That would be helpful if you could, because if that’s somehow happening, then that’s a bug in classic and isn’t how it worked back in vanilla.
I see that now reading on up on other post that it should be binary but I know for a fact I’ve seen those abilities partially resisted.
But then again this is Classic and not No changes Vanilla so who knows what Blizzard feels is correct?
what about professions, Ive heard skinning, ive heard alchemy and herb, ive heard enchanting/tailoring
Mage discord says that frostbolt was changed in cata so if it is partially hitting in classic that is a bug.
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No point in me typing up details with Qpon’s posts doing a great job already, but I’ll just echo Fire is a great spec for mages whether you’re in MC or not.
I played a lot of mage in Vanilla, and for me Frost was pretty much just a giant crutch spec that helped cover up how bad I was.
When I went fire and stuck with it, I became a far better mage and player in general, which meant when I did occasionally go back to Frost, I was even better at it then than I ever was before.
It’s not necessarily about kill speed, because Fire could do that too if it abused fireblast… but then you’d go OOM way too frequently to be worthwhile.
Instead, a lot of it has to with Pyroblast mechanics and the way it it triple-dips on mana efficiency. The 3 dips being:
- The obvious one being that the base spell itself is the most mana efficient mage nuke, buy a large margin.
- When killing a single target you usually finish with a wand attack or 2, which gives you a few seconds towards non-combat regen… then, because Pyro is a 6 second cast, you are backloading a lot of damage outside of the 5-second rule, giving you an extra 1-2 ticks of regen every mob.
- It has a whopping 170% spell damage coefficient, gaining far more bonus damage per mana from gear than any other single target spell.
That 3rd point is why I recommend to any mage leveling as fire to gear almost exclusively for +fire damage, and get your spirit/int where you can fit it in.
It should be noted that Frostbite+Shatter is a bit of an illusion when used in the context of single target farming. It’s awesome for burst if you need it and an amazing PvP/AoE tool… but for single target spam, it effectively it amounts to around +7.5% crit rate (+50% crit on 15% of spells) for the hefty price of 10 talent pts. That’s not much different than Fire’s global 6% crit rate talent which only requires 3 talent pts and doesn’t require a condition from its first cast (suppose it takes you 3 casts to kill a mob… then - on average - frostbolt will gain 0% crit, then 7.5%, then 7.5% … whereas fire gains 6% on all 3, or 10% if using scorch)
On the flipside, the best talent Frost has going for it with regards to single target leveling is - by far - Frost Channeling, which dramatically improves its efficiency. Without this talent Fire/Frost for single target wouldn’t be a debate, but this certainly makes it one. However, I think it falls short because of how little room frostbolt spam leaves for OOC regen compared to fire.
I’m not trying to hate on frost, or love on fire, I just think a lot of the math and practical results that favor fire never get through the noise from the hivemind parroting “frost is best, go frost, frost frost frost!”
Ultimately, single-target leveling comes down to how much mana efficiency you can gain while sacrificing the least time-to-kill, and that’s where Fire pulls ahead of Frost due to how incredibly efficient Pyroblast is.
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What is your opinion on Scorch? I’ve tried to work it in with different combos, but could never get it to outperform the ones you’ve mentioned.
I’ve found it useful at times once the Pyro/FBs are done… primarily when fighting mobs 3-4 lvls higher. After a Frost Nova then stack scorches, since they tend to not break the hold.
It is superb for gold farming if you know which mobs to farm
I try not to use scorch for leveling/grinding if I dont have to because fireball is more efficient with +damage gear, and there’s too many latency gaps between casts, but it has tons of uses across the game;
- Obviously Improved scorch in dungeons if you have it.
- Low cost nuke to finish off a mob at low HP
- You can fit in full casts of scorch between a ranged mob’s ranged attacks, to bypass any chance at spell pushback
- Desperate low mana DPS, using the higher crit rate + MoE to maximize efficiency on that last bit of mana.
- Spamming for crits to keep a big rolling ignite going (late game raiding)
- All sorts of situations in PvP, for obvious cast-time reasons, and also for more chances at impact procs (scorch can single handedly lock down a caster with just a bit of luck from impact)
- When you have improved fireblast for PvP, you’ll learn very quickly to weave spells around that fireblast cooldown, and scorch’s 1.5s cast fills in the gaps from instant casts perfectly. It’s also a huge part for your main burst combo in PvP if/when you can sneak in fireballs; Fireball->Scorch->Fireblast causes all damage from all 3 spells to land at the same time. This combo can be repeated over and over as long as you are free to cast and it catches a lot of enemies (and healers) off guard.
- Putting an enemy in combat that is running away, trying to mount/stealth/hide&eat etc … throw em a quick scorch when you’re not in range for a fireblast.
- Scorch spam vs a caster that has no pushback protection
Rule of thumb is generally;
Endgame PVE - pretty much only ever use Scorch to stack/refresh the debuff and maintain rolling ignites.
Endgame PVP - Use it a whole lot, for a lot of different reasons … but still definitely try to use fireball for damage when possible, as the burst from a big fireball -> scorch/fblast combo will get a lot of kills that 2 scorches wont.
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ok so from the sounds of it fire and frost are pretty even and it comes down to preference
Yeah… think it just comes down to play style.
When I tried to switch from fire to frost mage I got frustrated with how long it took to take out individual targets. I’m sure a good frost mage (with good gear) can be more effective then I was in switching, but it’s hard to replace pyroblast as a big boom stick.
I primarily solo (and did 15 years ago also… just not having a lot of time to coordinate for raids, etc). I found as a fire mage I could handle higher level targets easier, while farming and questing green targets faster as frost with aoe. Fire gives a bit higher upper end capability, and playing a mage I wanted to hit as hard as possible.
Someone else also mentioned just the enjoyment of watching fireballs fly out… there’s that also 
Fair enough. That actually makes it sound a lot more reasonable than I was expecting. I still think I’d personally recommend frost over fire, because of also getting Frostbite procs off of Ice Armor and being able to “cleave” shatter crits with Cone of Cold if needed, shattering off of Frost Nova, and being able to talent for a more powerful rank 1 Frostbolt for emergencies.
I can see Pyroblast being efficient just because of its hefty cast time, but the idea of tacking on an extra 6 seconds per kill (even if it happens out of combat) doesn’t seem appealing, though.
Since pyro starts out the combo, it doesn’t really feel like extra time during the battle to me. In practice it acts more like mana regen time that I use casting instead of sitting.
Plus at higher levels there’s a way to work in some arcane tree talents so that pyro becomes instant. Having an instant pyro feels pretty gooood.
Having said that, I do get a bit jealous when I see a frost mage round up a bunch of mobs and aoe them to death. It’s hard to switch though. If I try frost mage this time think I will start him from scratch to get a better feel for how it works than respec.
it’s not an extra 6 seconds tacked on, it’s more like 1-2 seconds, as you’re still doing damage from the cast, and doing ~150% of a fireball’s damage in 6 seconds instead of ~4.5.
what are the best professions to have as a mage tho, do i benefit more from having tailoring/enchanting or herbalism and alchemy
Tailoring has a pre-raid (and arguably post-raid) BiS robe that is BOP so you have to have Tailoring to use it. A lot of mages will go Tailoring until they get the robe, then drop the profession. That’s what I did with my mage in Vanilla.
This is the robe - classic.wowhead .com/item=14152/robe-of-the-archmage
so maybe it would be smart to take herb/tailoring to start and then get the robe and switch tailoring out for alchemy? and youd already have a lot of the mats to level the alchemy up. I want to be able to make gold, I don’t necessarily NEED the BiS over, is bags the only real way to make money from tailoring?
I found skinning to be a better money maker. Sometimes you can really clean up with skinning in areas where people are killing mobs and don’t need the skins. There’s also some tailoring plans that require a bit of leather.
Herbalism was much more difficult to find enough to make it worthwhile early. If you later switch to alchemy then you can power level herbalism pretty easily.
EDIT
Apparently I can’t reply more than 3 times on the same topic as a new forum user (kinda weird). So I’m updating this response with an answer to @Rivalz question below:
Enchanting is pretty expensive and hard to make money at lower levels. Plus all the greens and things you find you’ll want to disenchant instead of selling, removing another way to make money.
The other problem with enchanting is that you are basically offering a ‘service’ more than a ‘goods’. With tailoring you can make things and sell it on the AH. With enchanting you have to broadcast your enchanting on trade channels and hope for walk ins. That can take quite a bit of time just waiting for customers.
That’s assuming you are doing all this solo. If you have a guild that can feed you greens and you can level up enchanting things for them, then it’s a pretty good option. Otherwise I would wait on enchanting at least until you’ve made enough to buy your mount.
After a certain point tailoring can feed enchanting by making green/blue items to disenchant. But you really need to be at a point where you aren’t worried about having enough gold for basics, or are willing to spend a good amount of time invested in finding enchant customers.
** EDIT Level 2 **
“although do you think that keeping enchanting and just maybe selling the enchanting mats would out perform selling the skins from skinning?”
I don’t think the market for enchanting mats is nearly as strong as the market for skins. However that question can vary depending on the server, etc. The only people that really need enchanting mats are other enchanters, who tend to get their own. Leather is used in a lot of places, and in some professions where people are committed to other gathering skills.
Having said that… there may be a niche I didn’t find before. You can check the AH on your server for what enchanting mats are selling for. That would give you a pretty good idea of whether or not you disenchant and sell.
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There are other ways than bags to make money with tailoring. Dreamweave gear is good stuff from 40-55ish and isn’t BOP.
ok so I’m for sure taking tailoring. would you say skinning would be more profitable than enchanting then? I just don’t want to get to max level, make my robe and then not have a stable income from professions, sry for all the questions