As the new appointed mage class leader (lol, I suck in 1 on 1 pvp) This post is an ongoing process whcih will edited many times after advice and err pointers from other players.
I´m not here to tell you I know all thats be known about mages, but along the way I have picked up pieces of information about this and that.
!st of all, mages arent supposed to be good at soloing, we are supposed to burst kill monsters at approx our own level. But we are excellent support class dealing loads of damage, together with our AoE damage capacity. We are known to be the "glass cannon" of WoW. Our only tank abilities are poly and blink (maybe mana shield) and with some talents ice block and ice barrier.
Mages have a tendancy to get aggro from doing to much damage, same with rogues. So a mage needs to learn how much burst damage we can do to a single monster without getting aggro and possibly getting killed. This isnt really an issue on non-boss monsters, but when it comes to bosses, we need to avoid aggro at all costs, since we as squishies go down in approx 2 hits. Heres where a frost mages comes in with ice block. As frost mage I dont have to worry to much about aggro, since IF I get aggro I will simply go into "stasis" mode to avoid a premature death.
Talent builds:
Heres where it gets interesting, but most mages go either fire/arcane or frost/arcane, wheres the first is the best for burst damage capabilities, while the latter offers some survival tools. Up to date just going arcane is probably not a good choice since the major attack spell, arcane missiles really drains mana fast.
But theres some talents in the arcane tree thats a must to get, improved counterspell, excellent to soothe suicide arcane mages in pvp and to pull spell casters in dungeons. The only other class that has "silence" is shadow priests and we won´t have many of these with us in high end caves, so it´s the mages job to handle the caster mobs, priest has more important jobs to do.
In order to get there we have some choices on the way there, Arcane Focus or Improced Arcane Missiles. AF offers -10% arcane resistance, doesnt sound much, but it´s better then IAM. Why you say, AF makes them resist poly and silence alot less, which are crucials skills of a mage. Instant Arcane Explosion, IAE, since its the only aoe spell we have thats instant and dont require us to stand still. This spell makes us no1 on all mobs hate list, so be careful when you use it, but a must spell to have in mass pvp.
Evocation, we all hate to run out of mana on boss fights, heres our tool to keep casting bolts.
For fire mages; presence of mind, PoM is what make pyroblast a useful skill, together with poly its instant sheep.
End notes; due to restricted amount of text per post this post will later be divided into several posts and will be continual updated. please don´t add feedback in this post, give them in pms or on TS or ofc ingame.
I´m not here to tell you I know all thats be known about mages, but along the way I have picked up pieces of information about this and that.
!st of all, mages arent supposed to be good at soloing, we are supposed to burst kill monsters at approx our own level. But we are excellent support class dealing loads of damage, together with our AoE damage capacity. We are known to be the "glass cannon" of WoW. Our only tank abilities are poly and blink (maybe mana shield) and with some talents ice block and ice barrier.
Mages have a tendancy to get aggro from doing to much damage, same with rogues. So a mage needs to learn how much burst damage we can do to a single monster without getting aggro and possibly getting killed. This isnt really an issue on non-boss monsters, but when it comes to bosses, we need to avoid aggro at all costs, since we as squishies go down in approx 2 hits. Heres where a frost mages comes in with ice block. As frost mage I dont have to worry to much about aggro, since IF I get aggro I will simply go into "stasis" mode to avoid a premature death.
Talent builds:
Heres where it gets interesting, but most mages go either fire/arcane or frost/arcane, wheres the first is the best for burst damage capabilities, while the latter offers some survival tools. Up to date just going arcane is probably not a good choice since the major attack spell, arcane missiles really drains mana fast.
But theres some talents in the arcane tree thats a must to get, improved counterspell, excellent to soothe suicide arcane mages in pvp and to pull spell casters in dungeons. The only other class that has "silence" is shadow priests and we won´t have many of these with us in high end caves, so it´s the mages job to handle the caster mobs, priest has more important jobs to do.
In order to get there we have some choices on the way there, Arcane Focus or Improced Arcane Missiles. AF offers -10% arcane resistance, doesnt sound much, but it´s better then IAM. Why you say, AF makes them resist poly and silence alot less, which are crucials skills of a mage. Instant Arcane Explosion, IAE, since its the only aoe spell we have thats instant and dont require us to stand still. This spell makes us no1 on all mobs hate list, so be careful when you use it, but a must spell to have in mass pvp.
Evocation, we all hate to run out of mana on boss fights, heres our tool to keep casting bolts.
For fire mages; presence of mind, PoM is what make pyroblast a useful skill, together with poly its instant sheep.
End notes; due to restricted amount of text per post this post will later be divided into several posts and will be continual updated. please don´t add feedback in this post, give them in pms or on TS or ofc ingame.