Hi everyone. I decided to give Mage a serious try this expansion. I like Frost and Arcane a lot, and can see myself continuing to invest in and play my Mage from here on out.
Are there any helpful macros that work well for Mages? I struggle with cancelling casts to refocus on my procs. Do you all press and hold for casting or no? Do you prefer Arcane Momentum or no?
I’d like to cultivate good play habits now instead of fix a less optimal play style later.
Thanks!
Do not cancel casts for procs and Mage is the meleest of the ranged specs, so you still play on melee most of the time. Arcane Momentum is buggy af, don’t use it.
Generally not advised to take Arcane Momentum…can screw you over, e.g. if you get knocked off a platform you can’t blink back to save yourself (or worse, actually knock yourself off the platform), and I imagine something like Dawnbreaker would completely mess with it. On macros I’d keybind a cancelaura on Alter Time in case you already got healed and/or the positional snapback gets you in a bad spot.
I wouldn’t sleep on Ice Floes either. (In fact I wish I never had Shimmer so I didn’t miss it as much…) WAY easier for dodging a mechanic while casting vs having to Shimmer and pivot your camera back in time to get the cast off. Rarely actually need two blinks for an encounter, and regular blink gets you out of stuns/roots (e.g. Queen webs). Also makes Shifting Power less of a chore.
Alter is one of our best defensives so it’s good to get the hang of it early. Can also hit it twice (with Master of Time) to get a free second blink in an absolute pinch. Greater Invis is also a really good defensive for the 3sec DR.
Energized Barriers is also really good for breaking slows/roots - often overlooked for this use case alone.
It’s an extra button but for a melee especially, and given that you can press it mid-cast I think this is probably solid advice
If you have the time I’d play shadowpriest(balance and ele for similar reasons) for a season then swap to mage. If you hop into ranged for the first time you’re probably going to overplay a lot of the mage kit.
For example if you go hunter and you start as bm you’re just starting off by being very unpunished for poor positioning as you’re highly mobile, and when you shift to mm or a more hardcasting spec like destruction you’ll have to relearn a lot of your bad habits.
Thing with spriest/ele/balance is you’re pretty restricted in mobility and defensives relative to mage, by learning how to handle mechanics with minimal reliance on class ability so that once you shift into a class like mage which has something for everything (poly for snap interrupts, blast wave for repositioning, spell steal, blink, alter time, ice block, ring of frost/nova) you’ll start to fill in the gaps as you’ve spent enough time playing a class that spends the most of its time focusing on positioning. Being able to blink nova/wave and cc in a botched pull is no different than a ret paladin popping sac bubble, except there’s a few more pieces to the sequence so alot of mages just don’t do it. If you understand optimal positioning by playing a less mobile class, blink will just become second nature where you shift around the fight to manage utility because you already know you don’t have to sit on it for mechanics because you’ve learnt how to do it on a wheelchair class like spriest.
By all means start as a mage if you’re willing to learn how to use every ability and save groups from mistakes other players make, but if you aren’t used to range as I said it can be very easy to just overplay mechanics with mage utility (like constantly refreshing your barrier at max hp when no one shots are inc, instead of saving it for when you get under 70% hp/need to help your healer)
Real advice, cast fist.
I don’t think that’s good advice. If he’s looking to learn how to play a Mage, he should get used to Mage’s toolkit.
Shifting from a melee main to the most slippery ranged sounds like way to rush becoming another mid mage who just tunnels damage and casts counterspell, something that can be learnt on target dummies.
That alone hardly warrants a thread when there are countless videos and guides covering it, luckily they’re concerned with the shift from a melee main to mage and are asking for advice on all facets, of which wasting your utility/mobility because you can get away with it in lower end content(probably what they are going to be doing when they’re new to the class) is a terrible learning environment and if you’re new to positioning in group content as a ranged you’ll hardly notice when you’re blinking through the shadowpriests ground and actively making the game harder for your allies, its much easier to practice as the most handicapped class so that you can learn what it is they are trying to manage during content, so when you shift over into one with one of the most diverse kits you actually apply it in a way that helps the group and not just yourself.
(if they were a player capable of adapting to theoretical understanding and just reading up each kit and applying it to a field then I doubt they’d be making this thread)
I still think that’s flawed advice. Play with what you want to learn.
I don’t think playing melee vs ranged is all that different. I really don’t think playing hunter will teach someone how to play mage
Wanna have a good time with the mage class? Go with Frost it’s much easier to level up as Frost than Arcane and it currently does more DPS than Arcane. After they nerfed Arcane, it’s simply not worth going to that spec with it’s low survivability.
We do not. Mages usually rely on spell queuing to cast (as an example) multiple Frostbolts in a row. During the last bit of the cast time of the first spell, you can press the button again to smoothly transition into another cast. Never cancel a spell cast to use a proc unless you’re canceling the hard cast because you have to move. When on the move, you should still be casting something. If you take Ice Floes, you can hard cast while moving around. If you take Shimmer, you can start the cast, press Shimmer to blink away without losing the spell. On Fire, Scorch can be cast while moving. On Frost, Empowered Ice Lance procs are great to press while on the move. Arcane has Arcane Orb and Arcane Barrage that are instant cast (and Arcane Explosion if you are close to the enemies).
I agree mostly. However on Arcane there are a couple of moments where you would want to cast frostbolt or fire blast instead of arcane barrage.
if you are about to go into a burn and you have your 2 stacks of aethervision and nether precision, but touch (or arcane surge) isn’t quite off cooldown you might want to wait a moment.
The reason is that if you fire that arcane barrage, you have then spent your aethervision and nether precision stack(s) and arcane does most of its damage within the burns, so you’ll be losing a ton of damage. I’ll usually cast frostbolt here since arcane blast will also consume nether precision charges but if moving fire blast is a good option. I should probably start with fire blast first since it does more damage, but muscle memory …