Frost Mage has a ‘Shoot’ spell that requires a wand. The trouble is that the highest level wand I’ve obtained so far is only 131. Dagger, staff, etc. are higher level. If I switched my wand for another type of weapon which would make me lose the use of ‘Shoot’, would I be hurting my dps because I lose ‘Shoot’ or gaining dps because I’m now using a higher level weapon?
Shooting with wands is sadly now rather obsolete.
Generally speaking, you will greatly LOSE dps if you run around shooting things.
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I am confused. Are you speaking of Retail or classic? Shoot is no longer something viable in retail.
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Shooting with wands was obsolete since Day 1 of Vanilla back in 2004.
The primary rule for dps casters is “always be casting”. If you’re shooting your wand, you’re not actually casting any spells and your dps falls through the floor. As a mage, you should never EVER shoot your wand.
Basically, “shoot wand” falls in the same category as “whack with staff”, “swing sword” and “poke with dagger”. Yes, you an do those as a mage… but you really shouldn’t.
When it comes to weapon selection as a mage, the general rule of thumb is always take whatever is highest item level. Everything else is just cosmetic.
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It was a necessity when low on mana. Just as it was a necessity for Moonkin to be able to hit things with their weapon when they ran out of mana.
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I remember the exception to that being leveling in Vanilla/Classic. When leveling, especially early on, wands are a nice damage boost that doesn’t cost mana, and lets you do damage while not casting to let your mana tick back, especially for high spirit classes like priests. I don’t think that really changed until like Cata.
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Not really.
Back in Vanilla before they did the stat revamp, mages sought gear with the stat “increases spell damage and healing” (later renamed “spellpower”). Generally we avoided Intellect as all that did was give us more mana and a tiny amount of crit%.
However, even in Vanilla, mages should never have run out of mana. The gear goal was to equip just enough pieces of Intellect gear so you didn’t run out (including evocation, mana pots and gems). All other gear slots should be equipped with crit% or spellpower gear.
In retail today, mana is a non-issue for fire and frost mages. Arcane can still run out of mana, but that only happens if the mage messes up.
Note that this is for the endgame experience. I haven’t tried leveling a mage recently. Things might be different at very low levels.
There was a time when wanding was a viable strategy: When you are trying to conserve Mana you’d often wand things down while waiting for regen or between potion cooldowns!
Those days are long gone, however.
In any case, you should be going for whatever gives you the most relevant stats!
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I am actually having alot of fun in wotlk classic on my new mage finishing off mobs with a few flicks of the wand
Reminds me of the good ole days
I remember back in the day clutching some PvP wins when both players are on less than 5% hp and I’m oom and finish them off with the wand while they close in for the kill 
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Yes, the examples from others given were not for end game. Apologies for not being more clear myself. I should have been more specific to avoid the confusion. That was my fault.
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Okay so, to clear out the signal to noise regarding whether or not Mages “should” shoot, run out of mana on Day 01 of Vanilla, and whatever other things of no importance to OPs question…
Shooting with a wand was something you could do, its not relevant today, you should use spells, and itll likely get removed at some point.
Thats it. Thats all. Nothing else to say. Especially not elitist whining about the good ol days.
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I switched my wand for a dagger and I love how she plays. I have an Arcane mage, and my frost used to be a fire. I’m really enjoying playing the frost. Should have been a frost a long time ago. I’m having fun creating a frost theme: Wen Lo mount (not frost, but water. Are there frost mounts?), frost pet, frost headband (diadem of the spell keeper), frost breath (stolen breath)…
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Not true, especially while leveling, as Chroesire pointed out, but even in MC and BWL while evocation was on CD, because you were never going to get an innervate as a mage. I believe wanding also returned mana if Judgment of Wisdom was up, but my memory is fuzzy on that.
As the gnome points out:
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I disagree.
I raided MC and BWL back in vanilla and almost never used my wand. If you had at least 3 pieces of Intellect gear it simply wasn’t needed. Between potion, gem, and evocation you should never run out.
Also, mana regen both in and out-of-combat was crap back in Vanilla. If you wanted to regen mana as a mage between combats the proper technique was to sit and drink. 2 seconds between pulls? … no problem: you should be drinking. Blink to catch back up to the group if they’ve started the next pull.
For leveling back in Vanilla, I mostly leveled solo. When mana got low I sat and drank. Same for when I was in a group… wand dps is so low its higher dps to sit out the first 5 seconds of the next pull drinking than it is to wand.
I think the only times I used my wand were:
- I screwed up and my evocation got interrupted; and
- I wanted to humiliate someone in PvP by killing them with my wand.
Honestly, I hate wands and the only time I use them is if there isn’t any other weapon available and that is to shoot small animals with .
I used to shoot when I ran out of mana in OG days.
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I have fond memories of my 2005 big burly orc warlock killing raptors in STV by shooting sparkles out of his dainty little magic wand. At lower levels, it was certainly faster than spamming SB after your dots were rolling.
I actually wish wands would come back as weapons in retail. Not so much for auto-attacks, but I just wanna channel my inner Dumbledore in WoW. I wanna fire lazers and sparkly magic from a wand rather than my hands or a staff.
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Shoot goes back to the days when we regularly went OOM. These days mana isn’t an issue so wands are obsolete.
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on retail i really wish they’d just remove the ranged attack from wands and let them be just a stat stick. nobody uses wands because of the issue of accidentally using it and wasting a GCD
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I remember a Greater Magic Wand back in the day when leveling my priest back felt like an over powered weapon since it hit harder than my spells.
Any classic vanilla players will probably remember using this wand around level 10+
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