It does. Today I rerolled with my restodruid from fives. He went Boomkin and I went 33/28 with molten shields and imp blink. One of my early games made me laugh so hard when I got an impact stun on a rogue when he deadly threw me.

26-5 to 1808 so far and we're going to do some more games. I really figured our ceiling would be much lower since he's in full resto gear and I'm not used to playing this style but I'm actually thinking we can hit 2k.

Hello. I am a frost mage, building my spec for 2v2 arena with a ret paladin and some 3v3. I plan on being 17/0/44, and have much experience with this build, so don't say anything about 0/6/55 :P . 0/0/61 may be up for consideration if someone can make a good argument!

Anyways, I would like opinions and suggestions on this spec:

WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Mage -> Talent Calculator

Specifically, I'd like to hear some input on my point placement in Permafrost, Artic Winds, and Imp CoC. These are mainly the areas am debating about.

Also, I'd like to hear a little of the Ice Armor vs Molten Armor debate. I have always used Ice armor for the chill proc, even though people call me stupid for it. Is it just a matter of personal preference? Or is one significantly better than the other?


Thanks.

I don't understand why you would be trying to use cone of cold as an offensive ability in any bracket. I mean, I could see 5's where you might get 5 people (+Pets) all at once in a massive shatter orgy, but in 2's and 3's? It's an enormous mana drain for not very much damage, and those 3 talent points alone would be better off in empowered frostbolts, in my eyes. Again, I'd also move the 2 permafrost points in to empowered frostbolts, but I suppose that one can really be argued down to personal preference. I suppose.

As for Molten Armour, the issue I have with it is the 5 points you have to drop in to fire for it to be worthwhile, because this means giving up your elemental or Imp. Counterspell. Both of which I've found to be amazingly useful in PvP. I personally couldn't deal without Imp. CS -- and not because it's a "saver" for missed CSes, but because you can still shut a healer up if all they're casting is instants, or lock down someone else so they can't get their spells off while they're being assist trained...

Also, the prohibitively high mana cost of re-casting molten armour versus frost armour rank 1 is pretty much the nail in the coffin for me.

I've seen people just going back and forth on the Imp CoC debate. I looked up some of the best arena mages, seems like 1/3 ish had imp CoC. I dunno, i've always loved the spell. Do you use rank 1 CoC for a snare? Or what? It's always nice to have another instant available, not sure what the damage on an unspecced one looks like these days... (havn't played in 4 months). I hear alot of mages just using rank 1 for the big slowi.

I think my games might be a bit longer than usuall running with a ret pally, so mana might be more of a concern than before (with a rogue). CoC is kinda sounding like a bad idea.

As far as permafrost goes, again with the top mages, about half had at least a point in permafrost. Depends on your partner maybe?

Yeah, I have rank 1 on my bar. I don't use it too often, though. It's insta-snare fodder for druids, for me. Or when I'm trying to proc frostbite. The issue I always run in to when we're losing is mana, and I can't see myself throwing three points in to a huge mana sink to be a very intelligent way to deal with this.

Even rank 1 is already 210 mana on a relatively annoying cooldown, while max rank is a ridiculous 645 mana untalented. Given that it's ~450 damage base + a horrible coefficient, I just can't get behind this spell, personally. But a 2000+ mage may come in here and call me dumb and exhort this talent as the reason he's up there. I just highly doubt it.

Okay, thanks for the advice. I honestly thought the damage base was much higher than 450... guess that's what you get for an AoE instant cast with a chill effect!

Those 3 points will be put into Emp. Frostbolt. I don't see icy flows being viable, especially now since I will have little reliance on CoC. The final issure is just the final two in Permafrost or Emp Frostbolt, guess that's pretty much personal.

I'll assume it's safe to say Artic winds is more valuable than Emp. Frostbolt. And that Imp damp/amp isnt worth it (since i'll be receiving heals). And that 3/5 arcane focus is all that is necessary.

Ok I have run into a little trouble with the advent of resilience gear.

I play a frost mage PvP 17/0/44. I sit in almost all vengeful vindicator and with the new resil helm enchant courtesy of Sunwell rep, my resil is 455.

We do not have enough burst to take down targets due to the resilience of our targets.

Take note of this. A mage relies on a finite mana pool, with no means of healing for all intents and purposes.

So you limit the critical strike rating of mages spells, which means longer fights with your target being able to heal. We used to be glass cannon, but the advent of resilience has reduced our cannon to a pea shooter. We will run out of mana in almost all situations. And druids are OP. Innervate, HOTS, ability to avoid CC, kiting, etc...

Healing on the other hand has NO negative resilience effect. I could have 1000 resilience and if the guy heals himself my 1000 resil means nothing. Eventually I will run out of mana and it is gg. Healers pull crit heals off constantly. So in a 1v1 situation, a mage can not burst down anyone. So you cs a one heal. Not enough time to burn through 10K health, considering los and spell pushback problems.

My question is why has this not been brought up? How have they counteracted crit healing? In the end the mage class is more gimped than others because we have no instant mana regen. Spellsteal is virtually useless as you can not take the spell you need and is a mana drain.

Look at how many frost mages are in 2s and even 3s. They use mages for sheeping in 5s. Have you ever been the first target on a two warrior team. Two warriors chew through a mage faster than anything imaginable.

If anyone has a successful 2v2 team with a mage let me know. The closest I have come is taking another DPS like a warrior or rogue. We seem to do alright but we hit a low ceiling around 1700.

I have tried almost everything. Can anyone suggest a 2v2 that works with mages?

I know it kind of goes against the mage philosophy a bit, but have you tried putting crit on the wayside and just having great +damage? If you do that your base spell damage will be a lot better and then when you do get a crit, because of your increased spell damage it might be approaching what you would get otherwise when there was no resiliance involved.

There are several healing debuffs out there. MS, Wound Poison and Aimed shot all reduce healing effects. Mage 2v2 is a pain in the ass. There's no way around that, but it isn't an insurmountable mountain by any means.

The thing to remember is that when you put the blame on game mechanics, you never find ways to get better. Yesterday I nearly hit 1850 with a boomkin in resto gear while I played POM Pyro. We had gimp burst, but the point was to time our burst and CC to give us an opportunity to down someone. It worked extremely well on all teams with the exception of warlock teams because they are basically unburstable drain tanks. My main 2v2 is over 2k. I play with a rogue and we're able to coordinate fairly well in order to down targets.

The main thing you have to know is that arena is about coordination and team work more than anything. There is an amazing mage on my server who is cracking 2k with horrible gear. He's simply amazing and comes up with strategies for every possible situation.

Anyway - I'd remove your head enchant and put the Shatar rep one on there. You need the spell hit and the dmg more than you do that stam and resilience. As a frost mage you have a lot of escape mechanisms and you need that spell hit badly.

In fives I'm not sure what your makeup is but I run a CC heavy Eurocomp over 2k and while I have to sheep a lot I also have to burst a lot too. Getting off shatter combos at the right time is VERY important in order to kill a target. Your teammates will have to help peel melee off you at times in order for this to happen, but once again this is where your coordination and teamwork come into play. Having a druid cyclone the rogue so you can sheep a warrior and shatter the focus target is imperative in our setup.

My 3s team (RMP) is at 2040ish and I don't do all that much ccing in this combo. It is a lot more burst. I'm not saying you abandon sheep by any means - but if you're spending you're entire matches doing nothing but sheeping you're doing it wrong.

Mages have great burst, and we probably have the best burst in game right now aside from elemental shaman. And thats WITH a target who has a lot of resilience. You can still blow targets up in no time but you have to be smart about when you do it and you have to do it while you effectively use your CC and counterspells to stop healing.

The only things I do different form that build are zero points in imp CoC (its bad considering its mana cost and dmg), and I max out empowered frostbolt instead of winters chill. The latter is debateable but imp CoC is a bad talent for 2s and 3s and is borderline bad in 5s.

I think you're right.

You can always put a macro in with a shift modifier to the max rank and just use rank 1 all the time but then use shift + hotkey to max rank it for that little bit of extra burst when you want it.

I am testing out 33/28 for Arenas, and would like some advice. First, here is my current build:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I am open to trying 34/27 if that is better. I don't want to go back to Frost; I know 17/0/44 is the uber Arena spec, I just don't enjoy it.

My goal, specifically, is to make a spec that is efficient in 2v2s. My partner is a Warlock, who is usually SL/SL (but sometimes specs Felguard or tries other things). We aren't great PvPers; we are still learning. Our gear is good enough now, though, that we are starting to take it seriously rather than just point-farm, so I want the most effecient Arc/Fire spec I can get for the combo.

I will be using the spec for 5 man instances, too, so any PvE bonuses I pick up in the process are nice. But I want to primarily build it for PvP. If I am going to do ZA or something else serious, I will respec to Frost or Raiding Fire.

Specific questions:

1. Arcane "filler" talents. I have been picking up Imp. Mana Shield, and do use Mana Shield sometimes in 2s, but often find it runs me out of mana despite the talent. I wonder if the points would be better spent elsewhere. Also, I have been getting Magic Absorbtion, mainly for the synergy with Improved Blink, but with the new combat text I haven't been able to figure out how often it triggers in arenas (probably not often; I need to figure the new chat out so I can track it--I use an addon normally, Eavesdrop, and I don't think it tracks the mana gain).

Is Imp. Arcane Missiles worth it for non-interruptable missiles (assuming no MSD; I don't use it post nerf)? Magic Attunement for the better Dampen (might not get dispelled in 2s)? Max Arcane Meditation for the mana regen (helps a little in 2s, but few mana problems; nice sidelight for PvE though)? Arcane Impact for extra crits on IAE?

Part of the reason it's so hard to decide is that none of the talents are that wonderful. So I know it is sort of a marginal choice. Even so, I would like to try and make the best marginal choices I can!

2. 34/27 or 33/28? The trade off would probably be 1 point in Arcane Potency (10% more crits on Clearcast) on a 34/28 build, or 1 point in Fire Power (2% more fire damage) on a 33/28. However, you could pull something else on the 33/28, like a point out of Improved Scorch or the range talent.

3. Assuming 33/28, what do you do with the last point in Fire? In particular, Fire Power (2% fire damage) vs. 2nd point in Flame Throwing (3 more yards on fire spells). I like the 2% extra damage on fire spells, but it isn't exactly overwhelming--Scorch its for something like 700ish, so you are talking 14 more damage on a normal hit. It might be better to have the extra 3 yards for your Scorches and Fireblasts in PvP. (Pyro hits for about 3,500 non crit, so about 70 damage difference there.)

Thanks for any help!


----------

Also, for the person asking how the build plays in Arenas, I can only comment on very low brackets, so I am not sure I will be helpful. These are sort of informal early observations from my testing, so don't take it as anything more than that!

What I have found so far is that I do better against Rogues, due to Blazing Speed, and seem to do better against warriors when the warrior is focusing on me. I do worse on controlling warriors when he is on my buddy, however, since Rank 1 FB takes longer to cast, etc. etc. We have nonetheless had the most problems with Rogue teams, at least in part due to Cloak of Shadows. We have also had trouble with Warlock/Druid, unless we can trick the Warlock out of LOS of the druid, or get some good fears on the druid.

Double DPS teams, though, I think we have a distinct advantage (except against Rogue/Rogue). I go in invis, Proximo synchs the targets for me, and when I pop out of invis I sheep one and POM Pyro the other. (Yes, I open with it on double DPS teams--they aren't going to heal it anyway, and it seems to put them on the defensive.) Scorch allows me to cast while staying mobile; my armor procs stun casters and hunters (unless they get lucky and dispel it; I have a lot of crap buffs with a Warlock on my team though). Fireblast crits hard, and when I get a clearcast I usually try to use Fireblast instead of Scorch, for the crit bonus.

On healer teams PoM Pyro has proved a good finisher. The key is not to expect too much of it. If you wait until they are at about 40%, pop POM Pyro AP Trinket, you are looking at a good 3500ish damage insta cast without a crit, at least for me. Followed by a Fireblast (1.X seconds later), followed by Blastwave (1.X seconds after Fireblast), can often burn people down. Frost of course could do the same thing with Shatter combos, but I at least often could not do that "on demand". Maybe I wasn't skilled enough with shatter combos. (I was also pure Frost, so I didn't have silence for a 4 second lockdown.)

I like how it plays. I imagine it caps out lower than Arc/Frost, but I have more fun this way, so I am going to stick with it and just try to get as good as I can with the spec!

With the reduced cost Slow/Blink and the new Improved Blink - has anybody tried a 41+ arcane/fire or frost - or straight arcane in arena yet? The particular build I'm investigating arcane/frost.
hhttp://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/mage/talents.html?tal=2300450010232140320125100000000000000000000000535000310030000000000

For example, with the lowered spell cost on Slow - is it worth Spamming the druid every time he shifts to a combat form?

Is improved blink actually worth getting? Beyond the synergy with Magic Absorption - it seems very limited in application. Warriors and Rogues seem rather likely to snare - which Blink doesn't clear. Not to mention only being 25% chance.

That's kind of an offbeat build. I don't think i can recommend it, especially considering those points in frost channeling and elemental precision belong in imp. nova and shatter. The real question with 41/0/20 is, how do you plan on killing anyone? Your only defense against pushback is on a 3 minute cooldown, and a PoM frostbolt even with shatter and arcane power isn't going to be a reliable way of killing people. in between frost nova cooldowns you're doing very little damage. Arcane nukes are poorly suited for pvp (although arcane missiles are situationally useful and borderline cheap).

Slow, too, is unreliable, in that teams with a dispel will neuter it. Against druids, use slow right before you expect them to cast entangling roots or cyclone, ala curse of tongues, and on travel form if you can help a rogue catch up to them. its only slightly more than a hassle on druids, and even at the new cost slow could get prohibitively expensive when spammed.

I could see an arcane/frost mage making sense only on a team with another full frost mage. So maybe a fun rogue/mage/mage 3s or a 4dps 5s. That is a lot of burst, and the mage with more cooldowns and survivability can set you up for huge shatter combos.

Imp. Blink seems really good to me. 4 seconds doesn't seem huge, but its 4 seconds on a short cooldown. And when you're getting focus fired and you need the buff the most, you'll probably be using every blink cooldown anyway.

Drop some resil, seriously. I run with 415 in full vengeful + vindicators silk (and im more often than not running the engineering belt these days, and eyeing up rocket boots xl lite) and I'm thinking of dropping my one resil gem (10 resil from halaa in neck) next season and gemming full runed crimson spinels w/ 2 glowing shadowsong amethysts. Don't use the shattered sun offensive head enchant, it blows. Get the sha'tar head enchant, with a s2 or s3 staff it will hit cap you. I suggest a hex shrunken head, icon of the silver crescent or lightning capacitor as your trinket.

If you want to do more damage, the first step is to gear for it ;P

Build - Scorchlance

WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Mage -> Talent Calculator

Something I came up with after getting frustrated by cast times as a Frost build. I've only gotten to test this a little but I think it has a lot of promise in BGs when using Rank 1 Frostbolt and Cone of Cold for control and Scorch / Fireblast for burning someone down.

However, a problem that I keep noticing is Paladins. How on earth am I supposed to beat someone who can't be kited, can "snare" me with something Escape Artist won't remove, and do 2,063 dmg on a normal attack crit? I know I'm not super PvP geared but I'm shocked that with 195 res I can still be hit for almost 1/4 of my hp in a normal attack, and then 2,400+ from a Crusader Strike right after, doing well over 1/4 of my hp.

How do you all deal with Paladins?

I was looking for some good PvP macros for Mage but didn't see anything come up when I used the forum search function for "Mage PvP macro".

Right now I'm looking at the official forums Mage Macro thread but I'm sure some of you know better PvP macros than that thread is listing. Please share?

Also, is it true Bliz doesn't allow you to use mods while fighting in the Arena Tournament? Like SpellAlert and Afflicted.

arenajunkies Arena Junkies - World of Warcraft PvP Strategy and Discussion has a good macro section for mages.

And no, blizzard doesnt allow any addons in the finals.

EDIT: Any kind of normal addons that you use on live can be used in tournament realm. Just that the finals and second qualification round is played without.

Hello, new to these forums. I was looking over my PvP gear yesterday and thought about switching out my Archmage Ring from Kara rep for the new 60 badge ring from Sunwell, the 28 hit 35 spell damage one, and getting the Season 3 penetration staff instead of the hit staff.

I would lose a bit of crit, but maintain the hit cap and have more than enough penetration. Anyone think that is a bad idea?

As mage I dont really like switching out of my pvp gear, with full set and offensive gems I am sitting on 421 resilience with 10.1k hp. If your looking for spell penetration your best option is to buy 2 staffs or 2 times wand/offhand which is what I did. Switching regular wand/oh for spell penetration wands put me on about 100 penetration. However, I advice you if you don't have enough points stick with the normal gear. I have only used spell penetration gear a handfull of times when our clear tactic was killing pets. Against normal teams your normal 50 is enough by far.

I wouldnt do so. There are few things, fist weapons can be swapped in combat so having penetration weapons is easier than having not so good ring equipped.
Secondly the hit is utterly useless if you allready have the staff and head enchant.

I like the macros I was reading about at arenajunkies. Thanks for the tip.

My favorite was the mouse-over Icelance, which I adopted into mouse-over Counterspell and Polymorph as well. We'll see how useful those are, but I imagine they'll be nice to have for sniping off potential threats while remaining targetted on your kill. Does anyone know of a working 1 key press macro to cancel Ice Block and immediately Blink or Counterspell? I have this right now but it takes 2 presses:

/stopcasting
/cancelaura Ice Block
/cast Blink (or Counterspell on my other macro)


Also, would anyone like to point out some abilities to look for as Spellsteal opportunities? I was thinking stuff like PW:Shield and Frost Barrier / Frost Ward might be good, and someone mentioned Blessing of Freedom, but beyond that I'm kind of clueless. I wonder sometimes if I would win more fights if I was using Spellsteal but the mana cost makes me shy away from experimenting while trying to kill people.