Since the talents are coming out early.Follow

Lolz, so you're raiding frost with your mage, levelling shadow with your priest, but could go demo with you lock instead >:-\

at first i was pissed they removed improved flamestrike, but then i saw they added a talent that adds +6% to 4 different spells i use, so thats +24% in a way, but still, it makes flamestrike a lot less potent, and that is how you aoe with fire, unless of course you are one of those people who use ARCANE explosion as a fire mage (AE is nice, but only used a few times as a finisher, not as your main aoe spell, which will make you go oom real quick).. here is my build:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/mage/talents.html?tal=2300050010000000000000050520231200333105310510030000000000000000000

Once in a while we agree 100% and this is one of those times!

i couldn't possibly level as fire. my instinct as a caster is to avoid taking damage, and control the fight. fire is little more than a puddle of potential damage. it's a given that fire is more dps if you can stand there and convert your mana into health for minutes on end, but that's not at all what leveling is.

i'd much rather watch my target scream with rent flesh and sag weakly into a crawl before a spear of frozen hate impales his frigid corpse. >=D

besides, you can't pvp fire. and, while doable either way, it's far easier to do elite quests solo when you can kite. if i can hit 1k dps in my gear as a frosty, i'm happy enough to raid kara with the spec too.

i'll always be frost.

the elite quest targets that were designed to require a full group to complete were unsnareable, but they also had more health than a mage could take down with their own mana pool anyway. there are still more elite quests that are designed for two or three players that can be solo'd because their targets are still snareable. there are a few case even where the target is not snareable, but frosties have an easier time with it because of various survival mechanisms like frost barrier, or even the extra buffer of your water elemental's health!

right now, the most profitable way to make money as an herbalist is to farm the elite trees in skettis. it's doable if you're fire, but dangerous and more time consuming. so of course it's better if you're frost. my opinion is that fire is not conducive to solo play -- it's designed to be pure artillery in group situations. and so it's better at that role.

you *could* pvp as anything you want... but doing well in pvp? you can't walk into pvp combat with pve gear and a pve spec and then do poorly and claim that you do alright. everyone gets kills and honor points even if they're the worst player in the fight. that's "alright" in some people's books, but it's not actually contributing, and no one can seriously claim that players who don't contribute are worth anything in any aspect of gameplay.

blizzard already did make all specs "capable" of pvp in purely technical terms. you hit a player and voila: you're engaged in pvp. what blizzard is now accomplishing is a dilution of the strengths of individual talent trees. dps is cheap, and mages aren't the only ones who can bring it. the pure dps classes now require expanded utility and endurance to compete with hybrids who have the same dps output and yet can heal themselves. pvp balance is mutually exclusive to pve balance. wow is my favorite example of this lesson.

Edited, Sep 8th 2008 3:38pm by LaFey

Perhaps fire doesn't fit your solo play style, but I have extensively played most fire/frost variants and would say exactly the opposite. Fire and frost have been designed to be played differently. Frosts play style has more benefits in PvP than fire and fire has more in PvE than frost.

While we may disagree on fire vs frost in solo play this:



Is about as well said as I have ever seen it. I dearly wish that blizzard would create two forms of each tree, one set for arena/BGs and on set for PvE and spare us the constant tension between the two mutually exclusive goals.

Edited, Sep 8th 2008 6:09pm by MrFredII

Especially with the upcoming changes to the talents, a heavy arcane/fire build that has been looked at before may, "MAY" (before i get flamed) be usable in an arena setting. I mean the burst that would be there used on the correct class at the correct time (lotta ifs I know) could be game changing and almost unpreventable.

Forgive me if I miss something, but save a paladin healer and a grounding totem, unleashing Arcane power, trinket, fireblast, arcane barrage, PoM Pyro (that will be close to 60% crit from talents/gear im guessing) another arcane barrage when 3 sec CD is over, and another fireblast, all without exposing a school and having another arcane barrage soon will be a force to be reckoned with. Throw in a slow at the start or time your CS silence correctly and theres nothing a healer can do but die. Not to mention if they are stun locked by your rogue partner. Ooh, dont forget impact.

Less forgiving spec? yes but i think it will take the whole 3 minute mage to a new level (namely the 2 minute mage)

as much as i like the idea of barrage, since it's instant, it won't scale worth crap. so, despite its relative efficiency (for an arcane spell certainly) and low cooldown, it won't be in a pve mage's rotation.

as for



if you have a rogue stunlocking your victim, how is that a strength of the mage class? =P rogues do enough damage easily to kill anyone during the ten seconds or so of cheapshot/kidneyshot. it's one of the most complained about traits of the class =P

as for all this talk of 3minute mages... it sounds like it's time for a history lesson. there was a lot of moaning and groaning way back when one shotting someone was actually possible -- provided you outgeared their greens with all your tiered epics, and before resilience existed. this moaning and groaning -- and the cheering -- was done by people who don't know crap about mages and how they work. especially since arenas have changed so many things. mages are CC in arenas and they really can't afford to spend time trying to burst down someone while there's a healer pumping health at far more efficient rates than you. and higher rates at that. you see, when you list off this lovely page long list of spells you *could* chain together... there's the global cooldown to consider. six instant spells? no problem. that's 6 * 1.5seconds required to do them all. and in that time, someone's already locked down your healer and has killed your squishy butt. 3minute builds suffer from an obvious lack of understanding about timing and the purpose of such cooldowns. eating your cooldown as soon as you can means you've just wasted it: because pom and ap are only useful after someone is already weak.

ironically, mages aren't dps in arenas. they're just CC.

i have a question concerning the patch notes now. it says that instead of decreasing the cast time of arcane blast, it now increases the damage. anyone care to post some theorycraft about the relative mana efficiency of a spam'd arcane blast? how about with +1k spellpower? if arcane is getting a spammable workhorse spell, does this mean we could possibly see a really viable arcane raiding spec? the kind of gear such a build might go for -- i hear caster gear is being divided roughly into spirit stuff and crit/hit stuff. but that's just heresay, cause i can't prove it. but many kinds of mages might see a reason to go for spirit in wotlk...

Edited, Sep 11th 2008 6:30pm by LaFey

you must have never played a druid

playing on the PTR... Deep arc is sweet. i dont remember the exact spec I am but in arcane down to Barrage and in fire to Ignite. If I loose it's a very close fight, and only because i didnt pop AP. Quick not though. Arcane potency(30% while PoM is up) doesnt always show for some reason. sometimes it says i have 60% crit, other times it stays at 30%, i hope im still getting the benefit even though it doesnt show but im not sure, i do seem to crit ALOT though.)

Damn, I had pretty much settled on going deep frost 0/0/61 as a first pass, with the intention to stay frost and tweak the build based on some playing around.

Then I logged on with my mage (10/48/3) this evening to run a few dailies ... and it's ridiculous how thing just get purely and simply blown to smitherines with fire.

Half of the time it's 2x fireball and a fire blast, fight over. The other half is when one of the fireballs crit .. the fire blast is not needed then.

Now I'm totally confused again, I had convinced myself that frost is what I should be because it's a safer bet for levelling, and it has a nice little array of new toys. But if (new) fire is even the same or better (it has to be better) than it is now .. I'm going to have so much fun with it.

An Elemental build will probably work very well once you get FFB, but that's only at level 75. I will 100% definitely be trying that out ... there's just too much potential there to be ignored.

So i just started to think about what build i should go with for frost pvp. Does anyone think this is viable?

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage=00000000000000000000000000003533003310203130232100231151203303030102030000000000000000

I've given up empowered fb for improved because i barely find my self casting fb in arena. Is this a good idea?