Mage spec talk?

[TheWall]

Do you have any idea what the key talents are for the "Elemental" spec?

[Dren]

I'm by no means a veteran mage lvl'er (13 mage atm,) but I've been going the ice route and that seems to be a very safe leveling direction.  I don't know if it is the quickest, but I die very little while that has always been a complaint I've seen from others.

My biggest learning curve has been to treat my mana pool just like my HP pool.  Seriously, if you are out of mana and still have agro, yer dead.  At least Priests have some def (inner fire, shadowform) and hps (blessing) to have a chance, but mages are paper thin.  Rarely is mana a problem for my warlock.

[bhodi]

I had good luck grinding w/ IAM->AC->Evocation, then Fireball->Flame Throwing->Ignite(3pts)->Pyroblast, then back to arcane for the IAE, then fire tree Ignite->Impact then back to arcane for arcane med (4 pt) and presence, then back and all the way down the fire tree imp scorch(2 pts), Critical Mass, Imp Scorch, Fire Power.

Once you hit 60, respec for whatever you're going to be doing.

This is a pure leveling/solo build. Use IAE until level 25, then switch to fireball, then when you're 36 switch it up to IAE and use leveling discretion from there... most of the time you'll be doing FB+FB+FB (or FB+FB+Scorch), FN, back up, FB+FB+Scorch, and replace the first FB with pyroblast when avaiable... or for some specific levels (level 37-40 in badlands for mid-north elementals for instance are AWESOME), just shield, fireball one, scorch one, run into third and IAE until dead (sometimes you can FN and back up out of range and still IAE). Remember to walk sideways backwards for the 100% move, don't back up, that's only 70%.

Make sure to buy the higher level water if you can use it (which is half the time) and arcane power then elixir of the sages potions... they speed things up pretty dramatically. Use engineering if you can afford it, for gnomish death ray and the helper pets (chicken, dragonlings). Get as much int gear as you can and work at it so you can solo w/ mage armor instead of frost/ice armor. Don't give in to the temptation to do fedex quests or to hunt a specific, rare monster... stick with the easily stackable, high grind "whack 30 bunnies", "need 10 bunny skins", and "10 vials of bunny blood" type quests that you can all do in the same area WHILE getting XP. Consider quests a supplement to your killing XP and not the other way around. Yes, it sucks and sucks the fun out of the game, but if you're just trying to get to 60 it's the way to go.

[Jobu]

Do you have any idea what the key talents are for the "Elemental" spec?

You just hit up the key talents for each school... move points around for what matches your playstyle.

Ice: Shatter, Imp. Cone of Cold, Ice Shards, Ice Block
Fire: Blastwave, Pyroblast, Ignite, Impact

I've been tempted to try this out a few times, but frankly I think Imp. AE and Imp. Counterspell are simply must-have talents and you gimp yourself far too much without them.

[MrHat]

Improved Counterspell and Evocation are simply too much to be without imo.

But ya, once I get my mage to 50+ I might switch to a blizzard build for AV.

[TheWalrus]

I made an elemental pvp spec that was all the improved AE stuff (minus the arcane naturally) and I had great fun in AV. It's nice being able to make a difference on where the front line is all by yourself. Lead with a flame strike, blizzard, blink in, blast wave, turn around, ice block, blink out and laugh. Good times. Now I'm tempted to re up. Bastards.

[Teleku]

Also keep in mind that in the next patch after the soon to be released one, mages will be recieving their class overhall.  So things could change drastically (albeit, its probably a ways off as they are slow with patchs).

[Jobu]

Lemme refresh this again.  :-D

My main focus these days is on my mage. Lots of fun. I'm specced 18/0/33 for a Shatter/Frostbite/Blizzard build, with mid-range blue/green gear from all the big instances. 2800hp, 5600mana, somewhere around +80dmg.

I just hit Stone Guard, and really want to get one or two more officer ranks before easing off on the battlegrounds (they're getting a little stale after 4 weeks of them nonstop). Now I'm thinking of respeccing to the Arcane/Fire specs to help out in this last push. Anyone think it'll help at all? With frost, I feel I make contributions towards winning the BG entirely. Kiting people around at AB flags, snaring and slowing flag runners in WSG, AoEing the shit out of the alliance zerg in AV. I stick to my strengths and help the team win... or so I hope. But I get significantly less kills. Would respeccing to the more damage heavy, killing specs boost my honor gains past my current frost style? Our queues are between 20-45 minutes when I play, and AV is always 2 hours+. So there's the idea that I can squeeze more honor out of each session by cranking up the DPS for awhile.

[TheWall]

I always thought people complained about mages getting so much honor from their AE abilities. The concept being that you do damage to many targets at once and as such get a bit of the honor off of each of them.

I may not totally understand the way honor is gained though.

[Merusk]

I always thought people complained about mages getting so much honor from their AE abilities. The concept being that you do damage to many targets at once and as such get a bit of the honor off of each of them.

I may not totally understand the way honor is gained though.

The people who complain about this, also think that being #1 in kills matters more than winning.  You get honor from the first 4 times a person dies with you on their hate list for that day.  Note that's not per-battleground, that's per day.

So if you're in an Alliance group and someone suggests "Let's turtle and farm honor" it's quite possible that just quitting right there will be better for your honor rate (even with the 15-min 'coward' debuff) than spending the 30mins turtling.  Take a smoke/ drink/ piss and you still get into the queue 15 mins before everyone else in that BG. You're out a mark, but if it's not a Holiday weekend and your team doesn't cap a flag you're getting 0 honor anyway.

Tip: To maximize honor earned save-up those tokens, don't turn them in 3 at a time.  You get ~350 honor for every 3 Wsg/ AV/ AB tokens.  Doing 3 turn-ins nets you ~1100 honor.  Doing ONE turn-in of the "Combined Efforts" (dunno what it's called for Horde) where you turn-in 3 from each BG will get you ~2080 honor points.   This is a great way to boost your honor on weekends you haven't played a lot, or on the non-holidays so you push-up farther in that week's ladder.  (Obviously you're going to do SOME single turn-ins, because you wind-up with a lot more WSG/ AB tokens than AV, but always make sure you have at least enough banked to match the # of AV sets you have.)

[Strazos]

Well, I don't have access to Av yet, so I'm stuck with WSG/AB.

[Jobu]

I always thought people complained about mages getting so much honor from their AE abilities. The concept being that you do damage to many targets at once and as such get a bit of the honor off of each of them.

The people who complain about this, also think that being #1 in kills matters more than winning.  You get honor from the first 4 times a person dies with you on their hate list for that day.  Note that's not per-battleground, that's per day.

But the honor you get from your first 4 kills on someone is based on the amount of damage you do to them. Hence my considering going for a higher damage spec.

[bhodi]

One of the best things to get is Honor+ for titan panel. This keeps daily running total of everyone you kill and gives you the *real* honor points of both your kills and your battleground victories. It also plugs in/forwards stuff to SCT so you get to see the pretty scrolling "+25 honor points gained", gives you daily/weekly honor totals, etc... everything an aspiring poopsock ladder-climber needs to judge his next pellet feeding rank.

[Train Wreck]

I've always been a frost mage.  I have a secondary mage that's doing fire but he's only 18.  I haven't seen much info about frost talents (though I haven't had a chance to read page 2 yet) so I'll put in my two cents.

Frost mages have very good survivability in PvE, especially raids.  On a wipe, I'm usually the last one to die.  Ice Block only costs 15 mana and makes you invicible for 10 seconds.  Most observant healers will throw a regen spell on you if they see it.  Paired with Cold Snap (refreshes all frost spells), that's 20 seconds of invincibility.  You also have Ice Barrier, which is a damage shield that stacks with Mana Shield and gets depleted before Mana Shield starts consuming your mana.  This also mitigates not having Improved Arcane Missiles (no channeling interrupt when hit) if you prefer putting the talent points elsewhere.

Five points in Shatter gives you a +50% chance to get criticals on frozen targets with frost spells.  It's not uncommon to crit with both Frost Bolt and Cone of Cold after hitting something with Frost Nova.  With 5 points in Ice Shards, critical hits cause double damage.

Frost Bite gives any spell with a chilling effect a 30% chance to completely freeze the target (this includes getting hit when your Ice Armor buff is up).  I made a nuissance of myself at level 51 in AV by throwing Rank I Frostbolts at everything within reach.

Improved Blizzard chills for a 70% reduction in movement.  Combined with the aforementioned talents, it has a 30% chance of freezing per second that they remain in it, after which case they will probably recieve double damage.  It also has a good chance to trigger PoM so you can cast it again for free.  Sometimes I've gotten three free Blizzards in a row in AV, where it really shines.  If you're not spotted right away, you can stop a push single-handedly, especially on bridges.  And forget about mounted zergs... They might as well be riding three legged turtles.  It's also an effective counter to fear bombing.  When your side gets feared, cast it where the line used to be, and the other side will usually be reluctant to press the attack.  The time it buys is usually enough for the feared front lines to get their shit back together.

In PvE, my opening spell sequence is Frost Bolt, Arcane Missiles (twice if they are frozen), Fire Blast, Frost Nova, Frost Bolt, Cone of Cold.

In Arcane Talents, you definantly want Evocation and PoM.  I haven't had much use for IAE in PvE, but it's great in AV.

[TheWall]

I was considering dropping Ice barrier, being dispellable with a low mana spammable instant cast and all.  (fuck is that a stupid bug)  In it's place I was gonna take PoM.  I watched some Korean frost mage video and the guy has spec'd in  PoM instead of Ice barrier and he's kicking the crap out of multiples.  It's gonna gimp me in instances though.  I depend on that shield quite abit.

I'm just curious how he was owning with a Frost and PoM spec. Obviously I'm inexperienced. Can someone enlighten me as to how PoM and Frost work well together?

[SurfD]

granted i have never been an ice mage, but I imagine PoM for ice works much the way it works for fire: Burst Damage.

When dealing with multiple enemies, being able to drop one in a split second (especially if one or both can heal) is your edge.  Since Ice builds have higer direct damage then fire, due to larger crit base damage, beign able to Ice bolt, PoM, Ice Bolt, and potentially drop one target almost instantly could easily be a good tradeoff for having the survivability of IceBlock (which wont really save you from a competent player.

[Jobu]

PoM Ice builds only really work well with a good amount of +dmg. Even with all the right talents, Ice burst damage is really subpar compared to fire. Once you boost up your damage, it's pretty even. So then you can Icebolt, PoM-->Icebolt someone when they're frozen for those mad 50%+ crit rates. There's an excellent chance they'll both crit, and you just knocked 3500+ dmg off someone, who's chilled and can't chase you down.

Before I respecced fire, I thought of dropping Ice Barrier to try it out. But I really prefer Ice Barrier, because it absorbs all damage types, including magic. It helped a ton when fighting casters, and it kept rogues and warriors off me juuuust enough to keep kiting them if I happened to screw up, or got an unlucky resist. I have to commend Blizzard for their talent balance in this case (even though Mage talents are getting a review next). The tradeoff of shuffling around just 3 points like that makes a huge difference in your playstyle.