1v1, frost vs. _____ writeup (long!)Follow

I consider myself pretty decent at dueling, and I see alot of questions on "how do I beat a ______", so this is my quick thread on how I would play against specific classes as a frost mage. The main thing it comes down to is practice. Some people say duels are stupid, but in my mind if you want to learn how to PVP getting your 1v1 game rock solid is a core part of that. PVPing in a group environment (arena, fighting at contested BG flags) is the next step up, where you're target juggling, decursing teammates, CC'ing, kiting and trying to do damage. That's where I still need lots of practice myself, but I think my 1v1 game is pretty tight.



Starting from the top:

Death Knight - Armor: I use mage, lose some FB procs, but force them to reapply diseases far more often, = they do alot less damage
Don't blink until after he death grips, nova him just out of range, pull water elemental on your next GCD, he'll be hitting chains on you twice to open the duel and may trinket your first nova. If he trinkets immediately freeze him with pet nova, if you're in melee range and chain's at this point deep freeze and shatter. Kite with cone of cold, eventually you'll get out of melee range, always refresh ice barrier and frost ward, nova each cooldown and blink when you're death gripped. If they pop anti magic shell in melee range this is a prime time to use your ice block. Watch out for the pet stun, don't let it surprise you, if left on autocast it will probably be used to stun you during your first frostbolt wind up, so just expect it, eat it, don't blink if at all possible because he'll just death grip you back, chains you in melee range and make your life hell. Gargoyles are annoying, if you want to CS it go for it, but I just usually blow cooldowns and beat DKs while ignoring the gargoyle..icy veins to get rid of spell pushback helps when gargoyle is spamming spells at you (feels like wrath spam) and a ghoul is smacking you in the back. If the DK pops army in a duel laugh and call him a scrub, everyone knows duels are arena cooldowns only amirite? (no srsly, everyone knows that). In a world situation try to nova, if you can blink without getting death gripped back it's worth a shot to nova, blink, ice block, cancel it (only if you need to clear debuffs) and invis. If you can invis and just let them die naturally thats the best scenario, but you gotta nova everything, the DK, his ghoul and the army. Good luck.






Druid - Resto - Armor: Mage
Almost impossible if they're keeping all their instant HoTs rolling in tree form as a frost mage. Really not much you can do except try to get them low then blow cooldowns (twice) cold snapping for a 2nd round of cooldowns. If they know anything though, they'll probably just OOM you and annoyingly moonfire you to death. Beating healers 1v1 as a frost mage is an uphill battle, but if you can get a resto druid deep frozen without too many HoTs rolling at a decent HP level then blow everything, chaining counterspell as the deep freeze ends, you have a chance (not really).

Druid - Balance - Armor: Mage
I'll be honest I don't duel moonkins that often..I just never see them. So instead of pretending to know what to do, I'll just leave this one blank, sorry

Druid - Feral - Armor: Ice
Druids are such a pain in the *** for mages. Spam shapeshifting out of snares, if they have their shapeshifts keybound like any half decent druid should these guys are IMO the hardest spec to fight (besides healers). I'll take a DK or ret paladin with a 2350 weapon over a half decent naxx geared druid any day. Tips though, don't get caught casting frostbolt unless they're deep frozen or far away with feral charge on CD. Use your mirror images a bit later in the fight for spam frostbolt snares on the druid, use your elemental (2 if you got em), ice lance of novas, FoF procs unless deep freeze is up, then try to pop icy veins first, into DF, into ice lance spam (you can get up to 5 ice lances on a frozen target with icy veins and decent haste gear).






Hunter - Armor: Ice
Keep him snared stay in melee range as best as you can, depending on hunter spec they might try to scatter you in a frost trap (the ones that slow you to a crawl) but if you can just stay tight in their melee range, use instants, keep them snared, novad, you should win by brute force. Deep freeze hunter whenever possible, don't fall for feign death, immediately retarget the hunter when they do it. When you nova hunter and pet, shift a little so the pet can't melee you, don't nova them and stand right beside the pet letting it hit you. If the hunters BM you have to deal with unsnareable/unkiteble pet and hunter, you can't sheep them or do much, try to line of sight, try to invis, try to do anything but stand there going toe to toe with the hunter. Melee won't work here because they'll conc shot snare you, you can't snare them back and they'll easily get range and rip you apart. Ice block full duration will get ~50% of it but it's best if you can line of sight most of it. If you must toe to toe, go into TBW with an ice barrier up, frostbolt spam with all pets out, icy veins when your barrier cracks (it will drop fast), hopefully you can reapply another immediately (depends on cooldown). If you can't, ice block, don't try and sit there tanking the pushback without ice barrier up. You can icy veins to stop the pushback but without a shield your toast and mana shield doesn't cut it. Hopefully coming out of ice block, your barrier cooldown is reset, and you can do the normal melee range thing against the hunter once TBW wears off. Thats alot of text, but hunters in general are pretty easy, unless they get the drop on you from 40 yards out and know how to kite when you blink to about half range. Even then, blink close, pet nova, deep freeze you can get in their face quickly.






Mage - Arcane - Armor: Mage
Lose and accept it =) Just kidding sort of, at equal skill/gear levels though theres just no way, arcane has such an advantage. I suppose if the skill level is "both suck and are prone to making massive mistakes" theres a big chance. Mage duels often come down to counterspell wars, who gets the most effective counterspells in a duel typically wins. You both should have magic absorption and mage armor up, so 140 spell resistance for both players, counterspells resist quite often. If you have any spell penetration gear, wear if for the advantage. Ideal thing to counterspell on their end is arcane missiles or polymorph, they'll be looking to CS your poly or frostbolt. Whoever gets the first sheep off has a good advantage, you can strip a few buffs, resheep, strip some more, then get an opener with pets out. After opener play cautious with ice lance spam, spellsteal and scorch, don't open frost or arcane tree until they've blown CS. You can also juke the CS, wind up a frostbolt then tap forward quickly, they often fall for it, counterspell (you're still silenced for 2 seconds with mage armor and imp CS) but they miss locking out your frost tree. Try to strip all buffs early, so when you see something pop up like a missile barrage proc or frost ward you can spellsteal it immediately.

Mage - Frost - Armor: Mage
Same as arcane but you have more of a chance. Be cautious when their CS is up, try to get first sheep off, if your first sheep from max range gets counterspelled you can immediately strafe backwards and outrange their attempts at a frostbolt. Watch out if their elemental is out because then they can CS your poly, now you can't blink, and you're stuck in a nova for a shatter combo. You can trinket or ice block but you don't want to this early in a fight unless you have to. Just something to watch for. Theres usually a bit of a spellsteal war with trying to strip the enemies frost ward and ice barrier, this is when you can really do damage to another frost mage when you steal their buffs and they have both on cooldown. Now a shatter will do maximum damage so try to stay ahead on the spellsteal war, but careful not to OOM yourself either.






Paladin - Holy - Armor: Mage
Healers suck to fight, they'll probably use frost aura which is annoying, and they'll try to heal themselves completely with instants while chasing you down with freedom and getting instant flash of lights when their holy shocks crit. They can do alot of instant healing on themself but keep the output high, spellsteal freedom and keep as many stacks of winters chill up as possible. Catch them in a pet nova from 30 yards with freedom on cooldown you can start pumping out enough damage to outdps their instant heals, now you can deep freeze and go for the kill, chain a blanket CS silence onto them after the deep freeze, with your pets out you should force a bubble. Now they'll heal to full and you have to do it again. Healers suck to duel, but pallies are probably the easiest. If they cast anything while not at full health counterspell them and go for the kill unless aura mastery is up. Aura mastery has a big obvious graphic that looks like this - http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=31821#screenshots:id=123237 .... Open with a sheep on them, spellsteal, shatter. They can easily OOM a frost mage and melee to death.

Paladin - Ret - Armor: Mage
They hit so hard I hate relying on ice armor for procs. If you play right they'll have to use repentance as a gap closer, so mage armor cuts that duration in half meaning less distance closed on their part which = good. This is all about kiting and probably the best test of your kiting ability. You want to open with a sheep but it depends on the range. Hammer used to interupt a tree for 3 seconds so it was really bad to get caught hammered while sheeping, but now it doesn't matter as much anymore. Sheep them spellsteal spam, resheep, summon elemental, spellsteal, resheep, shatter combo start strafe kiting they'll probably cast freedom immediately. Try to spellsteal you've pretty much won at this point. I find rets pretty easy, but occasionally they can get WoTLK'd, ie: taken from half health with a fresh ice barrier to dead in a single attack (basically melee swing, CS and seal of blood all hit you at the same time, I've died to this before basically 14,000hp in one blow). Mages don't typically run with very much resilience, maybe 600ish so this is pretty common on mages. Just kite though, when they bubble you can ice block if they're too close to you. Preferably invis.






Priest - Disc, Mage Armor
Annoying fight theres almost no way to win. Try to pump maximum damage watch out when they close in for fear range, if you can force them to cast heals on themself (ie: pennance or flash heal) you might have a chance to win if they're at low enough health and the RNG Gods love you. But probably not, we're just not meant to take down healers unless we vastly outskill them.

Priest - Shadow, Mage Armor
Not much to it, spellsteal fort and PW:S, let them dot you up then CS a mind blast/flay, in the meantime you're pounding them with shatters and waterbolts. Ice block to clear DoTs they gotta refresh them, easy fight. Mind blast->SW:D has burst so don't let yourself get too low.






Rogue - Ice Armor
Rogue vs. mage used to be an epic fight, now it's a little less so because they're mostly mutilate and lost so much mobility, but traded it for burst. I go into these fights with ice barrier up and mana shield, I try to time it so my ice barrier cooldown will be ready when the first one breaks. Figure about 9 seconds sitting in a sap then 3 seconds of silence just watch the timers, don't spam refresh every cooldown because you don't want to be caught with ice barrier on a long cooldown when it's easy to avoid.

Multiple paragraphs for this fight, they'll probably open with garrote (silence) then unload some mutilates and possibly a cold blood evis onto you, this is what ice barrier and mana shield are for. You'll still be taken a bit low, the whole time I generally mash blink but it depends on the rogue. My strat against a garrote opener is typically blink the second I can, then pop a water elemental, then sheep. The water elemental is out in case they vanish, you should have your pet nova keybound to something you can hit very quickly, I use a macro that summons him with my 5 button, then tapping it again pulls the pet nova reticle. Pulling rogues from stealth/vanish with CoC/nova/pet nova/blizz is a bit of an artform and takes some practice and speed, as they say practice makes perfect.

If the rogue goes say, garrote, then cloaks and sprints at you, this is ice block time, but your water elemental is out first. A good rogue will gouge your elemental then vanish, so you can really be screwed at this point but at this point they're probably energy starved. As soon as his cloak is worn off I'll pet nova, come out of ice block and deep freeze, ice lance, if he trinkets I'll cone of cold and keep moving away. You still have your frost nova at this point, and he's blowing lots of cooldowns to stay on you.

TL;DR, blink, sheep, evocate heal, resheep, summon pet shatter, kite.

This duel took much more skill on the mages part when all rogues were running around as shadowstep, mutilate is just so kiteable. You can't just do something like blink out of an opener against a shadowstep rogue becaues they'll shadowstep kidney shot you. I'm not even goign to talk about those duels and strats because it's so chess based and cooldown dependant, describing normal duels is hard enough but frost mage vs. shadowstep rogue is IMO the king of all duels and it just takes a million duels to get to the point of being instinctive.









Shaman, mage for casters, ice for enhance
I'm getting tired now, so wrapping up quickly. Earth elemental/fire elemental deserve a "lolscrub" and the duel doesn't even count. Same with lay on hands and army of the dead, you just don't use those cooldowns in a legitimate duel, just like you never use a potion or a flask or buffs from an outsider. Anyways watch the grounding totems, learn to see the buff. Use lots of instants since earth shock is such a ridiculously short interupt cooldown (6 seconds, 5 talented). All shamans will purge spam you, they're kind of annoying to fight, but still relatively weak you just need to watch the interupts and grounding totems. Like all healers, get them low, deep freeze, blanket CS, while unloading burst with cooldowns up. Elemental use fire ward, CS lava burst and treat them like resto. Enhance treat them like..a rogue/paladin sort of, kite them in the same way, ice lance their totems especially earthbind. Try to frost nova the wolves and the shaman together and save counterspell for a last ditch heal.






Warlock - mage armor
The class that singlehandedly tries to get mage armor nerfed to the ground. We have a better chance then we used to, but honestly it's much the same fight as it was in TBC against affliction locks, it's arcane mages they hate with a passion. Affliction CS a fear and unload burst, the longer a fight goes the more chance to lose. Ice block a wave of dots early, particularly if they get a fear off, then cold snap so you get a 2nd ice block later.

Destruction locks have insane burst CS/deep freeze fire spells and use fire ward for immo's/conflags, undead have an advantage with a fear break here but this fight is burst before you are bursted yourself. Smile when they shadowfury and ruin one of your shatter combos and remind yourself it's just a game (then activate your PVP arcane duel spec and proceed to own all warlocks, if you can't as frost :P)








Warrior
More annoying then they used to be, that's a bit of an understatement. The only ones I duel anymore are 1850+ rated with the weapon so it's a true test of my own kiting abilities, the ones who are higher rated save their spell reflects until a shatter combo leaves your hands and grind you hard rarely, rarely letting a frostbolt leave your hands. It's a war of attrition against good warriors but you should usually come out on top.

Now that they can charge in combat it's very important to watch the difference between "charge" stun and "intercept" stun. Sitting in a bladestorm will wreck your face it does incredible damage, and typically the way a warrior will beat a mage is forcing a blink with intercept, then immediately charging and bladestorming. Don't blink charges, and be careful blinking intercepts (is charge on cooldown?) because that charge->MS->bladestorm will own you. They can shatter your ice blocks now. Watch when they go defensive with sword and board, try to tap an ice lance into the spell reflect, but the good ones won't spell reflect until the last 0.1 second of your frostbolt. You have to outdamage them because they get a free mortal strike each charge which will at least put a strong dent in your ice barrier and eventually you'll go OOM which is the other main way the warrior can achieve victory. Don't be ashamed to use pets, remember whenever you use pets against anyone, move away from them so an AOE can't do damage and take your pets out at the same time.

Novas will heal the warrior significantly over the course of a long fight (these fights go the distance) so just grind it out and if you lose, watch how the better mages handle it and try to emulate them.

Single greatest piece of advice I can give any mage, anywhere on how to PvP, ESPECIALLY 1v1.

Learn to shatter combo.

And I don't mean half *** it either, do it so you can pull it off with one hand and sleepwalking.

Nice writeup mike.

Definately, this is critical advice. Remember to freeze (ie: pet nova) at the last possible microsecond against dispellers too like priests/paladins, also against druids who can shapeshift out of your snare if you cast it too early.



I'll post a few of my macros here. I'll stay away from the focus macros, I handle that a little differently then others, and my focus macros are very simple. In arena I use Gladius mod for enemy targetting, it has a bunch of useful functions, but one I really like is right clicking a target to set them as my focus.

Water Elemental Macro
Like I said earlier, my '5' button is water elemental. I tap it once to pull him out, tap it again to bring up the pet nova/freeze reticle.


Simple Burst Macro
I use 2pc T7.5 (shoulders and legs) for the mana gem bonus. I don't raid anymore so this is about as good as I can get PVE gear wise :P T8 looks nice but I don't have access for the time being. I mostly just duel and play arena with my friends these days, as well as do skirmishes. This uses icy veins and my mana gem at the same time (2pc T7 bonus: using a mana gem grants 225 spellpower for 15 seconds).



Ice Block / Cancel Ice Block Macro
This wins me lots of matches against rogues. They sprint and cloak of shadows at me after I blink, I have to ice block. I'm watching their cloak of shadows buff (it lasts 5 seconds) and the second it's off I usually pop out of ice block and immediately cast something at them (deep freeze, frost nova, refresh ice barrier, it depends on the situation). I found before, the GCD would get triggered if I canceled the normal way, I'm not positive on that, but it felt slow when I did it the old way. I can't even remember how I used to do it, whether I clicked it off or hit ice block again. Not really sure. Sometimes (rarely) I even use ice block as a form of a trinket to quickly break a snare then immediately pop back out. I remember for sure I would get GCD locked trying that before I used the macro. The other thing this will do is stop whatever you're casting to get your ice block off. Be careful mashing this macro, you can go in and out of ice block in a split second if you mash too hard.




I won't bother with my focus macros, unless somebody actually wants them. In arena I use Gladius to set focus like I said, out of arena I use SHIFT-E to set focus on someone then I have my focus CS/poly/deep freeze macros.

I think those are the main macros I use, I used to have a macro that would cast frostbolt normally, rank 1 frostbolt with shift modifier..but I stopped using that a while back, basically to free up a keybind slot. I guess I could use it again but my lifes been fine since dropping rank 1 frostbolt.

Edited, Jul 10th 2009 12:15am by mikelolol