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.
I'm not realy seeing the point of your spec (gameplay speaking). You are spending 20 points in frost but I can assume you are only planning to use icelance (no improved frostbolt)? Without an other frost mage to provide deep freeze I'm not expecting you to be able to use icelance that much with only 1 nova and eventually a couple frostbite procs.
Regarding survivability, i'm not seeing what you are gaining from the frost tree (nothing that would provide a gain over Burning Determination + Impact).
I'm not realy seeing the point of your spec (gameplay speaking). You are spending 20 points in frost but I can assume you are only planning to use icelance (no improved frostbolt)? Without an other frost mage to provide deep freeze I'm not expecting you to be able to use icelance that much with only 1 nova and eventually a couple frostbite procs.
Regarding survivability, i'm not seeing what you are gaining from the frost tree (nothing that would provide a gain over Burning Determination + Impact).
I almost never use icelance. Using ice armor, I can pretty much count on melee to cause frostbite procs on themselves, and with shatter I have a +50% crit chance against them. I can also frost nova + POM Frostbolt for a frostbolt that has a 95% crit chance (50% shatter + 30% POM + 15% my base crit) to crit for about 8-9k (unmitigated). I also use glyph of icy veins for a snare removal and if I still have it up, I have it macrod with my AP so I can stack AP + IV for some pretty mean arcane blast spam if I get enough pressure off me.
One other thing that's fun is that I can get the full shatter effect for my entire missle barrage if I can cast it far away enough before the first missle hits, which is a ton of extra damage.
The 2 extra points in frost channeling can probably be spent elsewhere but I just hate going OOM early so it's a personal choice.
Thanks for the advice! I've got it worked out like this now, more mana, more resi, a little bit more spelldamage and alot more haste. I'm realy liking flow of knowledge. This is probely about as optimal as I'll get in the beginning.
Have you considered the two T7 chest/glove pieces that you can get for heroic badges? They'd be replacing savage gladiator gear, for a very significant dps boost (2T7 is quite strong, plus they're itemized for dps and have higher ilevel etc) and the SG gear, while better than nothing, isn't amazingly powerful on the defensive.
It's a fair number of badges, but it might be something to work toward with whatever PVE you do.
Especially shoulders and leggs are very good for mage in pvp, they get you nice set bonus, stats that you lack on pvp gear and need atleast as frost: haste and hit.
I am not understanding why in your 51/0/20 spec you picked up Ice shards and Piercing Ice? Not to mention you didn't take Imp Frostbolt... Those two talents only directly increase FROST damage and so, by being arcane, you've just wasted 6 talent points. Also, instead of taking 2 points into Frost channeling (7% mana cost reduction), you'd be FAR superior by taking 2 (or 3 if you get rid of those other two worthless talents) points into Arcane Meditation which in 3.1 will increase from 30% for 3 points to 50% for 3 points; saving you WAY more mana than 7% (or even 10% which is max for Frost Channeling)...
... Also, instead of taking 2 points into Frost channeling (7% mana cost reduction), you'd be FAR superior by taking 2 (or 3 if you get rid of those other two worthless talents) points into Arcane Meditation which in 3.1 will increase from 30% for 3 points to 50% for 3 points; saving you WAY more mana than 7% (or even 10% which is max for Frost Channeling)...
The increase to 50% only cancels out the reduction in natural regen, with the net effect that Arcane Meditation should give the same regen pre-patch and post-patch.
The gear I logged out in is the gear I pvp in. It has 6.25% hit rating + 1 point in elemental precision. Yesterday however I ended up 1v1 with a holy pally in nagrand and chased him for 45 minutes trying to get a kill.
He was belf so 2% extra hit needed.
However I was still missing frostbolts/nova's. He was using frost aura but since when does that actually makes you resist things? Unfortunately I didnt have my wand/oh with spell penetration yet but I don't get how it should work now.
Yesterday however I ended up 1v1 with a holy pally in nagrand and chased him for 45 minutes trying to get a
....
However I was still missing frostbolts/nova's. He was using frost aura but since when does that actually makes you resist things? .
Frost aura doesn't cause misses but it will cause partial resists..^^ post beat me to the reason for the misses.
Frankly, if a holy paladin wants to stay alive and doesn't have anything distracting him and isn't at a gear disadvantage you'll have a hell of a time killing him one vs one. He can likely have the mp5 to heal through your burst forever, can cleanse away any attempt to root him as fast as you can put it down and in worst extreme case if you get lucky and gt an advantage but don't quite kill him, his cooldowns will make you have to start all over (bubble, lay on hands)
Not that he's any real danger to you either. His offense is anemic and your mage disengage tricks and crowd control will give you ample chances to bandage/evocate so you can continue too. In a world pvp situation the best hope either of you have to actually win such a fight is to call on your buddies for help. I applaud your determination to chase him for 45 min and his sporting willingness to let you try without, say, ducking into Shattrath. I would have given up after it was clear that neither of us could really gain an advantage a few minutes in.
* Fiery Payback got an additional effect - When below 35% health all damage taken is reduced by 10% and your Pyroblast spell's cast time is reduced by 1.75 secs while the cooldown is increased by 2.5 secs. In addition, melee and ranged attacks made against you have a 5% chance to disarm your attacker's main hand and ranged weapons.
* Impact now gives Gives your damaging spells a 4/7/10% chance to cause the next Fire Blast you cast to stun the target for 2 sec.
impact nerf sucks but fiery payback is nice - too bad it's too deep in the fire tree for anybody to consider picking up.
Well yeah, I'm kinda annoyed by it too. While the idea is good and the fact that I'd rather have a stun on "demand" than a random stun there's no real reason to not use the stun right away. Its still nice as get away tool or as interrupt, but fire has already some great interrupt tools.
A 10% chance to disarm on hit is really great to however, but so far fire still seems like an rng pvp spec. Blazing speed, disarm, impact as defensive procs and crits and hotstreaks as offensive.
But patchnotes aren't final so I'll guess we'll have to wait some more to jump to conclusions
Ash2Ash: I dont see why Fiery Payback would be too deep in the fire tree for anybody to pick it up? Now, after TBC and with the WotLK-talent-trees, a PvP-Fire-Spec can actually make sense (I did enjoy it in battlegrounds even before because fire is the tree of my choice, but I am aware of the fact that ice was more versatile for pvp even there, not to talk of the arena).
Nowadays you can actually argue that there are good ways to use a fire-spec in pvp. Even more instants, some more survivability, a 51-talent that puts more pressure on your opponents are part of that. And Fiery Payback can not be disregarded if you go deep fire - in my view. Of course: a firemages main goal will still be to deliver burst - but living for some seconds longer, increasing my chance that a heal reaches me or I get out of a stun and get a chance to push someone away with blastwave isn't really a bad thing in my eyes.
What definitely makes no sense is the reduced casttime for pyroblast. Okay, so the whole talent, damage reduction included, is clearly meant for PvP. But a cast with 4,25 Seconds casttime (minus further haste reduction, okay) still is way too slow for as good as every pvp-situation. And besides that: If someone really specs deep into the firetree for PvP, he or she would most definitely take Hot Streak. There's absolutely no need for that weird casttime-reduction-thingy, as I see it.
Last edited by Fetzen : 03/11/09 at 12:48 PM.
Reason: Corrected some shitty grammar
pyroblast is a 5 second cast and not 6 second, fiery payback has 2 points so it's a 3,5 sec cast reduction which makes pyroblast a 1.5 sec cast which is pretty good. It's on a 5 second cooldown then, I don't know how it interacts with hot streak however.
BeeLz: My mistake. Still: My question to ash2ash was meant absolutely serious and your correction of my misapprehension just says it's still more valuable then I thought. If I understand you correct, you'd say it's a useful talent too?
pyroblast is a 5 second cast and not 6 second, fiery payback has 2 points so it's a 3,5 sec cast reduction which makes pyroblast a 1.5 sec cast which is pretty good. It's on a 5 second cooldown then, I don't know how it interacts with hot streak however.
The last time I had fiery payback was 3.0 and its cooldown did interfere with hot streak.
That may not be the case now, or going forward. I'll test it again when we get dual spec.
I have a 78Mage on Warsong, and Ive been in the Fire Tree for 80% of his Career,(with a brief stint in Ice and Arcane to see what everyone was talking about). Ive had Fiery Payback since I could Reach it in the Firetree, and I must say, that reduced Damage when you get below 35% is the only reason I took fiery Payback. It wasnt until reading this post that I Decided to go check on what MY castime reduction was. I have some +Haste gear, and without the Fiery Payback reduction, I'm at 4.6 casttime. With Fiery Payback, I'm down to a 1.1 casttime. I've NEVER had the chance to use it.. Hotstreak, with enough +Crit, and some Creative Playstyle, allows my HotStreak to Proc so often its quite insane, I've recently added to my PowerAura a notifier to let me know when Im @/below 35%, so I can use the Pyroblast shortened Cast Time.. We'll see how it works.. BTW, I'm ALL Fire, not one point is in Arcane/frost.
If you are going to go deep fire pvp, going all fire makes pretty good sense. (going deep fire might not make sense if you want a good arena rating but that's another discussion entirely)
you need to go 13 into arcane to be worth going into it at all, and 11 into frost to make it worthwile (spell impact and icy veins are the primary useful talents low in the tree, the rest are pretty much filler. You need 18 points to get to shatter and that is going to take away either your fire pvp talents or your fire dps talents.
You really need about 52 points in fire to get all the damage benefits. You also want blast wave, dragon breath, firestarter, impact, probably fiery payback, maybe burning determination and/or blazing speed.
That tends to leave < 10 points for other talents, and both frost and arcane have jack-all in the first 5 points and nothing very exciting in the first 10 points to spend them on. 0/61/0 though means you can have all the dps and all the pvp talents, although a few points are fairly marginal....they're just better than dipping a few points into arcane or frost without going high enough for the money talents.
(nobody thinks deep fire is great for pvp compared to frost or arc/x alternatives, but I've had fun with it in battlegrounds)
Good day, i dinged 80 on my mage last night and didnt really leave Zul'Drak - so the quest rewards i have on me are all 'lower level' than what i would have got it had i dont SP / IC etc, but anyway, i came here to ask a relatively simple question, where do i start as far as gear goes? I have 2/12k Kirin'tor rep so i guess that is quite a few runs for the dagger.
I'm working on getting WG marks for the boots / head / trinket. In PvP is haste or crit better?
Want to set up some sort of 'game plan' of things to aim for, that is all ^^
Haste is generally agreed to be better. Best way to get gear is join naxx25, vault of archavon 10/25 and sartharion 25 for emblems and pvp gear, while doing WG every time it's up for the rewards and massive honor. Don't waste your time with the blue gear, and get 2/5 T7 (or T7.5) bonus, preferably legs+shoulders but gloves are not bad either. Epic mage weapons only drop in raids (no heroic equivalent) or made by blacksmithing, so you'll need to get lucky here or put in a bunch of gold into it. Even in pugs nowadays though most casters have at least a low quality epic weapon.
Right, i've since levelled my tailoring a little bit and have the leg enchant if it isnt showing there, and i havent bothered enchanting any of my stuff as it all has to go, basically.
While it isnt really expensive, what mix of the blue tailoring sets would you consider? Should i go for the full Frostsavage set and mix in the WG epics when i have access to them, or take two or three pieces of the blue duskweave set to add some haste and lose some resilience?
With 11k Hp and 11k mana, i am welcome in 'normal' instances, which seems counter productive and not welcome in heroics, nor raids obviously.
Once i get the ball rolling i'm sure all will be fine, i really need to work towards the Kirin'tor rep reward too.
Looking at your gear, I really don't understand what you've been doing for the last 10 levels, as you have less spell power than I had in raid-entry-level-gear at level 70.
Do not bother with blue pvp gear, it is a waste of time. Instead make yourself more naxx-viable - see the Best Non-Raid Mage Gear thread for more information. Picking a good DPS spec from the mage forums will probably also go a long way into letting you in a pug raid, as well as reading bosskillers.com so that you don't look like an idiot when you zone in naxx and have no clue what you're doing and end up getting kicked from the raid.
Keep in mind instances are so easy right now that a lot of groups will simply not care as they could've just as well clear it without you doing anything at all. Especially vault of archavon, which you practically must do every week (both 10 and 25-man).
Anyway that's as far as I'd go regarding derailing this thread to stuff unrelated to high-end mage pvp.
Hello again everyone, I apologize for the newb post earlier. Hopefully I can redeem myself with this one.
I have been tinkering with Arcane/fire Mage PvP specs for quite a while now, with my raiding rotations down I have grown quite bored with raiding, this is why PvP is the next horizon to be conquered and grown tired of.
I have been playing with this spec for a bit in BG's and it seems to produce the perfect amount of survivability/interupts/DPS/magegoboom/etc... I was hoping all the fine nerdfolk here at Elitist Jerks could maybe help me tweak it to help me have a more full PvP experience.
Granted this spec is mainly for WSG/AB/EotS/WG as I have not tested it enough to use it in rated arenas.
Looking at your gear, I really don't understand what you've been doing for the last 10 levels, as you have less spell power than I had in raid-entry-level-gear at level 70.
Do not bother with blue pvp gear, it is a waste of time. Instead make yourself more naxx-viable - see the Best Non-Raid Mage Gear thread for more information. Picking a good DPS spec from the mage forums will probably also go a long way into letting you in a pug raid, as well as reading bosskillers.com so that you don't look like an idiot when you zone in naxx and have no clue what you're doing and end up getting kicked from the raid.
Keep in mind instances are so easy right now that a lot of groups will simply not care as they could've just as well clear it without you doing anything at all. Especially vault of archavon, which you practically must do every week (both 10 and 25-man).
Anyway that's as far as I'd go regarding derailing this thread to stuff unrelated to high-end mage pvp.
That was a fantastic reply mate, i agree with you that the derailment of a high end pvp thread wasn't really neccessary, but i figured making my own thread with such a trivial question would have been frowned upon! Good to see you are from my server also.
As for Naxx, i have done it before with Last Hope on my rogue, Nexi. I assume its pretty much the same as it was at 60! if not, i'm a fast enough learner anyway.
I'll take a look at that thread you linked and get working on it tonight.
Hello again everyone, I apologize for the newb post earlier. Hopefully I can redeem myself with this one.
I have been tinkering with Arcane/fire Mage PvP specs for quite a while now, with my raiding rotations down I have grown quite bored with raiding, this is why PvP is the next horizon to be conquered and grown tired of.
I have been playing with this spec for a bit in BG's and it seems to produce the perfect amount of survivability/interupts/DPS/magegoboom/etc... I was hoping all the fine nerdfolk here at Elitist Jerks could maybe help me tweak it to help me have a more full PvP experience.
Granted this spec is mainly for WSG/AB/EotS/WG as I have not tested it enough to use it in rated arenas.
For starters, you are missing out on a lot of potential by going that deep into arcane and skipping arcane barrage. In arenas, keep in mind you're going to constantly have pressure on you so you'll be lucky to get a casttime spell off. Currently your damage dealing instants are cone of cold, frost nova, fire blast, and blastwave, none of which are going to be damaging enough to burst down a target who has any amount of resilience.
Your choice of clearcasting without arcane potency also is not very PvP friendly. Burst wins and +30% of free crit is more burst.
Arcane subtlety is not a PvP talent anymore since they took away offensive debuff protection (re:slow). You're better off putting 5/5 Arcane stability - 100% pushback protection on your main nukes is pretty nice when you're constantly getting hit.
Not having spellpower means your burst is less bursty which is bad for arenas.
Finally, not putting points in arcane flows means if your initial burst fails, chances are you're going to lose. You will either be A) out of mana with no 2 minute evocate or B) out of burst cooldowns.
You can fudge some points between mind mastery and arcane mind, but for the most part, all those points increase your survivability and burst damage ability to arena levels.
If you're dead set on fire, then you'll have to ask somebody else since I have 0 experience with fire in arenas. The general concensus seems to be that deep fire builds do poorly.
02/23/09, 5:05 AM
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