Maligne

Yeah, I guess it's because I rarely do 5's, but I'm pretty convinced that arcane/fire is the best possible arena spec for me right now. I'm on a 3v3 with a multilate rogue and priest, so being able to take someone out of the fight right away is what gives us wins. We run into trouble not when I get focused, but usually when a rogue takes out our priest.

And honestly spamming mana shield with prismatic cloak has gotten me out of a lot of situations in which iceblock with hypothermia would not have.

Inform your dealers and whores of my credit, and pour me a goddamned drink!

 

cb_

Interesting, note taken.

 

Vermis

I'm quite interested how do mages generally gem their pvp gear, all the way sta/res gems or dmg/crit.

I do know its more about play style but by watching the armory there wasnt any general consensus in my opinnion.

 

Maligne

At first I went all +12 stam, but now I'm switching them out for +5 damage/+6 stam glowing nightseyes. And the half cast meta gem, which is incredible.

Inform your dealers and whores of my credit, and pour me a goddamned drink!

 

Xaev

On the gear note - I have recently begun to get involved in Arena, although not seriously enough to respec weekly yet.

I'm trying to decide which pieces of gear to get first. Is going for 3/5 S2 and 2/5 S1 for two 25 Resilience bonuses worth it? It seems to me that the pants and gloves from S1 would be the best two pieces relative to the S2 gear if I went this route, but I'm not sure what the best order to buy everything is. I am currently leaning towards getting the gloves first, but I haven't decided yet.

My current weekly point income is just over 300 for my slightly over 1500 3v3 team.

 

Vermis

I was pve'ing and too ignorant to pvp earlier. So I just went for 2-pieces of s1 and then 2-pieces of s2 for resi bonus (will be needed in the beginning direly)

 

Roywyn

Is it worth it to sacrifice some stats to get the 2-piece T4 bonus?

I rolled a few games without it, and personally found it bettter to get the uninterruptible frostbolts/fireballs, even with some stat sacrifice. What do you think about it, or does it entirely depend on the strategy?

 

Maligne

I think that for a frost mage the tier 4 bonus is pretty damn good. If you had access to the right pieces of T4 (shoulder/chest) I think it's probably worth it to use your arena points upgrading everything but those two first. Faxmonkey just put out a new video and it really shows how powerful the set bonus is for frost.

Inform your dealers and whores of my credit, and pour me a goddamned drink!

 

Zoee

Even though I rarely PvP as frost I've found the few times I've done it that the 2-piece T4 bonus is pretty much a given when selecting gear. It's just too good since the frost-tree doesn't have a talent like Burning Soul. Though, I guess as with everything else it depends what gear you're swapping out for it.

 

Yes

I think the above applies only to 2s and possibly 3sI think that if you're playing on a 5v5 and you need the tier 4 bonus your setup is not working efficiently unless you're running some sort of super caster dps team setup.

My other main | My PvP Blog

 

skallben

Pondered if to post this question here or on UI boards...
Anyways, Im looking for a working macro that makes me counterspell what I mouseover.
I got the impression that it is possible to hold mouse over an enemy (actualy enemy, not unitframe) and then when you cast CS it's whomever you mousover that get the CS. I found one that isnt working for me. Help please. Switching targets can be a mess when there are pets about.

 

Zoee

/cast [target=mouseover] Counterspell should work for you.

 

skallben

Cheers, it finally works. I probably misspelled or something because that was what I wrote in my last macro, slightly odd.

 

Faerun

Do a lot of high end PvP mages use the mouseover macro? It seems like you have a higher chance of accidentally CS'ing someone in the way, like a hunter pet running at you...

 

Leto

I use a focus counterspell macro personally. I don't have anything set up to show the cast bars of people I don't have targeted or focused, so mouseover actions would do me little good.

Rogue at heart.

 

Maligne

I use a focus poly macro, but not counterspell. It probably wouldn't hurt, but sometimes when we fight two healer teams it's helpful to poly one and CS the other.

Inform your dealers and whores of my credit, and pour me a goddamned drink!

 

Agni

Two topics here:

Relentless Earthstorm Diamond vs. Mystical Skyfire Diamond?

Radikal mentions using it in his blog, theorycrafted ~500ish more damage per shatter combo with his gear.

It seems to me that it would be ideal for the WE mage in 5's, with the number of shatter combos that occur compared to the proc rate on the focus buff. For just about any other spec (Arc/Frost, Arc/Fire, etc) it seems like the Mystical focus buff would be better since you can't really crit on demand. What do you guys think/use?

On that note, has anyone used double missile casting with focus buff in arenas to great success?

Cloak enchant

Do most people use Spell Penetration? Is that the best choice (I'm talking mostly 5's here) I am having difficulty justifying it since I am not seeing a lot of arcane/fire/frost resistance in the games I play. Paladins on opposing teams are often running shadow resistance (to combat our warlock fears) or concentration aura I'd imagine.

Other viable enchants would be 120 armor, 12 agility, 12 dodge rating, or +15 resistance to a spell school.

120 Armor
Assuming the formula from WoWWiki is correct: %Reduction = (Armor / (Armor + 10557.5)) * 100, 120 armor would give you between 0.9% and 0.7% additional mitigation against physical attacks with armor ratings of 1500 to 2500.

12 Agility
This would provide 24 armor, a little under ~0.1% mitigation against physical attacks and a chance to dodge. (Does anyone have an accurate conversion for mages agility:dodge%?)

12 dodge rating
This would provide ~0.6% dodge (assuming 18.9 dodge = 1% dodge, also form WoWWiki).

+15 resistance
Haven't done the leg work to figure out what this amounts to.

Also, I don't think I'm clear on how dodge mechanics work - Can you dodge a ranged attack? Can you dodge a spell? It only works when you are not casting, correct?

 

Maligne

You can certainly dodge a ranged attack, but not a spell. Also I think you have to be facing the attack to dodge it but I'm not sure about that.

Using missles during the foucs buff is one of the most awesome things I've discovered recently. It's just so fast. I've even put 3 in improved missles because the combo is so great.

Inform your dealers and whores of my credit, and pour me a goddamned drink!

 

Tower

You can't dodge ranged attacks, the rogue ability "Evasion" allows some dodging of attacks for it's duration, but that's it.

 

Maligne

Wow that's...odd. I was going off of experience of rogues dodging my hunter's shots so I guess that explains it.

Inform your dealers and whores of my credit, and pour me a goddamned drink!

 

Avelle

I personally use Powerful Earthstorm Diamond as my primary job in my 5's team is not damage. I spend most of the time CCing the other team and add some shatter burst. The #1 obstacle in me doing my job is usually a warrior, so the resist to stuns is nice. For the same reason I run armor on my cloak instead of penetration or resistance. Pretty much all of my gems are stamina gems as well until I can get my hands on the new craftable resilience gem or until I can wrestle some of the epic ones away from BT.

edit: Had to edit my post because I do not use a Relentless Earthstorm, I use a Powerful Earthstorm. My response is slightly less useful than I originally wanted but still leaving it up.

 

Agni

I feel like there's been a shift from stacking stamina and resilience among top arena mages to more damage oriented setups. While much of this is has been the rise of 4dps teams, even classical makeups at the high end have opted for a little bit of damage socketing.

For example, using this site to scour the top ranked mages, many of the top mages use the Mystical Skyfire Diamond (half cast time) and some use glowing nightseyes or potent noble topazes instead of straight stars of elune. This includes Team Pandemic's Ecilam.

Above a certain threshold (10k hp, 300 resilience?), it feels like stacking additional stamina or resilience would not help your team as much as having a little bit of extra burst when necessary. Or am I thinking about this incorrectly?

 

Kasi

I think it is mainly for frost mages because they have ridiculous survivibility anyway. You'll never focus fire on a frost mage because they have so many ways they could get away and mitigate damage. Thus since he won't be focused on, why overly stack stamina when he's not going to be pvp tanking (and if he is then either you've lost already or the opponent is choosing the wrong target and letting your lock/priest/elemental shaman go unhindered.)

 

Xei

I have only recently started on the arena's with a Paladin friend of mine and have tried a few different spec's. Now, we are on a PvE realm and primarily spec/gear for PvE, we just want to arena for a little fun. We are not looking to hit 2k rating in 2v2 or anything like that, just would like to be semi-competitive and actually get past the 1550-1600ish stagnant rating we seem to be at after 4 weeks of season 2.

My Paladin is Holy spec, with around 9k hps with Kings - I dont think he has any resilience at all, but that really doesn't matter in our low rating bracket atm.

We initially just started for fun the first week of Season 2, I was still my PvE spec of 10/48/3 and we could barely hold our starting 1500 rating. This may well have been because EVERY 2v2 team was starting at that rating at the beginning of the season and where just facing very good teams.

The following week, I respec'd for arena at the end of the raiding week to 2/0/59 - mainly because I was sick of getting my face ripped off by MS Warriors/Rogues. We managed to boost our rating to 1550ish through this, but we had trouble against caster teams and anything that had a resto Druid in it.

The next week, I tried the 17/0/44 spec to help a bit with the caster teams. I still find it hard to burst down some of these players before they get healed or run out of LoS. I definitely feel LoS is a direct nerf to Mages. Some games I just cannot ever get a frostbolt off at all and end up just spamming Ice-Lance/CoC and Fire Blast in conjunction with F-Nova and pet Nova. Every time I see we zone into Blades Edge Arena I just want to cut myself.

Frustrating with this, I recently spec'd 40/21/0 and am finding a little more success. I have found that when they don't see the ice barrier around me that choose to attack me more then my Paladin. Works out fine for us as he can usually just heal instead of dodging everything while I try to kill something. This has also helped with my inability to kill resto Druids. HoJ -> AP+Trinket Fireball -> PoM Pyro -> Fire Blast and Blast Wave will drop almost anyone without a buttload of hps and resilience - which you don't really see around 1550/1600 rating.

I don't think we have ever lost to the fabled MS Warrior+Paladin teams. With BoF/BoP I can normally kill the Paladin before the Warrior kills me. We definitely have problems against the dual caster DPS teams because all they need is to either burst my Paladin and dispell bubble or CC him (after trinket/bubble cooldown) for 5-8 seconds and DPS me down.

I really think the LoS game is just stupid and very frustrating for me especially. I know Mages have some of the best snares in the game but I just cannot play the LoS Meta game at all. I can nova or slow (CoC/Frostbolt) players to try and prevent them running out of LoS, but every class has some sort of counter to it, being either fear/stun/trap/kite etc. So I can chase them around that pillar, then I get out of LoS of my healer - who doesn't have any HoT's or insta-cast oh shit! heals if I come back into LoS low.

For us now, when we get Blades Edge we mount and run right first and directly at their faces, trying to catch them off-guard before they see a Mage and say "Lets LoS him all game, lol". Still doesn' work often, there are just too many pillars, bridges, ramps to LoS around. The arena is just fucking stupid for Mages. Nagrand is fine, I like it better - we just wait behind our pillars on our side. We will NEVER run over to their side and attack them, we wait till they come to us and meet them midfield. Our success rely's on the opposition having no place to hide. Lorderan is perfect for this, we don't even leave our starting area. We just hide till we see what class combo it is, or if its stealth we wait just slightly infront with consecrate spam.

My question is really what spec would you recommend for our class combo/rating? At this lowish rating I do think that AP spec is very useful for its ability to insta-gib someone out of the fight at the start - however it would diminish at higher ranks due to more hps/resilience. I like the survivability of frost, but the LoS meta game means I can never get more off then instant casts - especially in Blades Edge.

Which is my next questions, what advice do you have for using/abusing/avoiding the LoS game? Druids are the absolute worst for this, because of their resistance to CC/snares and loads of instant cast heals/HoTs.

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WTB Oceanic Horde PvE Players

 

Maligne

I prefer arcane/fire as well, but I haven't done much 2v2 with it and haven't done any with a pally. I've had great success with a holy priest/multilate rogue partner in 3v3 using that spec. The problem with it in 2v2 is that unless you're paired with another DPS class it's usually not enough burst. Honestly I think frost is better suited for your team, because of the beefiness and longevity. When you were frost did you try focusing the healer first regardless? (unless it's a druid). Like you said with HOJ and silence you should be able to take out a healer with some well timed elemental combos. The downside is you'll still get LoSed but there's nothing you can do about that. You and your partner just have to get good at playing that game with them. And yeah, Druids are going to be tough regardless.

Inform your dealers and whores of my credit, and pour me a goddamned drink!