have no healer behind them but i guess its because most of them expected easy fight
and didnt try/have everything prepared for a good fight.
Just the usual lance+nova spam + counterspell banish/fear/drain life , this priority. Dont try touching the pet unless you are tryng to run and rank 1 cold of cold slow on it.

Rogues - trink their kidney shot not their cheap shot. Blink off only kidney shot too.
Then root with elemental nova. Remember - cripling slows alot ,but so does the cone of cold - keep them slowed constantly with coc.
And ice barrier should be up on a cooldown.

Hunters - the usual nova + ice lance + coc + pet + nova + ice lance + arcane explossion/fireblast spam until nova is ready off cd.
The moment the pet turns red - blink behind them ,wait for 2-3 seconds for him to eat trought ice barrier and pet to catch up and THEN ice block.
After 10 seconds they are easy pray.
Spam ice lance if they are stupid enogh and try to get an easy aim shot - it interrupts their casting.

On the list of spells - mana shield is useless unless you have a quick choice between mana shield and death.
Go to warcraftmovies.com and download every movie with rating over 4 in the mage sections , youll find alot of usefull tricks.

On the side note , what kind of mage will have +15 spirit enchant on his chest , 15 strenght on his gloves and +10 stam on his legs ?

You wrote pretty good post about the classes you have problems with some reasonable questions , but your profile ... what you are smoking please ?
Check my profile , or anyone else actualy and get what gems/enchants you should be using.

PS : you are 361 enchanting - go to caverns of times quartermaster and get the recepy to enchant rings with +12 spell dmg , it requires honored rep i think.
Your best bet for meta gem is the half cast meta gem.

Well I'm an enchanter and new to the server (played a warrior for 2 years before on another server) so I haven't actually had the time, nor money to level up my stuff yet and my gear makes perfect use of skilling up enchanting. This is the only reason 8)
It's a pretty new character so I'm still working on faction, honor and tailoring/enchanting, obviously when I'm done with getting my honor stuff I'll work on my enchantments 8)

But thanks for the answers in the above post, unfortunately I was kind of hoping mana shield was a lot better than I assumed 8(

I've given it some thought, and really I think a lot of the QQ comes from the idea that when people think of mage in pvp, they think of owning warriors and melee, and they think of doing a crapload of burst damage and killing players really fast.

I think mages just need to get used to the idea that

a) The game is balanced around 5v5, expect to be weak in the other two brackets - be thankful that PMR is even a viable setup at all

b) Your job is to spam CC's and keep melee occupied, not to kill them - shatter combo with a shaman is only a short period of "wtfpwn" at the start, other than that there are other classes (such as warlocks and hunters) which are far less squishy, but much better at putting out damage, but not as good as "surviving" against warriors.

Everything you say Cwealm about mages pretty much applies to elemental shamans as well. Of course add in lack of CC, dependence on a single magic school and lack of mobility which makes it worse, although we do get some pushback prevention now. What I think blizzard really needs to work on is mobility for many classes and how they can deal when they're forced to stand in one place and actually do something that has a cast time.

I think Blizzard needs to address classes who, no matter what spec, are having problems in arena. I feel for Shadow Priests and Elemental Shaman, but you can always go Disc as a priest or Resto as a Shaman. Having a SL/SL lock always be more efficient at ranged magical damage/CC and warriors always more efficient at melee damage/healing debuffs is extremely frustrating to mages and rogues, who cannot spec any different to fill a role warlocks and warriors already do better.

Mages and rogues are in similar positions, in that Blizzard has absolutely no clue how to balance us to be fair in all arenas. Mage burst is just incredibly good, so you can't really buff their damage or give them more instants. I'm not really sure what their intent with Icy Veins was. Mages will consistently be punished for having access to better burst just as rogues are constantly balanced around another arena broken mechanic, stealth.

Let's hope 2.4 brings the game back to less druid/war/warlock focus and re-opens up the meta-game for rogues and mages.

Your overreacting, the additional downsides a shaman has are indeed single magic school and lack of mobility. However they gain the benefit of being able to tank melee, still shock people while under pressure, purge people while under pressure. And the ability to cast your burst because you can make it instant.

I dont know what are you smoking. They've way higher armor (melee migitation) they can self heal. The best burst class there is for arenas, not depending on some pet that can be killed before actual burst. Actually elemental shamans with PI are truly awesome and to be feared on arenas. Just go and watch how good shaman plays and contributes the team.

Shamans dont really need any form of extra cc, when you go for the shaman he will heal himself and then there will be 2 extra healers backing him up. If shamans were truly as you describe them 2346 wouldnt be viable for high-end arena playing. Yet clc (#1 bg9) plays it.

The real problem for shamans are off-specs that cannot be efectivly used in arenas (ench?) or how much better ele suits in 5's compared to resto. Besides shamans do have 70% interrupt resist from 4-pieces of s3.

Armor yes is nice, but we have no escape like blink or ice block. That is a rather big tradeoff. Elemental shamans under pressure can not self heal worth shit. All they can do is drop totems and purge pretty much. The thing is though that elemental shamans really only work in 5s. They are completely unviable in 2s, and have pretty much one setup they can go with in 3s. The reason they work in 5s is because it is the only bracket that they can get enough support around them that they're not focused first every time.

I know I can do huge damage, especially when I have PI on me. But the issues facing ele shamans are mobility, single school dependance and the issue many casters have with LOS. The first and third issue is what kills the class in the smaller brackets. Don't go telling me Shamans are fine when they as a class are by far the lowest represented at 3%, they are by far the worst in both 2s and 3s brackets and really just hold in 5s because there are much better targets to kill in a 5s match than a shaman who you can shut down very simply with CoT.

I just boggle at people here calling their class broken when as a class mage has multiple viable 3 and 5 setups and at least a couple decent 2s setups. Going resto as a shaman yes is better in 2s and 3s, but that 3% figure pretty clearly shows you that is suboptimal too. The dps you paired with would be in most cases be better to go with one of the three other healers.

Edit: Actually enhancement is more viable in 2s, and probably as viable in 3s due to the power of 2 physical class setups. The thing that really plagues ele shamans is that they can do great dps, but just not when they're purging, kiting, dropping totems, curing poisons, etc. Enh is nice because even though you can be kited, you can just auto attack for massive dps while using your GCDs to disrupt others.

I feel the real issue once again is mobility and the ability to dictate fights on your terms. Mages normally can do that with poly/cs/freezes, but when they're being rammed hard like the current strat is, its hard to get anything off cause you're running so much. Shamans are the same way, except with no abilty to get away but better ability to tank it. The best classes right now are the ones with the ability to do things under pressure. Rogues, warriors, priests, warlocks and of course druids all fit that bill. It doesn't even matter that they're not that durable in some cases, but that they can escape while still doing their role.

For crying out loud. If I could spec differently and be competetive in all brackets I would gladly accept it. I would gladly grind myself second honour set if that was the case. But it just isnt. The thing is that mages are too easily replaced in every bracket. As pure dps class we cant do anything else than just it. We bring cc and dps, the point is that locks do it better in every bracket.

Now tell me how would 2346 or 2345 work if that ele shaman would be replaced? Shamans are far from replacable, allthough resto struggles in 5's elementals reign.

What im hoping for is that there would be actually setups that require mages and those would be more or less all rounders. Take 2346 with wl, dependable but it works against most setups there is and as seen allready in S2 it performed very well. Im just more or less frustrated about the current situation, I do know that im not playing in top team this season, atleast no atm. But that doesnt mean I havent seen the top. If mage gets focused in 5's it just takes so much effort from the rest of the team to keep him up and you end up in 4 v 5 situation where you do minimal dmg cs someone, then end up oom by blinking and applying barrier. This applies to all classes but I do think that mages get hit too severly from training compared to other dps classes there are.

I don't think it is quite as bad as you say Vermis, but that is primarily due to the power of the PMR setup. We both are kinda stuck into specific setups if we want to do well, although I have heard that rogue/druid/priest/mage/lock is coming up as the counter to the 2346 setup. Add in there that I want to play in the smaller brackets, but all I have available to me is war/sham/healer.

Has anyone stopped to think that maybe the top team in BG9 is the top team because they're the top players? I find this whole mantra of "#1 team = #1 classes!" to be disconcerting and really a flawed argument. The standing of a single team is not a statistically significant sample size at all.

That being said, I would really like some pushback resist on my frostbolt. However the second aspect of our class, heavy CC, still works while under fire. If you can't figure out how to squeeze out polymorphs, kite and CS while being focused you're doing something wrong. This may not be sufficient contribution, but as a class we have a lot to work with.

Well BG9 is BG9. I do think it consist the best us pvp-players including mages. And to be in top requires min/maxing what they're doing and succeeding. Oh and last season we saw quite many mages in top teams when 2345 reigned but anyone who saw pandemic vs bopbopbobpnow should have pretty cleas picture why locks are so much stronger than mages.

#2 @ 3v3 cglol as resto.

Vontre is right, its more than doable and most mages learn it quite fast if they play in 3's or 5's. But it just all burns down to that: your team mates need to help you more than opposing team needs ie have shaman running and purging you and then put a warrior or ss rogue and you cannot squeese that sheep off so easily anymore. If even one interrupter sticks to you and warriors save their gcd for pummeling, then my dear sir its pretty hard to do anything.

All classes suffer from being unable to do anything when focused, some may cope with this majority doesnt. Most concerning is that when fighting against DB I get both pets on me and I just became most useless player in the game due pushbacks.

Oh and ye RMP continued (fmage, ssrogue, felloc, priest/druid/rshaman) is very nice indeed. Im actually glad that it just eats drain burns which are imho most annoying to play against as mage. But in those teams mages get the focus. Just that rogue keeps the wl so good in control while mage needs to dodge warrior and hunter with the help of druid, which is quite easy

I dont know about other classes but being ½ of the game behind pillar solo killing pets and avoiding hunter is hugely annoying. Not to talk about with little of rng those pets can actually kill me if hunter adds some pressure. 0/12/49 could work nicely.

Been concentrating on PvE mostly, have just started doing arena semi-seriously, so I have a question.

Pets.

In what brackets, and against what classes, should you burst down pets asap? Or does it depend on your matrix and/or the rest of theirs?

2v2:
Hunter y/n?
Warlock y/n?
Frost Mage y/n?

3v3:
Hunter y/n?
Warlock y/n?
Frost Mage y/n?

5v5:
Hunter y/n?
Warlock y/n?
Frost Mage y/n?

By doing so, you're crowd controlling yourself for a time duration equal to you killing the pet. In 5s, you will only make the other team a favor.

Something i've been dancing around with. That worked in my serious 3's (until we tanked it to our 2088 with another priest) and somewhat serious 2's is 34/27/0 (PMR and MR respectively) Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

It owns PMR mirror, getting on mage first will typically mean you can run away with blazing speed procs (which also breaks frost combo). Also a free 3000 base pyro hit with a ~50% chance to crit with clearcasting up is definately nothing to scoff at. Pretty much the anti-PMR spec, and a great spec in general giving a very reliable burst when you need it.

What this spec really exceeds at, and that i'm seeing how high it can get, is MR 2's. Fighting Druid/X teams we split dps, trying to make the healer waste cools and pvp trinket, then change focus target to the person that gets low and go all out. What this really excels at is that it beats any of the current major druid/X teams, against hunter/warlock rogue gets on him and keeps him stunned and kicked. Against warrior i keep CCed while rogue gets on druid then turn to warrior at my leisure, or finish off druid if that's the case. I love the spec.

I dont get the fuzz about that spec really, we faced it a couple of times in mirrors and we absolutely decimated them. Granted we do fairly well in mirrors but I was able to iceblock so much later then there mage it wasn't even close. Blazing speed is alright I guess but if your priest is on the ball with dispelling (which he should) your still more slowed because of crippling then he is. Instant pyro and blastwave are fun I guess, but overall this spec seems worse in mirrors. Against druids however it might be awesome.

I played with fire spec for a few weeks, to see if I could pinpoint the weaknesses inherent in it, and while I haven't finished discovering them all... it's strength lay in putting the hurt on druids. There are enough instant cast snares, disorients and general pain that a fire spec can put on a druid that it's forced to go bear and try to disable you, which we always found amazing, because once it gets close to me, it's not going to escape again.

But again, this is all anecdotal.

Ice barrier really isn't that great at all, what's the real difference between a fire mage and a frost mage that get fully dispelled?

Also, what spec did you say didn't work, 33/28/0 or 17/44/0?

I personally think people do underestimate the fire spec a lot in its ability to defend itself, the only real defence in the frost tree is the ability to use your W/E defensively (why the hell would you want to do that though?) a few extra slowing effects, and ice barrier.

The main problem with firemages i find is that the snares, burst and disorient effects need to be used defensively to stay alive, but you can't use it offensively to burst someone down, because that leaves you in a dead position.
Technically, icebarrier goes down really, really fast under focus, almost all of mage mitigation comes from blink and poly and nova.

But it just boils down to the fact that water elemental grants you the same spike burst as fire, but allows you to keep your defensive options open at the same time

As for pom-pyro im not so sure. Maybe it could be used better, and a lot of the "filler" arcane talents are often better than people beleive, but I think the reason why frostmages do so much better is because people just "beleive" frost mages are that much harder to kill, when in fact they probably arnt, and so frostmages sometimes get focused after someone else.
Pom-Pyro just makes you an instant focus for everyone