PVPFollow

*Basics- in depth to come

People seem to be bounding back to the pvp side of things (you can see just on the mage boards right now about four subjects with pvp in them) and alot of people keep asking "How do I beat _______"

I am not the end all beat all of mages. Although I have done my fair share of pvp my last few toons have been much more...relaxed. Regardless I'm still going to put my best effort out there to make a PVP guide for mages. If anyone would like to contribute feel free.




I'm going to focus mainly on the frost mage due mostly to the fact that I have by far the most experience in my mage career with this spec. Also the frost spec is regarded by most as the stand by for pvp mages.

As far as specs go- Arcane (17 points)

2/2 Arcane Subtlety
2/5 Arcane Focus
5/5 Improved Arcane Missiles
5/5 Arcane Concentration
1/1 Arcane Fortitude
2/2 Improved Counterspell

Fire (0 points)

None

Frost (44 points)

5/5 Improved Frostbolt
3/3 Frostbite
2/2 Improved Frost Nova
3/3 Permafrost
3/3 Piercing Ice
1/1 Icy Veins
2/2 Arctic Reach
5/5 Shatter
1/1 Cold Snap
2/2 Ice Floes
5/5 Winter's Chill
1/1 Ice Barrier
5/5 Arctic Winds
5/5 Empowered Frostbolt
1/1 Summon Water Elemental


This is a very competitive build which will allow you all the survivability of a frost mage, a great damage base, and counters to your enemies. I welcome everyone to try any build they desire but for the sake of this guide I'm going to play it safe.




As a frost mage a great portion of your damage will come from what is called shatter criticals. Against a frozen enemy you will have a much greater chance to land a critical strike thereby exploiting the damage bonus available to our class. Shatter crits also work off of hunters frost traps, so a clever mage can make use of Hunter tricks as well as our own frost nova, Water Elemental ranged Freeze, or a frost bite proc.

Learning your frost nova radius on the fly is important because it will allow you maximum distance in your endeavors (very few mages want to melee fight)

There was an Addon that brought up a frost nova radius for a second before it cast but I heard this was sternly frowned upon. If anyone knows any different please let me know. Regardless, assuming that you are playing as most do : P Learn the distance of your Cone of cold spells, your frost nova radius, and always have an idea of you Water Elementals mana. The Water Elemental will run out of mana before the 45 second duration has passed so know when to squeek in that last freeze before he fades. By doing this you will maximize you chance of massive crits in pvp.

Last on the basics of shatter crits is the double crit. If you are against a frozen target and you cast-say frostbolt at that frozen target and the moment your frostbolt leaves your fingertips you hit an instant cast (fire blast, or Ice lance) both of the attacks will receive the bonus against the frozen enemy which can be very helpful given the fact that frostnova/frostbite/freeze breaks almost alwayson a crit and can quite often with lesser damage as well.




Now that you have the basics of how you will score most of your big hits the main thing to do is get out there and play. Practice makes permanent the things that will make you a better player. (like not letting a hunter see you come walking toward them from across the map)

After you have some practice you should know your strengths (warriors being chief) and your weaknesses (warlocks and hunters) and will have to adjust your game to accommodate.



basic rundown 1 v 1 fights

Warriors

- Warriors don't like it when they are frozen to the ground and you are twenty feet away pew pewing them into oblivion. Do this often. Start the fight with a counterspell if possible in order to put the warrior in combat. This prevents them from chargestuning you and hacking you to pieces. If you do get charge stunned, don't panic- Blink. Use your water elemental to range freeze and continue blasting. It's also not a bad idea to have frost ward active to prevent reflects from crushing your strategy.

Paladins

- Paladins live twice in a solo fight. Freeze will be minimally effective so keep moving. If you are stunned use whatever means necessary to free yourself because a paladin will tear a stunned mage to shreds. when they bubble use this time to bandage yourself and bring back up your mana.

Rouges

- While we don't have a pet to sense sheathed players we do have a few tricks. Level one blizzard is my favorite. Low mana cost, slows your foe, chance of a frostbite proc, and exposes sneaky rouge types. Ice block/Water Elemental is your friend in this fight.

Warlocks

- Expect to be feared. In this way a mage can be prepared to face his/her fears (heheheheheh) Will of the Forsaken, Ice Block, trinket, and cold snap are all means of escaping fear. Ice Block has the added effect of wiping dots (a warlocks main drain) from you. Fel hunters will eat your shield, silence you and sing show tunes at you. Bad mamajamas. A spec that includes Presence of mind is somewhat more effective against a lock as you can pump out large damage or instasheep them. As a frost mage double shatter crits are out of the question. Bolts are out of the question. Freeze them then hit them fast. I <3 Arcane Missles :P

Hunters

- surprise sheeping their pet often works to great effect against marksman and Beast mastery hunters. With marks it lets us force the fight into a one on one tool bag match (and we have quite a few tools) while against a beast mastery hunter we can force them to use Bestial wrath early in the fight from where we can Summon our water elemental and Ice Block most the duration while our WE dps's for us. Things to expect are scatter shot, silence, bestial wrath as well as quick hits that add up to serious damage.

Druids

- Number one rule is don't let moonfire spam freak you out. Set up a shield and show them why we are a cannon. Moonfire aside, slowing freezing effects are going to try to be avoided by shape shifting. This will burn up some mana from the druid. If you can drop them fast (before they know they are getting dropped) do so otherwise force them to fight your fight.

Shaman

- Shaman will dispell your shields drop a grounding totem, shock you and have to at somewhere around 60% hp before you can nova/blink away. How I handle this is with mind games. Soon as my shield goes down I recast mana shield. Purge is fairly expensive mana wise as where mana shield isn't. After they purge this second shield I toss on a frost ward (it is unlikely that they will dispell a third time) in anticipation of a frostshock. Blink, feign sheep into a lower level frostbolt followed by a sheep. Set up from here and rain destruction, be prepared with your imp counterspell and blink.

Priests

- Do more damage than they heal. Counterspell when it counts. Ice block to wipe dots. I honestly have zero trouble fighting priests.





Team fights

Some examples of mages in team situations. http://youtube.com/watch?v=43Y9-0OYINA

In this video you can see the mage in a number of situations in a 2 v 2 setting. Wish it were from the mages perspective. As you can see, Sheeping is used to great effect.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=dJNLQS6yYig

Shatter crits in depth-

Ever notice how you can start moving on your mount before the cast bar is all the way full up? It's the same for all spells in the game. There is a little lag between your toon and the server. A good add-on that will help you exploit this lag is quartz. Another that I've messed with is lag cast. Check them both out to see what fits your play style.

When you download quartz you will notice a red portion of the cast bar. The start of that red portion is where the spells really stop casting. What does that mean for you my aspiring frosties? Quicker spells and double shatter crits even at low levels.

High level pvp

A good way to combo- WE (water elemental) freeze just before your frost bolt leaves your hand (because with shatter crits, the game doesn't care if the target is frozen when your spell lands...only when your spell leaves your hand) and follow up with an icelance in that red zone of your cast bar. This will still give you the triple damage off of the ice lance (because, remember- your target was frozen when Ice lance left your hand. So even if frostbolt crits and breaks your nova, as long as you let ice lance fly before your bolt hit you still get the bonus) as well as a chance for a shatter crit with your frost bolt.


At lower levels this can be done with Fireblast in the same way (minus the triple damage of course) and even before the WE comes into play with your frost nova.

It's almost always a good idea to wait on freezing your target in pvp because I promise that pally won't just sit there waiting for you to shatter crit him.


evertras' video tutorial for shatter crits. Evertras also has mage tutorials out in the I suck at pvp line.




Till the next update.




























Edited, Feb 8th 2008 2:40am by Xiemage

Edited, Feb 8th 2008 2:42am by Xiemage

Edited, Feb 15th 2008 1:49pm by Xiemage

Solo... I guess so, but they LOVE to manaburn mages (and locks). You MUST stop manaburn. Them healing isn't so terrible because you can generally out-dps a priest one on one, but.... manaburn and you're toast.

I only got as far as the Warrior part and quit reading. A mage that says to use blink when the warrior charges you needs to go back and PvP somemore before writing a guide about it. Sorry man.. nice try.

edit for spelling

Edited, Feb 9th 2008 10:18pm by DarkHybridX

[Xiemage][Explain? That's silly.]

Because when a warrior uses charge it is like a 1 second stun and if you blink you waste your only chance of getting out of stuns.

So then the warrior could use intercept which is a 3 second stun and the warrior will rape you.

Thanks for the add-on brooman!


As for intercept stunning, I've never had a problem keeping the second stun from coming and if I do get in a pickle I have block. Most warriors I fight don't hit me. Not once. The reason? I don't let them.

I did say though that I wasn't the foremost authority and I defiantly welcome other views (especially if I learn something lol) but as far as this one goes, I think I'm going to stick with my strat.

Well I finally got past the warrior/charge thing and read the rest. Decided to get my *** off my rogue and pvp with my mage for a week and here's some stuff you can add if ya want :)



Yeah.. that's about it. Instant casts FTW. Just blow them up till they shield and get ready for another go. One fun trick if your fire is when they bubble and your HP is all good look at your timer (you all DO have naturenemy cast bars right?) and start spinning up a pyro from range. Make them chose to heal to full and take a 5k crit to the face or stop healing and go stop you.




1 on 1 these guys are cake. Just don't blink when they first pop out and start stabbing. With the latest patches is safe to assume that all rogues will have shadow step. If you blink now they will just be waiting for you when you get there. Instead hit up that ice block we love so much and hope he's retarded enough to blow is vanish on you. Congrats.. you still have blink to play with.. he has 0 CDs. Now kite away. BTW.. don't use your tink to drop the poisions till he's out of range and used shadow step. He'll just toss em right back on.





Don't get me started. I just hope you have imp CS. Lock em out of their shadow tree for 8 sec and give em all you got. If their SL/SL it's not a bad idea to try and sheep them and kill their pet. Really hard.. pain in the ***.




Yeah.. the pet sheep is kinda fun. Hope they pop big red soon. But DO NOT pop your ele and IB if they pop big red. That's just dumb. With you out of commission they'll just go after your ele. And with big red they can just 2 shot it. When they pop it I just blink n run till they catch up to me.. then hit IB and wait it out. Then I'll bring out my ele.





I'm not even going to talk about these guys right now. Unless their resto they are so easy to kill it's actually boring. But... using rank 1 frostbolt to make them spam ********* to oom is soooo funny.





Yeah.. this is where you get to play a lock. Roll face on keyboard... pat yourself on back.




Really? Come over to spinebreaker and I'll show you some that will. Spriests are kinda like locks without pets. CS and nuke away. Now disc/holy on the other hand... Be prepared to toss your beer, cat, keyboard, somthing across the room. They're like the f*&king energizer bunny. You'll probably find yourself wanding them... alot. Try to get the jump on them and burn them as fast as you can. You want them to try and heal before they try and mana burn. Be ready with your CS when they do and finish them off.


Keep in mind that this is mainly for 1 on 1. In groups and arenas things change for alot of classes.

Actually it is a bad idea, they'll spell lock you when you're casting poly, lock your arcane school for 6 seconds (blink, COUNTERSPELL) and start a fear chain.



GFY. I play both, and locks are a bit easier in 1v1 PVP, but they are far more complicated then mages in group PVP (LOL SHEEP AND FROSTBOLTS)





edit- @xiemage, I saw that today, that's a good movie. I died a little inside that both the warlocks he fought have spell lock on autocast, how the hell did one get gladiator? Yes setup for another low blow jab at warlocks from bitter mages. But honestly, it saddens and surprises me how many locks don't know how to treat their spell lock as a manual counterspell.

Theres many possibilities, that lock was carried by stronger teammates, maybe was a minimal contributor on a gladiator team. I know alot of PVP'ers, and part of the high rating epeen stroke is more in "who you know" then "what you know".

So much the lock could have done there though. The main ones being (A) devour self out of frost nova/freeze, (B) spellstone out if devour is on cooldown, (C) trinket out as a last resort. Control your stupid pet's spell lock. I am a MUCH better lock then the one in that video, and theres no way that person legitimately earned gladiator without knowing stuff like that.

Edited, Feb 16th 2008 1:06am by mikelolol

agreed. I actually ended up writing a macro for a lock guildie of mine today because I saw him doing this (auto-spell lock).

-If anyone cares I think it was something like /cast [target=mouseover,harm]spell lock;spell lock iirc-


The basic principle in Ever's video is solid though, which is why I chose it to put on the guide (cuz let's face it. People who 'know' how to pvp aren't going to read this with an open mind. This is for the new.)


Thanks much for your .02 mike!