Mages

Odale

Active Member
Mages are WoW's Pure casters. Mages have little defense, so if you can keep up with a mage (Break out of Polymorph and get out of Frost Nova) (and survive insane damage) you'll beat them. As a mage however, you need to utilize the spells you have been given that slow your opponent down, Frost Nova and Polymorph. Playing a mage is relatively simple if you know how to slow the enemy down. My backlight went out on my laptop aqgain and i am typing by a reflection off the screen... it isnt really working. Ill finish this later.
 
They just revealed a bunch of the mage changes at IGN.

Quite lackluster IMO, priests get a spell that turn 50% of there spirit into damage, mages get a spell that turns 50% of our intellect into armor? So great I get an extra 130 armor... Shatter nerfed from 40% crit to 10%, good bye ice mages. AP nerfed from 35% to 30%, AE is now Insta cast but the replacemnet talent is 5 points for 5% crit on just AE, useless. BUT never fear we get a new rank of Conjure Food, apprantly that is what Blizzard is worried about.
 
It looks like the shatter nerf was a misprint, it is 50% still and now it seems like it affects both fire and ice spells. That could lead to some interesting builds. Something like 31 fire 20 ice, or 20 ice 20 fire 11 arcane. Blastwave + Shatter + Master of Elements = lots of free mana.
 
Exo-Slayer said:
It looks like the shatter nerf was a misprint, it is 50% still and now it seems like it affects both fire and ice spells. That could lead to some interesting builds. Something like 31 fire 20 ice, or 20 ice 20 fire 11 arcane. Blastwave + Shatter + Master of Elements = lots of free mana.

I still think AP specs will be better clearcast, pom, evo, and ofcourse ap, even with the nerf ap+fire specs would own pvp, frost hasnt changed much either. Only thing I dont like about MoE is it gives 30% mana back on crits. I'd much rather have clearcast where I can know that my next spell is free and unload into a mana heavy spell, rather than depend on crits to regain mana. Evocation is another talent that I'd have just because full mana bar in longer fights helps rather than wanding. Only way to find out is having fun on the PTR.
 
Evo is a trainable skill now, so to spec for AP you are getting Clearcast, POM and AP, and a bunch of useless talents. I think that MOE would work well with shatter in a crit build, I can just see hitting frost nova then blastwave and getting 10 crits, if it works with aoe that is. Also I want to try out combustion, I have a feeling its not going to beat out AP in pvp, but it will help a lot more in pve.
 
I think the talent review really boosts the Elementalist build. the "cookie cutter" (as cookie cutter as you can get with a not popular build) is 27frost/24 fire with the highlights being ice block, and shatter in ice and blastwave and critical mass in fire. This gives you huge insta cast dmg potential. The strength of the elementalist build is that you basically never have to stand still to unload your dmg and you have 3 get of jail cards in frost nova, blink, and ice block. Ice block is great for offense as you can use it to wait for your cooldowns on frost nova, fireblast, and CoC. Cold snap gives you another Frost Nova + CoC shatter combo.

The biggest disadvantage to Elementalist is mana inefficiency and lack of Improved CS (now that IAE and Evoc are trainable)

Here's a typical chain of spells:

Frostbolt opening (maybe 2) 800-1600
Frost Nova 200
CoC 600 (1200)
(Blink if stunned or movement impaired)
Blastwave 600 (900)
Fireblast 600
Coldsnap
Frost Nova 200
CoC 600 (1200)
Frost Bolt 800 (1600)

At the very minimum assuming no FB opening and no shatter crits, you're sitting on 3600 dmg. With all the shatters critting and 1 FB opening you'd be sitting on 6700 dmg. This is without trinketing and it's all insta cast except for the FB opening and FB ending. The one bad thing - you'll probably be OOM. Master of the Elements helps alleviate this a little bit.

You still have one more get of jail card at this point if whatever you were fighting isn't dead yet - Ice block.

Here's the build that I like with the new mage talents:

http://www.wowhead.com/talent/?RZVxrc0cuZiVczMVs

Assuming a fairly well geared mage has around 15% chance to crit from base crit, gear, and int: Non shattered: 25% crit for fireblast, 21% blastwave, 25% scorch, 45% flamestrike. Shattered: 75% fireblast, 71% blastwave, 65% CoC, 65% frostbolt.

This is definitely a PvP-focused build. Mana efficiency is alsmost nonexistant.
 
Eye for an eye is a Paladin talent. It causes all crits against the Paladin to return 30% of the damage to the caster.
 
After playing around on the test server for a little while I think this is the build I'm going to use. 29 Fire 22 Frost so I can get up to 8% damage from Firepower and then I feel 15% cone of cold damage outweighs 2 more %. With this build you get a lot of high damage instant casts and with shatter they crit quite often. Frost nova then hit blastwave and cone of cold and fireblast is on a 6.5 second timer. You also have Ice Block and Cold snap for emergencies, Ice Block is great for both pvp to remove dots or stay safe waiting for a cool down, and also as an aggro dump in pve.

http://www.wowhead.com/talent/?RZxghzf0uLVAM0o0po
 
Exo-Slayer said:
After playing around on the test server for a little while I think this is the build I'm going to use. 29 Fire 22 Frost so I can get up to 8% damage from Firepower and then I feel 15% cone of cold damage outweighs 2 more %. With this build you get a lot of high damage instant casts and with shatter they crit quite often. Frost nova then hit blastwave and cone of cold and fireblast is on a 6.5 second timer. You also have Ice Block and Cold snap for emergencies, Ice Block is great for both pvp to remove dots or stay safe waiting for a cool down, and also as an aggro dump in pve.

http://www.wowhead.com/talent/?RZxghzf0uLVAM0o0po

This build looks like it's probably one of the best ways to go unless people still prefer pom over other things.
 
mage help

This is notoriety, fellow 60 mage, if you guys as mages ever want help with strategies (end game or pvp), talent builds, advice, tips, feel free to stop in on the HK (holicron knights) mage forum we would be more than happy to help you just introduce yourself and ask away :cool:
 
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