Tactics againt a mage.

[CreativeInstitute]

Alright, I just thought as I'm going to slow down/completely stop posting here, I'll give you warriors out there some tactics to take on frost mages.

Warrior:

Now this used to be the most uphill battle for a warrior, but it sure as hell isn't now. With the right tactics, you can kill/do some serious damage to a frost mage quite easily.

Ok, first up, don't let the mage get a polymorph on you. I really can't stress this enough. You charge first, the mage will usually nova and get some distance and then try to polymorph you. You must trinket out of that initial frost nova, then start beating on him. This will force the mage to either ice block, or blink. Either way, he's just blown a massively important cooldown. If he blinks, you intercept and smash him (which will force him to ice block anyway, so he's just thrown the match), if he ice blocks, just wait it out.

Now that you've put pressure on him, he'll most likely bust out his water elemental: you must kill this thing. Aside from the passive damage, the important thing is to prevent it's nova. 3k health is not a lot for a warrior to rip through, so just kill it fast.

You have spell reflect, USE IT. I see so many warriors just standing there, frost nova'd with their big swords, not even bothering to stance dance and use reflect. I know it's a huge rage drain, but it's better to burn it than cop a shatter combo. Use it every time it's up. Even if it reflects a rank 1 frostbolt, he's just snared himself. Pop spell reflect and then bandage. That's precious seconds of health you're getting while he blows two ice lances to try to stop you.

Thanks to second wind, every time you get nova'd, you're getting health back, so pop your spell reflect, bandage, he'll be forced to ice lance it, while you've already gained a few hundred hp. The more instants he's blowing to dps you down, the less mana he has.


Keep piercing howl/hamstring up as much as you can. If he can't kite, he can't win.

When to use fear is very tricky. I've seen warriors fear off the water elemental to prevent the nova, which can work quite well, but what works best against me that I've seen is to just kill it and save the fear for when they throw a nova at you during the match. If you're beating on them, they'll nova to control/get away from you, fear them and they'll have to blow their trinket (or WoF if you're unlucky enough to come up against an UD mage). But that's what I've found to be best.


Anyway, those are the main things that warriors can do (that I see very few of them actually doing even in the 2k bracket) to make the warrior/mage fight not so one sided. Now I'm not saying that doing this will make you win 100% against mages. If they double pet, double veins, double block etc, yeah it's going to suck, but you're trying to prevent them from going on the offensive. Keeping them on the defensive is the idea.


Maybe you got something out of this, or maybe you knew all this already. It doesn't matter.

Peace.


EDIT: I guess if people have requests for other classes tactics against a mage, I'll be happy to help out.

[Azain]

the mage ice lances before i charge, since every spell under the sun has a longer range that charge. as a result i cannot charge, get rank 1 fbolt slowed, switch to intercept, after intercept he blinks, game over...

even if i trinket he will either be arcane and slow me, frost and use his pet to nova me, or fire and die quickly, short of a lucky blazing speed proc or two in which case i might die to that spec as well.

maybe with tactical mastery and getting the charge off i can win but mages have more CDs than warriors, and if they use them properly they can control the fight.

1v1 i can beat bad mages, but a good mage leaves me little chance of ever winning. in an arena however there is usually a counter class to a mage, such as a lock or a druid to prevent shatter combos and heavy damage, and when the mage has more than 1 person to worry about it becomes much harder to kite me.

[Nevoron]

Yeah we have it pretty easy against warriors, i don't sheep a warrior in a duel tho and in a duel i usually let them charge me, i can deal with it.

One tip tho, if the mage trinkets from something do that roar or shout where is walking speed is limited i had a warrior that fucked me up with that hard. Was in an Arathi a while ago.

As for your fear, most mages have their pet on follow so if they're close and both in fear range, fear, the mage might trinket or WotF but you take down the pet for a few minutes.

Maybe try to kill the pet and force a blink before the CD of Intercept comes off.

I can imagine how hard it is.

[Nahima]

You don't even need to stance dance if you're in battle stance, to be able to spell reflect. Just throw a shield on and use the skill. Make a macro.

I use this one that I made, for the time being

#show Spell Reflection
/equip 16 (your one hand)
/equip 17 (your shield)
/castsequence reset=10 [stance:2/3] Battle Stance; Spell Reflection

Hit it twice if you're in another stance, hit it once if you're still in battle.

You'll need another macro to put your 2h back on, haven't quite figured out how to get my 2h back without breaking the macro.

[Azain]

You don't even need to stance dance if you're in battle stance, to be able to spell reflect. Just throw a shield on and use the skill. Make a macro.

I use this one that I made, for the time being

#show Spell Reflection
/equip 16 (your one hand)
/equip 17 (your shield)
/castsequence reset=10 [stance:2/3] Battle Stance; Spell Reflection

Hit it twice if you're in another stance, hit it once if you're still in battle.

You'll need another macro to put your 2h back on, haven't quite figured out how to get my 2h back without breaking the macro.

/equip [modifier: ctrl] <2h'er here>

pretty sure thats its, i'm at work can't check my macros. might need a stop macro in there for the original part, but you can ctrl+click to get back your 2h'er or even switch back to zerker stance, although generally with names like vengeful gladiator's greatsword you run out of macro space quite quickly.

[Crimsonak]

Ok, first up, don't let the mage get a polymorph on you. I really can't stress this enough. You charge first, the mage will usually nova and get some distance and then try to polymorph you. You must trinket out of that initial frost nova, then start beating on him. This will force the mage to either ice block, or blink. Either way, he's just blown a massively important cooldown.

No smart mage will ever ever do that.
Even if you manage to pummel the first polymorph, any mage with half a brain can quite easily take a few seconds of damage with their sheilds up, then poly you anyway. Then its pretty much game over. You cant charge, you can intercept. However as it's been said he will happily just blink away.
This way even if you spellreflect a frostbolt, even if you fear them and get close again. They still have cone of cold, which slows you more than hamstring, and then still have frostnova ready again, and as a last resort iceblock is still up. A frostmage who knows what he is doing doesnt even NEED an elemental to control the entire fight against a warrior and leave him with pretty much no chance to win. Unless the warrior gets very, VERY lucky.

Because the rest of your "tactic" is based on something which.. 9 times out of 10. Won't happen. Its pretty pointless to post it.