Taja

I'd say your good with scryer's blade, the 18 resilience is not really worth it compared to the other stats you gain. Besides your probably better off getting s4 (honor) pieces now.

 

Drasilo

Howdy,

I decided to switch to PvP from 2/48/11 Raid spec, and I have some questions:

- I want to freeze my targets, correct? Freezing people is easy enough, but getting of Frostbolt can be a problem. Should I be doing something like Freeze/IceVeins/FB/Icelance/Cold Snap, then repeat again? Or am I way off here? I am having a hard time trying to take people down one on one, I am far to slow.

- Is there a good list of marcros I could find somewhere?

My gear is a mess at the moment, I am working on getting geared up.

Thanks!

 

cryek

I think we'll still see plenty of people taking the other gemming philosophy of CSD and dmg/haste gems to catch yellow sockets, and they might have the right idea for 2v2 and stacked dps teams, while PED is perhaps better for 5v5 and 3v3 with a healer. I don't know exactly how to evaluate the +5% stun resist, but it stands to reason it gets more valuable as you face more rogues and warriors.

You can hit 5% haste (something like 80 rating) by taking [Guardian's Pendant of Subjugation], [Guardian's Band of Dominance], [Cloak of Arcane Alacrity] and haste hybrid gems (dmg/haste or stam/haste) in yellow sockets only. In this setup you can take a pve trinket and pve ring and still be at 420 resilience and 1k spell damage; that'd be a way to push it up to really noticable levels of haste without gimping your other stats. Again probably just a matter of preference; i like a clicky damage trinket, some people like a battlemaster's in the second slot.

It comes down to whether you want a subtle reduction of your GCD and the cast time on bolts and polymorph or the equally minor bump to your frost damage or survivability stats. If there's a threshold of haste you need to reach to have it be worth anything at all in pvp, surely it can be reached with just the honor gear.

 

Maligne

This is almost exactly what I've done - currently sitting at 120 haste (7.6%) with 411 resilience and around 950 damage. I'm using [Tempest of Chaos], [Ring of Ancient Knowledge], and [Hex Shrunken Head] for the PVE items.

I also decided to go ahead and stick with CSD as the meta, in large part due to it's 2 blue gem requirement as opposed to PED's 3.

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

 

Lugdug

I noticed a couple things while doing 2v2 earlier and wanted to know if anyone else has been having these problems.

I've noticed that Polymorph and Sap are on the same DR which to me seems like complete bullshit. I've also noticed that either frost nova doesn't override frostbite all the time, or that frostbite overrides frost nova. Because there were a few times when I was close to a melee and I would frost nova only to see that he was frost bitten instead for only 3 seconds compared to 7. Anyone else been seeing these things?

 

Thesaint

So, after a few weeks of S4, I'd like to hear more feedback about gemming/gearing for haste over crit with the new honor gear. I'm still sitting on the fence about this so would be great to hear the community's thoughts.

Also, I had great fun with [Mystical Skyfire Diamond] in the good ole days before its internal cooldown. I primarily used it for PvE but I would like to hear if anybody has used it successfully in arena. Most of the high level mages I've seen sport the more traditional [Chaotic Skyfire Diamond]

 

Taja

To lugdug: Yes Poly and Sap are on same DR, don't really know why thats just how it is. I think the frostbite > nova thing is a rank issue. It seems frostbite does overwrite rank 1 nova, but not higher ranks. I'm not 100% on this.

Thesaint: I have the haste neck, cloak, trinket, bracers and double rings for I think 179 haste with still 445 res 19% crit and 903 spell damage. Having gathered this gear so far I'm not totally convinced and adding the major chunk of haste (weapon) will just kill my ability to do any sustained damage. The fast poly's and 1.9 bolts with IV are great though.

After spending some time with gear now I'm gonna try something like this:

Haste neck + haste bracers + haste cloak. These 3 only give up crit and not spell damage compared to there counterparts.
Further on normal gear with either stam/res/+damage gems. The key with this is that your basic weapon will be the haste one, bringing you to around 300 haste for insane poly's with still respectable damage. If you face teams where the haste is probably useless you switch to the regular weapon for a normal 60~ haste and around 1050~ damage.

 

Maligne

I think there's definitely a happy medium between haste and +damage, depending on what type of team you play on and your role. With full haste gear including the weapon you drop to something like 600 damage which is just unacceptable for anything other than perhaps some 5's comps where all you have to do is poly. It's possible to get up to around 800 damage and 300 haste with the weapon and some silly gemming but I don't even know if that's ideal.

I think the sweet spots are between 150 and 200 haste and 950-1000 damage, all while keeping over 400 resilience. I've been running 120 haste and I can definitely notice the difference. So far it's been worth dropping the damage and crit, but I'm not sure how much further it will remain feasible.

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

 

Lugdug

I've only been using the rank 5 frost nova, so it's not an issue of overriding a lower rank =/ although it's probably a damn good idea to use rank 1. 185 mana vs 55.

 

reaes

I've also had frostbite override a frost nova, and I suspect that its actually proc'ing off of ice armor. You're right though it is very annoying, and whats worse it kicks in the DR for nova's / frostbite

 

piratkopia

Posted twice sry the system always drop me out ) anyway see below!
Btw. i have experienced that nova will be more often overwritten by forstbite if it has less time remaining than a full frost bite debuff. Anyone experienced the same ?
I rarely have an early nova break, it might also be due I always icelance (1 or 2) first to make sure to land some hits before they come out of nova and cast forstbolt only in the last 5-7 seconds as I'm really sure they can't get out. (see my tip for this with the winter's chill debuff below)

 

piratkopia

Well reading trough all the posts about spell haste one point is for many of you not clear i think:
You can switch wepons in combat!!
Knowing that, the spell haste s4 wepon will have a great utility in nuke fights and you can switch back to the spell dmg wepon any time.
Also dont forget about spell pushback!! Spell haste is a great tool to avoid interruptions as you cast faster ergo they have less chances to push back your casts or break them.
Just an example: if they set a rogue on you to burn your cd's and mana faster in most cases you cant even cast at all. Now switching to the haste blade might give you the chance to land a succesfull poly or some more instants. It really helps you to support your team while kiting and tanking the rogue. Ofc. you can switch back any time to your spell dmg wepon as soon as you see you can / or have the time to nuke and cast.

As a side note and a tip (probably nothing new but might help someone):
As a frost mage always apply at least 3 winter's chill debuff to the CC target in advance this makes him nearly dispellable if you poly and you are able to nuke a target for 1-2 seconds more
Ofc. spell haste is a great help in applying the debuff early in the game
(if they have trinket or any cc break spell up, well that's another story )

 

Meghane

I believe spell crit is still very viable in pvp as opposed to damage and haste, depending on how much damage you have already and what your current crit chance is. I would think haste would be very interesting and useful, but I just am not able to get enough of it atm for it to really be useful.

Responding to what was mentioned about ice armor's frostbite proc replacing frost nova's, I have noticed as well. It can be really annoying when you just barely frostnova and then they get frost bitten. Blizz has really got to fix that so it only replaces it if they are going to be frozen longer that way, it only makes sense if it's going to add to the diminishing returns for freezes.

 

Qbert

As nice as it is to see some effort put into the Mage trees...there are still a lot of things I'd like addressed before they call it a wrap on the Mage changes;

1) Warlocks got their PvP bonuses from both armors wrapped into one Armor... and their PvE bonuses wrapped nicely into a separate Armor .... why are mages left with inferior PvE bonuses spread out over 3 armors patched together with PvP bonuses? Mages suffer from mana problems in both PvE and PvP ... and are starkly behind in PvE damage.

solution: Separate 30% regen into a separate buff & make it stackable with armors (coupling it with Arcane Intellect could even be an option, after removing the bonuses from other areas). Increase molten armor crit to 5%. Add haste to Mage Armor. Add frost damage to Ice Armor. This gives the 30% regen desperately needed in both PvE and PvP (making it dispellable in PvP seems balancing) while giving each armor a unique and balanced PvE/damage boost to keep pace with comparable lock armors.
__

2) Mana Shield is a stupid design. There is such a vastly higher cost to the benefit so that it becomes literally useless. There needs to be a tradeoff somehow that makes it viable.

Solutions;
a. Give it a Mp5 component like water shield... like 50mp5 while active, then a mana boost of ~1000 if it expires (1000 mana after 1 minute of nigh zero incoming damage seems perfectly reasonable).
b. I've always considered a "Mana" Shield as a sort of magic-powered shield and like its original intentions, preferred it to absorb only melee damage. I think it would be interesting to have a percentage of magic damage taken while active converted to mana... while having magic damage not be absorbed by the shield. i.e. fireball hits you for full damage (2000) while 30% of that damage (600) converts to mana. So having this up while taking spell damage would benefit the mage's mana... while taking melee damage would drastically hurt the mage's mana.
__

3) Impact & diminishing returns. This was added during AQ40 where stacking mages was common and bosses became stunnable (Sartura). Mages gained a sort of 'stunlock' capability for this boss by spamming scorch, making it infinitely easier. The problem with DR on impact is that the primary source of Fire's survivability in PvP deriving from its armor & nukes is the chance to stun, as opposed to frost armor/spells' ability to snare which isn't on DR. Tack on the addition of Living Bomb which seems like it would have synergy with impact but just lacks that quality with the prevalence with DR. I think one of the major viability problems with Fire is the lack of consistent defense. Molten Armor + Impact is great... but after only 3 seconds of stun, attackers are immune to it and can tear the mage to shreds until it comes off DR.

Solution; remove DR from impact vs PvP opponents.
__

4) Blazing speed not giving short immunity to snares. This is mentioned a lot, but still an issue, the talent simply fails in a melee world with instantly applied snares with no cooldown (see; shivved cripple poison & hamstring).

Solution; give blazing speed 2-3 seconds of snare immunity.
__

5) Arcane still has no real melee survivability. Imp blink was a bandaid on a waterfall, and doesn't address the issue.

Solution; have imp blink's bonus changed from a reduced chance to be hit to the age-old suggestions to have blink remove snares or drop target.
__

6) Spell pushback. With Kick, Pummel, Shield Bash, Grounding Totem and Repentance now off the GCD I simply see no justification for this mechanic anymore. There is no excuse for needing added time to avoid a spell, and the massive damage that casters take from melee is punishment enough for standing in range. The mechanic being abused by pet classes is just salt in the wound.

Solution; just remove the mechanic. There is plenty of time between now and the expansion's release to re-design the talents with pushback prevention.

 

cryek

While that is certainly a lot of things, it might be better posted elsewhere (the WOTLK thread comes to mind). The spirit of this thread is more of a Mage: Pvp Discussion, about arenas and battleground pvp and such.

no, but neither is frostbolt... or many other snare effects that reapply without incuring a dr.

The real problem with any pvp spec with 21+ points into fire isn't impact its how hard it is to stay alive when they target you and refuse to switch.

you want the SPELL PUSHBACK: LAST BROKEN MECHANIC OF LADEDAH thread you lazy lazy person.

 

Kindbud

This has always been one of my biggest problems with any of a Mage's powers. Mana shield used to be our primary defense and it is amazing how much of a liability it is, and generally always has been. So much so that if we were able to cast it on other players it would be the most powerful mana drain in the game. Mages already suffer more mana issues than any other class. It is amazing we have gone this long with mana drain only getting 1 negligible buff since release. Its more amazing there aren't any future buffs for this ability for Wotlk. There just isn't much practical logic to Blizzard in the manner in which they do things. I do like the idea of it giving mana regeneration while active much like that old trinket from lbrs as the trade off for losing so much precious mana.
__

 

Kindbud

Ideally you want to try for frostbolt/icelance(frost nova'd) shatters for maximum burst take downs. Frostbolts are difficult to get off but i would refrain from thinking along the lines of having to use IV/Coldsnap mentality to kill others. Those CD's are way too long to count on. When you cannot get off frostbolt you spam as many icelance shatters as you can fit in before nova breaks. Frostbolt/icelance combos are more possible than most people pretend if you catch them at the right time or lock out the right schools before you do it.

Mage is a fast react class. Every time you see a frostbite proc off of your frost spells you need to make it a habit of icelance being second-nature. Sometimes you can fit as many as 2-3 icelances off of a frostbite proc if you're fast enough.

 

cryek

Mana shield is a liability? Sitting in your spellbook, it holds you back? I would say it's a crappy spell, and is only worth a damn when its your absolute last resort, but that might be exactly what it's intended to be.

I'd rather have mana shield than nothing at all, I suppose. They're never going to review it and decide to make it a viable preventive shield or a mana regeneration mecahnic. It probably does need a review and some sort of buff, but lets not go nuts.

If it were a decent trade mana-wise, it would reduce the uniqueness of frost's 31 point talent. If it gave you mana, it would do exactly the opposite of the current spell's effect.

There are ways to mitigate the crappiness of Mana Shield. You can macro the same button to buff it and quickly remove the buff if you get the heal or avoid the worst of the damage. You can complain about it publicly. Or you can take it off your bars, but you never know when you'll need need it.

 

Kindbud

Well if you take the approach anything is better than nothing then sure, its fine as you say and maybe only there as a desperate last resort as you're running away with mana and no life and no CD's where it's meant to be used. Otherwise sit in the spell book as you say.

But if you look at it from the initial perspective of it being the strongest mana drain in the game, for a class that already has mana issues in PvP, and that if it were able to be cast on others it would be extremely overpowered, it very much can be seen as a liability.

All a matter of perspective.

Personally i dont feel it being a oh shit spell as a last resort makes much sense for the spell. WoW today every class can makeup mage ground. Kiting without ever being hit is mostly a preTBC thing. Damage is to the point it barely mitigates a hit/nuke. Lucky our armors have been improved significantly to makeup for it for non Frost specs that dont have ice barrier. Even then i'm more inclined to believe Blizzard has neglected it more than it is currently meant to be as it is, and its probably the only other Arcane talent that needs buffing to make the tree more PvP viable.

 

solbergb

What I think of it as for is when your health bar is dropping faster than your mana bar. It kind of evens it out.

I use it sometimes for AOE burndowns, where the goal is to have them dead before they kill you, and ending the fight low on both mana and health is ok. This is more of a solo or pvp/battleground thing than a tactic that works in most raids, but it does come up sometimes in 5man and 10man content. In raids or arena play with healers, generally trusting them to heal you is smarter than mana shielding.

It's also good when you absolutely MUST get that polymorph off and you need some kind of pushback resistance and hang the mana cost.

It's also useful for just dumb things like jumping off a tower when your blink is cooled down (or you want to reserve the blink for fighting), and your assumption is that you'll be running around a bit and your mana will recover faster than your health. Its utility value is quite similar to invisibilty in how often I use it, although it's used totally differently. It's not near as useful as blink, but is more useful than spellsteal.

 

Xenia

Hey!

I Started to play mage during s2 but really started to get in to pvp and arenas first during s3 i was undergeared for most of the time but in the end i at least got some decent gear (3xs3 and2xs1, vindicator stuff and some pve epix for weaps and stuff, 900dmg 10khp) at that point i totally loved playing mage but allso decided to reroll on anotehr realm... and dang! i was a rogue =)

Nowdays i really miss my mage and have started to level a new one, simply becaus i dont wanna play on my old server and ofc UD > Human imo. =P

I have started to look up what gear i should be going for at first and also what gems and enchants to use.

(btw im goin 17 0 44 and will go mainly for 2v2 and 3v3)

arena set pieces will come by order of req's, will prolly go for hands and legs first for s4 and get the head and shoulders from s2 because it will take some time to get gear to even stand a chance on getting the rating up for it. chest? well prolly just the blue rep crap if im not verry enjoyed by honor farming.. on the other slots? will go for pvp gear for the slots where i can get the rating, think ill go for good dps pieces in the other slots, just caus they r not visible, and the extra dps can come quite handy in lower rating games.

need some opinions tho on some things:

main hand/offhand/staff - hard to decide wether to go for s2 staff or MH/OH, (allso have the option to farm for MGT-dagger or one of the mainhands from ZA)

Stamina vs bonus damage - I read somewhere that Ice barrier, frost armor, frost ward etc has some benefit from +dmg. anyone has any numbers of how that works in terms of absorbation vs stamina?

since im goin frost i dont find crit as important as spelldmg, letting shatter do the works. would be wonderful if it wouldn't be to much sacrifice to abandon some stamina for dmg gems.

also haste as caster is a bit new for me, I'm eager to play around with it a bit.



a thought about mage gear:

I think mages lacks one thing in their options of pvp gear. Many classes have several sets of the arena gear to choose from and therefore get the option to go for a 3/2 combo of arena gear. would be really nice to see something similar to the locks destro/afliction sets, to let mages choose between the crit focused set we have now and another set. Ie: only dmg or a haste based set.
would be nice to try goin for the 2x35 resil bonus and maby gem deferently to get your wanted stats..
just think its a bit unfair that some classes have can obtain alot more resill than other classes and still have viable gear for a viable spec

just a thought tho =)

any corrections and hints about gear/gem selection is warmly welcome

 

Kolenzo

All of your gems should be offensive ones. The mage arena gear has more than enough stam and resil on it as it is, you don't need to gem for more. I personally went for a damage/crit combination, but damage, crit and haste all have their benefits. As far as weapon goes, I suggest staff as it hit caps you without having to gem for it, and it's a good crit for damage trade (something like 30 damage for 46 crit? Or something) at simply a small resil loss, and I also recommend taking silk over dreadweave for the same reason. Not critting outside of shatter is actually pretty weak, as non shatter crits are good setups for the actual killing shatter combo.

 

solbergb

Gemming damage/haste means you can use some of your arena pieces in PVE too. On battlegrounds I also prefer damage to durability.

stam/resil pretty much relegates the piece to arena PVP only, and possibly only when you're backed with a healer.

Crit is funny. For DPS it is strictly worse than haste in gem itemization but it has some advantages in DPM and burst. Gemming for crit is a PVP move but isn't as harmful to PVE crossover uses as stam/resil is.

For weapon, the merciless spellblade+ brutal or badge offhand gives better results than the staff (assuming you don't have arena rating).

 

Rej

I'm playing a Ret pally right now, and my 2v2 buddy is a mage. He really enjoyed Arcane/Frost before he started doing Arena, but now that we're trying to be serious about the team, he's switched to deep frost.

Is Arcane/Frost viable? Or would Arcane/Fire make a better choice? Other sources I've read say that deep Frost is a necessity because of the defensive talents it provides - is this true?

 

Fireflash38

[quote=Qbert;832868]

3) Impact & diminishing returns. This was added during AQ40 where stacking mages was common and bosses became stunnable (Sartura). Mages gained a sort of 'stunlock' capability for this boss by spamming scorch, making it infinitely easier. The problem with DR on impact is that the primary source of Fire's survivability in PvP deriving from its armor & nukes is the chance to stun, as opposed to frost armor/spells' ability to snare which isn't on DR. Tack on the addition of Living Bomb which seems like it would have synergy with impact but just lacks that quality with the prevalence with DR. I think one of the major viability problems with Fire is the lack of consistent defense. Molten Armor + Impact is great... but after only 3 seconds of stun, attackers are immune to it and can tear the mage to shreds until it comes off DR.

Solution; remove DR from impact vs PvP opponents.
__

4) Blazing speed not giving short immunity to snares. This is mentioned a lot, but still an issue, the talent simply fails in a melee world with instantly applied snares with no cooldown (see; shivved cripple poison & hamstring).

Solution; give blazing speed 2-3 seconds of snare immunity.
QUOTE]

Personally, I would just prefer homogenization of all such RNG talents, including Mace Stuns.

3s Stuns, % chance to proc is based on cast time/swing timer, w/ 3s spell the base line at 10%. So 1.5s spells have a 5% chance to proc, and pyroblast has a 20% chance to proc stuns.


And for the love of god, please give me #4, I do arenas as 33/28, and it is really the only survivability I have against melee.



Lastly, this thread needs more about Arc/Fire Arenas.