Cataclysm: Situational Tips and Tricks
 

Please try to keep the discussion limited to raid encounters where possible.

Avoid mentioning blatantly obvious things which can be classified as simply "using common sense".

This thread will be a consolidated resource to present, review and discuss Situational or Encounter-Specific Tips, Tricks and Optimization techniques.

This topic operates independently of spec. All manner of items are up for discussion: Spells, Specs, Talents, Glyphs, Professions, Racials, Creative uses for Trinkets and Consumables, esoteric ways to handle Encounter specific Mechanics - and so on. In WOTLK, we would have noted things like: Invisibility can be used to Avoid Tear Gas on Putricide, Frost Warding talent (now obsolete) could be used for huge mana returns on Sindragosa, Incanter's Absorption could be abused in several creative ways.

Other EJ Class Forums have seen several threads like this over the years, for discussion on topics such as Situational uses for Vanish, Demonic Portal, Amplify Magic etc. They present a great opportunity to quickly pick up a few simple - yet effective - tips to improve performance. These types of discussion points often easily get drowned out and spread across multiple mega-threads, making them difficult to track.

This discussion is reserved for Cataclysm. I'll start the ball rolling with a few small items:

- Mages can blink out of the third Furious Roar Halfus Wyrmbreaker does (Used when he's 50% or below) and quickly Counterspell the Shadow Nova he attempts to immediately cast afterwards. Requires good timing, but is easy to do and makes that part of the fight considerably easier for healers.
- Spellstealing Remedy off Maloriak is very helpful. Don't let dispellers/purgers remove it! Its bonus mana regen will allow a Fire Mage to AOE more agressively and stay in the Burn Rotation longer
- Carefully timed Mirror Images on Chimaeron -25% will force him to waste a few melee swings killing your images.
- Using Invisibility (after Mirror Images) on Chimaeron will result in Mages always being one of the last classes to die, giving you more time to DPS him down.
- Invocation could potentially see very strong use on Cho'gall, given that you can relatively easily guarantee getting an interrupt on the "Worshipping" spell. Fire specs could adjust their spec for this fight to pick it up (by dropping AOE talents, given that they are unnecessary for this boss anyway)
- If the engineering Nitro-Belt fails on any encounter, Mages can instantly blink back to the ground without needing to wait for the parachute to slowfall them down.
- Someone mentioned you can be creative with Incanter's Absorption via a profession item to proc self inflicted damage on-demand, is this still possible?

Anything that is easily forgotten, overlooked, or wouldn't ordinarily be considered - is probably a good thing to mention here!

Arcane Mages that can grab threat on Temple Adepts in Vortex Pinnacle inside the Grounding Field can use the talented knockback from Mana Shield after being attacked, then Polymorph the Adept once it's clear.

I hope these are not too obvious, but here is my list of "thank god I am a mage" moments:

In Shadowfang Keep you can iceblock Baron Ashbury's Asphyxiate and take no damge - twice as frost mage and so greatly reduce the stress on your healer.

As Frost Mage in Stonecore you can take care of Corborus' Crystal Shard on your own and thus greatly simplify the encounter. Just pet freeze or frost nova the adds and cast blizzard. Turn on enemy name plates to see exactly when the adds spawn. A Ring of frost in the transition phase makes it fairly easy to control all the adds.

In the last encounter, High Priestess Azil, you can pet freeze the adds in P2 when they stand on an area where a "rock" will fall - they will die.

In Throne of the Tides there is this one coridoor after the 3rd boss I think. There are a few 1.2m HP Mobs and an endless spawn of nasty small adds. The big ones will cast an interruptable, but also spellstealabe spell that deal 20k damge every second to any enemy within 8 or 10 yards. Letting them cast it an spellsteal it makes handling the small adds (and thus the whole coridoor) very easy.

Ring of Frost has some fantastic uses in a few different AoE scenarios:

- On Magmaw it's great for keeping the adds in place while everyone lays down initial AoE and snares, allowing them to stay clumped and killed before they have a chance to go anywhere.

- On Maloriak it's great for CCing the adds going into the green phase to take some stress of the healers when you have 9-12 active. Following up with a Frost Nova / Cone of Cold / Blast Wave saves a lot of healer mana and potential tank deaths, especially if you're aiming for the achievement, with minimal extra effort from the mage.

The trash in Bastion of Twilight (or basically, any trash with a combination of melee and caster mobs) are perfect with [High-Powered Bolt Gun] if you are an engineer.
It procs Invocation if the trash has a spellcaster currently casting a spell, and ignite if it crits (crits for 18k-23k for me). Also seems to scale with your current amount of spellpower, AND you can use it while moving. Just a way to push some extra dps on trash.

Omnitron Defense Council - When Arcanotron reaches 50 energy, spamming a fast cast spell (scorch or ice lance will suffice) and then quickly spellstealing the damage stacks can result in a considerable damage increase. Combined with the toxic gas or the arcane pools can result in some amazing burst.

You have enough time to hard cast a pyro and spread the dot (flamestrike or blastwave to "force" impact) on the first add spawning on magmaw before they start moving.

(feel free to rephrase, english is not my native language)

you can spellsteal aura of arcane haste (or however it's called) in blackrock caverns at the trash just before Corla for 2 minutes of haste and increased damage.
frost spells are also very useful in Halls of Origination at Setesh encounter for helping the tank kite the ads around the room while you dps the portals/boss: nova/freeze/ring of frost

Further, you can leave a couple of rogues dpsing on Arcanotron for the interrupts and keep spamming spellsteal for full 15 seconds of shield. Buffs stack multiplicatively, a 10 stack power conversion on the arcane field means 3x damage fireballs with lower than 1 sec cast time. If stars align and you get Toxitron after, you can do a few hundred thousand dps for a few seconds when the ads spawn.

You'll need 3 mages with high enough mana to spellsteal all, if there's 2 rogues and the tank dpsing.

Use Dragon's Breath to interrupt the mind-controls during Cho'gall when the raid is clumped up. It's short duration makes it superior to the other long duration options like fear.

If you are too close to the edge on al'akir and think wind burst will knock you off, if you immediately blink when getting hit by it you can avoid being knocked off and you blink back on. Also you can blink through tornadoes as well.

Valiona and Ther something or other
 

when blackout is casted on a mage....you can iceblock it and it will auto dispell and you take no damage....just make sure you are spread out far enough

also works with cauterize, although you will have to be dispelled (or wait it out)

and on ODS as long as your not the one targeted by the slime you can frost nova them in place (pretty sure all forms of slow work but this is mage forum...woot)

I have found that for most raid boss encounters it is better to use evocation as your first mana restore ability, rather than a gem first. By doing this you more often than not get an extra evocation just before the burn phase and/or a gem just when you need it.

In Deadmines the Defias Envokers after the Foe Reaper encounter, can have they're Debuff Spellstolen (Immune to Many forms of CC Buff) making the trash considerably easier on your way to Admiral ripsnarl

Could I make a suggestion that this discussion be limited to raid encounters? Most of the comments listed for heroic fights I find to be common sense, rather than "situational tips and tricks."