Mage Cataclysm Class Talent Changes
June 11, 2010 by Zuggy · Leave a Comment
Don’t forget to check out the other class changes as well.
Mage Cataclysm Talent Preview
In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, we’ll be making lots of changes and additions to class talents and abilities across the board. In this preview, you’ll get an early look at what’s in store for the mage class, including a rundown of some of the new spells, abilities, and talents, and an overview of how the new Mastery system will work with the different talent specs.
New Mage Spells
Flame Orb (available at level 81): Inspired by Prince Taldaram’s abilities in Ahn’kahet and Icecrown Citadel, this spell allows the mage to cast a flaming orb that travels in front in a straight line, sending beams that cause fire damage to passing targets. Once it’s cast, the mage is free to begin casting other spells as the Flame Orb travels. While the spell will be useful to any spec, Fire mages will have talents that improve it, possibly causing the Flame Orb to explode when it reaches its destination.
Time Warp (level 83): Grants a passive Haste effect much like Bloodlust or Heroism to party or raid members. It also temporarily increases the mage’s own movement speed. Time Warp will be exclusive with Bloodlust and Heroism, meaning you can’t benefit from both if you’ve got the Exhaustion debuff, though the movement-speed increase will still work even when under the effects of Exhaustion.
Wall of Fog (level 85): Creates a line of frost in front of the mage, 30 yards from end to end. Enemies who cross the line are snared and take damage. The mana cost will be designed to make Wall of Fog efficient against groups, not individuals. This spell is intended to give mages a way to help control the battlefield, whether the mage is damaging incoming enemies (Blizzard can be channeled on top of Wall of Fog) or protecting a flag in a Battleground. 10-second duration. 30-second cooldown.
Changes to Abilities and Mechanics
In addition to introducing new spells, we’re planning to make changes to some of the other abilities and mechanics you’re familiar with. This list and the summary of talent changes below it are by no means comprehensive, but they should give you a good sense of what we intend for each spec.
- Arcane Missiles is being redesigned to become a proc-based spell. Whenever the mage does damage with any spell, there is a chance for Arcane Missiles to become available, similar to how the warrior’s Overpower works. The damage and mana cost of this spell will be reworked to make it very desirable to use when available. This change should make gameplay more dynamic for the mage, particularly at low levels.
- We are planning to remove spells that don’t have a clear purpose. Amplify Magic, Dampen Magic, Fire Ward, and Frost Ward are being removed from the game, and we may remove more.
- The ability to conjure food and water will not become available until higher levels (likely around level 40), as we’re making changes to ensure mages generally won’t run out of mana at lower levels. Once mages learn how to conjure food and water, the conjured item will restore both health and mana.
- Scorch will provide a damage bonus to the mage’s fire spells. Our goal is for Scorch to be part of the mage’s rotation and a useful damage-dealing ability, even if someone else is supplying the group with the spell Critical Strike debuff. Scorch will provide the mage with more specific benefits, which can also be improved through talents.
New Talents and Talent Changes
- Arcane Focus will now return mana for each spell that fails to hit your target, including Arcane Missiles that fail to launch. We want Arcane mages to have several talents that play off of how much mana the character has and give the player enough tools to manage mana.* The talent Playing with Fire will reduce the cooldown of Blast Wave when hit by a melee attack, instead of its current effect.
- Pyromaniac will grant Haste when three or more targets are getting damaged by the effects of your damage-over-time (DoT) fire spells.
- The Burnout talent will allow mages to cast spells using health when they run out of mana.
Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses
Arcane
Spell damage
Spell Haste
Mana AdeptFire
Spell damage
Spell Crit
IgniteFrost
Spell damage
Spell Crit damage
DeathfrostMana Adept: Arcane will deal damage based how much mana the mage has. For example, Arcane mages will do much more damage at 100% mana than at 50% mana. If they begin to get low on mana, they will likely want to use an ability or mechanic to bring their mana up to increase their damage.
Ignite: All direct-damage fire spells will add a damage-over-time (DoT) component when cast. The flavor will be similar to how Fireball works; however, the DoT component will be much stronger.
Deathfrost: Casting Frostbolt places a buff on the mage that increases the damage for all frost, fire, and arcane spells. The only damage spell that won’t be affected by this buff is Frostbolt.
We hope you enjoyed this preview, and we’re looking forward to hearing your initial thoughts and feedback on these additions and changes. Please keep in mind that this information represents a work in progress and is subject to change as development on Cataclysm continues.
Cataclysm Stat & System Changes: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=23425636414&sid=1%3Cbr%20/%3E
Mastery System Preview: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=23710210871&sid=1
Mage Developer Mini Q & A
Flame Orb is not channeled. It may have a cast time, but after that is fire and forget. We want to try the line idea because there aren’t any spells that work that way currently. Giving it a target to follow makes it feel more like a fancy dot – useful perhaps, but nothing that feels really new. It will be balanced for single-target damage, but if you can launch it in such a way that it will hit multiple targets, then you’re just being awesome.
Wall of Fog is not channeled. We don’t know yet how wide it will be, but wide enough so that it feels more like a trip-wire than an area like Frost Trap.
We like the basic gameplay of Hot Streak. With lower crit rates all around, we hope that it will feel more like a bonus when it’s up rather than a penalty when it refuses to stay up. We may lower the magnitude overall for the same reason.
On Arcane Missiles, the basic spell is pretty cool. The problem is the way the spell works makes the current design hard to balance. It’s either too expensive and low damage or the opposite problem. This is particularly true at low level, and meanwhile we think the mage experience at low level is also a little too repetitive. The change is that you can’t hit Arcane Missiles whenever you want. The icon is just grayed out. However, when you deal damage, you have a chance to get Arcane Missiles to light up and then you definitely want to hit it. At higher levels Fire and Frost may eventually phase it out in preference for other spells, or if we like the mechanic, it may be something even Fire and Frost do, just less often than Arcane.
On the topic of mastery bonuses, understand that this is a new design for us and very few people have seen them in action yet. We run the risk of specific masteries being so generic that the mastery stat isn’t interesting or so complex that what players really like about playing a certain spec gets turned on its head. This is the kind of thing that will require a lot of iteration and the reason we’re trying to cover the whole gamut of relatively complex to relatively simple to see what feels right.
The reason behind Deathfrost (Frost mastery) isn’t to get Frost to spam Frostbolt more. It’s to get mages to spam Frostbolt less. If you hit nothing but Frostbolt, you’re wasting the Deathfrost bonus.
We’re shifting food and water to higher level because we don’t want players to have so much down time at lower level. We’re not trying to make it harder to level; we’re reducing the need to drink or eat so we’re bumping the actual food and water (though it’s really foodwater in the case of mages) higher.The intent behind Mana Adapt (Arcane mastery) is that Arcane currently has a pretty fun mana management game going, at least at relatively high level. We thought it would be fun to extend that concept even further to where Arcane mages that use the mechanics to keep their mana high would do higher dps. I find many of the predictions that Arcane is doomed in PvE based on the very limited information you have at the moment to be quite premature.
On Time Warp vs. Bloodlust, we are really trying to give groups flexibility in who they bring to 10 player raids to an even greater extent than we did in Lich King. We heard over and over that shaman still felt like the one mandatory class in any raid. The more we hear “now there will be no reason to take me over X class / spec” the happier we will be. The reason should be that you’re a good player, not that your mere presence makes everyone else perform better. It’s fun to feel more powerful in a group – we get that, and we aren’t going to completely marginalize group synergy. But it needs to come secondary to the skill of the players involved.
I understand some mages really like Fire Ward or Dampen Magic. Perhaps “no clear role” wasn’t the best choice of words, but we are trying to remove mechanics from the game that we think aren’t really cutting it. When asking players to put more buttons on their action bars from these new spells, we only think it’s fair to try and get some bar space back from the least interesting spells. Don’t worry so much about balance at this stage. Many things will need to be tweaked. Worry more about whether it ever felt like a fun decision to use these spells.
For everyone focusing on the RMP Arena comp, I really think you’re going to see a shift to more PvP concerns in Cataclysm being about Battleground balance. There will still be players playing Arenas for sure, but a lot of the players currently doing Arenas are going to shift to rated BGs instead.
Late Night Blue Posts – WotLK Class Changes and Boss Armor
October 22, 2008 by Zuggy · 3 Comments
Upcoming Frost Changes
We have concerns about how bursty dps has become in PvP. On the other hand, we’re pretty happy with mage dps in PvE so we want to take care not to hurt it.
For example, we discussed shifting some of Arcane’s damage between Arcane Blast and Arcane Barrage, but that actually does hurt one of Arcane’s PvE advantages over Fire — namely to be able to move around while doing some instant spells.
In the case of Frost, however, we have become concerned that it’s too easy to blow opponents up too quickly. Two of the culprits here are instant, uninterruptible Fireballs and Deep Freeze.
We are changing Brain Freeze to only proc off of Frost spells that can chill. Specifically, this limits the tactic of trying to fish for procs with Ice Lance. Ice Lance gets used a lot more in PvP, so we don’t think this will hurt Frost as much in PvE.
Secondly, Cold as Ice no longer reduces the cooldown on Deep Freeze. Deep Freeze is an (ahem) cool spell and we don’t want to nerf it too much, but you must admit that the poor frozen shmuck can endure a lot of damage while he is locked up.
Upcoming Warlock DPS Changes
We have finished a fairly comprehensive look at the dps of various classes and specs and are concerned that warlock dps isn’t quite where it should be. It’s not abysmal by any means, but we think it should be a little higher.
To give warlocks a little extra nudge in PvP, we increased Soul Link up to 20% from 15%. You may already have this change.
In PvE, overall, we just think a lot of classes benefitted from getting the warlock buffs a little more than the locks benefited from getting everyone else’s buffs. So we decided to just buff lock damage across the board (which will also help in PvP somewhat). Rather than change damage and coefficients of a lot of different ranks of spells, we just inflated talents that we were almost certain you’d already have. Shadow Mastery, Demonic Tactics and Emberstorm were all increased by 1% per rank for 5% total.
Let us know how that feels. The changes should go live before Nov 13.
Recent Fury Changes
As I posted recently in the hunter forums, we increased the armor on level 83 raid bosses by 10%. This will be a nerf to warrior dps.
In the case of Arms and Protection, we don’t think any adjustment is necessary at this time. Arms is doing very competitive dps, while Fury has fallen behind. We experimented with lowering the proc chance of Sudden Death, from where Arms gets a lot of its damage, but weren’t happy with the result and ultimately decided to buff Fury instead.
First, we increased the percentage of AP that contributes to Bloodthirst from 45% to 50%.
Second, we reduced the hit penalty on special attacks on Titan’s Grip from -12% to -5%.
As I have said before, we have been somewhat reluctant to give Titan’s Grip such a huge buff. It is now likely more powerful than several other talents in the tree and risks being the 51-point talent to which all other classes compare their 51-point talent. Nevertheless, we feel it was the right change to make.
When a Fury warrior missed a Slam or Bloodthirst on a boss, they ended up building up a lot of extra rage that couldn’t be spent fast enough. I understand some players suggested an additional attack for Fury, and that is something we may still consider when we see players hit 80 and start experimenting more with the build. But it would be a very big change that involved touching talent trees and glyphs, as well as a lot of time necessary to iterate on the right values. The Titan’s Grip change by contrast was a simple one, and judging by the number of players who have asked for it throughout beta, one that will be welcomed by the community.
Upcoming Hunter Changes
As I have suggested a few times, we are concerned that hunters of all 3 specs are doing damage that is clearly superior to other classes. While we’re trying to achieve closer parity among specs of all classes with regard to dps, and we want to particularly make sure that hunters, rogues, mages and locks are not left behind, we do think the hunters are too far ahead, particularly at 80, in good gear, when raid-buffed.
However, we have also tried to give hunters a substantial survivability boost in PvP and we don’t want to do anything that hurts them too much in PvP.
So here are changes you will most likely see soon:
1) Ranged attacks no longer benefit from the haste effects of Windfury Totem and Improved Icy Talons. This is a nerf to hunter white damage.
2) We are also improving the armor on level 83 raid bosses by 10%. This will be a nerf to the dps of any class that does physical damage. For classes that would slide behind with such a change, we’ll take steps to adjust them — though it probably isn’t as many as you think. The raid buff stacking overhaul was very beneficial to melee (and hunters). Sunder / Expose Armor alone can be a 20%+ dps increase, which is why we decided to attack the problem from this angle.
3) Now the armor change won’t affect PvP at all and the haste buff change will only have a marginal affect in BGs and only in Arena teams that include certain comps. However, in order to make sure we didn’t nerf hunters too much, we made two changes to Disengage. First, its cooldown dropped to 25 sec (from 30) which can be talented to 16. Second, it no longer requires a target, but does require you to be in combat. Now if someone closes to melee, you can leap back without having to select them first. We require you to be in combat though so we don’t see a lot of hunters bouncing around IF / Org or using it like Blink to goofily speed up travel.
Boss Armor Change
As I have posted a couple of times recently, we decided to raise the armor of level 83 raid bosses by 10% to correct for some dps difference between casters and melee + hunters. I wanted to address the issue head on with the rogues.
We have done a lot of testing recently, and concluded that even with this change, Assassination rogues are likely the top dps spec in the game against single bosses that don’t move around a lot (like Patchwerk). This isn’t a bad place for them to be. They pay a small price both for being melee (where more damage tends to occur) and for lacking the ability to respec into a non-damage build. We don’t think they will be as far above hybrids as they have been before — as I’ve posted before, it’s very important that hybrid classes do higher dps now that their buffs do not stack.
Combat builds, especially swords, is competitive but probably behind Assassination. This is something we’d like to address, especially if it turns out to be a major difference between the specs. Additional armor does hurt Combat, but also remember it’s just raid bosses and not other players (or trash or heroic bosses).
Subtelty, sadly, is just much harder to test since so much of their damage relies on other players. Our preliminary evidence is that they generate plenty of combo points from Honor Among Thieves, but this might mean their personal dps when not in a group suffers. This is something we’re still testing.
I will add that some players have wondered if Honor Among Thieves is bugged since the cp can occur more often than 1 sec. In this case, the tooltip is just unclear. When Jimmy the Shaman crits, he cannnot “send you” a combo point more often than 1 per sec. But if you have lots of players critting all the time, you can build them up quickly. So Honor is (here it comes) working as intended.
Patch 3.0.3 News and Changes Compiled
October 18, 2008 by Zuggy · Leave a Comment
PTR 3.0.3 News Compiled
Recent Blue Posts
Dual Spec Information
As a few people have pointed out, hardcore raiding guilds already respec in between bosses. All it takes is a little bit of patience, gold and maybe a warlock. The new feature just takes some of the busy work out of it by remembering say what spell you had on button 2 or button 3.
What the new feature really is supposed to do is let you change your mind. Oh, I was going to PvP tonight but now my buddies want to do Naxx 10 instead. I can flip on the fly instead of having to run back to Org or IF to respec and get summoned.
Very skilled or “into it” dps players absolutely can maximize their trash or boss dps through their spec. In fact, you hear a lot that certain talents aren’t good for bosses because they do things like improve your down time, AE or survivability. But all of those things can be great for fast clears. Players also sometimes say (silly) things like how they only care about how they perform on a boss. But if you want to do something like the LK equivalent of a ZA fast clear for the bear mount, you need to be fast across the board, not just on the 4 bosses. Players wipe on trash too.
We’re not going to make crazy fights where we expect the entire raid to respec into something weird. That was even asked at Blizzcon and the guy in charge of all of the boss design said simply “No” in reply. If we can’t assume you have a warrior or druid tanking, then we can’t assume you have a mage with an obscure talent build or 12 healers or something else abnormal.
Having to run to town to respec all the time between two common specs was a burden, just like pots and drums were a burden. Very few players enjoyed having to farm consumables for their raid night. (Though to be fair, some did). Players may have enjoyed the advantage those consumables might have given them, but of course they forget that the encounters were designed around the expectation that the group was chain potting and doing drum rotations. The encounters should be of similar difficulty, with the major change being that you don’t have to farm (as much).
Likewise, I understand that some players like having to commit to a talent spec at least for the night. Those players may feel that this is a “catering to the casuals” decision, but it’s one we think is right for the game. The different needs, for example, of PvE and PvP combat were putting a lot of constraints on the design of talent trees. Every talent needed to be very useful in both modes, which also tended to make them overbudget. That’s not the only reason for the feature, but it’s still a good one.
We won’t let you change specs within an Arena or BG, nor will we let you do it in combat of any kind. When the feature is fleshed out more, we’ll let you know more details.
Living Bomb Change
We still like Living Bomb. We realize not everyone does, and that’s cool. Not every spell or ability in the game is going to appeal to everyone and players are constantly re-designing spells into something they’d rather see.
However, we do think the mana cost on Living Bomb is too high, and we’ll be lowering it to something more like Arcane Explosion.
Restoration Shaman Mana Longevity
Teams stacking all dps do seem like they might be too dominant at the moment. We’re going to keep an eye on it for a little longer, but it is something we’re concerned about. One of the things I like about Arena is that healing strategy and tactics are a really big deal (vs. say BGs where it’s more about just killing stuff).
Enhancement Shaman DPS Changes
Right now, Enhancement dps is very high. If we changed say UR, we’d have to also nerf Enhancement dps to make up for the extra talent points you’d get to spend. It is something we want to take a look at, but there are also classes and specs right now whose dps is too low that need more attention.
Titans Grip, 12% Miss Rate
It should be fixed before Lich King itself goes live. That depends a little on what other issues crop up over the next few days that need more urgent attention. But the plan is to get all of those changes out soon.
Warlock Demonologist Changes
The Felguard magic damage reduction now extends to Holy. I believe this was hotfixed yesterday.
Typically we don’t change Holy resistance (which this is not), but it’s consistent with other damage reduction abilities (which this is) to reduce all magic damage. This should help warlocks stand up to paladins in particular in PvP.
WotLK Mage Mana Longevity Buffed
October 6, 2008 by Zuggy · Leave a Comment
Blizzard has been talking about the issue with mage mana longevity for as long as I can remember. It has been a crucial issue for the class throughout burning crusade, specifically in PvP. Now, it looks like the class may finally be getting the buffs it has been asking for.
We think mages are still having mana problems and don’t want to reduce Evocation’s cooldown anymore. Nor do we want to buff mage armor too much more or using e.g. molten armor seems pointless.
Instead, we reduced the mana cost on Fireball, Frostbolt, Frostfire Bolt, Arcane Blast, Arcane Missiles, and Arcane Explosion. (source)
There’s been tons of changes during the patch 3.0.2 PTR, but I think this one eclipses them all. So long as an appropriate reduction is implemented this should solve many mana problems for the mage class. No exact value reduction has been announced yet, but I would expect to see a finalized version on the next PTR build.
Mage WotLK Talents & Developer Q & A
September 30, 2008 by Zuggy · Leave a Comment
Another massive Q and A post from Ghostcrawler. She has done a great job already working with many of classes and now she’s finally making it to the mage class, particularly the information regarding the new spell frostfire bolt.
Initially I really didn’t understand the purpose of such a spell, guessing that most mages would opt for a standard fire, frost or arcane build, which still may be the case. That said, these changes and their implications do make it a much more lucrative spell and spec for mages to work with. Potentially bringing it on par with the 3 primary builds.
One of the biggest issues for mages during the Burning Crusade was the complete and utter lack of mana longevity. While it doesn’t appear blizzard has a definite fix implemented yet GC did mention they are very aware of this problem and taking steps to correct it. With renewed mana longevity in addition to the many other changes coming in WotLK should really make for a much more balanced and dynamic class in the expansion.
Torment of the Weak Explained
Some talents are just harder to implement than they appear. What we think we can do with Torment of the Weak is instead let a certain number of spells (say the ones you want to use a lot) get the damage bonus. That keeps the basic idea intact in a way that we know will work.
Frostfire Bolt Creation
We created Frostfire Bolt for 3 reasons:
- An interesting new spell that would cause a lot of exploration into which talents, gear and rotations benefited the best
- A solution for those fights in which a Frost mage shows up to a Frost-immune fight
- the keystone for a new Frost + Fire “elemental” build. If you want to go respec every fight, you can still do that. But with Frostfire, you should be able to do a lot more damage than if you hadn’t respec’d at all.
WotLK Mage Q & A with Ghostcrawler
Will mages continue to have mana issues as much as they do currently, or is something planned to help?
Yes, we are working on mage mana issues. They seem to run out too fast.
Will mages be expected to be dominant AoE DPS? Or is AoE DPS also being flattened across the board?
Great AE damage isn’t a good niche in a game with so many single-target fights. Your AE will be good, but so will that of warlocks and moonkin. We won’t keep your single target dps down in order to justify high AE dps.
Will Frost be able to dps as strongly if not more strongly than Arc/Fire in PvE? Or is that still the PvP spec?
We would like to see similar dps from all 3 trees. However, if you go for a heavy PvP build (in any tree), you will probably sacrifice some dps to get there.
Will Arcane Blast be modified so it can be used as a main nuke? Or is that ship sunk?
We want Arcane Blast to be used a lot. It’s not Pyro.
Scaling plagued mages throughout BC, will this be closely examined so it doesn’t repeat in WOTLK?
Yes. We aren’t happy with what happened to mages in BT and Sunwell.
Will Evocation ever be updated? Lowered Cooldown? Made like Innervate instead of channeled?
I don’t know the answer to that yet. I think Evo is fine if mages don’t run out of mana in 5 seconds. Evo could be part of that solution or not.
Will Frostfire bolt be given a purpose, now that double dipping is gone. Is it simply an “immunity” fight fallback?
No, we want it to be the kind of spell you can use all the time. But we want to get Frost, Fire and Arcane feeling good first.
Will ignite ever be fixed (ignite “munching”)?
We are aware of the problem (of course). It’s just not easy to fix.
Will the Water Elemental get more survivability? More resist? More +hit? More scaling?
All pets should inherit the hit of the master now.
Will mages have purpose other than dps in raids so that so called “hybrid” classes won’t fill in the mage spots after the single obligatory Winters Chill/Food/Scorch mage has been invited?
Just be better / do more dps than those other classes and you’ll earn a spot. We’re not going to give you a reason other than that that someone HAS to take you.
Is the numbers pass starting soon? We’re worried that you may be running short (5 weeks) on time to properly see data regarding the dps passes.
We’ve been in the middle of it for weeks. Don’t worry about the time. We don’t. If we looked at the ship date as a deadline, then we’d get sloppy and do dumb things. The truth is that in an MMO, game balance is a process not a destination. Even after the patch goes live, we’ll have opporunities to make changes before you can head to Northrend. With all the changes we’ve made, there are going to have to be some quick patches to fix things we missed. And overall we’d like to address balance problems that do erupt in a more timely fashion – consider, before we could always say “Eh, they’ll still take the X for his Y buff even if his dps is low.” We can’t say that anymore. Now we just have to get stuff fixed.
Mage / Rogue Vs. Warlock / Rogue 2v2 Arena Strategy
September 25, 2008 by S-Scythe · Leave a Comment
This is really quick match, and it will only be quicker if anything goes wrong for either team.
Rogue Arena Strategy
Rush the warlock with everything you’ve got, and try to avoid as much of the opposing rogue’s damage as possible. Attempting to find a rogue with paranoia is an unnecessary risk.The lock will probably be dotting both of you, so if you’re dotted and caught in a Kidney shot feel free to trinket to finish up on the lock.
NEVER let the lock get a fear off, as that’s almost a guaranteed loss. Once the lock is down, you’ll probably have used up most of your cooldowns at this point, it’s up to your mage for a smooth get away from the rogue.
Mage Arena Strategy
Shatter combos on the lock as fast as possible. Sheeping the rogue might not buy you the full window of CC you’re used to, but it can buy you atleast 3 seconds as it will take time for the lock to send his fel hunter for a dispel. The pressure is really on for you to keep your rogue out of the danger zone and to shatter the warlock on demand. When the lock is dead attempt to control the rogue to let yours heal up, as a 1v1 while in your advantage is annoying and time consuming.
Looking for more mage / rogue strategy? Check out the complete Mage / Rogue 2v2 Arena Strategy Guide.
Mage / Rogue vs. Warlock / Priest 2v2 Arena Strategy
September 4, 2008 by S-Scythe · 3 Comments
Rogue Arena Tactics
The strategy for the rogue is pretty basic here. If at all possible you want to sap the priest. This will allow you to get a solid start on the warlock and in many cases fill him outright. If you must use shadowstep to pull off the sap, it’s crucial you get it off quickly and cleanly.
Once you’re on the lock you need to be very watchful for fears. The mage cannot afford to burn his CS on the lock, so it’s up to you to kick / kidney shot any single target fear or howl of terror. Additionally, be ready to use your blind on the priest to assist the mage in his crowd control rotation.
I highly suggest using a focus blind macro to make this cc transition as seamless as possible. In an ideal game your rotation might look something like this. Sap –> Sheep –> Trinkets the sheep. Blind –> Sap –> CS — Sheep. While this always isn’t going to work out perfectly like this knowing your CC rotation from the beginning will be a huge aid to your success.
Mage Arena Tactics
While the mage is certainly going to be adding damage your primary role is still to crowd control the healer. Most mages are very confident in their own sheep / CS rotation, but don’t forget the fact you have a rogue. It will be very important for you and your rogue to successfully communicate through the match to maximize your collective crowd control.
Just like with the rogue’s blind, using focus sheep or focus CS macros can be very helpful. Not only do they allow you to quickly pull off your various forms of CS, but many times they can catch your opponents off guard. Many players watch for you as the mage to target them, often this is a dead give away to an incoming sheep or blind. Using focus macros you never actually have to target them, so they have zero idea what’s coming!
Looking for more strategies? Check out the complete rogue / mage 2v2 arena strategy guide!
Paladin PvP Guide – Holy Paladins
September 4, 2008 by Nalastai · 8 Comments
Welcome to read the first part of “Paladin pvp guide”. We’ll start with abilities and spells and cover additional topics with each part in this series.
Aura Swapping
Most of the paladins I’ve played against typically do not swap auras in different situations, even if it might help them a lot of. With Aura swapping you are actually changing those auras in constantly throughout the match. It is extremely important to swap these auras though. Using different auras allows you to get a huge advantage throughout the duration of the match and the better you get with using each situational buff the better off you’ll be.
Frost resistance aura – 70 frost resistance. Use it against any team where the primary source of damage is a frost mage.
Shadow resistance aura – 70 shadow resistance. Use against priest and warlock teams. This can really be a clutch buff, because one or two extra fear resists throughout a long duration match could very easily tip the tide in your favor.
Devotion aura -Devotion aura can be another very beneficial buff when used under the right circumstance. Generally speaking this aura is ideal on any team where melee damage is the primary damage output.
Blessings and seals
<Blessing of Sacrifice>
Really useful and important ability that people should use MUCH more. When to use it? I suggest to use it always against warlock teams, reducing so much of damage income to warrior. It’s really effective against rogue teams with the same reason, but they also can’t blind you, sap you or gouge you. You should always try to keep it up on your warrior against rogue and mage teams, that way you cannot be crowd controled nearly as effectivly.
Tip: You can sacrifice warlock’s pet instead of the warlock himself, that way you can keep both sacrifice and blessing of freedom up.
Tip: Keep the blessing of sacrifice up on your friend, that way you can’t get sapped, sheeped, blinded for too long.
<Blessing of Freedom>
The “Ultimate Kite” ability. This is one of the abilities that make the paladin class viable in arena. Excellent ability for pillar kiting, if you have your movement speed enchant or gem and your enemy doesn’t it’s pretty much impossible for them to catch you.
<Blessing of Protection>
Personally, this is one of my favorite paladin abilities, it’s simply dominating against melee teams. When using it with Divine shield and blessing of freedom rotating against rogue teams for example, there is really small change you could actually get killed. Blessing of protection only has 3 minutes cool down, so you’re able to BoP yourself, Divine shield after that if needed, and BoP again nearly asap after Forbearance has gone off.
Tip: Blessing of protection removes blind. If someone is about to die on the opposing team for example, and your friend gets blinded and can’t get out by himself, this is good thing to know.
<Seal of Justice and Judgement of Justice>
Judgment of justice basically kills resto druids, especially in 2s / 3s.
Unleashing this Seal’s energy will judge an enemy for 20 sec, preventing them from fleeing and limiting their movement speed.
That means that your opponent can’t run with more than 100% speed. Druids in travel form run just as fast they would run without it, or mutilate rogue who uses movement speed on talents can’t run faster than 100%. Even if the rogue uses his sprint (If it’s not improved sprint), he won’t run faster than he’d run without it. But you also need to remember that there are minor stuff that improves movement speed as well, and removing that from someone while you have it by yourself, might be dramatically.
Tip: Most of the people don’t know it’s also useful as seal. Seal of justice, has a change to stun your target on melee hit. When would you need really short stun? Interrupting warlocks or hunters while they’re recasting pet and while your partner is being cycloned and your hammer of justice is on cool down.
<Seal of Wisdom and Judgment of Wisdom>
The only use I find for seal of wisdom in arena is in heal fights against certain classes. Because it doesn’t really last that long to get benefits from it, I’d only use it in few situations. For example, if you’re playing 2v2 against healer + hunter team, judging it on pet and sealing yourself with it could save a lot of mana from you.
However, lately I’ve started to play really offensively against hunter + healer teams, so I judge seal of command on the pet every time it gets off from cooldown. (I’m currently playing with 47 / 0 / 14 holy spec with a warlock).
Other abilities
<Exorcism>
Mana cost 340, it’s a lot compared to damage it does, but sometimes you just got to go offensive and this spell is ideal for killing warlock pets. Together with Holy shock, judgment of righteous / judgment of command and hammer of wrath, it’s a lot of nuke damage. Using this technique is ideal for bombing pets, though you’ll want to make sure you pull them out of line of sight so it cannot be healed as easily.
You lose a lot of mana dropping the damage, but you’re able to drink after that so you may have to take the risk. Don’t start nuking the pet by yourself before it’s already pretty low and you’re away from opposite teams healer. If you start nuking it you’ll end up losing mana while opposite healer just heals it to full with mana cost of 300.
<Holy shock>
Your only instant healing spell, use it wisely. You can use it either offensively or defensively. If you’re playing against double dps team in 2v2 this is a spell you should have on cooldown all the time. Granted it is quite mana costly, but sometimes it’s the only way to get caught up on heals.
<Consecration>
Great way to detect stealth classes using Rank 1 and randomly casting it while mounted or even without. It’s also a great way to kill snakes from hunter’s viper / snake trap (Correct me if the name is wrong). Don’t use highest rank when you use it, use rank 1 or few ranks higher.
Mage / Rogue Vs. Paladin / Warrior 2v2 Arena Strategy
September 4, 2008 by S-Scythe · 2 Comments
Much like most warrior / healer teams, your opponents will probably have to try harder than you.
Rogue
Get a sap on the warrior and open on the paladin going full out dps to force his bubbl
e. Once he bubbles reset the fight via vanish. If you and your partner are having trouble CC’ing the warrior while forcing the paladin to bubble pop Evasion and Ghostly Strike as needed to avoid unwanted bleed effect when resetting the fight. Kill the paladin, and get away from the warrior if you have to.
Mage
Crowd control the warrior as best as possible with sheeps, frost novas, Rank 1 Frost Bolts(to Frost Bite snare him). These are all able to be cleansed by the pally, so tell your rogue to dodge it up if you’re having trouble controlling the warrior. Assist dps, and once the pally bubbles hit iceblock to reset the fight and wait it out. You decide when you want your rogue to blind, but I recommend while going for a kill on the pally or after killing the pally one of you has to get away.
Looking for more strategies? Check out the complete rogue / mage 2v2 arena strategy guide!
Mage / Rogue vs. Warrior / Druid 2v2 Arena Strategy
September 3, 2008 by S-Scythe · Leave a Comment
Oh man for every one of you guys out there, you’ll see about thirty of these. Some are competent, others face roll.
Rogue
See if you can find the druid in stealth. Before opening try to sap the warrior if possible. Do a KS lockdown to force the druid to trinket. Once you and your mage have a good CC train rolling on the warrior, Kidney shot again to shatter burst the druid.
Mage
Control the warrior in any way possible. Freeze effects, sheeps, whatever just take him out of the game and kill his carrier.
If the druid can’t be found:
Rogue open on the warrior(save premeditation) to force the druid to come out. Vanish and pull a switch to the druid, run cc trains on the warrior and win. It’s a good idea to not wait for the stealth detect eyes, as a smart druid will go into bear form at this point.
Looking for more strategies? Check out the complete rogue / mage 2v2 arena strategy guide!
