Mage Build discussion

[7F]LarryBoy

[7F]LarryBoy

New Member
I wanted to open the floor to a friendly discussion of various level 70 builds, primarily for group and raid PvE content. Feel free to dicussion your favorite builds, and to offer constructive criticism of the builds posted here.

When I stopped playing, and for many months before I stopped, my favored build for raiding was 10/48/3:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/mage/talents.html?2300050000000000000000050521201230333105312510030000000000000000000
By using lots of +hit and +crit gear, this build allowed me to maintain constant high damage against mobs with lots of health.

I was planning to level Pepernoten this same way, but I am certainly open to suggestions and new ideas. My goal is usually maximizing damage while balancing mana usage so as not to hold up the group or run out of mana during a battle.

I have been considering heavy arcane and heavy frost builds as well, and will post my ideas later. Feel free to post your own favorite builds!
 
this is one of those tough areas of debate. My first advice is:

Play your toon however makes it the most fun for you, especially while leveling.

If you plan on raiding, be willing to switch builds to meet the needs of the raid. I switched to frost for MC/BWL a long time ago. I switched back to a fire build because it seemed like a better overall move for raiding in TBC.

My suggestions for raiding are simply this:

1) Go fire. If you have other mages in your raid group, find out how they're spec'd and play. You don't both need Imp Scorch if you always play together.

2) Carry two sets of gear.
a) +hit set that brings your total +hit to 16% (including the 3% from frost talents). Pack as much +dmg as you can onto this set, use it for most boss fights.
b) +dmg/crit set with at least 5% hit from gear. This makes it so you will hit almost every spell on trash mobs. +hit after 8% total on trash usually is a waste. Basically, keep a few extra pieces of gear without +hit that has higher Dmg/Crit.

As for the rest of the time with hit/dmg/crit? I know that it's not supposed to be 1 point crit = 1 point damage = 1 point hit, it's actually 1 : 1.2 : 1.3 or something like that...but that's waaaay to complicated for me. To me, I actually prefer straight damage over crit because it means I can pump out more consistant damage. I don't have to worry about stealing agro if I crit 3 spells in a row... because at 20% crit, it isn't likely to happen.

3) Drink whenever you can during instances. Even if you only get to drink a few seconds, do it.

4) If you know you're going into boss fights and going to have to use gems/potions/trinkets.... start blowing them early. The super mana potion restores 1800-3000 MP. so as soon as you've used 3k mana, burn the first pot. As soon as you use 1600 mana, use the gem. As soon as you hit 40% mana, blow your evocate. There are a lot of cases that you can use Greater Dreamless Sleep potions (3600 hp, 3600 mana, 12 sec sleep - dispellable and interruptible) instead of a normal mana pot (anywhere from 20-50% additional mana from 1 use, plus increased time for tank to pull away in threat).

Especially as you get into raiding, there are boss fights that last 6-8 minutes. You can effectively keep yourself casting near 100% of the time if you use cooldowns effectively (including your invis to kill your threat - works great on Prince... use it at 65%, then nuke as hard as you can using every damage increasing cooldown you have to finish phase 2)
 
Awnold: good advice, but the Armory is currently bricked, it seems.

Durruck: Good points, and all things that I did on my 70 mage. I agree that for boss fights 16% or so hit is a huge bonus, otherwise you're losing damage to frequent resists.

My goal in this thread was to discuss the pros and cons of various builds. What are some builds that you have tried in the past? What was the frost build you used in MC/BWL, Durruck?
 
Posted a link a while back that goes through some rather intricate theorycrafting which are based around fire and arcane

http://www.redeemedonstonemaul.org/blogs/nevi/:


http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/38/magetriplepointshadedak3.jpg
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=93003149&sid=1&pageNo=1

Typically as 10/48/3, I won't let my crit drop down below 30% - if we had a reliable oomkin in our 25 mans, I would let it drop a touch more, but as it stands...we don't for a few more weeks, so that's my safety cushion.

There's also http://www.wowwiki.com/Mage_builds that goes through some fairly common ones and discusses the pros primarily.
 
Ok, here's a arcane/frost idea:
The Build

This would be for solo/leveling. I didn't take the aoe frost talents, as I'm not really planning to do aoe grinding, mostly questing. (Note that I would replace the Cold Snap talent with Icy Veins - a useable spell haste talent, when it is released.)

PROS:
This build gives me all the nice early frost talents for extra damage, crit damage, range, and the awesome shatter talents. On the arcane side I get the mana regen talents, and the three button mage talents for when I need a quick kill.

CONS:
Not going deep frost denies me some of the survival talents, and of course, the Elemental. On the arcane side, I fall just sort of Mind Mastery, which would give a nice boost to damage.

I think that given the choice between Shatter and Mind Mastery, Shatter is going to be more useful for questing/soloing. Combined with the high crit damage this build provides, I shouldn't have any trouble with killing trash. Thoughts?
 
leveling frost, in my experience 60-70, was very easy. While it's not as much damage as fire, the mobs are slowed and you still have a decent amount of overall power. That combination means that just as many mobs should die before they get to you, even compared to a fire build with it's high burst potential.

I never responded to your question about my build before I switched to fire. To be honest, it's been too long. I know that I rarely take the "suggested build" from the forums. I customize it a bit to make it fit my play style.

And I disagree with your assessment of Mind Mastery vs Shatter. Without frostbite in the 2nd tier, your shatter is only useful when you actually cast a frost nova. Without frostbite, I think you'd be better taking 3/3 Frost Channeling (4th tier frost) for better mana conservation and decreased threat in groups (should you decide to do any)

Mind Mastery 5/5 will grant you an extra 100 spell damage at 400 Int (easily attainable at L70), compared to 50% crit against frozen targets. The scaling is poor for the MM in the lower levels and because of the shortened casting times of the lower rank frostbolts, etc, you won't even see the full effect of the 25%. It's probably worth respecing as you approach 70 to pick up Mind Mastery.

I think early on, either getting Frostbite (while keeping Shatter) or Frost Channeling (by dropping Shatter) would be the way to go.
 
I run a 70 horde mage(semi-retired) and he has been deep frost since 60. I would consider going deep frost to help make your frostbolts more effective. The elemental is absolutely awesome. When you get yourself into deep water pop the elemental and you can overcome some serious odds even when oom. Frostbite is an absolute must(if your not going aoe grind spec), although currently it tends to break immediately on frostbolt procs. This is a known bug since 2.3 which has yet to be fixed(also possibly dependant on latency). So take that into consideration when you decide which spec to level as that will affect your play on frostbite.

In regards to frost burst vs fire burst I would argue frost is better in that burst is controllable. This will become most especially true when you get ice lance. You can milk frostbite procs or frost nova to include both frostbolt and ice lance to work off the nova/frostbite. When you first get ice lance you will expect 4k controlled burst damage most of the time. At 70 my mage can net 6k damage off that combo. You can also work it off of fireblast as long as you keep yourself in appropriate range. The damage/crit boon is calculated at cast t ime so take advantage of the frostbolt travel time when using fireblast in the combo.

My play in 5 mans with frost has been terrific. I can keep ahead of fire mages depending of gearing of each. Frostbite procs in instances tend to become an none factor since they break so easily on damage from party members. If you ever pug you will learn to appreciate the survivability of frost. A dead mage does no damage. Also cold snap is invaluable. If you go deep frost grab it.

For raiding I would consider ditching frostbite and any imp snare abilities in favor of arcane efficiency added to compliment frost. I haven't done any raiding on that toon, but as always I am confident that with a competent player frost can do more than adequate damage in a raiding environment while adding alot of survivability. Throwing in the pet for extra dam and you can close the gap with fire, but not all the way given both of you are competent.

Anyways, sorry for the length of the post.

Sean
 
Thanks for the tips, Randy and Sean. I had forgotten about Frostbite, and you're right, Shatter without it is less effective. Things don't really stay frozen in group activities, something I do plan to spend a lot of my time on.

Randy, I agree that at level 70 Mind Mastery is better. I'd be running groups more often, frozen targets get broken from damage, and ultimately many bosses and raid mobs are immune to it anyway. When leveling in the 30s and 40s, etc, I think it could be pretty handy, and as you pointed out, MM is much better when you have lots of Int to work with (like when you're level 70).

I'm going to have to think some more about this build. Thanks for your input guys!
 
Deep frost raiding question.

Considering the following build:
Chilly Raiding
Where would I put the remaining 10 points? The chill and shatter talents are not very useful in raids. I'm not sure how useful the damage reducing talents are either in raids. Usually we are hit with such large amounts of damage that it doesn't matter much.

Ice Barrier is probably useful in an emergency, and therefore Cold Snap and the cooldown reducing talent are probably helpful. This will also allow you to recast your Elemental quicker I think.

Thoughts? Suggestions on where to spend the other points?
 
A few choices that I see for your last 10 points...

A) Ice Floes (2 points) - reduce cooldowns by 10/20%. I don't think that your elemental timer gets reset, other than being able to use cold snap to re-cast it.

B) Ice Barrier (1 point) - hands down the best single point you can use. Like mana shield, but far more mana efficient. I absolutely loved this spell when I was frost spec'd.

C) Magic Absorption (5/5) and Arcane Meditation (3/3). Crits give mana back, plus extra in-combat regen. Nice for raiding on boss fights.

C, Part II) The extra points could be spent on Improved Counterspell (2/2) - Silences are always nice for pulling casters when your tank can't break LoS.

D) If you *happen* to have 1 point left over, go ahead and finish Imp Cone of Cold. Might as well get the last 10% bonus to your CoC for increasing your AoE damage, in case you ever get to use it.

Ditching Permafrost is probably a good idea overall, but I know there are times that it's really saved my skin from the free "frost nova" when something is chasing me. Overall, not a huge loss, though.
 
[7F]LarryBoy;267641 said:
Deep frost raiding question.

Ice Barrier is probably useful in an emergency, and therefore Cold Snap and the cooldown reducing talent are probably helpful. This will also allow you to recast your Elemental quicker I think.

Thoughts? Suggestions on where to spend the other points?
Click to expand...

spend them on respecing to fire :)

again, frost is generally a PvP deal - you sacrifice damage in terms of the base spells, but also in terms of gear. consider the set bonus on FSW vs Spellfire - quite lame.

if you're going to stick with it...go for imp cs in the arcane tree and probably fill out arcane focus. also, magic attunement is quite handy for Gruul where all the damage is physical so you can do a major boost to heals
 
17/0/44 is your cookie cutter arcane/frost PVP spec iirc...I believe that it has been shown that your two highest damage specs (unless you have the luxury of 2 pc. T5 set or a shadow priest, in which case it's arcane...) are 10/48/3 and 10/0/51. Before they removed the damage tax on fireball, I could also make a good case for a hybrid arcane/fire scorch crit spec with the Lightning Capacitor (Shade) and the Nexus Horn (final boss of Arc) trinkets. However, I think frostbolt and fireball specs have finally taken the top two spots for damage.

Frost seems to have much better longevity, and the recent DPS boost with the new 11 pt talent makes for some interesting CD management with theorycrafting and the like. With burning the WE at every possible cooldown, the frost spec does much better damage than I expected...but was still outperformed by my fire spec. Part of that may be gear (I have 3pc spellfire), but I do have 2/3 purples for my "backup" frost damage set.

If you enjoy frost, go with it. But fire will almost always outdamage it, and the survivability is almost as good, now that frost mages decided to share iceblock.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top