Frost mage PVP

[vickus420]

Hey all, I just hit 90 3 days ago on my mage and I'm having a bit of a hard time with PVP. I'm now pretty much fully geared although I somehow managed to spend 9k on crafted gear and temporary gems and now I'm broke so i can't afford to gem my last 2 pieces of gear. Anyway I recorded this gameplay and was hoping some of you could tell me what I could do better. My main problem is that I don't know what to do when I don't have FoF or brainfreeze up >.> Do I just spam frost bolt or something?

here is the video link. Thanks for reading any tips appreciated.

[wrathblade]

keep frost bomb on CD.
frozen orb when 3+ ppl are together.
try and freeze ppl a moment before frost bomb blowsup
if you don't get attacked frostbolt spam is good!

also don't wait for them to attack you. when that DK went for you get frost bomb up!

[vickus420]

I actually use nether tempest.. I saw frost bomb doesn't hit very hard. Should I be using frost bomb?

I know nether tempest doesn't hit hard either but I use it because brain freeze procs more

[Snuggli]

NT is probably better for BGs. Frost Bomb is fun for 1v1 though. Regarding what to do when no novas and no FFB/FoF: spellsteal, icelance, fireblast, get into a good position. It's often not really worth casting a frost bolt unless you're sure that you won't get kicked.

Watched a bit of your gameplay, a couple of notes:

Your CD management is a little iffy. Popping offensive CDs vs people when they are already 10%, blinking before death grip, randomly blocking for no real reason, etc.

You don't very often (or at all) shatter your novas with a FB/lance combo, you just seem to nova and lance straight into it. Maybe not in team fights, but definitely in 1v1 situations, you should try and make the most out of each of your novas because they'll eventually DR or all be on CD (which happened a couple of times) and you'll have nothing left to do apart from spellsteal or icelance spam. Obviously this doesn't mean try and FB/lance into every single nova, because a lot of times you'll get strangulated or disrupting shouted or wind sheared on your Frost Bolt, but if the nova is 8 seconds long, you've got time to fake a good 2-3 times before you have to worry about shattering it.

Apart from that, you seem alright on Mage. You were a little lazy with NT a couple of times (letting it fall off a lot of people while not doing anything else) but for BGs you're absoloutly fine, and I presume you know that already because your KB/death ratio wasn't bad.

[vickus420]

Thanks for the advice :] I'm just wondering what is FB? I would like to know because I want to get the most out of my shatters. And to be honest I got lucky with that battle ground I don't usually do so well. It was probably the funnest BG I've ever done though. Oh and the second time I blocked it was an accident ;_; I need to rebind it, I tried to frost nova the warrior and nova is bound to shift+2 while block is shift+3.

[Snuggli]

Thanks for the advice :] I'm just wondering what is FB?

Frostbolt

Good luck!

[Pewpewwindeeps]

A couple things before I nitpick your playstyle. You're doing awesome! Keep at it and you'll be amazing

That being said, there are a couple things I want to mention that I prefer to do when I'm playing my mage. The first one that bothered me(again, just personal preference here) is not running Glyph of Deep Freeze. As previous posters have stated, you only have so many novas to work with(and this is especially true if you are fire or arcane). I saw you trying to spam Deep Freeze a couple times on a nova'd target, but to no avail because the nova had already broken. I absolutely love my Deep Freeze off the global cool down. It's amazing, and try it out to see for yourself!

Another thing that I want to say, and again other posters have mentioned it(even yourself), is keep doing stuff. There were a couple(not many) times where you were just standing there not doing anything(lol at the /dance at the end). If you don't have any procs, just hard cast Frostbolt, and if you have to kite, just spam Spellsteal/Cone of Cold/Fire Blast/crappy Ice Lances.

Use Counterspell more. I know I know, "don't use it unless you interrupt a spell" blah blah blah. It's amazing what a silence to a ret pally or dk does. I try to use it as much as possible, and I love pairing it up after a Deep Freeze on healers.

Polymorph. Use it. Love it. It's your friend. You could be doing this during some of those down times that you had.

Once again, I'm not trying to bash your playstyle because it is obvious that it's working for you. These suggestions are just my personal preference when I play my mage. My experience on a frost mage is 2300 in RBGs and 2000 in 3s and 5s.

And to be honest, I actually picked up a neat trick from watching you play. Blazing Speed> Ring of Frost around yourself. That was awesome!

[Deleted]

Has it really gone so far that mages no longer hard cast frostbolts or even know how to?

[vickus420]

Yeah I'm definitely going to add glyph of deep freeze. There were dozens of times where it would have gotten me a kill or saved me. I just made a few macros so I'm goin to be able to use counter spell more when I'm casting I also started using polymorph sometimes I forget I even have it >.> it's like a sap that can be used in combat it's great.And it doesn't feel like you're bashing my play style that's the kind of feedback I'm looking for :P and thanks for the kind words! I like to think i'm getting better.


And yeah blazing speed has saved me more times than I can count and I've only been playing for a few days. People tell me to take presence of mind but I don't mind hard casting ring of frost. I was actually considering grabbing frost jaw instead. I just don't know what glyph to replace deep freeze with because all 3 I use seem so useful : /

armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...urshy/advanced

[Pewpewwindeeps]

Here is my armory showing what glyphs I like to use. http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...inaqt/advanced

I actually only use one glyph that you use, and sparingly: Glyph of Ice Lance. I prefer armors, deep freeze, and polymorph more than any other glyphs.

Nevermind the gemming, I'm messing around with my gemming to get a feel for what I like best. I would normally be gemming resilience.

[Snuggli]

I'd drop all 3 of your current glyphs and get:

Armors / Deep / Evocate for BGs.

[vickus420]

I wish I could drop the water elemental glyph but if I do I find it's hard to manage. I have a macro set to make him follow me but whenever I need it it's always 40 feet away using its auto attack.

[vickus420]

Yeah I can't imagine not using glyph of ice lance. It's hilarious when you're doing 2s and you're up against 2 melee and they stay together. I'm going to switch my gems around a bit but I'm not going full resil.

[Pewpewwindeeps]

I always keep my pet on passive unless I feel like I need extra damage to kill a healer that is just tanking me. Your pet does so little damage that you don't need it to be hitting your target. It's basically there for a root and FoF proc. That's it.

[Snuggli]

I always keep my pet on passive unless I feel like I need extra damage to kill a healer that is just tanking me. Your pet does so little damage that you don't need it to be hitting your target. It's basically there for a root and FoF proc. That's it.

I'd disagree, Pets do quite a large amount of damage and it's really easy just to have 1 extra bind/macro.

If you've got the space on your bars, make a macro that sets your pet to passive. Macro your pet to set to aggresive in frostbolt or ice lance and then every time you attack a new target it'll swap with you. If you 100% need it next to you, press the passive macro 1-2 seconds before you need it and it'll be next to you assuming it's not CCd.

Here are the macros I use (I have no idea if this is the best way to go about it, I'm not that great at Mage):


Macro to set your pet to passive (I have it showing the tooltip of Counterspell so it shows the CD of counterspell):

#showtooltip Counterspell
/petpassive
/click PetActionButton2 LeftButton

Macro to set your pet to defensive and attack your current target

#showtooltip
/cast Frostbolt
/petdefensive
/petattack

[pkm]

Honestly I feel it's not worth controlling the elemental. He's best for the ranged novas and you don't want him to be out of range or eaten up by someone since he is very squishy. He just dies real easy.

I would much rather be safe knowing water elemental is next to me than have him do some dps. Like frost isn't capable of damage, eh?

[Pewpewwindeeps]

Like frost isn't capable of damage, eh?

Exactly my thoughts. I've never really felt the need to have an extra 20-30k damage during my burst windows. Frost mage damage is so high right now you absolutely don't need it. And outside of your burst every 1 minute, the elemental damage is healable with a simple HoT that eats pretty much 0 healer mana. Perhaps putting the attack macro into your burst macro would be okay, I think. But having your elemental running into enemies and getting nuked down is an awful idea. Seriously, you have no idea how many times LoS issues has caused me to die or lose arenas because my pet was attacking something.

[vickus420]

I'm going to try to manage it.. but if it doesn't work out I'll just replace glyph of armors for that water ele glyph. What's the point of glyph of armors anyway? if a shadow priest puts a dot on you it will fade 10% faster? -.- don't get it. If someone could explain that would be great.

[Snuggli]

Exactly my thoughts. I've never really felt the need to have an extra 20-30k damage during my burst windows. Frost mage damage is so high right now you absolutely don't need it. And outside of your burst every 1 minute, the elemental damage is healable with a simple HoT that eats pretty much 0 healer mana. Perhaps putting the attack macro into your burst macro would be okay, I think. But having your elemental running into enemies and getting nuked down is an awful idea. Seriously, you have no idea how many times LoS issues has caused me to die or lose arenas because my pet was attacking something.

If you learn how to micro it well, it's 100% worth it. Think of it as a 10-15k DoT - if you had that spell as a Warlock would you 'not' cast it?

It's well worth learning if you want to min max, and it adds something to the Frost Mage skillcap.

I'm going to try to manage it.. but if it doesn't work out I'll just replace glyph of armors for that water ele glyph. What's the point of glyph of armors anyway? if a shadow priest puts a dot on you it will fade 10% faster? -.- don't get it. If someone could explain that would be great.

Correct. It's really strong, molten armor with it is nearly like a permanent barkskin AND it means it's very easy to change because it reduces the cast time too. A couple of Mages i've played with will start with Mage armor (even against melee teams, the extra 3k mastery on opener is very strong, it is a straight up 10% damage increase on frozen targets) and if they start getting trained, they'll just swap to Molten.

Mage Armor: Reduces DoT duration by a further 10%. (35% total)
Molten Armor: Reduces physical damage taken by a further 10%. (16% total)

[Deleted]

Good luck with pvp, and you should've only got mats and ask for someone to make you that armour, a lot cheaper.