Arctic winds, cold snap and perma frost shouldn't be underestimated. Nova + ice barrier + cold snap + nova + ice barrier is hardly trivial and perma frosted CoCs are the difference between getting away from a warrior while hamstringed and not.

I think this is more an argument of how retardedly overpowered dispels are (and concurrently, how vulnerable mages are to dispels) than it is a defense of fire vs. frost.

Dispels are completely out of control- there is no downside to them and there is no thought required (particularly with hunters).

Another downside of fire is that it doesn't have efficient dispell protection. You can't rank one scorch someone (For the debuff if you have it) without risking an ignite proc, and even rank one frostbolting someone isn't enough stacking debuffs that a priest will have even a slim chance of not getting poly on the first cast.

That and it's a pretty mana intensive spec. Not that frost isn't, but with fireblast (and dragon's breath and blast wave) as your primary "instant cast damage spell" you're guzzling 3x as much mana per instant, since you almost never have the option to ice lance.

I'd say fire is quite a bit more mana intensive, and while frost requires intelligent use of the elemental, barrier, etc., fire requires that you just out-play the other team by a significant margin, most of the time.

sorry but i gotta disagree here. i run with a half cast time meta and whenever it pops i have 5/5 imp missiles waiting..
how 1200 dps over 2.5 seconds (thats without crits...) with 100% pushback resist is useless i fail to see...care to enlighten me?

Just to note - I almost never, ever miss my CS, but as i've gotten better at the game, I almost exclusively use imp-cs as a "4 second, instant, off the GCD CC on any caster", and half of the time, I wont bother to wait for the spell to come out, since we are already tying down a long CC chain with PMR.
Any school locks I get, honestly seem more like a bonus than the actual main function of the spell.

Mana cost for that dmg. Its rarely groundbreaking as well. You get a short burst but if that burst doesn't kill a target that just line of sighted you then what was the point since they're likely to get topped off before you do any more damage. The mana cost is the kicker though. With as bad as mage mana can be in arenas I don't like blowing it on AM.

When you're close to full and have an ice block jump down - sheep the rogue under the bridge and run back up.

Have your team also kill the hunters pet if its giving you a lot of push back on sheep. You just have to time your novas/blink/sheeps to give you the best opportunity to get away. You can line of sight the hunter quite easily but you also need to communicate with your healers to make them aware of where you are. Running with raid icons over each team mbmers head can help with this.

I have a few questions about 2v2. I am currently 2/5/54 have 10k HP, 333 resil, and 850 spell damage. I either 2v2 with a Holy Paladin or with a Warlock who is currently Felguard spec with Shadowburn.

Whenever I am playing with the Holy Paladin we seem to always lose to SL/SL Warlock/Resto Druid team.
The games are often extremely long with some even lasting around 10 minutes. I just can not do enough dps to out dmg the druids heals, and between being feared/cycloned/mana burned it seems like this match up has no hope. We even have the pally kill the warlocks fel hunter while i am distracting them and we still tend to lose. What can we possibly change to make this a better match up?

Another problem I am also having when playing with the Holy Paladin is against hunters. Basically all the hunter does is throw a mana burning arrow on myself and the pally and just run around a pillar. LoSing all my nukes and cc's, during this time his healer is doing the same thing just LoSing me so I can not CC or anything. We generally kill the hunters pet while he is kiting us around just so we do not take the extra damage from this. I am constantly rooting the hunter when he is in range of nova and spamming CoC on him when I can but he just scatter shots/wing clips then and gets away.

When I am doing 2v2 with the Warlock it is a completely different style of play, We beat any hunter team because they can not effectively kite because they have dots ticking on them and there healer is death coiled/feared and being mana burned during this time. We also do not have problems against SL/SL warlock/druid team because once again we have mana burn for the druid.

The teams that we do have problems against though are Rogue/X team. We lose 90% of the matches if there is a rogue on the team. If it is rogue/non stealth we will come out and fear the un-stealthed and start dpsing it. During this time the rogue will jump on the Warlock, the warlock generally trinkets out of kidney shot and then death coils, health stones and then fears. What often happens is the rogue will then trinket and CoS during this time I basically can not root the rogue unless we get lucky and the Warlock just gets demolished. Leaving it a 2v1 match pretty quickly. If it is a rogue with another DPS I can sometimes pull it off depending on how low in health they got but most the time I can not, and if it is rogue healer its GG.

If anyone has any suggestions at all with what I could do to improve I would greatly appreciate it.

First things first, in 2s you really need to spec 17/0/44 for Imp. CS, as it is pretty much a requirement to have any chance of beating a team with a druid or priest healer.

Mage/Holy Paladin is just not a viable 2v2 combo at all. If you insist on playing 2's with your paladin friend, have him pick up the Season 3 Ret set. Mage/Ret Pally is a decent setup; I believe this combo actually hit #1 on one of the European Battlegroups this season. You'll do a lot better against druid teams, and your burst potential is very high against most targets. Much like Mage/Rogue, you'll need to be very adept at coordinating burst/cc oppurtunities with your partner.

As for Mage/Warlock, I believe that having your partner spec SL/SL is a better option than Felguard since 95% of the time he will be the enemies main target. Against rogue/healer teams, you need to keep the rogue under control with a sheeps/fear/nova rotation until his cooldowns are blown. Pressure his healer and keep the rogue under control after this and you should have a decent chance of winning.

While not a mage-related tip, your lock needs to save FG intercept for the rogue's CoS. Unless he gets a lucky stun resist from racials/talents/metagem, it should allow your lock to kite him more effectively. Intercept as soon as CloS goes up, and have a CC ready for when it drops. He can probably burn a cooldown to escape it, but you're trading short cooldowns (20-30 secs) for long ones (1 minute and up). It's the only hard counter to it your team has, but you need to be aware of the timing as your FG lock won't have CoEx and so can't kite on his own so it's down to you after that.

Going SL/SL for this combo has advantages (having a felhunter out has its own benefits against rogues of course), but your partner will be giving up DPS in favour of slightly improved lastability and utility. I've always viewed SL/SL as an outlast spec, whereas mages tend to work better if the fight doesn't drag on.

YMMV, as always.

This is a matchup you won't ever win unless the other team makes some pretty horrific errors. You will go OOM, the Warlock won't. Your damage on the Druid is almost nil because he can shift out of Freeze/Frost Nova and you have no consistent stun to keep him locked in place. Your damage on the Warlock will be heavily mitigated by Master Demonologist and Soul Link. The Druid can't be Polyed for more than 1 GCD, and the Warlock can devour Poly off himself with his Felhunter. Mage/Healer in 2v2 simply isn't a good combo, and Warlock/Druid teams make it extremely evident.

it works just like normal dd spell with resilience. It just has casting time but it will break if someone outrange you or goes out of line of sight. Why it is used is because the ones you fired will follow to out of los when they "left" your finger tips while target was in los.

So no it has nothing to do with dots, its just unique

Btw, not sure if some of you have noticed but on PTR, spells, and ranged attacks, even wands, will now proc molten armor, and thus impact.

I'm not sure what impact (pun) this will have on mage arena, but I havnt tried what happens if a mage with molten armor attacks another mage with molten armor (instadeath?). Certainly a buff though. Doesn't work on dots unfortunately (damn warlocks.)

edit: video proof Molten Armor + Impact

Hmm, interesting with molten armor. Nice buff for 5s i think but still nothing to compete in 2vs2 or play anything beside PMR in 3vs3. I doubt anyone will spec x/5/x for 3vs3 instead of 17/0/44, maybe at the top bracket where u face mirror teams mainly.

Just to check though, *does* it lead to an "infinite" combo with another mage - I havn't had the chance to check myself, only seen videos of this new mechanic.

I agree that it probably won't change people from speccing 17/0/44 though, an instant 4 second CC off the GCD is simply too strong for a mage to give up.

But it would be interesting if you could decidedly turn on molten armor if you see another mage, and kill each other simply by attacking the other person?

There are no infinite feedback loops from molten armour, just tested.
Hit => MA proc => nothing else.
Thorns damage doesn't proc MA either.

I reckon its more or less useless since 17 points in fire for just the armor that will be dispelled quite soonish after the game has started which isnt reapplyable due the high mana cost. Meh just me but seems useless. Allthough im looking forward to lower mana cost on spellsteal (USABLE AT LAST!) and blink.

btw slow has also reduced mana cost but for arenas, who cares :P

Anyone experimented with fire 20 / frost 41 spec? Or fire 21/frost 40?

Blastwave is a very useful spell. 30 sec cd can crit its aoe slow and can trigger both ignite and impact.
I mean in 5v5 you rarely find a team without a wl and a banished elemental is 0 dmg anyway ... (+CoT)

My question is: Does anyone have any kind of experience with a forst fire spec in arenas ?

Sorry dbl post

Surprised nobody has posted it yet, but two major changes -

Icy veins now provides 100% pushback, improved blink now gives 4 seconds 25% dodge rate of spells and effects, blink, spellsteal and slow have lower mana cost, and icy veins and bloodlust can no longer stack.

Definately very similar to some *cough* patch notes we have seen, and certainly a buff to mages. Perhaps a slight nerf to 2345 setups, but i think that blizz is moving to a more 3v3 orientated format.

The Imp Blink buff can only be an effort to promote the mage in 2v2, which is really only good while playing 2dps PoM/Pyro?

Yeah Imp Blink looks nice, but water elemental still looks nicer. I dunno, maybe this will be the extra little bit of survivability needed to push 34/27 into the foreground, but I doubt it.

Does anyone have the mana costs for blink / spellsteal / slow at 70 available? Those are changes that have been a long time coming.