Definitely team synergy is an important part of spec choices. With a rogue spamming cripple, anything permafrost is probably a waste of points. Frost channeling is huge if you're having mana issues - more likely at higher ratings.

I like ice floes because of the ice barrier reduction, I find it often important to protect important casts from pushback.

I've lately gone back on arctic winds.. its % damage per point is pitiful, its mitigation per point is also pitiful. Getting both the defense and offense adds to the value, but I haven't found my overall damage output, or the amount of melee/hunter damage I recieve, significant enough to justify the 5 points.

Improved cone of cold is going to add up to way more damage than arctic winds if you're using it during a burst phase. It's one of my favorite talents.

Most of this is playstyle preference as long as your choices fit together coherently and provide the most benefit to your particular team. I'm currently testing out a build that doesn't use winter's chill. I'm not sure added debuff control, especially debuff control that doesn't play well with polymorph, is worth the significant point investment. Perhaps if I had a warlock or shadow priest on my team it would be more effective.

What about trinket choices?

I'm still gearing my mage, 30 badges in with a Xiri's and PvP Medallion.

I've been eyeing The Lightning Capacitor though, but I have some questions about it and would like to hear other's thoughts, with or without experience. Search results are non-existent or too random, especially with the abbrev >_<

I'm running in a 4dps setup, Warrior/UAlock/Spriest/FrostMage(me)/Paladin. We're still working out the kinks, me benching my rogue of 2+ years (we were running 2UAlock/Spriest/Mutrogue/Paladin before) so our rating hasn't breached 2k, around 1900 at the moment though. I never get focused (a HUGE relief coming from playing my rogue) with a better geared Spriest and UAlock running amok.

Like you'd think, I spend most of my time shutting down healers, stopping offense burst with sheeps and snare control, and adding burst dps with Pet Shatter Combos + FIreblast.

Will the charge go off on my current target if I nova, and get 3 crits? What about if I nova, CoC and get the 3 prereq crits, but I do not have a target? I was thinking it would be nice to Icelance my way up the Winters Chill debuffs along with a couple charges to unleash a more devastating shatter combo. I find with Xiris if I pop it, shit goes down and my role of CC/control takes priority and my trinket goes to waste popping Super Polymorphs.

Does the proc get shatter bonus? Any other info would rock, or a link to a compiled source would be appreciated. Other trinket discussion encouraged as well (from pvp standpoint).

The Lightning Capacitor proc goes to the target of your last critical strike. So if that's molten armor, it will hit the warrior attacking you.

I'm currently running mage/priest in 2's and doing pretty decent we eventually get it up to around 2100 then we would run into warlocks that are drain spec. I usually come in to the match up saying lets kill the fel hunter, but after 7 of spells in a row are resisted, I say screw it and dps the warlock while my partner (priest) is trying to mana burn their paladin,priest,druids while getting mana drained. IF i did get the pet down we could drink more often and have a higher chance of winning. So my question is should I stack penetrations gems in my season 1 gear to kill the fel hunter? (if you have any other suggestion about beating warlock/healer combo, I would appreciate it). I was also thinking about recruiting a rogue to switch out with vs warlock groups.

heres my armory: The Armory

Armory: The Armory

As the season has progressed, I have been gearing more towards damage over survivability. But barring a few honor items (ring and possibly pvp trinket which I am almost finished grinding), I have no idea what further gear path to take. Should I break my 2-piece T4 bonus (shoulders and hat)? Would season 2 pants be a large upgrade over T5 considering I’d also lose the spell hit? Or should I just save for another 2 weeks and get the new spellblade?

My 3v3 team (MS Warrior, Resto Shaman, Frost Mage) is probably the one I will focus most of my energy into, if that changes anything.

Relevant stats
~9200 hps (wtb boar’s speed enchant on Zuluhed server)
~870 spell damage
~300 resil (once I get pvp ring)

I used to wear two pieces of t4 in season one also, but the armor upgrade in season 2 is so nice that I had to give t4 up. Arena is based all around resilience now so I would get the pants eventually also.

But then again, Blink sucks up your mana faster than you would believe and it seems it would almost be better to let your healers use some of their mana since I, at least, go OOM before them 99% of the time.

I really do miss Improved Blink from my early stint as 33/28. The mana saved on a typical arena fight was amazing,

Yeah, the great thing about 33/28 is all of the little things. Blink, mana shield, prismatic cloak, blazing speed - they all add up and create a surprising level of survivability. Unfortunately there's not a talent which counteracts "that mage doesn't have ice barrier, kill him first" Well I guess there is one, but that's beside the point.

This is actually one of the things I've wondered about, how come most frost mages always start the match with ice barrier up? That is basically screaming to the other team "don't target me, I'm frost!" - you would think it would be in the team's best interest for a frost mage not to announce his spec, hope to get targeted and then force the other team to disrupt their assist train and pick a new target when he iceblocks.

Actually I've found that the mental deterrent is far more valuable than the barrier and block. When a mage isn't focused, he's free to disrupt and damage the other team at will. Which is what wins games (at least for us). I had to switch to frost because not having barrier was getting me focused from the start every game.

We actually fought a team last week where from the start the mage had mana shield up. I called out that he wasn't frost and we should focus him. We got him to around 40% and he ice blocked. "Okay" I thought, "must be an elementalist." I told my team to stay on him, and after the block we got him to 10% and he summoned a water elemental. We killed him anyway. It was strange for sure, but really reinforces my point I think. The extra 1000 or so health from barrier is nice, but with hypothermia it is very possible to focus and kill a frost mage first. But for whatever reason, having barrier is like a free pass to not get harassed in the first place, and I'll gladly take it.

Because most of the huge burst damage for a lot of teams comes from the warrior, and a timely blink can easily fuck up their burst. If you rely on melee at all, a good (and geared) ice mage can punish your team severely for trying to focus him.

Edit: But of course you can also punish the other team severely by spam sheeping/CS/burst damage, which I prefer. =)

so true !

And that's the reason why before some 5vs5 I switch some stuff to gain dmg & loose stam&resiliance (boots, wrist, pant --> not visible ones)

A free mage can really own the game with the "spam sheeping/CS/burst damage".

Stopcasting-Macro for CS is really a must-have in my opinion. Also bind the CS to some key which is really close to your hand, it's one of the few things which you really have to shoot FAST in some situations. Since I bound the CS to my "F"-key I rarelly miss even 1.5s casts.

Our team actually has more problems killing elementalists than 41 frost mages. Blazing speed just enables the mage to escape from our warrior far more than ice barrier. I honestly never see any mages that aren't iceblock speced anymore, last season the only non iceblock mages was the 2 warrior 2 pom fire mages 1 paladin team that caused us grief.

Speaking of non-block mages...

Is it even remotely possible to arena at a high level with something else (33/28 probably)? It's mostly a hypothetical question -- I loathe mage PvP, I'll use my druid if I ever get semi-serious in the arena -- but I'm curious.

Yeah, there are a couple very high rated mages using 33/28 with blazing speed. Blazing speed is clutch.

sorry for older bump, but this was the closest thread I could find for my question.

Getting back into the game after quite a few months absence. Never got into Arenas or PVP much in TBC before I left, but I enjoyed pvp pre-TBC and want to get back into it.

After reading this thread, I'm happy to see that frost is possibly the most viable pvp spec (always liked frost the most) but I'm surprised an elementalist (41/20) with so many instant cast spells isn't stronger. Is this a result of the increased HP and resilience that's so standard? It just seems like a 41/20 shatter build CoC -> Dragon's breath -> Blast wave -> fire blast -> Arcane Explosion spam is so much burst that you'd be dropping people left and right. Especially if you get em rooted with a lucky frostbite proc or nova first. Where does the theorycrafting fail here? Do we go OOM too quick even in 2v2 or 3v3 with this strategy? Are we too frail

I just want a few pointers before I spend too much time practicing a non-viable spec to figure out that it's, indeed, not viable. I'm still operating mostly on pre-TBC ideas, where even my frost build had plenty of burst to take out most anyone other than druids, pallys and some warriors, and enough control to make those warr fights winnable given enough time (good druid/pallys were pretty impossible for me back then though).

The problem with casts such as blastwave is that you risk hitting CC, which is a big no-no. Unless you're positive you're going to drop the guy, breaking your team's CC is a bad idea. Also, refer to my comment below.

I think a full fire mage (or even better, AP fire) belongs on a 4 dps team, if anything. 3 dps/2 healer matches pretty much dictate "outlasting and survivability" so Ice Barrier and Ice Block are pretty vital.

Edit: I've never done any 5v5 arena as fire because I don't believe the damage outweighs the survivability of frost (plus you still have shatter combos).

Kir: You're definitely thinking in level 60 terms which is no fault of your own. The game between well-geared arena players is very, very different now. Between resilience nerfing all your crits and ungodly large health pools (think 10k unbuffed for the squishier classes), burst on that level is going to be woefully inadequate. My best advice is to get in there and see for yourself. At the end of the day the mage ends up being a used for control effects like counterspell, polymorph, nova/coc, and quick focused bursts of damage. Survivability and mana consumption are major, major concerns in high-level play.

Also dragon's breath and cone of cold share a cooldown >.>

Ah, shared cooldown.. I never specced into Dragon's breath for long, except for shits and giggles to try it out. I was mainly frost for leveling/grinding. Guess I never realized that or forgot.

I did know people have 10k+ hp as a base, I had about that with shitty gear at lvl 70 before I stopped. But, after a few bolts/scorchs to soften up, thought the instant casts would be enough to finish people. I guess I'm underestimating resilience too. I was routinely getting 4-5k bursts off of a single frostbolt/icelance combo when a mob was rooted. If I got off 2 ice lances before it broke, or they all critted, it got even higher. Thought with BW, DB and FB, you could get 10k+ bursts, or at least have some instant cast ready every few seconds while you run around kiting.

Your post makes me glad though, I've always preferred the highly control oriented side of the mage. That's how I played in BGs before, with a frost spec. Rogue, warrior and hunter friends who would brag how easy they owned mages would eat crow when they fought me. I'm not saying I was some pvp god, just that I played a style that most didn't and they weren't used to it. Un-ending dead zoning of hunters, root and kiting melees.. then iceblock - cold snap, iceblock if back up arrived pissed enough people off that I'd get chased halfway across AB to finish me off. I'm not suprised at all they nerfed that with hypothermia.

I remember dueling a few warriors when I hit 70, and their reflect ability changing that from one of my easier 1v1 matchups to possibly the worst. Is this still a bad matchup, or did I just not get good enough at reacting and throwing an icelance or something to take the reflect? I tried it for a bit, but it just seemed to throw off my rhythm so much, that it was basically the same effect. i.e. game over.

edit: P.S. I appreciate the advice. I do intend to 'get in there' myself and figure it out. I just would rather start down a viable path and perfect it. I was horrible at pvp for a long time until I finally figured out enough tricks from playing my frost spec and seeing videos from good mages that showed how each spec was played. I was blindly trying to figure it out myself, changing specs a lot, and sucking at them all.

Warriors are still a tough 1v1, but because of weapons, not spell reflect. It is still consistantly winnable for the mage if you start on relatively even footing and the mage doesn't make any mistakes. When you're up against someone with a tier 2 or 3 weapon, getting caught without a blink or ice block is usually game over. Spell reflect can make a pretty big difference if you aren't ready for it, but the way around it is to either wait for it to wear off or just ice lance.