Yeah for another post making me question my main.
Can you elaborate on the arcane missiles thing?
I didn’t realize the dead zone / nova thing. Neat.
That rivalry sounds fun!
I was a spriest. Everyone hated on me. snifffff
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It’s a channel spell which I believe also moves you with your target.
So say if a rogue/druid is jumping all around your arcane missiles will always face you towards them
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That was not my experience at all. Keeping a paladin at bay wasn’t too hard, even if you couldn’t kill them.
Fighting a shaman was near impossible. Earth shock every 8 seconds or so so every other mage cast is silenced. Frost shock so you’re constantly slowed. Totem to block a high damage spell. You could poly them to run away, but they’d just wolf form and Frost shock you again. It was as hard of a counter as hard counters get.
This is the very first toon I made. I loved the leveling experience, the utility, the power and nearly every aspect of him. If you enjoy being a glass cannon with unmatched control over your enemies, mage is the class for you. Just remember when you get your crystal water, they only summon at seven at a time.
Paladins are a joke as a mage, they will never have any uptime to do damage and when they do it’ll just hit Ice Barrier. Maybe they can outlast your mana but then the mage can just sheep and eat/drink to reset.
Shamans are definitely one of the more difficult fights and elemental is a hard counter.
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To add to this, arcane missiles also “lock on” to your target from the moment you cast, so as long as you get the initial cast off you will channel all missiles, even if the target gets out of range or breaks line of sight. I used to take advantage of this for finishing off would-be flagrunners sprinting through the WSG flag room and half-dead opponents trying to flee from failed attempts to capture nodes in AB.
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Killing a Paladin was dead easy in Vanilla. They have no real damage, no real mitigation, just their heals. Sure you can burn yer mana cleansing the debuffs all day, but do not forget, everything the Mage does puts it right back on. ALL a Paladin had was bubblehearth.
When I did BGs and ran into a Paladin, those who hadn’t seen me before would try and fight back before dying or run for help. Others, who had seen me before, would stop and just sit there to speed up the inevitable, unless they knew for sure help was nearby. In that case, they would run for that help as well.
You have to spec into arcane missles. It isn’t far into the arcane tree. Think its a 5 point talent. Basically you just spam it and hold the right mouse button down and your toon will auto rotate to keep the rogue/cat in front of you while you channel.
The only melee that was really dangerous from what I remember, was an arms warrior who either had Rank 14 weapons and/or Naxx gear. Short of that, they just don’t have the burst. Even then, however, they can still be kited/controlled to death.
That said, Blizzard’s view of the Mage is “glass cannon” and our health, even in pvp gear, reflects that. If you get caught with yer pants down, you will die.
5 at a time. 4 casts to complete one stack of 20. Same for food. Makes prepping for raids take a LONG LONG time. Why people often had Mage alts to help make all the food and water before raid.
Very easy to play in pve, you just spam frostbolt lol. High skill cap in pvp.
I would watch this
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Mages are great. One of the better solo classes, and the best cc/aoe maybe.
I think every class probably does have a foil in the game. But from what I can tell mages have a lot of tricks up their sleeves.
That video was well researched. He did a solid job. Do have a few complaints about it, but they are pretty minor.
He did miss the pinnacle of fire Mage raiding though. In Firelands, on the Alysrazor encounter, a Mage would go a full haste and mastery gear setup. You would fly in the air like normal, get yer rings as you dodged tornadoes, and spam arcane blast. At 25 stacks you had like 100% crit and haste. Soon as the tornadoes disappeared, you raid would bring the two druids of the flame into the boss. The Mage would pop all cooldowns and crank pyro, after pyro, after pyro into the boss. At about 35% energy on the boss, as she recharged, you would pop combustion, whatever your ignite was up to, and then use fireblast to spread your dots to the two adds. For about 5 seconds your damage would skyrocket and a Mage would be doing upwards of 5.5 million DPS in a 20 man heroic Firelands. Often that was enough to drop the boss 60-70% of her total health bar, from a SINGLE Mage.
I can’t agree with all his opinions on the changes the Mage faced over the years. Like with Altered TIme, I felt that was a needed change, and the spell itself should never have made it into the game. I agree that the “Mage Fantasy” is being a turret glass cannon. Classical high fantasy has emphasized the massive energies and truly skilled Mage wields for centuries in stories going all the way back to Merlin and King Arthur. This idea of bouncing around like a hyper-active brat with ADD and being loaded with sugar inside a candy store, was just always bad design in my opinion.
But again, he was pretty on point with the history of the Mage. I myself, was never able to make the transition from the killer mindset to one of control in PvP. So I really retreated from PvP over the course of BC expansion. That said, the best raiding Mages were the ones who utilized their full toolkit to aid the raid. The best Mages were the ones who decursed, provided food and water, interrupted key casts, and kept an eye on their fellows even while still dominating the meters.
Your countering of shaman is one counterspell away. They can’t do anything but whack you for 10 sec. They should be dead at the end of that 10 sec.
I don’t see why. Poly > strongest nuke > scorch > FB/CoC > start your control. As soon as they try to cast anything counterspell and then they die.
Only if they were dumb. I ate mages that didn’t bother running away for breakfast.
The final ranks were changed to stacks of 10 per cast
Typically a Mage could out last the Paladins mana bar, because of evocate and the mana gems, not to mention Sheep resets. Add into they had an interrupt / silence, the Paladin didn’t, and the Paladin had one magic tree (counterspell), a skilled Mage could definitely make a lesser Paladin fall.
Juking that Counterspell is an absolute must, because eventually you will have to hard cast Holy Light / FoL
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You would be surprised on how often mages overreact when you randomly stop to cast FoL early. As a paladin, controlling that counterspell is a lot easier than a kick or pummel.
No doubt, been there done that. But a Mage has little reason to run away when he has the ability to reset the fight, aka mana up, at his leisure.
An oom Paladin is a dead Paladin. I’m basically just saying its not an in the bag kinda win for Paladin, and for Mages it can be tricky if they’re not on their game.
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Paladin’s also have their fair share of resets.
I don’t know. It never went down for me in my favor. Poly’s pretty easily countered. And I’m not sure what start control is.
I used to duel paladins, and never thought they were that hard. Weren’t they really slow?
It’s like we’re remembering different games here.