Im now debating playing a mage or a paladin considering i think id have more fun with a mage anyway. What are some tips and advice? Thanks
On the mage^^ not pally
You’re breakable. Either they die fast or you do. If you can reliably kill them faster than they kill you, though, you can potentially take on a dozen enemies at once with your AoE.
just play a mage, seems like you want to anyways.
There’s a reason mages are the most common class at 60. But that also means you’ll be playing the most common class at 60.
Frostbolt, frostbolt, frostbolt, ice nova. Move max range. Frostbolt, frostbolt, dead. Repeat.
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Don’t forget the drink back to full after 2-3 mobs before the repeat.
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Or you can wand and walk drink
Unordered list of thoughts concerning mages.
Note: The effectiveness of some tips may be made invalid by Classic’s updated client
Master at controlling an enemy or two (or more if you’re very skilled)
While leveling, if unhindered and uninterrupted, you can AOE grind which consists of pulls of 8+ enemies at once, and you kill them in the same amount of time that you’d frostbolt a single enemy down. This requires a specific talent spec. Do your research ahead of time if you choose this.
Teleports at level 20 and 30 (20: All cities but Thunder Bluff and Darnassus. 30: TB/Darn)
Portals at 40 and 50 (40: All cities but Thunder Bluff and Darnassus. 50: TB/Darn)
You can sell these portals any chance you get, typically the price for portals levels out at 1g per, but you may see competition drive that price to a different number.
You can sell level 55 food/water, or any level but 55 sells best
Raidiing/dungeoning typically consists of frost bolt spam, with polymorph as a reliable CC that often secures your group invite for dungeons.
Fire will be your primary spec in AQ40/Naxx raids. I have no information about fire outside of raids because I don’t play fire outside of raids.
If you’re leveling on a PVP server, I strongly suggest frost as your means of leveling.
Basic PVP guidance is to use engineering. You can actually buy the materials to max out engineering fairly cheap after you hit 60, but if you think you need mining to pull it off, then by all means. You may also want to level up Engi while leveling in order to reach Iron Grenade (a grenade that stuns) which will likely require mining
To start, getting tailoring up to skill, and learning/crafting Robes of the Archmage is going to be very helpful as an early and long-lasting chest piece. You can drop tailoring if you desire after making the robe.
Always keep mana gem conjured while leveling. It’s a free mana potion and you don’t want to be caught in a bad spot without mana if you could have had your gem. Every time you use the gem, conjure another after your fight.
Sheeps do wander a little bit. If you have to pull a target some distance before sheeping, you can do so. If you need to stop the group before reaching you, use frost nova. Be mindful of frost nova around other people’s CC’d targets.
Use rank 1 frost bolt to help control targets. If you see a feared target running towards un-pulled enemies, you can attempt to frost nova them, or at the very least, slow the target down with rank 1 frost bolt which casts very quickly.
If the unpulled group does end up pulling, you can attempt to AOE kite them with rank 1 blizzard, however if your group is not aware you’re trying this, they will often interrupt your rotation. It will also fail if one of the enemies is ranged.
Rank 1 AOE blizzard kiting can save groups though, and kite things long enough for the other members of your group to get things under control. The down side is that it can also break other member’s CCs, so be mindful and pay attention to your group. You will rarely need to do this.
Ice block is a frost talent that encases in a block of ice, protecting you from all physical attacks and spells for 10 sec, but during that time you cannot attack, move or cast spells. This spell will also remove debuffs from you and can be used strategically in that regard (think warlocks, CC)
If an enemy is about to run behind cover, you can cast Arcane Missiles on them at the last second before they’re hidden, which is a channeled spell. It will continue casting missiles at them until the channel has finished, even if they are behind cover.
If you’ve jumped from a great height, you can use Blink (a teleportation skill) just before hitting the ground, and your falling momentum will be reset or you will be placed 20 yards forward from the place you were going to land. You’ll take no damage as a result. This is if you lack a Light Feather for the Slow Fall ability, of course.
You can use rank 1 arcane explosion (nearby) or rank 1 Blizzard (at distance) to attempt to de-stealth a rogue without wasting too much mana.
If a warrior is approaching you to attack, use counterspell on him as soon as there is range to do so (spam it even if he’s out of range, make sure you’re not mounted). Counterspell will put him in combat and prevent his charge. He will turn back and wait for the combat timer so he can charge again, make sure he doesn’t exit combat. This can be done to rogues as well if they are for some reason not in stealth, but you suspect they will stealth soon (you see this most often on a rogue approaching on a mount who doesn’t think you see him)
I’m sure there are other things.
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Frost for leveling, arcane/frost for raiding, until AQ drops, then you can go fire.
It’s repetitive, until AQ you will absolutely just be spamming frost bolts on raids, and that’s it. High demand in raids/groups but that means you’ll also see a lot of competition on loot. It also means that there will be a disproportionate number of people playing mages.
Also, fun fact, people will CONSTANTLY pester you for food/drink and ports. Chinese gold farmers will walk up to you and just drop gold in your inbox and whisper you “120 food”
Others will expect you to give them 120 food/water for free because “it doesn’t cost you anything”, even if you don’t have the spell yet to summon entire stacks.
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1. Practice kiting. Being able to kite mobs (and melee classes) is fundamental to success as a mage. We didn’t have all the instants back then like we do currently in retail. Fire Blast has 1 charge (not 2 or 3 as in retail) on a CD; heating up/hot streak does not exist, so no instant pyros (except if you talent Presence of Mind, which has a 3 min CD); Scorch cannot be cast while moving; Blink interrupts spell casts (it doesn’t currently on retail); etc. You basically need to stand still so that you can wind up your spell (e.g. Frostbolt, Scorch, or Fireball) and do damage.
2. Get a wand ASAP and use it while leveling (you’ll have to drag out the shoot ability from your spellbook to use it). Some mobs will run away from you at low health, so use your wand at this point (or right before to drop them into low health) to save yourself some mana. Plus you’ll need to use it on certain bosses (like Onyxia), so might as well build up the weapon skill. Oh yeah.
3. If you end up on a PvP server you will need to consider PvP viability in your build in addition to leveling efficiency. Frost is generally better for leveling because its slows and snares and mana efficiency will allow you to take down difficult mobs solo, and allow you to go longer without drinking. Fire is less mana efficient, but it has some high burst potential with (Arcane Power) + Presence of Mind + Pyroblast that will enable you to take down almost any other player 1v1 while leveling.
Also, if you end up on a PvP server always be rotating your camera and looking behind and to the sides of you so you can see if someone is coming to gank you. And Scorch is really useful for PvP, especially if you talent 5/5 Impact and go deep fire. It’s low damage, but it’s quick (1.5s cast) and allows you to kite people while still damaging them.
Mages were pretty strong in Vanilla, but we also didn’t have all the problems that other classes did, which is why we were the last class to get our revamp. This is probably one reason why we were so popular: we had the least amount of problems of any class. It will be interesting to see this time around with all the classes having had their revamps done how class balance plays out at 60.
If you pull aggro off the tank blink through it towards the tank.
Remember pyro doesn’t scale as well as fireball, as 25% of its spell power goes into its dot.
I could post a bunch of different things, but honestly, you would probably get better information from a few YouTube videos that can show you.
Thank you all ![:slight_smile:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")
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