I’m not asking because i want to stir up any pot, just curious for any who remember real Vanilla.
Were mages this powerful back then at least for farming multiple mobs, Now the following I triple checked before i was like um, um this has to be wrong.
So a level 51 mage was out in WPL farming level 51/52 mobs. I counted this he had 10 of them he was farming at 1 time and he killed them all. I waiting again about 5 mins later he had another pack (i counted them again) of 10 and he kiled them all. Now if he was level 55 or above i’d have said ehh no problem here, mages are overpowered for farming lower level mobs. BUT same or higher level!!! Am i missing something this i never remembered in Vanilla.
Just a real question, does this seem broken?
Sounds about right. They’re slowing and dealing channeled AoE damage.
Seems about the same from back then too.
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I think the mages that are doing that are just good at being a mage. I could never get the hang of mage, tried a bunch of times over the years. I was really good at shadow priest and warlock though, multi dotting and moving through groups quickly, just the kiting part of mage I sucked at.
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Blizzard kiting is how my buddy handled the adds on gluth back in vanilla naxx so… seems legit?
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It’s the same as vanilla. I was a mage then, and the cauldrons in WPL were very popular to farm.
Ironically I have a mage now and can’t be bothered to AoE farm any more. I know it’s more efficient to level quickly, but not my cup of tea now.
okay… just didnt remember seeing same or lower level mages kiting 10 same level of higher mobs back then… so guess i just miss rememeber
Yes you can do that because you aren’t ever being hit if you do it correctly. The cooldown of your cone of cold and nova are alternating between one another so if you are spacing them out properly the mobs have no way of getting to you. It all depends on how much mana you have for blizzard and as most mages are stacking stam/int it isn’t a problem most of the time
I mained mage in Vanilla and I did exactly this at exactly that level in WPL. It’s not completely brain-dead easy… you have to pay attention to detail but easy enough.
Yes, a very common method of leveling was to AOE mage grind. It’s also super efficient because quests give extra gold at max level. So you grind 32+ in dungeons and WPL and then quest at 60 to get your mount pretty quick.
The reason we’re able to do it is because we can gather mobs and iceblock til they get grouped. We can then blink out of melee or frost nova and blink and blizzard. Arcane/Frost mages have an improved slow that applies with Blizzard.
The main thing I see novice mages do is take the freeze talent that does the nova affect when you Blizzard. This is an error. You want the mobs to stay as grouped as possible.
The other thing I see novice mages do is go strictly frost. Arcane explosion is still a good tool and putting a significant amount of points in Arcane will help more than just dumping everything into frost.
hes getting real lucky with resist cause farming mobs same level is risky
It’s legit.
Mages did this back in Vanilla too.
They are just more skilled at it after years of practice, so it looks better than they did it before.
THeyre the same the problem is the players are different. We have the power of hindsight now. 15 years of people realizing that X was actually better than Y.
Seems right - I remember some people doing that with a mage. AoE farming isn’t my thing, even though I’m playing a mage, and so I’m not speccing for it. I’m getting ready for PvP in STV and I’d rather have a strong PvP spec rather than an AoE farming spec. Shatter crits yo 
I played mage in Vanilla, and yes it was this powerful. The potential for AOE on packs of mobs was fantastic back then. It was a big reason why I went mage, the guy who got me into WoW told me that good mages were doing this so I gave it a go myself. It made stuff like argent dawn rep really, really easy
I mained a mage for a lot of Vanilla and I’d occasionally spec for aoe to farm stuff, and yes it was powerful. It was also boring as all hell so I never stuck with it for long.
We had a Frost Mage in our guild back in Vanilla who was very good at doing all the AoE/Kiting for mass regular pulls & even elite packs in dungeons. Mages have always been a cheesy class like that.