I really need some help with my mage.

[jadedfuture]

So, I've played this game for about 10 years now, and the one thing I've played are melee classes. I started out as a ret pal, and I have played EVERY melee class except for Feral Druids, because they're boring to me.

Because of this, I've decided I wanted to main a ranged character other than my Hunter for WoD, and that sounds cool. At the time I made my mage, warlocks were in this shitty place where one spec was the best for everything, and I wasn't interested in it (destro). So, I rolled a mage.

Was pretty fun, I boosted him to 90 after some hours of leveling and getting bored. I leveled through the WoD zones MUCH slower than I would had I been playing my Retpal, because every time I would pull something, if I pulled more than one, it was either CC or die. So I cc'd. A lot. It was annoying, but enjoyable. I'm level 100 now, and I was having a pretty good time RP'ing as a mage, but playing one has been very problematic.

I find it impossible to move anywhere. I use Ice Floes almost always when I need to move from things like the Tectus smoke or the fire on Twin Testes. When I run out of Ice Floes charges, I just.. Spam Ice Lance and do almost no damage. It's pretty bad. Also, on fights such as Twins, I seem to be interrupted CONSTANTLY. Rock fall, int shout, the fires not enabling me to cast.. It's almost havoc. How do I even stand in my rune? (i imagine i probably should take Incanters for that fight..)

I'm so used to being SO mobile as a melee that this class almost annoys me because I can't do ANYTHING. Also, the class is extremely gear dependent, but that's cool, I never minded it, just a slight issue.

Has anyone else cured this mobility syndrome or am I just going to have to shelf this class because I'm not skilled or patient enough?

[Deleted]

Well basically the mobility for the three specs are as follows:

Arcane: Very immobile. Ice Floes will help you and you have some instants (force nova and you might get presence of mind in a macro)
Frost: Haven't played it for a while, but it's similar to arcane, but has more instant casts with the ice lances, but again ice floes is what makes it more tolerable
Fire: If you want to be mobile, this is your spec. You have the ice floes of course, but you also have Scorch which lets you cast while moving. Take into consideration that you always have some dots ticking so you will always be dealing damage on the move. On Highmaul, arcane is probably the best spec, but on BRF you can go fire on most boss fights. You will be running and jumping around while dealing great aoe damage and decent single target damage. You might want to give this a try and see if it's for you.

[jadedfuture]

Well basically the mobility for the three specs are as follows:

Arcane: Very immobile. Ice Floes will help you and you have some instants (force nova and you might get presence of mind in a macro)
Frost: Haven't played it for a while, but it's similar to arcane, but has more instant casts with the ice lances, but again ice floes is what makes it more tolerable
Fire: If you want to be mobile, this is your spec. You have the ice floes of course, but you also have Scorch which lets you cast while moving. Take into consideration that you always have some dots ticking so you will always be dealing damage on the move. On Highmaul, arcane is probably the best spec, but on BRF you can go fire on most boss fights. You will be running and jumping around while dealing great aoe damage and decent single target damage. You might want to give this a try and see if it's for you.

I really want to try fire, but my damage is far too low because (1) I have little experience in the spec and need to learn more about it and (2) being ilvl 624, most of my gear does not have enough crit to play Fire viably.

[Nawdle]

Fire is fun but you will need the item level. This is also true for arcane, I probably wouldn't try that out before 660 ish either. What old mate said about scorch is only true if you're going to be on the run for hours at a time, because ice floes and fireball is just better dps (obviously).

What's going on there, OP, is you're learning caster. Things are different for us, and there's a lot of skill in learning when and where you can get a cast off. You will get used to it, but on high movement fights as frost it's worth saving ice floes for periods of genuine movement rather than using it when you want to move half a foot to the left (for example). Use procs for that.

[Choloz]

This is just something you need to practice... it's about only moving when you absolutely have to. You have blink for when you have to move long distances/quickly, you have icy-floes, you have fox from your hunters (which they should be popping when the entire raid is moving), you have ice nova which takes up a GCD worth of time and you can pool it for movement, and you have instant cast procs with frost. Plus, your gear level is absolutely horrible, which means your multistrike is low so you're not getting nearly as many IL/FFB procs.

Just don't panic when there are things happening around you, I guess.