Just a few mages ?'s

[ChristopherD87]

hey guys, got bored with my monk main, so lvling a mage to have some fun...Mostly doing pve but some pvp here and there for fun. haven't played mage since cata so had a couple questions...

1) for the tier 2 talents (for pve purposes) are temp shield or flameglow ever used?? I could see situationaly maybe temp shield, but flameglow??

2) what happened to seeing fire mages everywhere?? is it much more RNG based or a harder rotation? Or does frost actually do better high end than fire?? (speaking from what I have seen on my monk in normal and flex)

Thanks for the help guys

[Kendeura]

Temporal shield is the best PVE talent except very select situations.

Frost is better to play in shitty gear, and easier, which is what you'll find when you don't play in heroics mostly.

[ChristopherD87]

really temp shield is best?? I woulda thought Ice barrier is best since it last longer, but ill try out temp shield then lol...


but in crap gear, can fire still do well??? I like fire a lot, but if I have to play frost till I get good gear I don't mind doing that

[ChristopherD87]

1. Ice barrier is most popular choice because of obvious reasons. Flame Glow looks useful for fights where you only take less damage. At higher damage range GD isn't helpful. I think its a new talent, It came after I unsubscribed.

2. These days specs have become fight specific. Fire for Mobility. Arcane elsewhere. Its been a long time since I unsubbed so I will also wait for more opinions.

Yeah for the #2 answer...from what I have seen...non heroic raiding of course so take with a grain of salt...I have seen probably 95% frost mages, 4.9% arcane...and mayyyybe 1 fire mage...Just not used to it lol since in cata fire pwned all, and frost was lol at pve

[Vedel]

Frost is best at low ilvls since it scales the least and Blizzard has had to buff its core spells frequently over the expansion. Fire requires at least 35-40% crit to be competitive and arcane requires at least 14k mastery. Both of these aren't that hard to reach in normal/heroic SoO gear but Frost is also easier to play since the rotation is mostly about bomb uptime and using procs. For fire you have to react to procs to turn them into pyroblast! so more room for error and well Arcane may have a rather simple rotation you need to understand your mana management and any movement in a fight needs to be understood for correct rune placement to minimize movement time.

[ChristopherD87]

Yeah understandable Vedel...on the bomb management you mentioned...Which bomb is best for frost and which one for fire??? I see a lot of people using NT and LB, but not as many using FB...and not sure which one is the best. I have read the guides, but always see people using different ones...or is that once again fight dependent?

[Kamswow]

Living bomb is best on most fights, Nether Tempest is good if you're multi dotting a lot of targets, and frost bomb is really only good for something like challenge modes as frost.

[Deleted]

I use frostbomb the most simply because of te fact that it gives a predictable FFB_proc and it explodes for a truckload on frozen adds, very handy on 10M normal where bringing some extra utility is handier then min/max bullcrap. I dont think the OP is in a 25H guild.

[Henzington]

#1 Ice Barrier is only better for malkorok and for the iron prison for dark shamans. Otherwise Temporal Shield is better because it is off the gcd and since it is a percentage rather then a set number it can prevent/heal a lot more damage overall

#2 Fire is just slightly behind in single target dps to arcane and it has vastly more mobility so it is the preferred spec for a lot of people for that reason. For nonheroic raiding, all of the specs are competitive so you can use any of them for just about any fight and perform well. The excecption is handling the belt on Siegecrafter which arcane is terrible for due to the movement and the fact that rune of power doesn't work properly on the belt.

[ChristopherD87]

I use frostbomb the most simply because of te fact that it gives a predictable FFB_proc and it explodes for a truckload on frozen adds, very handy on 10M normal where bringing some extra utility is handier then min/max bullcrap. I dont think the OP is in a 25H guild.

Nope, not in 25 H lol, doing 10mans, and only downed 2 bosses on heroic so far...but I always tank, but we need some new DPS so I am gearing up my mage, that's y I aksed these "noobish" mage questions lol, just to make sure I can get the best out of my play


thanks for the answers/advice

[Vedel]

The bombs are basically
LB 1-2 targets spread
NT 1-2 targets within 11 yards, 3-4 targets
FB 5+ targets stacked

This is for Frost, most fire and arcane mages won't touch FB since applying the fire damage debuff is harder with FB and NT does tons of cleave damage with arcane mastery since you sit at 100% when casting it on everything. And frost bomb gets better with higher haste which most fire and arcane mages forgo for crit or mastery, respectively.

[Hasufer]

Sure u dont use LB on 3 targets spread too Vedel? - I'm quite positive u do

[Voidism]

heh, the many times Temporal Shield saved my butt. Them 100k+ heal ticks feel really awesome.

[Vedel]

Sure u dont use LB on 3 targets spread too Vedel? - I'm quite positive u do

I guess you do, it is just super rare for that to occur since it typically means that you need 3 tanks or one of the mobs is a caster that for some reason needs to be seperate.

[Deleted]

Temporal shield is definitly superior to the other two, except for malkorok, as mentioned in a comment above.
For your other question I'm not sure what kind raiding you're raiding but all mages I know of on my realm play either arcane or fire.
These are all progressing heroic though.

Frost definitly provide the raid with more burst damage and AoE (Frozen orb), which might be needed for guilds that progress through normal (that was our case when we did normal).

Frost also has kind of a low (atleast lower than fire/arcane) skillcap, in my opinion, so I guess that's why many players prefer it. They simply do more dps in it than fire/arcane - this is subjective of course, the average player probably doesn't put in as much time as heroic progressing mages into rotation and optimizing.

I hope this post was helpful, excuse my english, it's not my native language.

[IsrafaelMage]

Frost also has kind of a low (atleast lower than fire/arcane) skillcap

What kind of skillcap do you need as fire?