Pre WOTLK mages

[remendejo]

hi, i started wow in one year ago so i missed vanilla and BC, and i wonder what were the raiding specs for mage in that times and the rotations?

[nwo]

It was probably just spamming 1 button...

I haven't played in pre-BC and I leveled up a mage shortly after BC came out. After I got to 70 it was pretty boring because all I did was spam scorch/fireball/fireblast. That's pretty much what BC was about, so I can only imagine how bad pre-BC was.

[Keoren]

TBC also had a strong arcane spec, especially with 2-piece t5. You specced 40/0/21 and spammed arcane blast (instead of increased damage the spell got faster) and dropped the stacks with frostbolts. Basically the spec had strong burst similar to nowadays and you managed mana with the stack dropping. I started in TBC and actually found this spec very fun while requiring quite a few invidual decisions.

[Lollis]

I didn't get past Molten Core on my mage at Vanilla because I started it very late so I cant say the rotation for fire which was the spec then frost tho was just spam frostbolt pretty much while also throwing ap and pm. My arcane/frost spec : 21 0 30 iirc

TBC Fire 2 48 11, keep Scorch up, spam fireball. Didn't play arcane much.

And Keoren, you are missing 10 talent points there.

[Odina]

God I miss Vanilla :P

I remeber the first night after the patch that introduced "winters chill" was introduced and peopel were all saying how hax it was that we could stack scorch with our main nuke and that ALL of us got th crit buff!

God good times... MC and BWL and even most of AQ20/40 was frost bolt spamming. More so in MC and BWL due to the high resist to fire the bosses had. Come Naxx 40 fire came up as superior aspecially with the HAX that was Rolling ignites. In these times it was simple spam Fireball and keep scorch up or if frost spam frost bolt! You didnt really have any other spells to cast!

TBC had Fire as the main raiding spec with a blimp of arcane due to the 2 piece bonus early on. However the rest of the time was fire all the way. Rotation was much like vanilla...spam your main nuke and keep up a debuff if you had one!

[Keoren]

And Keoren, you are missing 10 talent points there.

Edited, was a typo on my behalf.

[Teckdragon]

It was kind of like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nLw4CUWn9w


Decurse, decurse, decurse...


Made this vid during the heyday of TBC prior to Sunwell.

[flinchy]

I didn't get past Molten Core on my mage at Vanilla because I started it very late so I cant say the rotation for fire which was the spec then frost tho was just spam frostbolt pretty much while also throwing ap and pm. My arcane/frost spec : 21 0 30 iirc

TBC Fire 2 48 11, keep Scorch up, spam fireball. Didn't play arcane much.

And Keoren, you are missing 10 talent points there.

fire can't have been the main spec for MC... fire immunity.

[madethisfor1post]

Vanilla: For MC/BWL it was frost, after that it was fire.
TBC: Fire was pretty much it from start to finish. Arcane and frost made a few advances but...
WotLK: You know the story...flavor of the month etc etc etc

[FrozenFlames]

and them black drakes were immune to fire aswell (like ony, and those in bwl)

[histuguya]

I never played my mage in vanilla but i leveled mine as soon as bc came out and the first "cookie cutter" spec was the 2/48/11 fire spec and it was more or less, scortch, fb spam, not a whole lot of fun, when i got into TK/ssc the best dps was 40/0/21 and it put us up near the top, at least fighting with hunters at the time, and that one was kinda like arc today, building up stacks, but nothing immediately dropped them so u did a frost bolt spam, but at that time the debuff gave spells extra damage. Best part of this spec it showed who knew how to play their mage and who didnt because it drained mana pretty fast

[Zarlunce]

I didn't get past Molten Core on my mage at Vanilla because I started it very late so I cant say the rotation for fire which was the spec then frost tho was just spam frostbolt pretty much while also throwing ap and pm. My arcane/frost spec : 21 0 30 iirc

TBC Fire 2 48 11, keep Scorch up, spam fireball. Didn't play arcane much.

And Keoren, you are missing 10 talent points there.

He's saying he wasn't fire because he was still in MC, therefore frost. But yes Fire was king in AQ and BQL. That's how I was with my mage, I don't remember the exact numbers but Im sure it was the same as other peoples. I never played my mage in BC much.

[Deleted]

fire can't have been the main spec for MC... fire immunity.

He said he played frost pre-tbc.

[Twidis]

Fire spec was the win in vannilla, i had fire since ever, even in MC.
Back then talents didnt triple your dps, i was mainly fire with imp frostbolt for certain bosses in MC and BWL, the rest was always fire, rolling ignites, superior spellpower scaling made it better then frost ever was.
Its fun how in vannila everyone was saying "stack crit for fire, spellpower for frost" and yet i whored spellpower and hit and was ahead of all the "crit stacking" mages, well untill naxx when we started bringing 6/7 mages to the raid so i had to convert to more crit due to rolling ignites.

But basicly it was mainly fireballs with ocasional fireblast to keep ignite up, keep scorch stacked (ussually you would talk with other mages like, each one of you used 1 scorch then fireballed, so less "downtime" with scorching and one had the duty to keep it up) then mostly decurse and AoE.
TBC was fairly more balanced making frost and arcane something usable, but was mainly the same, Wotlk gave more complex rotations, heh complex... so to say.

[Twidis]

Also back then you didnt have spell queue, so you needed to use addons to counterlag with /stopcast macros, it wasnt just pressing the key.
Nowadays there are more "complex" rotations but it ussually resumes to spamming your keys like a maniac and not a real understanding of what you are doing, most can be macroed and while it wont have top notch efficiency it will be close to it, but yes i would say it requires some more attention if you want to maxime your dps, saying otherwise would be ignorant and downright incorrect, but its not THAT much harder really, WoW skill always resumed to paying attention to what is happening and knowing your class instead of watching tv while pressing the same key, nothing much.

Also, when AQ hit spell penetration also kicked in, which made fire more viable in MC, exept on immune bosses ofc. God i hated fire imune bosses but i always refused to spec frost, hated it.
But then again didnt loose THAT much dps at the time, as i said before talents back then just improved your eficiency at a certain spec, 10 points in it was more then enough to make it viable, i always played as "elementalist" because never had problems with mana and had a druid who always innervated me, so completly skipped arcane tree, loved when shatter also started affecting fire <3.