kamekazai

Hello long time reader though first post.

My mage currently fights with 17/44 arc/fire spec. It is an interesting build with a unique playstyle. I have been away from the game since march so let me know if any of this is outdated or wrong.

Basic Gameplay:

The build I use revolves completely around scorch, I have no points in imp or emp fireball. The basic idea is to scorch spam while possible then when mobility is needed to throw fireblasts and occassional scorches. This keeps you highly mobile and still doing decent damage. When things get close or when burst is needed the fireblast, blastwave, dragons breath, scorch, fireblast combo is these, you'll be surprised how fast this is dished out.

Pros:
-Imp CS for locking out casters and healers a little better
-Less dps loss from having to fight and be mobile, good against melee
-less dps loss do to spell push back since scorch is such a fast cast and most other spells are instant
-Can go into mana conserve mode by chain casting scorch which with the debuff favors you in long fights.
-When debuff is stacked can through out chain instants for nice burst damage.
-Less dps lose due to stoping to cc and cs

Cons:
-No out of the gate or distance burst damage
-Overall lower dps, not sure on the math behind how much less haven't worked it out
-Must be careful with target selection as inital dmg can be healed through.
-Not as much survival talents as Ice



Basically this builds major strength is the ability to be reactive to events around you without the lose of dps of long casting main nukes. Normally in 2v2 and 3v3, depending on team make up, I would cc one enemy while scorching another then after building up a debuff and before I am unable to keep cc'ing I will throw down with instants to burn them down. Mana gem then rinse repeat.

Hunters:
I noticed this was you guys major headache class. I usually blink in close, FN, fireblast, BW, DB then throw arcane blast and fireblast till dead. just stay in melee as long as you can, raptor strike hurts alot less then their distance moves. Will burn alot of mana but just try to keep the mana gem handy.

 

solbergb

I do something similar but keep in mind my arena rating is abysmal (although I do ok vs equally bad frost mages).

Mine is 0/44/17 or some variant, going with icy veins, permafrost, arctic reach and faster frost bolts instead of whatever you're getting out of arcane. Like you, my offense is mainly scorch/impact with mobile fighting done with fire blast, the two fire AOEs, and in a pinch arcane explosion and ice lance. I'll toss in a 1 second frost bolt as a snare vs melee. For defense I rely heavily on impact/molten shields, blinking out of stuns, trinketing out of other effects etc. Icy veins is used for pushback resistance on polymorph, mostly. Like you I pay for the PVP talents by throwing out the fireball talents. Using scorch as main nuke instead of fireball, with the rest of the fire DPS stuff taken (as my build does) and with my gear level, it translates to about a 14% DPS loss over a scorch/fireball rotation in PVE, or a percent or two less against a straight fireball rotation (with fireball talents). It doesn't lose any DPS against untalented fireballs.

In PVP, fireballs just take too long, or if you are being ignored, they give away your position. I'm not a fan.

This is a playstyle that some of the Wrath changes may help. It works very well on battlegrounds (scorch doesn't give away your location, and the AOEs have more scope). I enjoy it more than PVPing frost, but there is probably any number of good reasons why you don't really see it in the level of arena play where the mage players are competent.

I fight hunters with this spec the same way any other mage fights hunters. You blink into their face and you stay next to them, and if their pet gets involved, go with the AOE burst stuff. The pet dies as a side effect and the hunter is limited to his much weaker melee stuff against you. I don't see that frost has any real advantage against hunters (at my skill level. I'm sure a competent arena frost mage can do clever things with kiting and WE to mess up the hunter/pet dynamics that are well beyond my skill)

 

kamekazai

Nice to see a similar strat. For me the main interests from arcane are the imp cs, arcane impact and clearcasting. I do like the potential from putting those 17 points into frost though, will look into it.

I will also agree that this play style may have no use at higher level arena but I find it much much more interesting that frost or pom/pyro.

The key is learning to predict and react to you opponents and no just dps'ing away.

 

solbergb

While I would like imp counterspell and arcane impact, I just have trouble with spending the first 10 points in arcane on a PVP spec that isn't pretty deep into arcane. (10% more mana doesn't make that big a difference in most of my matches, I don't need threat reduction, the only "hit" stuff use arcane for is arcane explosion and it hits ok untalented and 10 points of penetration which I will use occasionally is expensive for 10 talent points). In frost, while I'm not delighted with the lower tier talents under icy veins, I do at least use them.

 

Taja

Sounds like a fun spec but hardly good. Fact is that Water elemental is just insanely overpowered (or mages are just gimp without it) and the only thing you might give it up for is pom/pyro. A fire spec can work but I think it still varies greatly on who you play with. For 2v2 hardly anything in the arcane tree is wasted, clearcasting, imp missiles, arcane fortitude, magic attunement are all usefull talents.

 

kamekazai

I will be the first to admit it is not nearly the best spec possible but it plays well for my uses. Give me a moment to explain.

I didn't really play very competitively in the arena as its just my personal preference that BG's are more fun. As such since I recently reactivated my account I mostly have been bg'ing it. In BG's I would argue that this spec is better imho. I found the lack of trailing from fireballs and frostbolts to be a huge benefit when distance nuking. I also found ice's reliance on the WE for significant damage to be a downfall. In arena's you always have it but in BG's the fights are long and thus it is on CD, and hands down I find I do much much more damage when a frost mage doesn't have the elemental. I like that my blastwave, Dragons breath burst damage is on a nice short cd as well.

To each there own but I have noticed those things making a difference. In the arean though things are a different story.

 

zesarzero

hi to all i just got my alt to 70 and hes a mage and i want him to pvp but i want a litle of pve as well and i was wondering:¿ if i reach the hit cap i can do some pve?? and if i get the hit cap would this be bad cause then i'd lose some spelldmg and some haste ...thanks for ur help cause my main is a tank i dont know anything about mages

 

Nostrum

Pve 16% hit, pvp 3% hit. So, yeh you'll lose a load of item budget, the pvp gear is pretty obvious same as most classes.

It's good to see a lot of fire and arc/fire mages around these day's. I always hated frost pvp with no reliable spell pushback protection and reliance on nova/freeze to do any decent damage, the fire specs always felt more fluid since day 1.

 

solbergb

Most people have at least two "suits". A "hit suit" and a "Trade hit for spell damage and/or stam/resil" suit. You only need the "hit suit" on boss monsters. For solo, trash and 5 mans, 5% hit is enough. For PVP, usually 3% is enough but some talents make enemies harder to hit, so using 5% for anything that is "not a boss" works pretty well.

I've settled on three basic suits, although I sometimes mix and match items from various suits for specific fights (eg, might mix in more stam/resil stuff if I am threat capped on the tank or the fight has a lot of raidwide damage and I have enough "hit" for the fight).

Hit suit - 164 hit (fire mage), as much DPS as I can get assuming that hit and stam/resil based only on whatever pieces make up the suit. (stam 6k unbuffed for KZ, 7k for T5, 8k for T6 seems to be about how other mages seem to gear when I do inspects and they don't have a lot of PVP gear in their set)

Resilience suit - ~260 resil, 10k health, but at a fairly significant hit to spell damage (100 less than the hit suit, 200 less than the DPS suit. Used when I have a lot of healing support and expect to get focused - mostly for 5 man arena these days or doing dumb things like trying to solo 3-5 man group quests or "tanking" for lowbies on level 60-65 content.

DPS suit: Same stam as the hit suit, more resilience and pretty much a 1-1 swap of spell damage for spell hit compared to the hit suit.

I also swap in and out trinkets and rocket boots Xtreme light for specific situations. (eg, in KZ vs Big Bad Wolf I swap in rocket boots in case I get chased by the wolf and I'm slow on the draw for kiting it)

If you have tailoring, the hit and DPS suits are fairly easy, but you need something else for PVP as they are very low on stam and have zero resilience.

These concepts were pretty much the same when I was using fresh 70 blues/greens as it is now with my mix of S2-4/Badge gear. I just used the reputation blues for the resilience suit and the best gear I could find for hit/dps suits, whatever it might be.

 

Guaire

Hey, I don't think this thread has been updated much for WotLK, but i figured I'd post here before trying to start a new one.

I rerolled mage during TBC, hitting 70 with about a month left before wrath came out, so I didn's have much arena experience on my mage at 70 (although things seem very different right now).
Arcane is pretty strong right now, but I prefer to play frost, so thats what I'd like to ask about.
Specifically, what build would you play for 2v2 (mage/rogue or mage/dk) and 3v3 (mage/rogue/rShaman)? I have chosen a 20/0/51 build, picking up permafrost in favor of arctic winds 5/5.

Here is my question: What stats to focus on when gearing, enchanting, gemming, etc.

Stamina and resilience are a must, so i make sure to pick up a goodly chunk of those.
I get enough crit from frost effects and debuffs that I don't really worry too much about crit rating, I take it when it comes along but i don't look for it.
Other than that, should I get straight SP, or should I stack a little bit of haste? As of right now, without any haste buffs (icy veins, berserking, etc), I can cast deepfreeze, and have time to get only 1 FB+IL, or 3 IL before it wears out. How much haste would I need to make that FB+IL+IL, or ILx4? Also, given the choice, would you rather do 1 frostbolt or two icelances? Frostbolt gets you additional procs like FoF or Fireball!, but icelance keeps you mobile and helps avoided getting interupted.

edit* typo, and to comply w/ forum rules

 

Vallren

I honestly find resilience very lack luster compared to Stamina. Maybe it's just me but resilience just doesn't seem that attractive a pvp stat as it used to. Stamina on the other hand is like candy. It's much easier to have HP to survive burst than to mitigate it to a survivable level, granted I 2 with a healer so it might be different for you roflburst teams.

Setting things on fire since Open Beta

 

solbergb

The rule of thumb I was given is that if you have a healer behind you, resilience tends to be superior to stam after a certain minimum stam, as it damps out crit spikes, and if you don't have a lhealer piling on more stam is superior.

With most pvp gear you get a healthy amount of both, so it's not much of a discussion beyond gemming strategies (which for me would either end up as spellpower or stam, depending on the purpose of the piece, most of the time, not resilience vs stam)

A more interesting discussion in the current environment is whether to chuck the pvp gear and just use top tier PVE stuff, as there is a significant dps difference between them trading off against say 3-4k of stamina and 400ish resilience.

As it is currently easier for me to get PVE gear at the moment and my crafted/no-arena-rep pvp options are very limited I've been mostly taking the burst approach. Once I get enough EV's for the hateful set though I may experiment.

I do know that at the end of Burning Crusade post 3.0 patch, at level 70 it was absolutely worth it to put on my pvp suit vs my pve suit (both of which were of similar quality) because even in battlegrounds, total damage dealt was as much a function of how long I stayed alive than my damage throughput and I won quite a few battles by outlasting the opposition.

So far, with entry level pvp/pve gear though, at least in battlegrounds damage > defense. Perspectives with epic gear in both categories would be welcome.

 

Microwavegerbil

Since this post hasn't been updated much since Wrath, figured I could ask some questions to get some discussion going on Mage pvp.

How much spell penetration is everyone going for? Spell pen to cloak is a fairly obvious choice, but after that how much should you really go for? I know I've had key counterspells resisted a number of times in my matches so far, and as I get my 2s rating higher I need to make sure my spells are not getting resisted.

 

Taja

So far I haven't been using alot. But my plan is to get another wand/oh with spell penetration to switch out against various teams. And once I got (close to) full deadly I'll use my 2 blue gems for meta on spell penetration instead of stam/damage.

About your counterspell resists: remember you need 5% hit nowadays to be capped. Add the fact that some classes, belfs for example have -2% chance to be hit by spells. This combined with the fact that pvp gear has 0 hit on it its hard to get there.

 

Marcel

I'm wondering about haste. How much do you go for as frost? Whats usefull and whats overdoing it? Also, for spell penetration, Taja do you have a certain number in mind? I'm just hitting 80 on a mage with no experience at all so far so there is alot to think about. No real access to Naxx ect either.

 

Kanotaur

I've always been a pve Mage myself, and have only been successful screwing around in pvp in battles where I can avoid 1v1 combat (ie av, which I often top the chart in as ff spec. With my growing boredom with wotlk however I'd like to get a little more serious about pvp. Can somebody link a couple of the more popular builds with some educated opinion on them?

I'm really just afraid I won't be able to stand not doing the same kind of burst damage I'm used to.

 

poof312

Ideally, for PvP frost, you want to get to 30% haste to make your GCD 1 second at all times. Of course, this makes icy veins less useful than it otherwise would be, but getting in that extra ice lance when someone's deep frozen is game-making. Since 30% is hard to attain in PvP gear (or any gear really), go for 10% so that you can at least get that 1 s GCD during icy veins. The spec is generally 20/0/51 to pick up TTW and imp CS.

 

Kolenzo

1 sec gcd requires 50% haste.

You should aim for a balance of haste and damage. If you could attain about 1850 damage and 12% haste, you would be in pretty good shape. You should also at the least be hit capped vs other players (4%) and probably hit capped vs racials (6%), and have a reasonable amount of spell pen to counter acclaim, frost aura, paladin resist auras, motw, magic absorbtion and mage armor. Playing without at least 50 (with more to swap on via weapon swap) is just asking for trouble.

As frost, you will practically need at least a little pve gear. It is quite literally impossible to balance all these stats decently in pure pvp gear. Ideally, grab the turning tide and valorous shoulders/legs (no item budget wasted on spirit on those pieces) as they all have a good amount of damage/haste. The 2pc bonus from t7 is also arguably better than 4pc gladiator set. The offhand from 25m patchwerk and/or the wand from 25m anub'rekhan are both solid items as well, but be careful not to trade off too much resilience.

Your goal in using pve gear is not so much to get "more" stats (bar using the turning tide) as it is to specialise your stats more towards haste/dmg and away from crit.

Regarding resil vs stam, survivability vs damage:

Resilience is a healer efficiency stat. Not in just the obvious sense in that it lowers the damage you intake and thus the amount of healing your healers need to do, but also because it is always there. A high stam pool vs more mitigation by resilience, in the initial burst, both may turn out the same, however, the player who has the high stam pool needs to have more inefficient, higher hps heals used on him as until he is at or near his full health levels again, the high stam pool does nothing. With a high resil player, you can afford to use more efficient heals because his resil benefits him no matter what health level he is at (this is all somewhat subjective however).

In terms of how much survivability they afford you point for point, it depends on your current stats. Until you have a reasonably high stam level, resil will not do a large amount for you, but once you start pushing (as a mage) roughly 17k, 18k health, resil becomse more useful.

Survivability vs damage: While gearing up, it's a bit of a balancing act. What you're initially aiming for is "enough survivability to not get instagibbed". I've geared up two mages at 80 for pvp this season, and I feel the breaking point for survivability is probably around 16k health and 600 resilience (give or take a bit either obviously, 18k health 400 resil would probably be fine too for example). Once you've reached this breaking point, you need to increase your reliable damage output alot, which either means damage as arcane, or both damage and haste as frost. Your goal here is to increase the damage you can reliably do during a burst window, such as a deep freeze -> imp cs.

Once you feel you can reliably kill someone in a lockdown, you reach the "do whatever" stage. At this point you want to regem for any socket bonuses you missed, pick up items that allow you to specialise any one s tat you may be working on (eg alot of arc mages at this point work up their crit rating a bit), and try to round out your survivability with perhaps a little more stam/resil. To give some numbers from s4 to try and lend some context, minimum survivability would have been around 9k life 300 resil, minimum damage was probably around 900 spell power, then you could fill out where you liked. I ended up with roughly 10k life, 380 resil, 1k damage and 11% haste, so that you can see where the numbers ended up at (I'm not suggesting my way of gearing was necessarily the best or the only way).

 

darlabear

So, I've always been a PvE mage who only occasionally went into battlegrounds, but now that I'm decently geared for my guild's PvE progression needs.. I want to try PvP and arena. I'm looking into an arcane/frost spec with around 18/0/53.

I know what gems/enchants I want to go for, but what glyphs are optimal for PvP in this spec?

I was thinking of mage armor and evoc. But I wanted to know if these were ideal and what would be best for a third?

Thanks for the advice.

 

ash2ash

Glyph of evoc is almost mandatory. You're probably going to want to go with ice armor for arenas so no on the mage armor glyph. Instead, you probably want any two of the following: Icy veins, Polymorph, Blink.

Personally, I go with evocation, Icy veins, Blink. Really nice to have extra getaway tools with the icy veins and an extra 5 yards on blink is better than you might think. Works great in BGs, but I have only done 2s and 3s upto 1750 as 51arcane/20frost so YMMV.

 

Kolenzo

Evocation is unquestionable. Beyond that, there's alot of options. Icy veins (especially if you have rocket boots), frost nova, blink are all good options. Polymorph can be useful, especially if you play with another class that puts up dots alot such as a death knight or warlock.

Mana gem is also very nice since the patch. Running with both 2pc t7 and the mana gem glyph will cause your mana gems to restore up to around 6k mana, which is amazing.

I am personally running mana gem/evocation/icy veins and am quite happy with my setup.

 

Marcel

I have been messing around with Rawr a bit and planning out my character. Seeing I hardly PvE I'm basicly going to have to make due with PvP gear rewards, rep rewards and the ocasional heroic thingie. Spellpenetration and hit are good right now but my spelldamage and haste are very low compared to the stats mentioned above. This is my gear as planned out. My gems are mostly orange gems with spellpower and haste. I'm wondering if anybody has any suggestions on how to get my spelldamage and haste up without going to Naxx or if this will be the best I can do for now.


Head: [Titan-Forged Hood of Salvation]
Neck: [Hateful Gladiator's Pendant of Ascendancy]
Shoulders: [Savage Gladiator's Silk Amice]
Chest: [Savage Gladiator's Silk Raiment]
Waist: [Hateful Gladiator's Cord of Dominance]
Legs: [Savage Gladiator's Silk Trousers]
Feet: [Titan-Forged Slippers of Salvation]
Wrist: [Hateful Gladiator's Cuffs of Dominance]
Hands: [Savage Gladiator's Silk Handguards]
Finger1: [Hateful Gladiator's Band of Dominance]
Finger2: [Annhylde's Ring]
Trinket1: [Battlemaster's Celerity]
Trinket2: [Medallion of the Horde]
Back: [Hateful Gladiator's Cloak of Ascendancy]
MainHand: [Flameheart Spell Scalpel]
OffHand: [Ward of the Violet Citadel]
Ranged: [Wand of Blinding Light]


Health: 17503
Mana: 12513

Crit Rate: 23,93%
Hit Rate: 7,43%
Spell Penetration: 60
264 Haste Rating

Arcane Damage: 1505
Fire Damage: 1505
Frost Damage: 1505

Resilience: 597

 

solbergb

There are a number of items that drop in heroic dungeons that could be mixed in to raise your dps stats at the expense of resilience and a bit of stam. Given that you have ward of the violet citadel and annhyld's ring on your list these should be achievable for you. Go to the class forums, there is a good thread on "best no raid mage equipment" that you can compare to your pvp gear and see which gives you the most bang for the cost of reduced survivabiltiy. Violet hold, for example, drops one of the top two or three wrists in the game.

If you don't do 5 man PVE either, your options are more limited. The Kirin Tor ring is better than Annhylde's ring but it isn't cheap. The KT exalted chest is better than the SG chest from a dps standpoint but several heroic blue drops are significantly better.

One thing I recommend is to attempt to get into the raid for Vault every time your faction wins wintergrasp. Some of those greens on your list can be replaced with purples, and even your purples can be upgraded in the 25 man raids. No arena rating required.

 

ash2ash

You can save up heroic badges and buy out two pieces of heroic frostfire gear. IMO 2pT7 has a slight edge over 4pPvP anyway, esp if you don't have 2 minute evocates. Also IMO for mage PvP you're probably better off going with PvP trinket + flow of knowledge. 590 spelldamage on 45s c/d >> 60 haste and a mini last stand. Also you'll probably want the wand from heroic AN.

 

ash2ash

By the way, has anybody had any success with arcanofrost at higher brackets? I just started a new RMP after climbing up to 1750 pre-nerf.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

is my spec. It's a good balance between survivability, damage, and mana efficiency. I know it's not ideal but I make it work and I'm not really inclined to change it unless I have some compelling reason.