Mages In Classic

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
1

I’ve never played Mage in Classic, but may do so now.

For those of you who actually played Mage in Classic, what were your impressions?

What would you advise a newbie Mage?

2

they are very good in classic. pvp wise horde has a bit of an advantage in that you will see fewer classes that counter you. you are good against paladins and not so good against shaman. the good warlocks tend to be horde too

mages are good for pve in every raid, the biggest problem there is loot competition

3

Extremely fun class to play (will be my alt).

They are an S-tier class in vanilla. Polymorph is broken. Use rank 1 for spells like frostbolt (quick snare) and blizzard (improved), frost nova (save mana) and arcane missiles (for grounding totem). Rank 2 fireball to keep a dot on rogues.

The level of control that a mage has is insane, extremely strong. I actually prefer the control playstyle (deep frost) on the mage than the burst playstyle (elemental). Don’t worry, both specs do both extremely well. Also, ignite barrier is a great spec.

You will be spamming frostbolt until AQ40, but the true challenge is learning how to efficiently manage your consumes to restore mana (various ranks of mana gem, mana pots, dark runes), especially for speedruns.

My best advise is to learn how to stay alive first (you are squishy), which means that you will learn how to control your opponents. Focus on that, and the burst naturally comes.

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4

Being able to teleport around the world without waiting for long flight paths or an hour HS CD is highly underrated. It’s a huge QoL upgrade if that’s your thing.

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5

They fine.

6

:snowflake: :fire: :sheep: Mages are fun. :sheep: :fire: :snowflake:

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7

A lot of folks are gonna be running tailor/enchant on their mages for the various pieces of gear, but being able to make mana pots and elixirs IMO is a bigger boon in the long run, even if you never raid (where flasks come into the picture). It’s so good to be able to make a bunch of health/mana pots from herbs you’ve run across in your travels instead of being forced to make a trip to the AH and probably overpay for those same potions, or worse, abstain from buying potions altogether and using only those that drop.

I lucked into herb/alch on this mage back in Vanilla (Alchemy just sounded cool back then, particularly having just watched FMA), but for Classic I’ll be rolling an herb/alch mage as my first char intentionally.

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8

The biggest change betwween retail and classic mage is mana.

Mana = life, you make decisions around your mana. If you are low on mana your gameplay will be different.

Drinking water is a big part of keeping your mana as high as possible before going into combat.

Some say 75% drinking 25% gameplay. I don’t agree with those numbers but it may feel that way If you’re not having fun with managing your mana.

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9

Mage is one of if not the most common classes you will see in classic. Easy to play, non gear dependent, and good utility like portals/food/water.

The hardest part is that with so many mages, it becomes competitive to get raid spots.

Don’t even get me started on fighting over gear.

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10

Mages are the better caster in classic, and popular for groups, but raid slots are more contested than warlocks.
-Best aoe in the game.
-Infinite food/water.
-Teleports/portals to cities.
-Solid class in BGs
-8 spell hit handed to you from talents/enchants (warlock gets 0)
-Threat reduction talents in fire+frost (warlock gets 0)
-Great survival spells in raids, ice barrier, fire/ice ward, blink, ice block. Warlock has practically nothing here except a 2m CD death coil and his tradable healthstone you could get as any class. You also mooch his bloodpact.

11

I was a PvPer in Vanilla. Mages are probably the single strongest class in the game.

  1. Polymorph lasts 50 seconds in pvp.
  2. Rogues do not have cloak of shadows, that came in BC.
  3. Spec into Arcane Missles and watch rogues and feral druids never be able to get at your back. They lose like 70% of their damage if they can’t attack from the back.
  4. You can Iceblock while carrying the flag in WSG, it doesn’t drop it. That change might have come at the end of Vanilla, I can’t remember.
  5. Rank 1 Frostbolt for fast snare, then max rank to nuke others down.
  6. Hunters have a dead zone. It is right on max range of Frost Nova.
  7. The only cloth gear with good stamina stats was pvp gear. Getting to Rank 8 isn’t too hard. Get that blue pvp gear and you will do well and outperform most lower pve gear too boot. Tier 2 is where pve gear begins to really eclipse the pvp gear.
  8. Your archnemesis will be a warlock with a felhound out. The ability to eat your Ice Barrier, fear, horrify, and silence just gives them a TON of control over you. They are the one class that will truly force you to play at the top of your game when vs in pvp.

Outside of pvp there are other reasons Mages are great:

  1. Portals
  2. Slowfall, doesn’t get removed by damage unlike Priest levitate
  3. You are your own source of food and water
  4. Control in PvE, frost is just so dominant for so long
  5. Can make good money not just from professions but in selling ports.

Downsides:

  1. REAGENTS!, REAGENTS!, REAGENTS!! Portals, teleports, and slowfall all require stacks of reagents to cast. This costs money.
  2. Mana management, screw this up and you won’t be doing much for a long time. That said, the tools available are many. Mana Gem, Evocate (not just for arcane mages anymore), Spirit (yes spirit on our gear is a thing in vanilla and our evocation is based around how much we have, that said, don’t stack it.), Mana Potion, Water, Food Buff; Mana regen is measured in MP5 or Mana back per every 5 second tick. I might be wrong on evocation being based on spirit, that might have been a BC change. It was, at times, based on spirit, based on intellect, and a flat % of mana restored over the duration of the channel.

That really sums up what I can remember at the moment. Can’t wait for the 27th of next month.

11 Likes
12

Easy to play.
You will encounter many good mages.
very few great ones. Hard to master.

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The mage and warlock rivalry in guilds is hilarious, you’ll like it regardless of which side you’re on.

Mages are very strong though and you won’t regret playing them. It’s like the Red sox vs Yankees, North Carolina vs Duke etc. Get ready to talk smack

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14

I’d like to add that, aside from mana, frost mage in retail plays a lot like vanilla mage.

You don’t have you’re WE,Ebonbolt or Glacial Spike but the premise is pretty much the same you just talent into the basics.

Winter’s Chill, Shatter Combos, Ice Block and Ice Barrier.

If you’re thinking of going Frost Mage in Classic and aren’t on pservers I’d recommend leveling one on retail,spec into lonely winter as to not get accustomed to a pet that won’t be there, and if you like it and do well I’m confident you’ll like it and do well in Classic.

I believe both of these were changed prior to 1.12

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There is no Ice Lance either. The original shatter combo was Frost Nova, Frostbolt into Cone of Cold.

Are you sure about the sheep? I thought that came with the 2.0 pre-patch.

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Yes thank you for that I felt like I was missing something.

Not 100% sure to be honest but yes I think so.

17

Yes poly does last that long but not in pvp. I think the first cast is like 20 seconds and it DR’s down from there.

I just watched a classic beta duel Venruki vs Snutz and it was 20 seconds on the 1st sheep, 10 on the 2nd, and 5 on the 3rd.

18

Paladins totally neuter your toolkit. Nova? Cleanse. Slow? Cleanse/BoF. Sheep? Cleanse/BoSac. PoM? Bubble. If a paladin wants to disengage there is nothing you can do about it. All a shaman can do is purge you and get annihilated from a poly. You can even stop their burst from even happening at all while you burst them instead.

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It has the possibility to reach 20 sec. But it is very unlikely. Every second after the 7th you have increasing chances of breaking early. DR doesn’t change when the increased chance for break happens.

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  1. Polymorph, like any other CC, will not last more than 15s. You will never see a single CC go over 15. This is why downranking CC spells conserves mana. The higher ranks spend more mana for no benefit vs a player.
  2. You cannot hold a flag while divine/shield ice block is active. The game will drop it on the ground. You can however click the buff off, then pick the flag back up. So they can be used to clear effects from you. Vanish will also drop a flag, but the rogue can pick it right back up. They will simply lose the stealth. They generally vanish (flag drops), grab it again (stealth drops), then sprint.