Ick… almost every single zone has multiple locations to AoE farm at, including areas you need for quests. After doing that even for a short while, I found any single target nuking to be soooooo slow.
Plus if you have any plans on doing 5-mans, the more AoE centric builds are safer and easier to use (and typically expected).
But yeah, if you plan on FB-spamming your way to 60, Frostbite and Shatter both would be ideal. No Improved Blizzard, Winter’s Chill, and maybe even pass on Improved Cone of Cold on your way to Ice Barrier.
Mages are the least engaging, nuanced or interesting class to play IMO - in any spec. Even my Paladin is more fun to level/quest/solo. Nice basic utility though, & pretty easy semi-AFK mode sailing in groups while still pumping out some of the best DPS. /yawn
With Shatter its pretty darn fast…no doubt AoE is faster—but compared to other classes, a single-target FB build does pretty well in terms of leveling speed.
Also AoE leveling on a PvP server isn’t ideal…I ganked plenty of mages who were trying to manage massive pulls…and I know the same would happen to me lmao.
Is that why the guides all say to not use it, as the aggro generation is terrible? What are you doing going afk for around a minute before throwing up some dots on it? lol.
You’d be more fun to talk to if you weren’t more easily triggered than every cartoon heel in a Looney Tunes short.
Prioritizing single target while specializing into Frost is frankly a bad idea in terms of speed or efficiency. So unless he’s going for some deep meaning behind FB or just can’t stand the idea of AoE skills, the better advice is “don’t do it” than how to maximize it.
Of all the times I had to sit and single target pull things, it was so minimal compared the the rest of my leveling/questing that speedier single elite kills (like the elites to the west of Thorium Point) just aren’t worth the loss of AoE supremacy.
Oh for sure it has its challenges, but it isn’t like you’re any less dead when someone opportunistically opens on you when you’re mid pull. Maybe I just always had particularly patient gankers, but they never really seemed to come at me ever when I was full health and in no danger from the mob or two I had.
Plus if PvP is truly that atrocious, then AoE specs are even more important because of the grouping in instances, or the rare few soloing in instances you’ll be forced to do otherwise.
I disagree with this, but I respect your opinion. I’m much less likely to die when I only have to sheep one target and focus on only one other…rather than handle 6+ targets and a ganker at once.
In fact, one of the things I like most about my mage is my ability to turn a mid-pull gank into a loss for said ganker. Your statement comes off as if mages are bad at responding if they get attacked mid-pull—when I find this to be one of their strong points.
I’m not generally attacked by anything that lets me live very long anyway. I would have jumped for joy had I gotten attacked by someone I could actually land a Polymorph on, let alone survive long enough to cast it. I think some Warrior tried getting cheeky with me at the Go’shek Farm in Arathi, so I kited his dumb butt to death and was quite pleased with myself.
Then a lvl60 Feral ate me. Repeatedly.
Once I got into the late 40’s and beyond, it was a steady routine of checking if the questing hubs are overrun, if yes, back to ZF. I know ZF solo was faster anyway, but I actually like doing quests to break up the monotony and sometimes the rewards are pretty solid anyway.
Mages certainly aren’t doomed when attacked, but until I became sturdier, Warlord Warriors and Rogues weren’t exactly something I could fight with any reasonable certainty of victory.
Yes yes, the guides, the video evidence, the thousands of hours of experience and data people have on that class’s pet… yep all wrong, we should all bow in reverence to your knowledge that is L2P Warlock. L2 b a better troll, and not so obvious.
It sounds like you just never were good at PvP with a mage? I don’t mean that in offense.
Ice Barrier and/or Ice Block, then a well timed counterspell for casters or frost nova for melee is all the separation you really need to get a Polymorph cast off.
