Mage pvp Elemental spec

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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So I have been thinking about playing mage for pvp purposes and farming… I have really been theory crafting some elemental mage specs, because my frost pvp spec seems to be fairly well established.

I have been looking around and found hundreds of builds for elemental and none of them quite make sense to me as most of them are centered around fireball/scorch. I personally think a frostbolt/instantcast/scorch when kicked spec would be the most beneficial in every scenario so what do you think about this build here?

https://classicdb.ch/?talent#oZVgGzM0uZVVG0obth

Most of the builds, like I said, focus around scorch and fireball so they ignore the 100% critical strike damage with frost spells and some even ignore the 50% increased critical strike chance on frozen targets. Now it may just be me here but I feel like sheeping>pyro>nova>frostbolt>coc>blastwave>fireblast would be 100% the best rotation for an elemental mage.

Whats your thoughts on this specific build and if you have a better one, why?

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Unless you’re getting all 3% of your hit from gear, you’re going to want a point in elemental precision and arcane focus until you’ve got hit cap from gear alone.

While you certainly can get imp scorch, I wouldn’t. And while imp fireblast is nice, I think there are better things to get. Fireball is extremely powerful, and I think we have the points to improve it.

https://classicdb.ch/?talent#ozZEgMz00uZVqG0o0th

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I loved playing Elementalist towards late vanilla. Pop trinkets then Fire Blast -> Blast Wave -> CoC -> Scorch -> Fire Blast for crazy burst. You can also fish for impact procs with scorch or get some ignites rolling before you start the burst cycle. This also saves your frost nova for maintaining distance after burst cycle letting you hard cast some frostbolts.

Super fun build in BGs.

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I can get behind that. The only reason I got the scorch/imp fireblast is because with this spec I can’t really see casting fireball that much. Maybe you could but I would think frostbolt + instant casts would be the way to go. I do understand the single point elemental precision and I would probably sacrifice a point of artic reach for this. Not quite sure I would take a point from artic reach to put into the 2% arcane spell resist as polly would be the only thing to be resisted and recasting one on the offchance it resists isn’t the end of the world IMO.

Very interesting, how would you play around useing fireball/frostbolt with this spec out of curiosity.

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It’s for poly and counterspell. Mostly for counterspell. You’ll cry when counterspell gets resisted.

Occasionally you’ll arcane explosion as a no CD instant cast to hit nearby enemies. Just like how you might scorch and then at the end of the scorch you’ll fireblast or CoC, if both of those are on CD and you’re close to your target you can AE in the same way. And arcane missiles kills are for style points.

While you often don’t have a chance to sit around casting full fireballs, it does hit harder than frostbolt and there are occasions to use it where you’re not needing the kiting power of frostbolt at that time, or spamming scorch praying for impact procs. Especially if you’re trying to record a world pvp video to show us all your skill, you’ll hardly ever have time for full casts. Even most of your frostbolts will be rank 1 and scorch will taken center stage as your main cast-time spell. But if you’re in a BG and a rogue puts a 5 point kidney shot on your target, fireball is the way to go. Very hard hitting, good damage for the cast time and you’re not desperate for impact stuns and spamming scorch as a way to achieve that with a rogue on him.

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That is true! I think I may switch it up to get that fireball and the one point of ele precision. I’m still on the fence with the point in the arcane tree. I fully understand why, but the extra radius on your frost nova is just soooo good for catching rogues idk if I can go without lol.

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Yeah, arctic reach is very good. If you have it, sometimes you’ll be able to catch like a 4 man frost-nova CoC combo that you simply couldn’t have without it. You could always try and catch rogues with blast wave or AE first, and then set up your frost nova as well.

There’s lots of good talents that we wish we could get with our limited number of points. Mage talent trees represent a success in the old talent system, they are fun and flexible, and you could for sure succeed with multiple configurations. Of course, once you get 3% hit from gear you wont need the point in either of the +2% hit talents and you’ll be able to invest more about the talents you’re excited about.

Elemental was fun. Arcane frost was fun, I believe Vurtne’s very first mage pvp video was arcane frost. But Arcane fire was great too, and so was full frost. Imp blizzard, arctic reach and even permafrost can let you do some pretty cool stuff too. I did a lot of AV as full frost and I was quite a force in locking down the bridge during a turtle. At least long enough for us to summon Ivus and ride him to victory.
:innocent: :snowflake::cold_face::snowflake:

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Thanks for the discussion! What amount of gear does it take to achieve 3% hit out of curiosity? I plan on just doing specifically 5mans and bgs and crafting gear. Hopefully doing some PuG raids as the server matures.

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We still don’t know when pvp gear is going to hit the servers, or how long it will take for you to hit 60 :stuck_out_tongue:

The arena in BRD can give you a 1% spell hit belt. Drakkisath in UBRS can give you a 1% helm. Balnazzar in strat drops a 1% spell hit neck. And even down the hallways at the cannonmaster there’s another 1% spell hit neck.

Once ZG comes out and bloodvince stuff is available spell hit is all over the place.

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“Elementalist” spec back in vanilla was considered any mage spec that focused its talent points in a combo of fire and frost talents while taking little or no arcane talents.

The good news:

  • It was fun to shoot a barrage of fire and frost spells.

The bad news:

  • Elemental spec wasn’t considered viable back in vanilla for PVE or PVP.
  • The problem was there just wasn’t much synergy between fire and frost. Unlike arcane, which provided lots of synergy. Result was elemental mages were inevitably just handicapped fire or frost mages. Weaker in pretty much every respect, with no real advantages over traditional specs.
  • Traditional vanilla mage specs typically had 18 in arcane and the rest all in either fire or frost. The 18 in arcane got you Clearcasting, Instant Arcane Explosion, Evocation and Improved Counterspell… all critically important vanilla mage talents.

For PVE:

  • Evocation and Clearcasting were vital for maintaining mana during a long raid encounter. Without those talents it was easy to run dry mid-fight which would hose your dps. Back then Mana didn’t regenerate in-combat to any appreciable degree like it does in Retail.
  • Improved Arcane Explosion converted arcane explosion from its default 1.5 second cast into an instant cast. Instant cast arcane explosion was a great spell for PVE AOE.

For PVP:

  • Instant arcane explosion was critical for PVP. It was your only tool available that had a realistic chance of destealthing rogues who were our deadliest PVP foe.
  • Improved Counterspell added a small Silence onto Counterspell. This was great for PVP, because sometimes you wanted to finish off a foe before they could heal and needed something to prevent the target from getting off an instant cast spell. This was your only option.

Blizzard realized that elementalist spec was a cool idea but wasn’t viable.

  • Eventually they took steps to try to make them viable in WOTLK by giving mages Frostfire Bolt - a spell that counted as both a frost and a fire spell and benefited from the passive talents in both talent trees.

  • Frostfire bolt helped, but unfortunately even it wasn’t enough. Even in WOTLK, elementalist spec continue to remain a niche spec with subpar performance compared to any spec that had 18 in arcane.

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Ehhhh raids sure… everything else… it for sure was.

They got almost every benefit of the other specs while also having massive hitting instant casts. That was their benefit.

All mages have instant AE, all mages have EVO

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Actually mages for much of vanilla did NOT have instant cast arcane explosion. Instead we had a 5-rank Tier 3 talent that progressively reduced the cast time. Without the talent it was 1.5 second cast. And with spell pushback and mobs beating on you while you were casting it basically became a 3-second cast spell.

However, at some point Blizzard realized EVERY mage considered instant arcane explosion to be mandatory and took that talent, so they changed the talent.

Double-checking the 1.12 talent calculator it looks like the change happened during vanilla sometime before or during 1.12. Bottom line for Classic is that yes, arcane explosion default is instant cast.

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I understand that, but I’m not discussing pre 1.12 talents as that’s not what we are getting in classic.

Ele mage is for sure VERY good in pvp and in 5mans. One could argue that other specs would be better but honestly the ele mage playstyle seems like the best in the best hands.

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Maybe things are different now.

But my recollection from vanilla and the early expansions was that virtually all mages were either deep fire with some arcane, deep frost with some arcane, or deep arcane with some frost or fire.

Elementalist mages with little or no arcane and deep investments in both frost and fire were virtually non-existent… with good reason. They performed much worse in both PVP and PVE compared to the mages with cookie-cutter specs.

Periodically, in PVP in Vanilla I’d encounter a rare elementalist mage. When that happened I knew I was going to have an easy kill. It was almost certainly some noob who didn’t really know what worked and what didn’t. And back then there was no combo of talents available that would make an elementalist as effective as a traditional mage spec.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyeoT1owdFo

Id say for sure they were pretty good. You could argue for sure that maybe another spec could be better. Idk about 1vX though. Elemental mages aoe damage was insane.

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Interesting pvp video.

However, I wouldn’t read too much into that. He was blowing iceblock in nearly every fight and that is a loooong cooldown. In most BG fights it wouldn’t be up.

He also appeared to heavily outgear his opponents as he was dressed in Rank 13 gear and was clearly fighting low-rank foes in non-epic gear.

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AE was certainly not our only tool. And nor were rogues our deadliest pvp foe.

Unless rogues were popping every CD you were always going to have an easier time against rogues than locks or spriests. And to defeat good locks or spriests often you’re popping coldsnap for 2 ice blocks.

Let me know how it goes when you’re fighting SL locks when the servers go live.

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All those classes were really tough to fight 1v1. However, I recall in vanilla this one High Warlord rogue who was an absolute monster in pvp. Basically no chance of ever beating him as a mage.

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Man I think wrath launch hit the perfect balance of transitioning into new content out of any other expansion. Was pretty nice knowing that the year of farming BT/Sunwell for the perfect set wasn’t wasted and a ton of people were entering Naxx2.0 in t6 gear. Frostfire spec was insane until late tier 7 early t8 when you could get enough crit for fire to outpace again.

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Alright then how about this one

Vurtne for SURE was not overgearing anyone in these videos.