A Guide to Mages

[Skandranon]

Responding to MongoJerry’s call for content - here it is. As I’ve noted, it’s a preliminary draft, so feel free to pick at things. Discussion is good, but please do it in the comment thread to avoid messing up the organization of this one.

Yes, this contains a lot of simple stuff, but I’m writing for someone who’s had only minimal experience with the game. Should I change this approach? Let me know.

As my highest-level mage is 47 right now, this will only cover levels up to 40. In the future, I intend on expanding this all the way up to 60 as I play my way there. However, just because my experience isn’t comprehensive doesn’t mean it isn’t useful, and 40 is a nice point to start some writing. After all, not everyone currently playing made a level-capped mage in beta.

All right, friends. Let’s talk mages.

Before we get to anything else, let’s hear Blizzard’s thoughts on the subject.

When seeking someone to introduce monsters to a world of pain, the Mage is a good choice. With their elemental and arcane attacks, it's a safe bet something they can do won't be resisted by your chosen enemy. Damage is the name of the Mage game, and they do it well. Their arsenal includes some powerful crowd control spells, also, giving them the ability to keep hordes at bay ﷓﷓ in fact, these abilities can be used on the most common creatures in the game, thus making them extremely valuable for this purpose.

As typically helpful as the usual Blizzard blurb. And by typically, I mean not at all.

In WoW, the mage has a number of roles, which may not necessarily coincide as situations change. Massive bursts of damage are certainly part of the mage’s repertoire, but they aren’t all of it - and a strategy based solely on inflicting mass damage isn’t going to serve you well at all times. As for their comments about “resistance” and keeping “hordes” at bay…well, let’s just say that’s typical Blizzard honesty, too. Resistance is a problem mostly limited to mages, because of the elemental affinities of mage skills, and “hordes” can be kept at bay, so long as they’re hordes of two.

This guide will encompass a number of topics, but I’m going to try to make it as complete as possible. Briefly, it will be structured like so:

a) Making your mage
b) Skills
c) The Early Game - Levels 1-10, but not including the assignment of the first talent.
d) Talents and Talent Builds
e) The Early Midgame – Levels 11-21.
f) The Late Midgame - Levels 22-40.
g) The Lategame - Levels 41-60.
h) After the Level Cap - High-level content after level 60.
i) Glossary of terms

Sections g and h will be written once I have experience of those points in the game. Until then, this is a guide from levels 1-40 only. This is a PvE guide. Nothing against PvP, but I’m not writing for that.

Sections will be posted as follow-ups to this message.

[Skandranon]

a) Making your mage

There are only a few choices you need to make as your character progresses, in keeping with Blizzard’s minimalist style. The only ones with mechanical significance are race, choice of equipment, choice of profession, and talents. Talents get their own little section, so I’ll deal with the other three here.

i) Attributes and Equipment:

You can’t control your stats the way you could in D2, but that doesn’t mean there’s no room for an attributes section. Bonuses in WoW consist mainly of additions to one of the main attributes: Strength, Agility, Stamina, Intellect and Spirit. You can optimize your gear in several different ways. Strength and Agility are clearly right out, as neither provides substantial benefits for the mage. Strength is virtually useless, while Agility’s only real significance is a slightly increased dodge chance. The other three are more interesting.

Stamina: Each point of stamina gives you 10 max hit points. It doesn’t seem to figure into any other calculation or statistic.
Intellect: Each point of intellect gives you 15 mana. Furthermore, more intellect increases your critical strike chance with spells.
Spirit: Each point of spirit increases the rate at which you regenerate health (when out of combat) and mana (when you haven’t cast a spell in five seconds).

Of these three, Intellect seems the most important, and that initial reaction would be mostly right; Intellect determines the size of your mana pool, and that relates directly to how much magic you can sling in each encounter. That said, building directly for Intellect isn’t necessarily the wisest move: yes, more mana is good, and a (very slightly) better critical strike chance is also good, but a heavy intellect focus may cost you in other stats. The choices are likely to be something like +4 int, +4 spi/sta vs. +5 or +6 int, and that kind of trade isn’t worth it.

So, next to Intellect – spirit or stamina? A great deal of the caster gear in this game assumes spirit – the Ley Staff for human and troll mages being just one example – and, certainly, mana regeneration is important. The question is whether it’s important enough to bother pushing spirit, and the answer is generally no.

Spirit reduces downtime, but as long as you’re patient – and you’re going to have to be, so if you’re not, go play something other than a mage – you can drink back everything you need. Mages can conjure food and water, so it doesn’t even cost money like it costs other classes. In combat, health doesn’t regenerate and mana regenerates only after five seconds of not casting anything. It’s rare that you’ll get into a situation where the enemy mob can be killed by one spell that you don’t have the mana for, forcing you to wait to regenerate enough to get that last spell.

On the other hand, stamina is always relevant. Your battles are going to be one-on-one blasting matches, where at least some of it’s going to be done at point-blank range. It’s in your best interests not to melt as soon as something gets to that range, and without stamina equipment, your deaths are more likely to result from a lack of health than a lack of mana. (Yes, all deaths eventually result from lack of health, but I’m sure you know what I mean.) This is especially true if you’re soloing difficult dungeons or elite non-instance quests. I’ve bulked up on stamina, maintaining a stamina bonus usually ranging from 120% to 180% of my base stamina score. Having soloed Nek’rosh, Mor’Ladim, and Colonel Kurzen, among other elite quests, I can credit my stamina focus for each of them.

This isn’t to say that you should ignore spirit entirely. One useful talent relies on having at least a workable level of spirit, and seriously long battles such as Archaedas in Uldaman may actually require you to stop casting and just regenerate. Two int/spirit items will generally satisfy this requirement. Three at most.

ii) Race selection

This section comes second because I wanted to talk about stats first, given that stats are one of the few ways the races vary. Each has special abilities, but tiny ones. Four races can be mages: trolls, undead, humans and gnomes.

Trolls start with the lowest intellect, 19, of all starting mages. They start with 21 stamina and 23 spirit. The two abilities of theirs that matter are Berserking and Regeneration. Berserking lets you speed casting time by 25%, but you can only activate it when wounded, which is down to 20% or so of max life. Somewhat useful for finishing things up, but if you’re wounded the enemy is likely to be next to you, and you won’t be using spells dependent on casting time. If you are, you’re probably better off running instead of berserking and hoping to eke out a win. Regeneration is a great deal better, allowing 10% of your health regen to occur during combat. It doesn’t seem huge until you get Polymorph, but then troll mages become the only mages naturally capable of keeping a target disabled while regenerating health and mana back to full.

The Undead start with the highest spirit, 27, of all mages. Their intellect is 21, second-lowest and stamina is also 21. All four abilities are useful to mages, in greater or lesser degree. Underwater breathing is handy for those times you’ll need to submerge, and 10 shadow resistance can’t hurt. Cannibalize is a little superfluous for mages, but you can eat a corpse if you don’t feel like conjuring food. And Will of the Forsaken, which makes you temporarily immune to fear, sleep, and charm, is situationally useful but it’s nice to have.

Humans have the second-highest intellect, 23. They have 23 spirit and 20 stamina. None of these stats are the highest, but none are the lowest either. Four abilities are relevant to mages, though one is only peripheral. Sword specialization is the peripheral one – mages can learn swords, but you probably won’t want to be actually hitting anything with them, even with a whole level’s bonus attack rating. Diplomacy is a handy thing; nothing special, but it helps you get to those faction discounts quicker, and makes two particularly awful quests in Desolace easier. The Human Spirit provides a 5% bonus to spirit, which makes all your spirit gear count for that much more (and leaving room for more stamina gear). Perception is valuable against stealthed enemies – usually, you’ll only detect them up close, sacrificing most of your range advantage. When Perception is activated, you can see stealthed enemies from further away. Situational, but useful, like Will of the Forsaken.

Gnomes start with the highest intellect, 27, of all mages. The tradeoff is the lowest stamina, 19, and the lowest spirit, 22. Gnome abilities are well-suited to mages; all four can possibly be useful. The least useful is Technologist, giving a +15 bonus to engineering – since you may not necessarily want engineering. Arcane resistance can’t be a bad thing, though enemies’ use of Arcane is few and far between. The gems are Expansive Mind, offering a 5% intellect bonus, and Escape Artist, letting you break out of roots and snares. Quite a few creatures use nets or frost novas to stop you from getting away, so of the situational abilities this one will probably see the most use.

Any race makes a good mage. Gnomes have a lot of advantages, but other races’ abilities have their moments as well. For beginners, however, I’d advise a gnome, just because Escape Artist is a great way to save yourself from some mistakes, and because the intellect bonus is the best passive among all of them.

iii) Professions and Secondary Skills

Each character in WoW can only learn two professions at any one time, so picking the two for your mage is a fairly important decision. Each has some pros and cons.

Herbalism – this skill allows you to gather herbs for Alchemy.
Mining – this skill allows you to gather minerals for Blacksmithing and Engineering.
Skinning – this skill allows you to gather leather for Leatherworking.

Which gatherer skill, if any, that you choose will generally be influenced by your choice of production skill. There are five.

Alchemy – creates potions. Mana and health potions are very useful to mages for obvious reasons, but alchemy can create a number of stat-boosting potions as well. A late change in beta means that potion effects can’t stack with some of your skills, but aside from that, you can create a number of handy effects with this skill. Poison curing, water breathing, invisibility – all will be useful.

Blacksmithing – creates metal arms and armour. Not all that useful for you. Blacksmithing creates Mail or Plate items, none of which you can use. You may be able to get a dagger or sword out of it, but not one with bonuses that help you.

Enchanting – allows you to enhance equipment with small bonuses. The upside is that it requires no gathering skill, since you get materials from disenchanting magic items. The downside is that it costs quite a lot of money and is difficult to raise, since you get materials from disenchanting magic items. A skill that creates magic items can be useful to alleviate this problem, but only Tailoring really counts as others would need a gathering profession too. The important part of enchanting is that it lets you add little stamina bonuses to your items that improve your survivability. As for trading, it’s difficult to sell enchantments. The only one that’s really popular is Beastslayer for the red glow.

Engineering – creates engineered items like dynamite, shrink rays, battle chickens, etc. The dynamite won’t be of much use, but the goggles created by engineering are some of the best available early headgear, and some of the other trinkets it creates can be useful, or at least fun.

Leatherworking – creates leather armour. You won’t ever be able to use it, either. It doesn’t even have Blacksmithing’s bonus of giving you barely-useful weaponry. That said, like all tradeskills, if you feel you can make a good profit selling leather items, go for it.

Tailoring – allows you to create cloth armour. Tailoring seems to be a profession custom-made for mages, but it’s hardly a required profession. In general, you can make weak cloth armour with Tailoring – there are exceptions, but most of the time what you can make will be inferior to what drops. That said, there are very useful patterns, such as the Robe of Power, which you can only get if you tailor it for yourself. You can also create bags with tailoring, always in demand. Tailoring also requires no gathering skill, as the required cloth drops off enemies.

A number of mages go Tailor/Enchanter. While that’s a good set of choices, it tends to cost you a great deal of money. If that doesn’t matter to you, it offers plenty of benefits. If you want tailoring without the money loss, Tailor/Skinner helps, as there will be tailoring recipes that require leather. Herbalism/Alchemy is also extraordinarily useful. Mining/Engineering is mostly a gnome choice, but gnomish shrink rays and remote controls are just as useful to mages as to any other class. Barring the choice of feeder characters, who take two gathering skills to send raw materials to other characters or sell them on the auction house, I’d limit my profession choices to one of the above pairs.

There are three secondary skills: Cooking, Fishing and First Aid. Everyone can have all of these skills. The most important to a mage by far is Cooking – with enough advancement in cooking, you can create food that bestows large stamina and spirit bonuses for 15 minutes. These “well fed” bonuses have helped me through soloing quite a few areas – don’t underestimate them. As for fishing, it’s mostly helpful to raise cooking, but you can fish up some decent items if your fishing is high enough, and you’ll need it for Alchemy. First Aid is not as important since you get free food, but you can bandage yourself in combat (i.e. when something’s polymorphed and you can do so without interruption).

[Skandranon]

B) Skills

Before I get started on skills, I’d like to introduce you to Rule One.

RULE ONE: THINGS GO WRONG

I had more rules, but they all seemed to condense nicely into this. Hence, rule one.

The biggest assumption that a lot of guides make is that things are going to be perfect. They assume that each engagement is going to go according to plan, and that if it doesn’t, you are clearly an inferior player. They also provide little or no advice should things turn south in a hurry.

Hang all that. Things go wrong. You are going to misjudge aggro, or you’re going to pull one too many mobs, or you’re going to get an add from an unexpected direction, or you’re going to get something spawning on your head. Things go wrong. The distinction between an excellent player and one who is merely good is that an excellent player can react to most unexpected situations and still pull out a win.

Rule One also applies to groups. The dream is a perfectly functioning group where you’ve got a pair of tanks, a healer and some other support character. Not all your groups will look like this, and not all groups that do are going to work well. You’re going to get tanks that don’t know how to tank, rogues and other mages who have no idea what an “aggro” is, much less how to handle it, and priests who think they’re offensive spellcasters. You could leave the group every time it’s not perfect, but then you won’t be in many groups. In the majority of cases, you’ll have to deal with it. Things go wrong.

Remember this part whenever I say “see Rule One”. Because I’ll say it a lot.

Anyway, on to the skills. I’ll be talking about them in the order Fire, Frost, Arcane, and the spells will be ordered according to how you get them.

[Skandranon]

i) Fire Skills

Fire is about what fire has always been about – damage, damage, damage. Only one spell doesn’t do damage, and it isn’t all that useful.

Fireball
Rank one: level 1.
Rank up at 6, 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, 42, 48, 54, 60.

There isn’t a great deal to say about Fireball; it’s what you use to shoot things and make them die, at least in theory. It consists of two damage components: the initial impact, and some damage-over-time for eight seconds afterwards, amounting to roughly ten percent of the impact. As you increase your rank in Fireball, two things happen that distinguish it from other spells. Firstly, at rank 2 it reaches 35 yards in range, longer than any other spell. Secondly, its casting time will rapidly increase, so that by the time you’ve got Fireball rank 5, it casts at 3.5 seconds, making it the longest-casting combat spell that isn’t a talent. Further ranks increase damage, but not casting time, so 3.5 seconds is the longest you’ll ever take to throw one.

Fireball’s primary use, obviously, is as your longest-ranged damage dealer, and it can be frequently seen as the first spell in any solo battle. Once they’re getting all friendly-like up close, however, it’s time to switch off, because with Fireball’s long cast time you’re guaranteed to be interrupted at least twice. That doesn’t do great things for Fireball’s damage.




Fireblast
Rank one: level 6.
Rank up at 14, 22, 30, 38, 46, 54.

The moment you cast Fireblast, it delivers a burst of fire damage at instant speed, without the possibility of interruption. Of course, there are drawbacks: a fairly lengthy eight-second cooldown, and a relatively short 20-yard range.

It’s decently mana-efficient, but mana efficiency is the most overrated attribute of any mage spell. The only efficiency that matters is making sure their life bar runs out before yours does, and if it takes your whole mana bar to do it, well, that’s just how it goes. Efficiency only matters in the sense that you shouldn’t need more than your whole mana bar to kill something.

Fireblast lends itself to a number of applications. The most obvious is for finishing off mobs that have survived to get close to you (in later levels, this will be virtually all of them), because it can’t be interrupted. It does, however, have substantial other combat use if you’re careful. Its eight-second cooldown gives it a fairly lousy damage-per-second stat, but you won’t be standing still while waiting for it to cycle. Rather, Fireblast is a series of peaks in your overall damage-per-second, each separated by eight seconds. If you expect a fight to last at least eight seconds after the target first enters Fireblast range, using one immediately is almost always a good move. Be careful, however. Eight seconds sounds a lot shorter than it is, and there are cases where not having a Fireblast available right away can hurt you.

Finally, when there are named mobs that you need to kill for a quest, and the spawn site is being camped, there’s no better tool than Fireblast for tagging it right away. I definitely recommend against using it to steal spawns from people who were there before you, but not all players feel the same way, and having a quick hand on your Fireblast helps there.




Flamestrike
Rank one: level 16
Rank up at 24, 32, 40, 48, 56

The Blood Mage’s signature spell from Warcraft III is back in WoW. Flamestrike is your first targeted area-of-effect spell, blasting a small area with fire and burning for about eighty percent of impact damage over the next eight seconds. It has a 3 second cast time. Area-of-effect spells do not target mobs, so when aiming you need to know where your chosen victim’s going to be: unlike bolts, Flamestrike will not follow your target. In practice, this limits Flamestrike’s use to stationary targets.

You can try to use Flamestrike instead of Fireball in solo play – the area of effect makes up, mostly, for Fireball’s range advantage. The only problem with this is its damage. At rank 1 Flamestrike’s damage is basically comparable with rank 3 Fireball’s - but Flamestrike costs three times as much to cast and does forty percent of its damage over eight seconds. Fireball rank 4, which is obtained two levels later, is completely superior. Flamestrike 2 and Fireball 5 are obtained at the same level, and the damage is again fairly even, except that Flamestrike still costs twice as much and needs an eight-second wait for the full effect. Efficiency doesn’t matter, I said, but don’t take that as a license to use ridiculously inefficient spells. Paying twice the mana for the same damage is a bad deal no matter how you slice it.

But, of course, it’s an area-of-effect spell, you say, and it has to be measured against multiple targets to see how much better it is. Which is true, to a point. If you use it on two targets you instantly have more total damage than Fireball. In solo play, however, you’re better off pulling two targets (if you have to) with Polymorph, which gives you less time to cast against the other guy but which doesn’t raise the problem of having two mobs attacking you at the same time. Even if you somehow want to pull more, you’re still better off using Polymorph first. So Flamestrike in solo is basically used when you want to pull more than one mob and not polymorph any of them. Wait, what?

Flamestrike is a great deal more interesting in group play. When you have a tank, you are guaranteed targets that will sit still for your roasting and which are also likely to stick around for the eight seconds it takes for Flamestrike to finish. Of course, it’s not as simple as that.

Against one target, Fireball does better damage, etc, as outlined above. You still might want to consider Flamestrike because it builds its aggro a little more slowly, but it’s not a huge difference. You want to use it for multiple targets. However, there’s an associated problem, which is true of all AoE spells. The best party play involves focusing on one target, killing it first. In many parties, this means getting the other(s) just annoyed enough to go after the tank and then ignoring them. Delivering a Flamestrike in this typical situation results in every mob other than the primary target switching aggro...to you. Two or maybe three of them go tearing after you, you have to turn and make a run for it, and the entire party plan goes to hell (handbasket optional).

If you want to uncork a Flamestrike, the party has to be ready for it. Enough threat has to be on the tank so that when you do shoot off the Flamestrike, they’re mad enough at him to ignore the fact that they’re on fire. Generally, this means you’ll be delivering Flamestrikes late. If damage is spread around to attract each target, you can cast them earlier, but this is generally too much coordination to expect out of pickup groups.

Flamestrike is interesting, but you have to use it with care. At later levels, Flamestrike’s damage gets better than Fireball’s on single targets, which would make it somewhat more useful except for the fact that it still costs an outrageous amount of mana and can miss. Some things don’t change.




Fire Ward
Rank one: level 20
Rank up at 30, 40, 50, 60

The only non-blasting spell in Fire, Fire Ward sucks up fire damage. Fire damage is uncommon in the game, but you can count on seeing it from time to time. It lasts thirty seconds or until its damage limit is reached, and it has a thirty-second cooldown.

Fire Ward is obviously situational, if only for the reason that it’s no good against things that don’t use fire. The less obvious reason, however, is because the amount it absorbs is not particularly large compared to the damage you’re likely to be seeing at each level of Fire Ward. At level 30 you can get a Fire Ward that absorbs 185 fire damage, for example, but your hit points are going to be in the 700-800 range at a bare minimum at that level. If you’re following a good solo strategy and getting stamina gear, it’ll be much higher.

Sure, it helps to prebuff before going into combat against a fire-user, but it’s not critical. Fire Ward’s actual usefulness is limited to those cases where you would have died before killing the mob without Fire Ward, and survived because of Fire Ward. Those aren’t too common. It’s a fair bet that there will be more times you die and think “But I had Fire Ward!” than times where you lived with a margin smaller than your Fire Ward’s protection.




Scorch
Rank one: level 22
Rank up at 28, 34, 40, 46, 52, 58

When you cast Scorch, you hit a target for a small-to-moderate amount of fire damage. Scorch is a funny little spell. It doesn’t do much of anything, in many senses. It doesn’t have especially good range, nor especially good damage. On the upside, it doesn’t cost a lot of mana or time to cast, either.

So why use Scorch? Well, Scorch’s one standout feature, mana efficiency, isn’t a matter of concern for a soloing mage, as I’ve said. You can be efficient for minutes with Scorch, but if you’ve nearly been clawed to death after thirty seconds, efficiency isn’t going to save you. In solo play, you will rarely want to use Scorch, since for solo players, Scorch really doesn’t do anything that Fireball can’t do better.

Where Scorch really shines is in group play. This can confuse a little - why would a low-damage single-target spell be useful in group play? Picture this: it’s a few seconds after the battle’s started, and all the opponents are on your tank. There hasn’t been a lot of threat built up. If you launch a big-damage nuke spell now, whatever you hit will break out and start chasing you. You don’t want to cast that spell until more threat’s been built on the tank. At the same time, you want to contribute.

You need a spell that doesn’t do enough damage to draw aggro. It also shouldn’t cost much mana, which you want on bigger spells, nor tie up casting time. It should do good damage for the mana, or you wouldn’t bother casting it. It also shouldn’t require any preparation on the party’s part. You need Scorch.

Scorch is the surgeon’s scalpel, a weapon of precision. It isn’t used by spamming it and it’s never the primary offensive spell, which explains why a lot of people have no idea what spell I’m casting when I use Scorch. It is, however, critical to maximizing your damage output in groups. Wielded properly, Scorch will never do you wrong.

[Skandranon]

ii) Frost Skills

The frost skills aren’t quite as purely damage-oriented as the fire skills. Frost does damage, and plenty of it, in its own way, but it sacrifices raw damage output to apply other effects, and contains a great deal more non-offensive skills.




Frostbolt
Rank one: level 4
Rank up at 8, 14, 20, 26, 32, 38, 44, 50, 56

Frostbolt’s very similar to Fireball, with a few key differences. Frostbolt has shorter range, does less damage, and slows the target’s movement for a few seconds when it hits. It has a slightly shorter casting time than Fireball. That said, its casting time eventually reaches 3.0 seconds, so it’s still not something you want to cast if a mob’s in your face.

In its basic form, Frostbolt is almost strictly inferior to Fireball as a damage-dealer. Its main effect, the movement slow, doesn’t stack with successive bolts, so every bolt past the first is less useful. Starting with one can work, buying you time to cast more spells as the creature charges you, but lay off otherwise. Talents will make Frostbolt a lot better, but we talk about those later.




Frost Armor/ Ice Armor
Rank one Frost Armor: level 1
Rank up at 10, 20
Rank one Ice Armor: level 30
Rank up at 40, 50, 60

As a mage, you’ll generally be armoured in thin and papery clothing, with little protective value. Frost Armor attempts to address this weakness by adding ice. It’s a beneficial effect that lasts for thirty minutes, adding to your armour and conferring a minor slowing effect on anything that hits you, reducing their movement speed to 70% and reducing their attack speed by 20%. When Frost Armor turns into Ice Armor, you also get a small amount of frost resistance.

As it turns out, adding ice is better suited to drinks than armour. A few more percent is nice, but generally you don’t want to be hit often enough or hard enough to be forced to rely on it. The part you should like is the slowing, chilling effect, which buys time to run, and the attack speed reduction, which will prevent more damage than your armour will. Neither effect is all that large, but there’s literally no reason not to have this up at all times.




Frost Nova
Rank one: level 10
Rank up at 26, 40, 54

When you cast Frost Nova, you fire a ring of ice that expands in all directions for a short range. It does minimal damage, but whatever it strikes is frozen and rooted to the ground for up to eight seconds. Its drawback is a monster twenty-five second cooldown. Don’t plan on getting more than one of these per fight.

The real reward for reaching level 10, Frost Nova is something you’ll want to be ready to hit at all times. Without talents, Frost Nova is the only skill you have that can inflict the “frozen” status on enemies, which is incredibly valuable if something’s in your face. It buys precious time to cast uninterrupted, in the best case, and in the worst keeps the enemies stopped while you flee to safety.

Once you get it, it becomes an important part of your plans. Around level 10, mobs will stop dying from a barrage of spells at range - they’ll reach melee range with more life than your Fireblast can finish. It’s completely intuitive as to what to do next: Frost Nova, back up, unload your biggest spell and then Fireblast for the win. This is its most common use and certainly not a bad one.

It’s important to note, however, that damage seems to have a way of breaking the “frozen” status. Each hit on a frozen creature seems to have a chance to shatter the ice, freeing it to move again. This is a reason why Frost Nova won’t see much use in group play: with an entire party’s worth of attacks on the creature, chances are the ice will break in one to two seconds, tops. And because Frost Nova generates a surprising amount of threat for something that doesn’t do a lot of damage, the creature will want to come after you after it’s free, which is not going to help matters.

Of course, Frost Nova is invaluable if you want to run. Nova, root them in place and head for the hills with a head start of up to eight seconds. Especially valuable if you’ve found yourself suddenly surrounded.

Further ranks of Frost Nova don’t increase its radius or freeze time or anything that might be vaguely useful to you. They increase its damage, upping its lousy DPS from somewhere around 0.8 to almost 3. Whee.




Blizzard
Rank one: level 20
Rank up at 28, 36, 44, 52, 60

The company name signature spell, Blizzard bombards an area with ice shards for eight seconds, dealing damage in a series of waves, once each second. It’s a channelling spell, meaning that any hit you sustain will cut into Blizzard’s total time, even though Blizzard will go off once a second.

Blizzard shares a number of problems with Flamestrike, i.e., low damage for high cost, ability to miss, and so on. However, it’s even worse in solo play. Flamestrike’s damage takes eight seconds, true, but the only condition for Flamestrike to hit is that the target be in the area when the spell goes off. Blizzard requires the target to be in the area for the entire eight seconds. What’s the likelihood that a mob will sit still for eight seconds and enjoy the falling snow? I’ll take “not bloody likely” for $400, Alex.

There is a place where a mob might be interested in staying for eight seconds, which is right next to you. But then you’ll be losing giant chunks of time off Blizzard, getting even less damage for your enormous mana investment. You could use mana shield, but either way you’re paying a lot of mana to get your Blizzard off.

Which brings us to the next question. Why would you ever want to? Blizzard’s damage at rank 1 is 200 over eight seconds, which sounds nice until you realize that it’s only 25 damage per second. In comparison, rank 1 Arcane Missiles, which you get twelve levels sooner, will be going off for 25-26 damage per missile, once every second. For nearly four times as much mana, you get a spell that does roughly the same damage as a spell that you get much earlier and already have an improved version of. This is not the deal of the century, friends. Like Flamestrike, pass on Blizzard for solo play.

In group play, Blizzard has almost the exact same usefulness as Flamestrike. It’s good, if you can make sure it doesn’t attract anyone else to you. It would seem to be more useful since it spreads its damage out, generating threat slowly, and doesn’t do that much damage in the first place. However, just like Frost Nova, Blizzard generates a disproportionate amount of threat, and in practice you’ll be tossing these just as late as Flamestrikes.




Frost Ward
Rank one: level 22
Rank up at 32, 42, 52

See Fire Ward. Same thing, but for Frost damage. Nothing to say here I didn’t say there, except for two notes. Water elemental types do frost damage, even though they don’t look particularly frozen. Frost Ward will shield you from their melee attacks…for a little while. And Frost Ward will shield you from the slowing effects of frost damage.




Cone of Cold
Rank one: level 26
Rank up at 34, 42, 50, 58

Cone of Cold is an instant-cast cold spell with a fairly lengthy ten-second cooldown and a very short range. When you cast it, you hit all targets in a short, wide, vaguely cone-shaped area in front of you for some cold damage and slow them to 50% of movement speed for eight seconds.

A lot of Cone of Cold looks like Fireblast - and you can use it in much the same way. Cone of cold usually offers about half the damage of Fireblast for twice the mana, so it’s not a particularly efficient spell, but it expands your menu of options slightly. If you have the mana to spare, going Cone-Fireblast in quick succession can end a fight much sooner.

Cone of Cold differs from Fireblast in three ways. Firstly, its short range. Unlike Fireblast, which can hit a target 20 yards out, Cone of Cold’s range seems to be much shorter, ten or twelve yards. Its animation is also little help in determining its possible area of effect. To use Cone successfully, one generally needs to wait until the target is moderately close.

Secondly, it has a small area-of-effect. In general, this will be of little use in solo play, though there are one or two exceptional situations. In group play, it means you have to watch where you Cone, and should be wary of firing it at the primary target unless you’re completely sure that it won’t attract the other mobs.

Thirdly, the slowing effect means that it can be used for reasons other than damage. 50% is the best base slowing effect you can find on any Frost spell, and so Coning something and running is the next best thing if your Nova's still cooling down. Alternatively, use this to keep things that run in fear from running too far.

[Skandranon]

iii) Arcane Skills

The Arcane skills are a large and diverse bunch. Some of them are excellent offensive spells, but there are large numbers of utility spells as well. Outnumbering the Fire and Frost skills combined, it’s a sure bet that you’ll be making extensive use of Arcane abilities throughout the game.




Arcane Intellect
Rank one: level 1
Rank up at 14, 28, 42, 56

Your basic and only buff – Armor doesn’t count since you can’t use it on anyone else. Improves Intellect by two points at rank 1 and increases as you increase its rank.

Not a great deal of strategy is involved with this spell: more Intellect = more mana for you, and that’s always a good thing. Have this up at all times. In groups, make sure to buff any character that uses mana with this, and especially the healer.




Conjure Water
Rank one: level 4
Rank up at 10, 20, 30, 40, 50

One of the most critical spells in the mage’s arsenal, Conjure Water lets you have water anywhere, anytime. Upon training in any rank of Conjure Water, you can create two bottles of water, quality depending on rank. Each level gained after that lets you conjure two more bottles of that rank of water, until you can conjure 20 bottles. The next level, you’ll be eligible to train in the next rank of Water, and the bottle count starts at 2 again.

One word: indispensable. You’ll eventually run out of mana…sometime. And even with high Spirit, regeneration is slow. You could wait a minute or two between each fight to regenerate up to full, but when I said you needed to be patient – yeah, not that patient. Water can reduce the time waiting to between twenty and thirty seconds. You could buy water, but that would, you know, cost money. Conjure makes it free – and given how much drinking you’ll do, that’s huge.

Good group play mandates that you offer conjured water to anyone who asks for it, even if you’re conjuring two bottles at a time. Of course, that will require a few minutes of casting-drinking-casting, but if your groupmates can’t take that, either don’t bother with the water or find a better group.




Conjure Food
Rank one: level 6
Rank up at 12, 22, 32, 42, 52
Useful. From time to time, you’ll get hit. Food makes getting it back go faster. You don’t need this like you need Conjure Water, but it’s handy to regenerate health quickly. You can eat and drink at the same time, so while you’re waiting for your mana to come back, it can’t hurt to have free food to top off your life while you’re at it. So go ahead…slam a refreshing mug full of bread into your face.




Arcane Missiles
Rank one: level 8
Rank up at 16, 24, 32, 40, 48, 56

The first all-out offensive Arcane spell, and it doesn’t disappoint. Arcane Missiles channels for three seconds at rank 1. At the end of the first second (one-third of the way through the bar on the bottom), it kicks off its first missile. At the end of the second one it fires another one, and right as the spell’s ending it fires its final missile. Higher ranks fire stronger missiles and last for a longer period of time: at rank 2 it fires four times over four seconds, and at level 3 it fires five times in five seconds. Only spell damage increases after rank 3.

For much of the game, Arcane Missiles will compete with Fireball for the best DPS of any offensive spell. With talents, Fireball squeaks ahead, but Arcane Missiles is otherwise better. Missiles usually costs more, about 33% more than Fireball, but you know what I say about efficiency.

One of the great attributes of Arcane Missiles is the fact that it’s far less vulnerable to resistance. Technically, of course, it’s no more vulnerable to resistance than any other spell, but the way it functions – delivering damage in small packets once per second – means that you’ll generally get more reliable damage through on highly resistant mobs. One three levels above you resists roughly 70% of incoming spells. If you need 50 damage right now, a cast of Arcane Missiles shooting 5 missiles of 56 damage each over 5 seconds will most likely get you that damage by the time the spell’s done casting, whereas two or three 150 damage fireballs may still end up all resisted.

Because it fires at the end of each full second it’s been channelled, any time you lose due to being hit costs you one missile right away. Actually, the first three hits will cost you a missile each, meaning that rank 1 Arcane Missiles won’t fire at all if you’re hit three times. Not to be used up close in its untalented form.

Be careful when clicking the button for Missiles when you’re casting one after the other, because it’s a channelling spell. For other spells, clicking the button while you’re already casting will simply do nothing or give the message “another action is in progress”. Clicking the button for Missiles will turn the channelling off, ending your spell early, which you almost never want to do. The occasions when you want to do it, turning and running will do it just fine. Look for the spell bar to flash at the bottom before you hit the button for your next Missiles.

Lastly, Arcane Missiles has a number of bugs. One is an animation bug. I’ve never seen the full animation, but supposedly it looks like it’s firing a missile once per second, like it actually happens to do. Most of the time, and all of the time for me, you’ll only hear missiles get fired, with the visual effect delayed about a half-second. On occasion you’ll hear the missiles fire, see the damage number, and not see the missiles until the end, when the visual effects all fire at once. Sometimes you’ll break out of casting stance and just stand there while you cast the spell and missiles pop out of your shoulders. Don’t worry. It’s working.

Except in one case. Sometimes you won’t hear missiles at all, and see no damage numbers. Yes, sometimes it’ll channel and cost you mana but not bother with the whole firing part. This can be caused by a number of things, but generally it has something to do with the spot you’re standing on. Back up, cast any other spell (Fireblast is good), try to move onto flatter ground, and try the missiles again. If it doesn’t work, run. Occasionally, you’ll run into pairs of enemies that, when pulled with Polymorph, always trigger this bug. It’s all very strange, but generally low-incidence. This shouldn’t discourage you from using missiles – but be aware of how to react if they bug. Rule One applies to everything.




Polymorph
Rank one: level 8
Rank up at 20, 40, 60

Casting polymorph transforms any target humanoid, beast or critter into a harmless sheep with an absurd regeneration rate. Any knock on the head, however, turns the sheep back into whatever it was before. Most creatures take exception to being turned into sheep, and so expect that they’ll be looking for you the moment their uncontrollable desires to graze subside.

The ability to remove an enemy from combat completely is priceless, and the mage’s Polymorph is one of the easiest ways to do it. Mostly, Polymorph is a one-stop solution to the case of unexpected adds. If a creature barges on to the scene, you can simply turn it into a sheep and finish whatever you were doing with minimal disruption. Always have this ready.

Polymorph’s role is exactly the same in group play – cutting down the number of adversaries. It works fine on elites, so sheeping makes even instances go more smoothly. On an unrelated note, if Oxford ever accepts sheep as a verb, this is going to be why. Nearly no one calls this spell Polymorph.

One last thing. While something is under the effect of your Polymorph spell, you are considered to be in combat, not regenerating health and being unable to eat or drink. This is true even if you’ve run from the sheep and are outside its aggro radius. Of course, once the spell ends you’ll be out of combat, but until then, even running to a safe distance won’t let you get away from battling the sheep.




Slow Fall
Rank one: level 12
No improvements

This spell does exactly what it claims to do – it slows falling speed, consuming a light feather in the process. That’s all it does, and it just slows your fall – it doesn’t let you change the direction of it or do anything other than glide to the bottom and take no damage. Whatever angle you were falling at before, you continue to fall at afterwards.

It’s useful, in places, but it isn’t something with a high priority to pick up right away. When its cost is trivial, grab it. Jumping off high cliffs is a sure way to make creatures stop chasing you, and this makes sure you don’t splat at the bottom. The fun you can have flying off high places is a bonus.




Dampen Magic
Rank one: level 12
Rank up at 24, 36, 48, 60

Dampen Magic is an interesting idea, but not all that interesting in execution. Anyone buffed (and I use that word only because the game puts it in that category) with Dampen Magic takes up to X less damage from enemy offensive spells, and heals up to 2X less from healing spells. Further ranks marginally increase the value of X. Dampen Magic lasts three minutes.

The problem lies in the tiny effect of Dampen Magic; at rank 1 it only shields you from up to a measly 10 damage per spell, which is already miniscule compared to the attacks you’ll be facing. Assuming the distribution is even, you’ll only get 5 damage prevented reliably, which is basically nothing. This is something you should only consider when playing solo, since you don’t have any healing to be reduced by Dampen’s drawback. If there’s a healer – even a secondary healer – forget it.




Arcane Explosion
Rank one: level 14
Rank up at 22, 30, 38, 46, 54

A cast of Arcane Explosion releases a burst of arcane energy, inflicting damage on all enemies within ten yards of you. It has a short casting time, only 1.5 seconds, and no cooldown.

One thing becomes apparent from obtaining rank 1 Arcane Explosion: the damage isn’t great. In fact, it’s terrible. Rank two Fireblast, obtained at the same time, inflicts twice as much damage to a single enemy for the same cost, and does so immediately instead of after a 1.5 second cast. Arcane Explosion shares the usual AoE vulnerabilities of Flamestrike and Blizzard, and furthermore requires you to actually be near whatever you have to hit. Arcane Explosion, however, gets much better than other AoE spells due to its specific talent, which will be discussed in the Talents section.




Detect Magic
Rank one: level 16
No improvements

This does exactly what it says it does: shows you all the buffs that your target has, for two minutes. It doesn’t, however, give you a way to do anything about them, and neither does any other spell you have. This is of strictly limited utility.




Amplify Magic
Rank one: level 18
Rank up at 30, 42, 54

Amplify Magic is a buff (again, only because they say so) which is essentially Dampen Magic’s reverse: during its three-minute duration, take up to X more damage from enemy offensive magic, and heal up to 2X more from healing spells.

In solo play, there’s no reason to ever cast this because you don’t have a healing spell to take advantage of it. Group play offers a use for it, in a situation where your tank isn’t being bombarded by enemy spells, but could use extra healing. But once it’s cast, you’re stuck with it for three minutes, which could be bad if a caster adds. You could cast an equal level of Dampen to reverse the effect, but it’s altogether too much trouble for a negligible bonus. This might have been more interesting if you could cast it on enemies, like a kind of magic Hunter’s Mark, but you can’t. Opportunity missed, Blizzard.




Remove Lesser Curse

Name equals effect. This instant, no-cooldown spell removes a curse from a friendly target. Lesser curse implies that there are greater curses, but I haven’t yet seen one. Remove Lesser Curse has handled everything marked “curse” I’ve seen yet. It clears one curse at a time, so if a target has more than one you’ll need to cast it twice.

This is, of course, narrowly situational, since not all enemies use curses and those enemies are few and far between. However, it’s invaluable in the situations where it is of use. For one thing, it’s simply good party play to be able to remove curses – no one else can do it, so you’d better be able to, just to keep everyone in good condition. For another, when you are cursed, the curses tend to hurt – Tuten’Kash in the Razorfen Downs throws one that slows everybody by 25% for five minutes Another in the Deadmines inflicts 300 shadow damage after 60 seconds, and if you’re a gnome this will probably kill you at the levels in which could be doing that area.




Mana Shield
Rank one: level 20
Rank up at 28, 36, 44, 52, 60

This spell works almost exactly as the Naga hero’s spell does in Warcraft III. Mana shield will absorb a certain amount of physical damage, draining two mana for each point of damage absorbed.

This is less useful than one might think. Hit points exist for a reason, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing to lose a few in the course of a battle. In fact, since mana regeneration is going to be the thing holding up your downtime, it’s actually preferable to lose life, as you can regenerate that separately and in parallel with mana. As long as you can destroy your target before your life runs down too badly, you’ll be fine. Which gets us to the heart of the problem – mobs your level and one above won’t be able to damage you all that much before you destroy them. Mobs two levels higher than you might kill you, but for them, you want as much mana as possible since they’re likely to resist more of your spells and because they have more hit points. The only cases where mana shield might save your life are ones where it forfeits your chance to kill the creature.

It does prevent spell interruption, but there are better ways to deal with it than this. Aside from that, you can also pop this up if you’re keeping something polymorphed, your life is low, and you don’t have any bandages handy. Since you can regenerate your mana to full even when you’re in “combat” with the sheep, you can use this to make up for your low life. This won’t happen a whole lot, but it does from time to time.

The best use for mana shield is when you’re running away. When concerns such as killing are abandoned, you just need enough mana for a few escape spells, and all the rest can go to keeping you alive.




Blink
Rank one: level 20
No improvements

Blink teleports you 20 yards forward, unless something is in the way. That part of the description is completely sound. Blizzard also goes on to helpfully note “frees the caster from stuns and bonds”. Um…no. In fact, it could be changed to say “does not free the caster from stuns and bonds” and it would be a great deal more helpful, since you might actually think it does those two things, and it doesn’t. You can’t cast anything, including Blink, while stunned, and when you Blink you aren’t “freed” from a bond, you just bring it with you twenty yards in a forward direction.

Despite these glaring inaccuracies, Blink is plenty useful. The most obvious use is to get away, and between Frost Nova, Blink and Mana Shield, your mage is going to be very hard to kill. Of course, you can always use it to get from place to place a little quicker.

A final note about Blink. As you gain levels, the mana cost increases. The spell itself doesn’t change.




Counterspell
Rank one: level 24
No improvements

Your salvation against casters, Counterspell is another one of those literal spell-names. When you hit something that’s casting with a Counterspell, it stops their casting immediately. Not only that, it locks out anything from that school of magic for the next ten seconds, encouraging casters to charge up to you and beat you with bent wooden sticks for piddly damage. It casts instantly, with a thirty-yard range (so if something’s casting Fireballs at you, you’ll need to get closer), and has a thirty-second cooldown. Its description correctly notes that Counterspell generates a lot of threat. Counterspell can be resisted like any other spell.

The use of Counterspell is fairly obvious – transforming a spellcaster into a weak melee fighter for ten seconds. Caster mobs will cease to trouble you after you obtain this spell, even elites that are only two levels below you. In group play, casting it will usually make whatever elite spellcaster you countered try to melee you – but that brings them in range of your tanks without having to risk going over to them and aggroing anyone near them. Still worth it.




Conjure Mana Gem
Conjure Mana Agate: level 28
Conjure Mana Jade: level 38
Conjure Mana Citrine: level 48
Conjure Mana Ruby: level 58

This spell is actually four separate spells. I categorize them all as “gem”, since they don’t differ in any fundamental way. This spell conjures a unique, soulbound consumable that instantly restores some amount of mana when consumed.

Essentially, what this spell does is expand your mana pool by whatever amount the gem restores. The only penalty for creating what is basically a personal mana potion is a few more seconds drinking. Its cooldown does not overlap with actual potions. Carry one of the latest version in your inventory all the time – having an emergency mana supply is useful and convenient. You can have multiple gems in your inventory at once – one of each kind – but each gem has a 3 minute cooldown that applies to all other kinds of gems. So while you can have a Mana Agate and a Mana Jade at the same time, once you eat one you won’t be able to eat the other for three minutes, and either you or the other guy will be dead by that time. For long fights like the aforementioned Archaedas, however, this trick can be useful.

They should have made these Agate, Beryl, Citrine and Diamond. Just my opinion.




Teleport: and Portal:
Teleport: Ironforge, Stormwind (A), Orgrimmar, Undercity (H): level 20
Teleport: Darnassus (A), Thunder Bluff (H): level 30
Portal: Ironforge, Stormwind (A), Orgrimmar, Undercity (H): level 40
Portal: Darnassus (A), Thunder Bluff (H): level 50

These spells link you and possibly your party up with any of the capital cities on your side. The Teleport: versions only take you, and use up a reagent costing 10s; the Portal: versions can take the whole party but require a 20s reagent.

Usefulness depends on how much you think your time is worth. Teleporting/portalling to a city is hands down the most expensive manner of travel. You can go from almost anywhere to any capital city by using less silver than that. There are very, very few situations where teleporting is more economical, and those situations are odd ones such as Nethergarde Keep to Darnassus. The Horde line of these is more useful as their two level 20 teleports take them to different continents, whereas the two Alliance teleports go to two cities that are basically one city anyway due to the Deeprun Tram.

Portals will make you popular with parties at the ends of instances without exit doors, but the reagent hurts – 18s a shot. It’s not that much money, but it builds up over time to something serious. Some mages try to charge for opening a portal, which makes them a little less popular.

[Skandranon]

c) The Early Game, levels 1-10

The early game isn’t all that interesting, mostly because you have a limited spell selection and because nothing is particularly challenging at this stage. In general, you will be able to solo the whole thing, with the exception of initial elite quests such as Fizzle for trolls and Hogger for humans, and even those are possible with the right preparation.


--- The Early Game – Solo Play ---
Initially, you’ll set off on a quest to kill a mass of level 1-2 beasts that aren’t initially aggressive towards you. This isn’t a tough task, but it should introduce you to the basics of a mob engagement while solo.

From levels 1-3, you have no choice but to use fireball. Target something and get as close to maximum range as you can (if this is your first character, note that the number in the upper-right corner will be red if you’re out of range and white if you’re in range). Reel off fireballs until they get close. You can switch to your staff at this point, if you like, but you can also keep casting fireballs. If you do, you’ll introduce yourself to the biggest reason why you’ll want to engage at a distance – casting time interruption.

Whenever you’re hit, you’ll lose casting time. This counts no matter where the damage comes from. The stats have been cited as 1 second for the first hit, .8 second for the second, and while I haven’t tested extensively to determine if that’s true, it feels roughly correct from my own experience. It works similarly for channelling spells – you lose maximum time off the spell, which reduces the chance that you’ll still be channelling it when it checks to see if it’s going to do anything. Ideally, then, you want to kill them before they can reach you, or, if they do reach you, to have some manner of uninterruptible attack to finish off whatever life they have left.

At level four, you’ll get frostbolt. Switch to that; at this point, fireball has no advantages. Frostbolts will serve you well until level 6, when you get Rank 2 of Fireball and Fireblast, which expands your toolbox to something a little more interesting. These three spells can get you rolling on the general strategy for a battle solo.

Pick an opener. This is how you’ll express your greetings to most things you encounter. It’s like shaking hands, except without the shaking, or the hands. There isn’t much to choose between fireball or frostbolt at this stage; either will work just fine. Fireball has a 5 yard range advantage, but frostbolt slows them down. Either way it’s more time to cast more fireballs or frostbolts as they charge in. Generally, you’ll be wanting Fireball for its superior damage. By the time they get in close, their life should be low enough that a single fireblast will finish them.

Make sure to cast them as close together as possible. When the spell bar flashes, you can hit the button for your next spell.

At level 8 you’ll obtain Arcane Missiles and Polymorph. Arcane Missiles has the best damage-per-second of any of your spells to this point, and Polymorph is going to be a staple for the rest of the game. Both are going to get a lot of use.

Arcane Missiles, despite having the best DPS, isn’t a good choice of opener. When you look for an opener, you want something that makes a big impact, regardless of casting time. After all, before your opener hits them, they’re unaware of your existence, which means that they won’t be running towards you waving pointy things. In essence, casting time before the battle actually starts doesn’t “count”, so what you want is the biggest amount of damage that can be done in one hit. Fireball is the best candidate there, but frostbolt also does more damage than a single missile hit and gives you more time to shoot off missiles. Either works fine to start things off. Missiles as they come in, fireblast to finish things.

Polymorph has a number of uses, generally when things go wrong. However, it can also be used as an opener – against multiple targets. Occasionally you’ll see mobs engaging in a buddy-up system whereby they patrol in pairs. If you shoot one, you’ll get them both mad, and it will be significantly more difficult to take them both on at the same time. Sheep one, however, and you have a slightly shortened but much easier combat against the other guy. Your blasting power won’t get near that point until level 10, but keep this use in mind.

At level 10, you’ll get frost nova, which suggests itself to strategies simply. As they approach melee range (after you’ve unloaded from long range), cast nova to freeze them, back up, and cast something else without fear of interruption.

In general, you only want to back up a few steps – just out of melee range. You could back up more, or turn around and run to a safer distance. But freezing doesn’t last long – a maximum of eight seconds – and every second you spend backing up and running away increases the chance that the mob will break free and cost you every bit of advantage you earned by casting the nova in the first place.

Do remember what I said about hits possibly breaking the ice of Frost Nova. Hence, while Arcane Missiles may sound like a natural option to inflict the most damage while they’re frozen, there’s a good case to be made for Fireball, as the multiple-hits mechanic of Missiles appears to have a higher chance of breaking the ice.

There are a number of things that can go wrong even in the early game, but the two you’re most likely to get are unexpected attacks and resisted spells.

Unexpected attacks are something you’ll have to learn to live with, but until level 8 you won’t have a good way of dealing with something spawning on you, a monster trained towards you, or a mob you just plain didn’t see. The easiest option available is always to run. Your Frost Armor should slow them and you should get away clean as long as you’re aiming yourself in a direction where things are clear. If there’s any doubt, go for the road as the roads are always clear of spawns.

It’s a little hairier if something attacks when you’re preoccupied with blasting something else. All of a sudden, you’re dealing with spell interruption earlier than you thought, making your original target more likely to survive and also get to the point where it can chew on you. Again, running is always an option. If your original target is very weakened and you’re at full life, you can consider shooting off a Fireblast right away and going to your melee weapon to finish them off quickly, and then running from the add. Either way there isn’t a lot of wisdom to staying and fighting. You’re just not made for close combat.

Once you get Polymorph, however, unexpected attacks become little more than a nuisance. Your immediate reaction to any unexpected add or attack should be to sheep it. If you want to attack, run to a safe place and uncork an opener. Otherwise, you can run – much easier when you’re not being chased – and go to wherever you were planning to go. However, keep in mind that you won’t be noted as “out of combat” until the Polymorph spell ends, no matter where you are, so don’t plan on eating or drinking until it’s over.

The worst case is multiple adds, such as if you happened to cast a spell while someone brought four or five mobs into your general area. Unless you can hit a fireblast and finish your original target immediately, run to the nearest clear space and keep running until you’re out of combat. If they’re chasing closely, use frost nova, if you have it, and keep running.

Resisted spells can be less severe, but you also don’t have an easy solution such as polymorph to deal with it. Against mobs up to two levels higher than you, resists will be infrequent, but you need to know how to deal with them. Against mobs three or more levels higher, 70% or more of your spells are resisted, and you generally don’t want to start fights like that.

Resisted spells are like missed attacks for weapon-users, but they’re much worse. After all, the warrior didn’t just spend two and half seconds charging up. The main result of a resisted spell is going to be a creature in melee range that you can’t finish with a Fireblast. Polymorph doesn’t help here since whatever you morph will regenerate all its health, forcing you to start from the beginning – which you can do, of course, but that’s time-consuming and you may not have enough mana to do it all over again. Remember, you won’t get out of combat until Polymorph is done, so you can’t eat or drink while a sheep’s wandering around.

In the very early game, you can generally pull out your weapon for this. Your damage and accuracy with staves and the like are going to fall behind very quickly, but very early on they should suffice. During the middle stages, you can use frostbolts, since they have the quickest cast time aside from instant. Fireblasting immediately can be useful, as well, since if you can survive eight seconds another Fireblast can generally end it. If you have a great deal of mana, Arcane Missiles is the best choice to get damage on the target because of how it works. If, at the end of one second, the bar is still on the screen, you will get one missile, and even if you’re hit twice the bar’s length will go from 3 seconds to 1.2, meaning that it will still be around when the game checks to see if it should fire a missile at the end of the first second. It won’t fire any others, making it incredibly inefficient, but it will get you 24 damage after one second, which is useful if you need that damage right away.

In the worst case, you may need to sheep the target and run from it. This set of circumstances won’t happen often, but if it does, this is how you react. Yes, I needed to say it. Rule One.

--- The Early Game – Group Play ---

Don’t expect to see a lot of grouping up at these levels. Most challenges can be completed alone, though progress may be gradual. However, any group you end up in at these levels is an excellent way to learn a key skill for groups throughout the game – threat management.

Given the enormous amounts of damage mages can put out in a small period of time, it should come as no surprise that they can get a mob’s attention very quickly. This is, of course, bad. As I’ve pointed out earlier, your armor is likely to be of the downy soft variety and not too good at stopping anything much more savage than your average kitten. Preferably, you want their attention focused on the tank, so you can sling spells without worrying about getting eaten.

One thing should make itself clear right from the get-go: group play is nothing like solo play. Solo play involves firing the biggest damage spells immediately and piling on the damage as quick as you can to kill something before it reaches you. You can do this even in group play at these levels, but it’s really better to learn your proper role in a group so that when you really have to work as part of a group, you’ll know what you’re doing.

Most mages never contribute all that much to groups, because the grand majority of them are played incredibly badly. Sometimes it’s just general cluelessness, but most of the time it’s because they’re playing in groups like they’re trying to play solo. This is almost always going to get you in trouble at the higher levels, because it’s frankly a stupid thing to do. It makes the tank’s job harder, it makes the healer’s job harder, and it makes your job harder. Don’t do it.

First things first. Don’t pull (i.e. be the first to get the mob’s attention). If you really, really have to, use a wand. Under no circumstances launch a max-range Fireball or Frostbolt, since that’s simply going to make whatever you hit very mad, and it will be extraordinarily difficult for your team members to get the aggro off you. Mobs display a tendency to stick to whatever got their attention first, which works fine if the tank was that person, but not so well if it’s you.

Your first priority, then, is to do nothing until the tank has safely attracted the attention of your target and is likely to hold it. There are options later, but not at this point. Then you can start to cast, but carefully. Arcane Missiles and Fireballs are both fine, but you must take care to space them out and not rapidly chaincast them. You can cast Frostbolts slightly quicker.

In groups this early, you essentially have but one priority – not attracting the enemies’ attention (“getting aggro”). Do try to push the envelope a bit, if only to get a feel for how much damage you can do safely. Whenever they lock on to you, stop casting and don’t do anything that could possibly deal damage to the target, unless its life is so low that a spell or two will kill it. Move towards the tank instead of running away, so that he or she can take back aggro as soon as possible. Try not to Frost Nova, since it’ll not only draw the ire of whatever you hit with Nova, but may also attract others who were happy to hit the tank until then.

Strategies are similar for smaller parties without all the defined roles. If your party lacks a true tank, i.e. a paladin or warrior, you’ll have to go with a substitute. Warlock and hunter pets follow mostly the same rules, as do shamans and druids. If you’re using a rogue as the “tank” you can open fire sooner, as the rogue’s high damage output will keep the mob attracted longer. Parties without healers are somewhat more problematic. In general, tanks will survive without healers at this level, but be ready to have the entire party run if needed.

The only group situations where you should play like you’re soloing are when you’re all mages or all mages and priests. In both those cases, no one can take much damage – just like the situation when soloing – so treat it the same way. Only in these cases, however.

[Skandranon]

d) Talents and Talent Builds.

It’s impossible to go further without discussing talents. In many ways, talent builds, like skill choices in D2, are the most important selections you’ll make when plotting your path as a mage. However, with the ability to reassign them, they’re not quite as critical as skill choices. Still, it’s a good idea to know what you’re selecting from. In the same order as I discussed the skills, I’ll go over the talents, then talk about specific builds and how to get started on each of them.

[Skandranon]

i) Talents


1) Fire Talents

Improved Fireball
1 point – Fireball cast reduced by 0.1 second.
2 points – Fireball cast reduced by 0.2 seconds.
3 points – Fireball cast reduced by 0.3 seconds.
4 points – Fireball cast reduced by 0.4 seconds.
5 points – Fireball cast reduced by 0.5 seconds.

If you want to be able to use Fireball as anything but an opener in the middle to late game, you’ll want Improved Fireball. Three and a half seconds is a monster casting time, and while three seconds is still large, the difference between the two is enough to boost Fireball’s DPS past Arcane Missiles’. Getting it early isn’t that bad of an idea, either – getting it when Fireball’s only 2.5 or 3.0 base seconds to cast makes Fireball relatively quick-casting for the time. Five points in this is also a prerequisite for Pyroblast.



Impact
1 point – Your Fire spells have a 2% chance to stun the target for 2 seconds.
2 points – Your Fire spells have a 4% chance to stun the target for 2 seconds.
3 points – Your Fire spells have a 6% chance to stun the target for 2 seconds.
4 points – Your Fire spells have a 8% chance to stun the target for 2 seconds.
5 points – Your Fire spells have a 10% chance to stun the target for 2 seconds.

Stunning casters can stop an incoming spell right away, and stunning an incoming creature buys precious time to fire off another spell. Ten percent will go off more often than you think.. Useful especially with Scorch, but also with fireballs in solo.



Ignite
1 point – Your critical strikes from Fire spells cause the target to burn for 8% of your spell damage over 4 seconds.
2 points – Your critical strikes from Fire spells cause the target to burn for 16% of your spell damage over 4 seconds.
3 points – Your critical strikes from Fire spells cause the target to burn for 24% of your spell damage over 4 seconds.
4 points – Your critical strikes from Fire spells cause the target to burn for 32% of your spell damage over 4 seconds.
5 points – Your critical strikes from Fire spells cause the target to burn for 40% of your spell damage over 4 seconds.

Ignite simply gives you more damage. Eight percent is not so much, but when maxed this talent drops an additional 40% on the enemy, and that’s pretty serious stuff. Killing them quicker is always good. If you add Critical Mass, it becomes more frequent, and Combustion guarantees that Ignite will make them burn. Without critical-improving talents, however, Ignite weakens a little – a five-point investment for something that may not happen all that often.



Improved Fire Blast
1 point – Fire Blast cooldown reduced by 0.5 second.
2 points – Fire Blast cooldown reduced by 0.8 second.
3 points – Fire Blast cooldown reduced by 1.0 second.
4 points – Fire Blast cooldown reduced by 1.3 seconds.
5 points – Fire Blast cooldown reduced by 1.5 seconds.

Fire Blast’s spikes in DPS are always welcome additions to any battle, and against especially tough enemies, a few more Fire Blasts can always come in handy. But a 1.5 second reduction against an 8 second cooldown is not that great. And how often are you going to be Fireblasting other than as a finisher? Five talent points may not be a worthwhile investment for such a small effect.



Flame Throwing
1 point – Your Fire spells gain 3 yards of range.
2 points – Your Fire spells gain 6 yards of range.

Range is one of Fire’s advantages. Two points in this kicks your Fireball up to 41 yards range, which makes it an even better opener from a distance. Notably, however, this also improves Fireblast range to 26 yards, making it far easier to use multiple times. Attacking from range is one of the mage’s major advantages – anything that makes it bigger is better. Flame Throwing is even more interesting in the sense that it does something you can’t accomplish any other way.



Incinerate
1 point – Increases the critical strike chance of your Fire Blast and Scorch spells by 2%.
2 points – Increases the critical strike chance of your Fire Blast and Scorch spells by 4%.

Fire Blast and Scorch are going to be spells you use a lot, fire specialized or no. If you’ve already taken ten points in fire talents so you can take this, you can count on seeing a lot of both these spells in the future, and two percent per point is quite good for critical strikes. Of course, if you’re going deep enough to snag Critical Mass, you may not feel the need to build on that talent with this one.



Pyroblast
1 point – Gain Pyroblast rank 1.

Pyroblast is, essentially, a Fireball with a six-second cast, a one-minute cooldown, and bigger damage. Pyroblast, is, therefore, an opener, since for openers casting times don’t matter. It makes a much better opener than Fireball, inflicting up to thirty percent more damage for a tiny increase in mana cost. The six-second cast ensures that you won’t use this in combat, but it’s a great way to reach out and touch someone.



Improved Flamestrike
1 point – Increases Flamestrike’s critical chance by 5%
2 points – Increases Flamestrike’s critical chance by 10%
3 points – Increases Flamestrike’s critical chance by 15%

Increasing the critical strike chance by 15% is a big, big number, the largest improved critical chance any talent offers any spell. With Critical Mass or Arcane Instability, it isn’t unreasonable to assume you can get Flamestrike’s critical strike chance into the 25% ballpark, which makes it much more reliable. That said, Fireball and Pyroblast still make better openers, since they track the target even if it moves, and Flamestrike doesn’t And while 25% critical strikes sounds really good, most of the time there still won’t be a critical strike, putting Flamestrike back on the same page with over twice the mana cost.



Burning Soul
1 point – Gives your Fire spells a 25% chance of not being interrupted by damage.
2 points – Gives your Fire spells a 50% chance of not being interrupted by damage.
3 points – Gives your Fire spells a 65% chance of not being interrupted by damage.

Spell interruption is the bane of every mage. Burning Soul lets what’s probably your best damage spell, Fireball, ignore any interruption over half the time, allowing you to use it semi-reliably even in melee combat. But why, exactly, are you casting Fireball in melee combat? There’s a much better option for an offensive spell if you don’t want to be interrupted.



Improved Scorch
1 point – Burns the target for 5% of your Scorch damage over 4 seconds.
2 points – Burns the target for 10% of your Scorch damage over 4 seconds.
3 points – Burns the target for 15% of your Scorch damage over 4 seconds.
4 points – Burns the target for 20% of your Scorch damage over 4 seconds.
5 points – Burns the target for 25% of your Scorch damage over 4 seconds.

This is a flat damage increase for Scorch, not conditional like Ignite or having a percentage chance of working. It works all the time, making it even more damage efficient, and it does so in a perfect way for Scorch. An increase to the damage of the initial hit would make Scorch draw more aggro, defeating the purpose – this damage addition burns over the next four seconds, spreading out aggro. If you’re planning a lot of instance runs, this is a great addition to Scorch, which you’ll find yourself using a lot. Then again, 25% of Scorch damage isn’t really that big of an increase, because Scorch’s base damage is low. There might be better places to put 5 points, especially considering that most fights start with only two or three Scorches before you move on to the heavy stuff.



Improved Fire Ward
1 point – Your Fire Ward reflects 20% of the absorbed damage back to the caster.
2 points – Your Fire Ward reflects 35% of the absorbed damage back to the caster.

Fire Ward isn’t exactly a stellar skill, and the Improved version doesn’t make it better at all. Even a level 60 Fire Ward, reflecting up to 204 points of damage, isn’t a big deal. Fireball at that level is averaging 650 or so damage per cast, and you’ll need a few of those. 204 is a drop in the bucket. Not to mention, it only works against things that use fire, and some of those are fire elementals, which won’t overly care what you bother reflecting. This one’s a filler talent. Don’t touch it.



Critical Mass
1 point – Increases the critical strike chance of your Fire spells by 2%.
2 point – Increases the critical strike chance of your Fire spells by 4%.
3 point – Increases the critical strike chance of your Fire spells by 6%.

This is a powerful passive. For three points, 6% is quite a good critical strike chance increase. Its synergistic effects with Ignite aren’t to be ignored, either. Beyond this…well, more criticals, and you don’t need to do anything special to get them. Obvious benefits.



Blast Wave
1 point – Gain Blast Wave, rank 1.

Blast Wave is basically a Fire Nova. Unlike Frost Nova, this spell has teeth, and does significant AoE damage. But it doesn’t immobilize its targets, just dazing them instead, which reduces their move speed by 50% but isn’t as nice as freezing. It has the normal problems associated with AoE spells. It casts instantly but has a 45-second cooldown, and makes a decent additional finisher.



Fire Power
1 point – Fire spell damage increased by 2%.
2 points – Fire spell damage increased by 4%.
3 points – Fire spell damage increased by 6%.
4 points – Fire spell damage increased by 8%.
5 points – Fire spell damage increased by 10%.

Flat damage increase across the board for all Fire spells. Most talents don’t work all the time, and so each one that does deserves a good long look. Aside from that…I don’t really need to explain the benefits of more damage, do I?



Combustion
1 point – Gain Combustion.

When you cast Combustion, it guarantees your next Fire spell a critical strike. A five minute cooldown means you can only do it once every so often, but this plus Pyroblast can be quite the opener, even more powerful if you have Ignite. Alternatively, this plus Flamestrike or Blast Wave can really wreck groups, again, even more severe with Ignite.



2) Frost Talents

Improved Frostbolt
1 point – Frostbolt cast reduced by 0.1 second.
2 points – Frostbolt cast reduced by 0.2 seconds.
3 points – Frostbolt cast reduced by 0.3 seconds.
4 points – Frostbolt cast reduced by 0.4 seconds.
5 points – Frostbolt cast reduced by 0.5 seconds.

If you’re going Frost, Frostbolt is going to be your main damage-dealer, much as Fireball is for fire mages. Decreasing its cast time pushes its DPS up over an untalented Fireball’s, and noses it out ahead of Arcane Missiles for some levels (AM will still be higher during four out of every eight levels, at least until you get Piercing Ice). Any kind of frost specialization starts here.



Permafrost
1 point – Your chill effects last 1 second longer.
2 points – Your chill effects last 1.5 seconds longer.
3 points – Your chill effects last 2 seconds longer.
4 points – Your chill effects last 2.5 seconds longer.
5 points – Your chill effects last 3 seconds longer.

On the bright side, a longer chill can’t hurt. If you open with Frostbolt, it gives you more time to cast other things as they’re charging you. But then again, if you’re opening with Frostbolt and are Frost specialized, chances are your next cast will also be Frostbolt. In that case, the duration could be 3 seconds, half what it is without talents, and they’d still be chilled all the way, so Permafrost adds nothing. And if you’re not Frost specialized, why are you thinking about putting points into Frost talents?



Ice Shards
1 point – Your Frost spell critical strikes deal 20% more damage.
2 points – Your Frost spell critical strikes deal 40% more damage.
3 points – Your Frost spell critical strikes deal 60% more damage.
4 points – Your Frost spell critical strikes deal 80% more damage.
5 points – Your Frost spell critical strikes deal 100% more damage.

Like Ignite, this is just more damage, with the precondition that you have to critical first. Just like the Fire tree, there are ways to make this more frequent, and double damage when you do can end things in rapid fashion. Also like Ignite, but even more, Ice Shards has synergistic effects with the rest of the Frost tree.



Winter’s Chill
1 point – Your chilling effects slow the target’s movement by an extra 4%.
2 points – Your chilling effects slow the target’s movement by an extra 7%.
3 points – Your chilling effects slow the target’s movement by an extra 10%.

Slowing their movement even more translates directly to more shots and more casts as they approach. Especially useful for Blizzard, which really needs the reduction. The bonus, however, isn’t all that big for three points.



Improved Frost Nova
1 point – Decreases Frost Nova cooldown by 2 seconds.
2 points – Decreases Frost Nova cooldown by 4 seconds.

Two points buys the cooldown of Nova down from 25 seconds to 21 seconds. The impact will be assuredly minimal. Still, you’ll have to take this if your frost build includes Shatter. By itself, it’s a junk talent.



Piercing Ice
1 point – Your Frost spells do 2% more damage.
2 points – Your Frost spells do 4% more damage.
3 points – Your Frost spells do 6% more damage.

More damage, all the time, for all your Frost spells. Good for the same reasons Fire Power is good.



Cold Snap
1 point – Gain Cold Snap.

Cold Snap is a no mana cost, instant cast spell with a 10 minute cooldown. When you cast it, it finishes the cooldowns on all your Frost spells. This does what Improved Nova doesn’t: lets you cast another emergency nova if you need it right away, or just another Nova to trigger Shatter. The cooldown is prohibitive, but new abilities are always good deals for one talent point.



Improved Blizzard
1 point – Adds a chilling effect to Blizzard, slowing the target’s movement to 70% for 6 seconds.
2 points – Improves the chill, slowing the target’s movement to 40% for 9 seconds.
3 points – Improves the chill, slowing the target’s movement to 25% for 9 seconds.

This talent is clearly a way to make mobs stay in the Blizzard for the whole eight seconds. When maxed, it cuts 75% off the target’s movement speed, which is a lot. Add Winter’s Chill on top of it and they’ll be crawling out at 15% of their movement speed, which gives you a really good chance to get the entire Blizzard off. That said, reference “Why would you want to?” in the section about Blizzard. Blizzard’s damage is pathetic, and even getting off the whole eight seconds is nothing special. Still, if you’re going Frost, you may be using Blizzard as your main AoE – in which case, get this. It also synergizes with Frostbite.



Arctic Reach
1 point – Increases the range of your Frostbolt and radii of Frost Nova and Cone of Cold by 10%.
2 points – Increases the range by 20%.

With two points here, Frostbolt gets a 36 yard range, outranging untalented Fireball. Extra yardage is even better with a slowing effect, and turning your primary weapon into your best opener is an easy decision.



Frost Channeling
1 point – Decreases the mana cost of your Frost spells by 5%.
2 points – Decreases the mana cost of your Frost spells by 10%.
3 points – Decreases the mana cost of your Frost spells by 15%.
Takes the sting out of those costly spells, like Blizzard, but not by that much. Repeat with me: efficiency doesn’t matter. At least, not the kind of efficiency which is bought with 3 talent points for a mere 15%.



Shatter
1 point – Increases the critical strike chance of your spells against frozen targets by 10%.
2 points – Increases the critical strike chance of your spells against frozen targets by 20%.
3 points – Increases the critical strike chance of your spells against frozen targets by 30%.
4 points – Increases the critical strike chance of your spells against frozen targets by 40%.
5 points – Increases the critical strike chance of your spells against frozen targets by 50%.

Shatter is one half of the Dynamic Duo that’s going to characterize heavy Frost specialization. Fifty percent is a LOT, and you can guarantee frozen at least once with Nova. The other half of the Duo is going to make sure more than Nova can do it. The result is guaranteed critical strikes, and with Shards that means big damage quickly. Shatter can still be somewhat interesting with just Nova for frozen, but much less so.



Improved Frost Ward
1 point – 50% of the damage absorbed by your Frost Ward is added to your mana.

It’s better than the Fire Ward talent, and 50% is a fairly large effect for one point, but Frost Ward absorbs even less damage than Fire Ward, and we already went over the fact that Fire Ward doesn’t absorb damage in useful amounts at high levels.



Ice Block
1 point – Gain Ice Block.

When you cast Ice Block, you are instantly surrounded by a block of ice that lasts for 10 seconds. Ice Block has a 5 minute cooldown. While you’re iced, you’re immune to all attacks and damage, but can’t do anything more than rearrange your inventory, making this essentially a group talent. This is a quick and useful solution to the problem of a breakout: it gives the tank 10 precious seconds to take aggro back from you. Its drawback is minimal - it stops you from attacking during a time you shouldn’t be attacking anyway, and it stops you from moving at a time when you shouldn’t really be moving. I like Block just because of Rule One.



Improved Cone of Cold
1 point – Your Cone of Cold damage is increased by 15%.
2 points – Your Cone of Cold damage is increased by 25%.
3 points – Your Cone of Cold damage is increased by 35%.

This is a large unconditional damage increase, and you don’t get many of those. Improved Scorch is the closest comparison and you only get 25% for 5 points. Here, you get 35% for 3, which is much better. If you’re going to be using Cone a lot, get this. That said, since you can’t really use Cone more than once every ten seconds, you may find it difficult to use Cone a lot even if you want to.



Frostbite
1 point – Your chilling effects have a 3% chance to freeze the target for 5 seconds.
2 points – Your chilling effects have a 6% chance to freeze the target for 5 seconds.
3 points – Your chilling effects have a 9% chance to freeze the target for 5 seconds.
4 points – Your chilling effects have a 12% chance to freeze the target for 5 seconds.
5 points – Your chilling effects have a 15% chance to freeze the target for 5 seconds.

This is the other half of the Duo, allowing all your spells including Blizzard and Frostbolt to freeze up targets, priming them for a Shatter-powered critical strike. Frostbite links the entire Frost tree’s offensive talents together into a large critical-strike making machine, at least in theory. An Improved Blizzard can freeze things with this, but you’ll need something else to crit them with – Blizzard doesn’t do that, to my experience.



Ice Barrier
1 point – Gain Ice Barrier, rank 1

This variant of Ice Block doesn’t last a guaranteed ten seconds, since it can be broken by sufficient damage. On the upside, you can attack out of it, and it holds for a whole minute. Very nice for mobs in melee range. This can be used if your Block is cooling down in groups, but this is basically a solo talent. Barrier, as a matter of fact, functions much like a long-cooldown, more efficient mana shield, since it only costs 1 mana for each 2 damage prevented. You can use it in much the same way, but this is even better since you can prebuff, drink, and go into battle without having it suck away your offensive power during the fight.



3) Arcane Talents

Arcane Subtlety
1 point – Reduces threat generated by your offensive Arcane spells by 20%.
2 points – Reduces threat generated by your offensive Arcane spells by 30%.
3 points – Reduces threat generated by your offensive Arcane spells by 40%.

This is a group-play only talent, but a fairly useful one. Missiles, as I’ve said before, will always be very near your highest-DPS spell, which also means that you won’t be using it until late in any fight to avoid drawing aggro. This talent lets you use it earlier and raises your overall damage output in a group. That said, it doesn’t let you use things that much earlier, and with this talent or not, an early bomb is still going to take too much aggro from the tank.



Arcane Focus
1 point – Reduces the chance for an opponent to resist your Arcane spells by 2%.
2 points – Reduces the chance for an opponent to resist your Arcane spells by 4%.
3 points – Reduces the chance for an opponent to resist your Arcane spells by 6%.
4 points – Reduces the chance for an opponent to resist your Arcane spells by 8%.
5 points – Reduces the chance for an opponent to resist your Arcane spells by 10%.

When you’re at low levels, and “resist” pops up a lot, you might think this is very tempting. And it’s not a bad talent, but it isn’t spectacular. Mobs up to two levels higher than you won’t resist all that much of your spells – maybe fifteen percent. Mobs up to three levels higher will resist a clear 70% of whatever you throw, and beyond that, count yourself lucky to land even 5% of your spells. It’s nice to virtually ensure that you’ll never see a resist on a close-leveled enemy, and if you have extra Arcane points you need for prerequisites then here’s not a bad place to put them.



Improved Arcane Missiles
1 point – Your Arcane Missiles have a 20% chance to avoid interruption due to damage.
2 points – Your Arcane Missiles have a 40% chance to avoid interruption due to damage.
3 points – Your Arcane Missiles have a 60% chance to avoid interruption due to damage.
4 points – Your Arcane Missiles have a 80% chance to avoid interruption due to damage.
5 points – Your Arcane Missiles have a 100% chance to avoid interruption due to damage.

This talent is huge. It’s one of the completely transformative talents in the game, changing Arcane Missiles from a spell you want to cast just as mobs are incoming to a backbone offensive powerhouse. The mage’s biggest bane, as I said, is casting time interruption, and only a few instant, long-cooldown spells get around that. Five points in this, however, and one of your biggest guns suddenly is immune to interruption as well. Arcane Missiles isn’t just artillery, after this – it’s a melee attack, too, with pretty good DPS. Use missiles against anything that survives to melee with more life than Fireblast damage; use it against casters and ranged attackers who can interrupt your spells from further away; use it against something that spawned on your head. There are so many uses for Missiles after you max this talent, and many of those uses cover previous vulnerabilities. Most importantly, this talent makes Arcane Missiles a safety valve for all those occasions when things go wrong. Invaluable.



Wand Specialization
1 point – Increases your wand damage by 5%.
2 points – Increases your wand damage by 10%.
3 points – Increases your wand damage by 15%.
4 points – Increases your wand damage by 20%.
5 points – Increases your wand damage by 25%.

At first glance, this talent doesn’t look very good. And, well, it really isn’t. Most of the time you’ll be casting spells – wands are just going to be finishers, if you bother training them to the point where you can hit something with them. However, it’s not all bad. A cursory examination of the wands in the game shows that most tend to have somewhere around 1.5x to double the damage of similar-level bows and guns, for the reason that casters’ agility (and therefore, ranged attack power), won’t be very high, and because you can’t enhance wands’ damage with ammo. It could be made to work, but I’d advise putting points elsewhere.



Arcane Concentration
1 point – You have a 2% chance of gaining Clearcasting (next damage spell is free) every time a damage spell hits its target.
2 points – You have a 4% chance of gaining Clearcasting every time a damage spell hits its target.
3 points – You have a 6% chance of gaining Clearcasting every time a damage spell hits its target.
4 points – You have a 8% chance of gaining Clearcasting every time a damage spell hits its target.
5 points – You have a 10% chance of gaining Clearcasting every time a damage spell hits its target.

At first glance, this talent doesn’t look very good. However, it definitely is. Ten percent happens decently often (though it only counts the first hit of each spell, so Missiles and Blizzard don’t have a chance to activate this multiple times). The real point, however, is that this mathematically works out to about ten percent more mana. Consider that Arcane Mind offers 2% more mana for one talent point. That’s worth it, and Concentration does virtually the same thing, so there’s little reason not to take it. It’s even better than Mind in some respects, as Mind offers small mana bonuses which aren’t a whole spell’s cost, whereas Concentration makes sure its bonus is useful by refunding a whole spell’s cost at once.



Improved Dampen Magic
1 point – Increases the effect of your Dampen Magic spell by 25%.
2 points – Increases the effect of your Dampen Magic spell by 50%.

Dampen Magic’s effect is tiny, and so a percentage-based increase isn’t really impressive. Even at the highest Dampen level, this raises prevention up to only a possible 75 points, and spells are doing four times that much at level 40. Total filler talent.



Improved Arcane Explosion
1 point – Reduces the casting time of your Arcane Explosion by 0.3 second.
2 points – Reduces the casting time of your Arcane Explosion by 0.6 second.
3 points – Reduces the casting time of your Arcane Explosion by 0.9 second.
4 points – Reduces the casting time of your Arcane Explosion by 1.2 seconds.
5 points – Reduces the casting time of your Arcane Explosion by 1.5 seconds.

This is another transformative talent in line with IAM. At five points, the reduction of 1.5 seconds is equal to Arcane Explosion’s entire casting time, making it…instant. And it still has no cooldown. In solo play, AE becomes the finisher of last resort – after you’ve used Fireblast and Cone, if it’s still alive, just hit AE until done. In group play, AE becomes the best AoE spell available in terms of DPS – though it will eat mana at a ferocious rate, you’ll be able to jam the AE button once a second, resulting in truly insane damage. That isn’t to say you should use it in every group situation with multiple targets – there are still many cases where using AoE spells is unwise – but when they’re the right call, Improved Arcane Explosion is the best answer.



Evocation
1 point – Gain Evocation.

Evocation is an activated ability. When you do, you begin to channel a spell, except that instead of using mana, you gain mana. During the eight seconds you channel Evocation, your mana regeneration is active and increased by a whopping 1500%. With medium spirit gear, this is a full recharge in eight seconds – and can be done in combat. Its ten-minute cooldown means that this isn’t something you’ll do a lot, but especially in long boss fights at the end of instances, a full recharge, essentially for free, is a good thing to have in the back pocket. With less spirit gear this may be less than a full recharge, but it will still be far better than any item. It can be worth wearing a spirit item or two just to make sure this fills you up.



Improved Mana Shield
1 point – Increases the damage absorbed by your Mana Shield by 50%.
2 points – Increases the damage absorbed by your Mana Shield by 75%.

As I said in the Mana Shield discussion, Mana Shield isn’t of great use except when running away. Improved Mana Shield definitely makes it better for that purpose. However, unless you’re running a lot of intellect gear, you won’t be seeing mana shield that much. Narrowly useful talents aren’t generally good picks. If you’ve found lots more straight +int gear than +int/sta gear, you might want this, but when your drops eventually get around to more stamina you may regret it.



Improved Counterspell
1 point – Your Counterspell has a 50% chance to silence the target for 4 seconds.
2 points – Your Counterspell has a 100% chance to silence the target for 4 seconds.

Any talent with 100% in the name is worth taking a look at, and Improved Counterspell is one of those. It isn’t very useful pre-level 30 or so, because during that time, caster mobs generally cast from only one school. Therefore, Counterspell’s lockout effect is essentially a silence for 10 seconds. As you get into the mid to high 30s, however, you’ll begin to encounter casters with multiple schools, and a basic counter will just get them to start casting something else. You want them to run up to you and start attacking you weakly, and Improved Counterspell strongly encourages that.



Arcane Meditation
1 point – 3% of your mana regeneration is active even when you’re casting.
2 points – 6% of your mana regeneration is active even when you’re casting.
3 points – 9% of your mana regeneration is active even when you’re casting.
4 points – 12% of your mana regeneration is active even when you’re casting.
5 points – 15% of your mana regeneration is active even when you’re casting.

On the one hand, mana regeneration at all times – good. On the other, five points for fifteen percent? 3 spirit gives you 1 mana every two seconds. My mage has about 160 odd spirit at level 44. That works out to about 53 mana every two seconds. With five points in Meditation, that’s something like eight mana every two seconds, or something like thirty seconds just to pull back enough mana for a Scorch. Compounding this problem is that it’s not really useful in long fights, since what you’ll do there is stop casting for five seconds and get 100% of your mana regeneration for a little while. Short fights, tiny percentage of regenerated mana? Not altogether worth it.



Presence of Mind
1 point – Gain Presence of Mind.

An ability like Evocation, Presence of Mind is free to cast, casts instantly and has a 3 minute cooldown. When you cast it, your next spell with a casting time of less than 10 seconds casts instantly. A new ability for one point is always a good deal and Presence has a number of applications. The least of them is shooting a Fireball or Frostbolt instantly, making one of your massive impact spells into an instant finisher. What Presence brings to the table is flexibility, which helps when things go wrong. Rule One.



Arcane Mind
1 point – Increases maximum mana by 2%.
2 points – Increases maximum mana by 4%.
3 points – Increases maximum mana by 6%.
4 points – Increases maximum mana by 8%.

Arcane Mind is a passive ability that gives a small, but significant mana boost. It’s a talent that works at all times and in all circumstances, fairly uncommon so far as talents go. At level 44 I’m getting about 70 or so mana for each point; if I pushed intellect harder at the expense of stamina I would have even more. I would classify this as mainly a group ability, as it’s rare to run dry solo. This isn’t an astounding ability, however, and if other abilities in Arcane attract you, there’s no compelling reason to take this. Still, more mana is the foundation for a lot of other things, and you won’t go wrong with points in Mind.



Arcane Instability
1 point – Spell damage and critical strike chance increased by 1%.
2 points – Spell damage and critical strike chance increased by 2%.
3 points – Spell damage and critical strike chance increased by 3%.

The damage bonus is not very large, and the critical strike increase, while nice, isn’t as big as other bonuses. Three percent doesn’t look big compared to Critical Mass’ 6% or Shatter’s 50%. But the great thing about Arcane Instability is that it works on all your spells, not just your Arcane spells, and it works all the time. A talent that does that is hard to find. AI is an excellent pickup.



Arcane Power
1 point – Gain Arcane Power.

Arcane Power is the third ability in the Arcane talents tree, requiring 31 points to take. Like Presence of Mind, it costs nothing to cast, casts instantly and has a 3 minute cooldown. When you cast it, your spells are supercharged for the next 15 seconds – they cost 35% more to cast, but get a 35% boost in damage. Thirty-five percent is a massive damage boost: only Improved Cone of Cold offers a comparable increase and it does so only for one spell and for three talent points. AP only happens once every three minutes, but the option to kick your spells into high gear is extremely useful.

[Skandranon]

ii) Builds

There are a limited number of talent points for each character – 51, to be exact. Hence, you need a plan – a build – to put points where they’ll make a complete character with the capabilities you want. In general, builds are built around a certain objective. Heavy Arcane builds are really there to get Instability and maybe Power, with certain other pieces interchangeable. Heavy Fire builds look for Critical Mass and Fire Power, while heavy Frost builds want Frostbite/Shatter. Instead of laying out point-by-point plans, I’ll talk about the overall objectives of certain builds, highlight key talents, and explain which ones can be changed due to personal preference. After I’m done that, I’ll talk about choosing between them.

31+ ARCANE BUILDS

Builds which I’m grouping under the category of “31+” have as their objective the last talent in the Arcane tree, Arcane Power. I’m calling it 31+ because, although you can get Arcane Power with the 31st point and stop, some choose to go more because the Arcane Talents offer a lot to pick from.

Just about every build that incorporates Arcane (and that’s just about every build, period) should have 5 points in Improved Arcane Missiles and Improved Arcane Explosion. The transformative nature of those talents, along with the massively wider toolbox of options getting both of those gives you, makes them automatic choices. Evocation’s usefulness puts it on the list, as well as Presence of Mind. Other Arcane talents are not necessary by any means to a 31+ Arcane build, but Improved Counterspell would certainly rate as one of my top recommendations.

One 31 Arcane build might look like this:

5 Improved Arcane Missiles
5 Arcane Concentration
3 Arcane Focus
1 Arcane Subtlety
5 Improved Arcane Explosion
1 Evocation
2 Improved Counterspell
1 Presence of Mind
4 Arcane Mind
3 Arcane Instability
1 Arcane Power
31 points

In this build, there are a few points that are purely discretionary. After IAM, Arcane Concentration, though useful, is not totally necessary. You have the options of Arcane Subtlety, Arcane Focus, and Wand Specialization at the same time. Of those four, I strongly recommend Concentration, given its immediate potential to contribute. Wand Specialization’s lone attribute is reduced downtime, and a talent that is rendered useless by patience isn’t going to go far.

The more interesting question is between Focus, Subtlety, or Concentration. Concentration is obviously useful. It’s not only the early ten percent boost to mana, but the fact that Concentration frequently saves you more than that by letting you turn cheap spells into expensive ones. Scorches, Fireballs and the like can trigger Clearcasts that you can spend on Arcane Missiles and Flamestrike, if you really want to use it. This isn’t so evident in the early game, however. Of these three, Concentration is the only one which works for all your spells, not just Arcane, which should make it serious mid-game consideration.

Focus is also useful, in the sense that less resists are always good. Getting ten percent increased effectiveness is almost like Concentration’s ten percent more spells, but this only works for Arcane spells. Still, it isn’t a mistake to take Focus.

Subtlety offers the most interesting bonus because it isn’t easily quantifiable. Less threat is fantastic in group situations, but points to a weakness – no solo use. It’s a little front-loaded: the first point is a 20% reduction, subsequent points are 10%, so you might consider one point but not maxing it.

The salient question concerning Subtlety is how much damage it will let you do. The reason to take any threat-lowering talent is so that, in theory, you can do more damage before getting a breakout, or so you don’t have to worry about breakouts. Early on, this is true, but there are other factors to consider. Firstly, that anything fired early will take aggro that’s hard to remove – even Scorch will do it if you Scorch the target before anyone else has hit it. Missiles, for example, do five or six times the damage of Scorch, so even if you have Subtlety, you have to wait. And after your tank’s had five or six whacks at the mob and things have settled down, you can generally open fire, though carefully, with your biggest spells and expect the aggro to stay on the tank. Subtlety isn’t going to obviate the need to take care when attacking, and though it may allow you to attack earlier, the functioning of Missiles means that even if you get two missiles in before someone without Subtlety, you’ll both be firing at the same rate the rest of the way and so the initial advantage will be small.

The use of Subtlety is mostly to protect you from stupidity, which comes in two forms: yours, and others’. Subtlety can help you if you tend to be quick on the trigger with your Missiles, increasing the chance that your eager move doesn’t attract an equally eager mob. Mostly, though, it helps when you’re dealing with tanks that don’t know how to tank, such as paladins who have never heard of Seal of Fury. You can control your own stupidity, but not those of others, and so there are definite Rule One reasons to take Subtlety.

Before you get Presence of Mind, but after you’ve gotten Evocation, there’s a four-point gap which can be filled with Improved Dampen, Improved Mana Shield, Improved Counterspell, Arcane Meditation, and any one of the above talents that you didn’t take. Improved Dampen is useless for the reason that Dampen is useless, and Meditation offers only a trickle of mana for five points, so excluding those is easy. By this point, you should have an idea of how your mana shield use has been. That, along with your intellect score, should influence your decision on whether to take the talent. Improved Counterspell really only becomes useful around the early thirties, and there’s no experience that can tell you whether you’ll want it or not. I say take it, and respec out later if you think that it isn’t helping.

After Presence but before Instability, there are another four points which slot nicely into Mind, if you like it, but which can, of course, go to any of the previous talents if you feel like playing with a smaller mana pool. Sacrificing points in Mind to go for Improved Mana Shield is a little contradictory, though. There’s a two-point gap between Instability and Power which can also go into any of the previous talents, as well.

To finish: a sample 31+ build that goes over 31 in order to get all the goodies.

5 Improved Arcane Missiles
3 Arcane Focus
3 Arcane Subtlety
5 Arcane Concentration
5 Improved Arcane Explosion
1 Evocation
2 Improved Counterspell
1 Presence of Mind
4 Arcane Mind
3 Arcane Instability
1 Arcane Power
33 points


30+ FIRE BUILDS

A 30+ Fire build aims at maxed Fire Power and Critical Mass, without necessarily getting Combustion. Obviously, some builds can go for 31 Fire to get Combustion, as well, but Combustion is an either/or with Presence of Mind, which needs 21 in Arcane, and Presence combos well with Fire and has 2 minutes less cooldown.

A 30 fire build could go like this:

5 Improved Fireball
5 Impact
5 Ignite
1 Pyroblast
2 Flame Throwing
3 Improved Flamestrike
1 Blast Wave
3 Critical Mass
5 Fire Power
30 points

Mostly, this pushes Fireball. The idea is to ensure maximum damage from maximum range, tossing fireballs as they approach and finishing Fireblast-Cone and maybe Blast Wave for quite a lot of damage. The Fire skills are mostly about damage, and that’s what a Fire build is about, too.

Room for variation is more limited than in the Arcane build. Three points in Improved Flamestrike aren’t needed if you don’t want Blast Wave, and while it’s useful, it does have a 45 second cooldown. You can take two of those four points and max Incinerate for more criticals with Fireblast/Scorch, but there really won’t be a lot of good places to drop the other two. Improved Fire Ward is awful, Improved Fire Blast is only going to get 0.8 second off with two points, and Improved Scorch is distinctly mediocre with only two points. The best place to drop them might be Burning Soul, so you can try to use your amped-up fireballs in melee, but Missiles are still a better bet. You can max Improved Fire Blast or Scorch, but you’ll have to steal points from Impact to do it, and I don’t consider that a good trade.

Combustion vs. Presence of Mind. Both are free and instant to cast. Combustion has 2 minutes longer of a cooldown, and applies only to Fire spells. When you’re doing damage, Combustion guarantees a critical for base damage +50% and an Ignite for 40% of the spell damage over 4 seconds. Given the cooldown, you’ll probably want to use it on a Pyroblast. Presence lets you follow a normal Pyroblast with a Fireball, doing 80% or so of the Pyroblast’s impact damage and possibly Igniting a second time. Combustion does more, but not that much more, and happens much less frequently. Presence is usually a better choice, but Combustion will be more useful in some situations. Pick whichever you like.

The full fire build adds Combustion and two points in Incinerate for 33.

30+ FROST BUILDS

The aim of a heavy frost build is to go for Frostbite/Shatter and abuse it as much as possible, laying out Frostbolts, hopefully to freeze so that the next crits it hugely by way of Ice Shards, and using Nova to guarantee a freeze if it doesn’t happen off Frostbite.

A bare-bones 30 Frost build to accomplish the above is:

5 Improved Frostbolt
5 Ice Shards
2 Improved Frost Nova
1 Piercing Ice
1 Cold Snap
3 Improved Blizzard
5 Shatter
2 Arctic Reach
1 Ice Block
5 Frostbite
30 points

The more developed 33 point build takes Ice Barrier and finishes Piercing Ice.

Like the Fire build, there aren’t a lot of choices. Most of the alternatives aren’t particularly good options, such as Permafrost and Frost Channeling. About as much as you can do are not to take Snap (which has a 10 minute cooldown and is unlikely to help that frequently) or Piercing Ice, and use the points in Winter’s Chill if you’re looking for extreme slowdown by way of Blizzard or Improved Cone of Cold if you want to put some teeth into your Cone.


28 ARCANE BUILDS
These builds are looking just to grab Arcane Instability out of the Arcane tree, saving points to use on the 21-point abilities of one of the other trees.

5 Improved Arcane Missiles
2 Arcane Focus (or Subtlety)
5 Arcane Concentration
5 Improved Arcane Explosion
1 Evocation
2 Improved Counterspell
1 Presence of Mind
4 Arcane Mind
3 Arcane Instability
28 points

The choices are virtually the same as those in the 31 arcane builds outlined above, except that the last 2 point gap between Instability and Power doesn’t exist.

23 FIRE/FROST BUILDS

These builds are the other halves of a 28 Arcane build. The Fire build seeks to max Critical Mass, resulting (with Instability) in a 9% critical strike bonus to all fire spells. The Frost build can have three objectives: Shatter (with no Frostbite), Ice Block and chilling Blizzard, or Improved Cone of Cold.

A 23 Fire looks something like this:

5 Improved Fireball
5 Impact
5 Ignite
1 Pyroblast
2 Flame Throwing
2 Incinerate
3 Critical Mass
23 points

The choice is in the air as to whether to take Impact or Improved Scorch. Ignite is a must since this build tries to maximize critical strikes, and Incinerate also is a little more useful here. Improved Flamestrike is right out since you won’t be getting Blast Wave, and other things are just more useful.

23 Frost, Shatter variation

5 Improved Frostbolt
5 Ice Shards
2 Improved Frost Nova
3 Improved Blizzard
5 Shatter
1 Cold Snap
2 Arctic Reach

Ice Block/Blizzard variation

5 Improved Frostbolt
5 Ice Shards
3 Winter’s Chill
3 Piercing Ice
3 Improved Blizzard
1 Cold Snap
2 Arctic Reach
1 Ice Block

Improved Cone of Cold variation

5 Improved Frostbolt
5 Ice Shards
3 Piercing Ice
3 Improved Blizzard
2 Arctic Reach
1 Cold Snap
1 Improved Frost Ward
3 Improved Cone of Cold

These slimmed-down builds have very little choice, targeting their objectives. The Frost Ward point in the Cone of Cold version can go somewhere else, but you won’t be able to buy much for a point. Of these three, the Cone of Cold variation is probably least effective, but pick depending on what you plan on using most.

21- ARCANE BUILDS

These builds are the other sides of 30+ Fire and 30+ Frost builds. They’re looking just to skim the cream off the top of the Arcane tree to help the other one.

21 Arcane to match a 30 Fire
5 Improved Arcane Missiles
5 Arcane Concentration
2 Arcane Subtlety/Focus
5 Improved Arcane Explosion
1 Evocation
2 Improved Counterspell
1 Presence of Mind

Again, two floating points. Since you’ll be doing most of your damage with fire, those two points in Subtlety/Focus can easily go to Mana Shield or Dampen or whatever you prefer. (But don’t pick Dampen, please). If you’re getting Combustion from fire, you must necessarily lose Presence of Mind from here.

18 Arcane to match a 33 Fire or 33 Frost

5 Improved Arcane Missiles
5 Arcane Concentration
5 Improved Arcane Explosion
1 Evocation
2 Improved Counterspell

This build just looks for the five top low-level talents of Arcane and takes them all. No floating points, since there aren’t large prerequisites to satisfy.

20- FIRE/FROST BUILDS

These are the other halves of a 31 or 33 Arcane build. They only look to do some low-level effects well – the truly grand effects are beyond their reach.

20 Fire
5 Improved Fireball
5 Impact
5 Ignite
1 Pyroblast
2 Flame Throwing
2 Incinerate

The point of this build is to get a good long-ranged Fireball and Pyroblast and do some openers before the Missiles get involved. Also, this build benefits from Instability and definitely Power from the Arcane tree. AP makes a volley of fireballs from this build better than a Critical Mass/Fire Power boosted volley from a Fire specialist – for fifteen seconds. Ignite can be traded for Improved Scorch, as this build doesn’t have Critical Mass to emphasize crits. The 18 Fire build to match a 33 Arcane can drop Incinerate or two points off Ignite/Impact.

20 Frost
5 Improved Frostbolt
5 Ice Shards
3 Improved Blizzard
3 Winter’s Chill
2 Piercing Ice
2 Arctic Reach

You get a nice, super-slowing Blizzard, and a long-ranged Frostbolt to open with and to cast while they’re incoming. This is making the best of those two spells without using a lot of points. You can choose to move one point from Winter’s Chill to Piercing Ice, if you like but that’s all the choice there is for a build like this. If you really, really like Shatter, you can build a 20 point sheet that maxes Shatter for you, but you lose Arctic Reach, and you’ll be wasting two points into Improved Frost Nova for one 50% crit chance per battle. The 18 Frost build to match a 33 Arcane is probably best off dropping the two points in Piercing Ice.



--- Choosing a build ---

Let’s quickly review the general builds I’ve outlined above.

Heavy Arcane Builds:
33 Arcane/18 Fire or Frost
31 Arcane/20 Fire or Frost
28 Arcane/23 Fire or Frost

Heavy Fire Builds:
31 Fire/20 Arcane
30 Fire/21 Arcane

Heavy Frost Builds:
33 Frost/18 Arcane
30 Frost/21 Arcane


So how do you choose? In general, most of the builds I’ve outlined will do reasonably well. Of course, there are advantages and disadvantages.

Heavy Arcane builds are a good choice. Some Arcane talents apply to all your spells instead of just Arcane spells, and you’ll find things that are immune to Arcane are very, very rare (I haven’t seen one yet). Either Fire or Frost work fine as a companion, though the 18 Frost build is a little weaker. Arcane’s wide range of capabilities and universality of key talents (especially Instability and Power) are the advantages of this build.

Heavy Fire Builds dish out the damage exceptionally well. Critical Mass and Fire Power combine to give these builds the best damage output of any of them. It doesn’t have the best critical strike chance (the 28/23 Arcane/Fire build has that) but makes up with raw damage. Of course, you’re going to stumble into problems with creatures that are immune to or which take reduced damage from Fire.

Heavy Frost builds don’t deal damage quite as well, but their slowing and stopping power more than make up for it. Shatter lets Frost eventually ramp up the damage as well, and Ice Block/Barrier are excellent tools to have. The problem with Shatter is that it’s mostly a solo talent.; as I said, attacks tend to break the ice around frozen creatures, and in a group, it’s rare that any creature you freeze will still be frozen by the time your next spell gets to it, rendering Shatter worthless. If you don’t mind one of your talents being invalidated in groups, however, Frost builds are still good picks.


--- What About The Frost/Fire Builds? ---

Every build is going to include Arcane. That simple. Frost and Fire don’t synergize in any way at all – each tree has spells that essentially are either/or with spells of the other three. You can’t use the slimmed-down builds together, since the result is both a good Fireball and a good Frostbolt, and they take the exact same role. Any way you look at it, a number of talent points will be used on skill overlap, and that’s not a good thing. And you have to lose Improved Arcane Missiles, possibly the most useful talent in the game, or spread yourself out even further. Not worth it. That’s enough space on something no one should do.

--- Building Up ---

Builds have to start somewhere, and this is how. This assumes you don’t feel like respecializing at any time, ever. If you’re willing to wait a bit, a strong Arcane/Fire or Fire/Arcane build will take you far enough for you to pay a gold and swap talents into a fully-formed version of what you’re looking to end up with. Some builds struggle a little out of the gate, like the heavy frost build, and so for that it might be advisable to include reassigning talents as part of the plan.

ARCANE/FIRE builds

10-14: 5 Improved Arcane Missiles.

Every build includes it for a reason. Get it as soon as possible.

15-19: 5 Arcane Concentration or 5 Arcane Focus/Subtlety or 5 Improved Fireball

If you want Improved Arcane Explosion right away, go Arcane for your next five points. I don’t think it’s that important until rank 3 at level 30, though, so you can also start building your Fireball if you want. I recommend Concentration if you want to go IAE, since you shouldn’t be grouping much at this level nor should you really be seeing many resists. But if you’ve got your heart set on Focus or Subtlety, go right ahead.

20-24: 5 Improved Arcane Explosion or 2 Flame Throwing + 3 Arcane Concentration/Focus/Subtlety.

If you wanted IAE, then get it here. If you’ve been building your fireball, quickly turn it into the best opener with 2 Flame Throwing, then go Arcane in order to get to IAE by the time you turn 31. Again, I say Concentration but you can go with whatever you like.

25-29: 5 Improved Fireball or 2 Arcane C/F/S + 3 Improved Arcane Explosion.

If you’ve been building Arcane, get to work on that Fireball, now. Keep heading towards IAE on the other side.

30-31: 2 Flame Throwing or 2 Improved Arcane Explosion

Essentially, both sides meet up here. You want a long, fast fireball and IAE by now.

32: Evocation

You can get this earlier if you’re willing to delay your IAE by one level, or you can choose to delay Improved Fireball or Flame Throwing instead. It comes in handy from time to time earlier than 32, for certain, but is never really needed.

33-37: 2 Improved Counterspell + 2 Arcane C/F/S + Presence of Mind or
3 Ignite/Impact + Pyroblast + 1 Improved Counterspell or
4 Ignite/Impact + Pyroblast

Again, you can choose here what you’re looking for. If you’re looking to get to Arcane Instability quickly, then plunge back into Arcane, as the 7 points you have in Fireball will make it useful for a long time. Otherwise, Pyroblast is close, and it makes a useful opener. Afterwards, however, swing towards Instability as the remaining effects in your Fire build aren’t going to be all that big. If you’re looking for a 30 Fire/21 Arcane build, take the third option and head off in a fiery direction.

38-44: 4 Arcane Mind + 3 Arcane Instability or
1 Improved Counterspell + 2 Arcane C/F/S + Presence of Mind + 3 Arcane Mind or
6 Ignite/Impact (finishing them both) + Improved Flamestrike

Pushing on towards Instability for heavy Arcane builds, headed to Critical Mass for Fire builds.

45+: Develop as you see fit. By this time you should have a general idea of what works for you and how to make it better. Arcane heavy builds should finish up Arcane Power and then turn towards Fire, finishing Ignite and maxing Impact, or snagging Pyroblast if you don’t already have it. Fire builds should get to Critical Mass and then Fire Power, or take Improved Counterspell to handle the tougher casters around this time.

ARCANE/FROST Builds

10-14: 5 Improved Arcane Missiles
15-19: 5 Arcane C/F/S or 5 Improved Frostbolt
20-24: 5 Improved Arcane Explosion or 5 Ice Shards
25: Evocation or Improved Blizzard
26-30: 5 Improved Frostbolt or 2 Improved Blizzard + Cold Snap + Improved Frost Nova + Arctic Reach

I’ll have more to say on the subject after I’ve played a heavy frost specialist past 30. Yes, I will start a completely new mage, just so I can write authoritatively on how to build a frost character. Sacrifices in the name of knowledge, and all that stuff.

[Skandranon]

e) The Early Midgame, levels 11-21.

The early midgame is the point at which your talents begin to kick in, and the first point at which anyone can develop distinctive strategies. I’ll outline a few that worked for me, but I’m not precluding others that might work for you.

--- The Early Midgame – Solo Play ---

Solo play shouldn’t change all that much through the first part of the early midgame. Up until level 14, you should be adding points to Improved Arcane Missiles, which will make things a great deal smoother. If the usual fireball/frostbolt barrage followed by missiles, nova, fireball, fireblast doesn’t kill them, you’ll be able to hit Missiles with increasing reliability.

At level 12, Slow Fall and Dampen Magic become available, along with rank ups for Fireball and Conjure Food. Upgrading Fireball is important even if you’re frost specialized; you won’t be developing your frostbolt until a little later and Fireball will be better for now. You can wait on Slow Fall; you won’t have that many feathers right now anyway, and a serious opportunity to use it won’t open up until level 17-18, when 6s isn’t quite so much.

Get Dampen Magic. Yes, it’s a terrible, useless skill, I trashed it and slammed it in my review of it and my mind hasn’t changed on it. But you’ll be encountering caster mobs very soon, sooner if you’re a troll but soon in any case. Casters are awful for mages since they can deliver a lot of damage from range, and until level 24 you won’t be able to fight them effectively. Until then, you’ll have to make do, and Dampen is one of those ways to make do.

At level 14, you’ll max Improved Arcane Missiles, giving you your real melee weapon for the rest of the game. You’ll also get Arcane Explosion and upgrades to three of your spells. If money’s short, skip Arcane Explosion for now. It isn’t useful without its talent and you won’t have that for a little while. Yes, you can use it to take on hordes of greens and grays, but you’d really be quicker picking them all off with fireballs etc. in the usual way as opposed to charging into their midst and unleashing explosions for tiny damage (that gets worse as they start interrupting you).

Level 16 brings a rank up for Missiles (get), Detect Magic and Flamestrike (don’t get). Flamestrike is, as I said, unlikely to be useful for a long time and neither is Detect Magic. Save your money. You’ll need it soon enough. Your play style through this level shouldn’t change much: continue on in the usual way if you’re pushing Arcane talents, and favor Fireball or Frostbolt if you’re upgrading one of them.

Level 18 gets your Fireball rank up, Amplify Magic, and Remove Lesser Curse. Skip Amplify. Remove Lesser Curse isn’t important to get immediately, but Alliance players should have it before they go to the Deadmines.

Eight new spells are available at level 20. Immediate priorities should be the rank ups for water, Frost Armor, and Polymorph, as well as Blink. Get Blizzard if you’re frost specialized and choosing to go right for Improved. Skip it if you’re not. Get Mana Shield and Fire Ward, as well – the first for running away, the second because you’re still not 24 yet and you still have to fight casters with non-useful spells.

The only change here is that when you run you should put on Mana Shield, and Blink in the direction of the clearest area. Play goes on as before.

Running in fear. More mobs are going to do that in this level range. It’s good and bad. Good, because you don’t need to Fireblast them to death, just to run-in-fear range, and then they’ll stop interrupting you and you can Fireball them in the back. Bad, because if you can’t catch them, or they resist that Fireball, whatever other mob they blunder into while fleeing will aggro on you. I prefer to use Missiles and keep Fireblast until it’ll kill them, even if I can Fireblast them and cause them to run, just because doing that limits the possibilities of bad things happening.

--- The Early Midgame – Group Play ---

Group play also doesn’t change a lot in this period of time. Your spells will increase in power, so you do have to watch your threat levels.

Starting in this level range, near the 20-21 part, you’ll start getting your first elite quests, ones that are difficult to complete solo. Grouping will, therefore, be a lot more common near the end of this level range, and even in the middle for a party to take on Ragefire Chasm. All I can say is to watch threat levels closely. Missiles will let you open up on a severely injured creature that has broken out on you, so you don’t have to run so much, but it’s still not a good idea to get threat on you and it’s still not a good idea to play like you’re soloing. This is where playing like you’re soloing can start getting you killed.

Polymorph is going to become more useful in this level range, especially when you head into your first instanced dungeon. There are a lot of ways to use it. You can pull with it if your party can take the minimal aggro caused by the Polymorph off the non-sheep mobs. If you don’t, however, you should always be on the watch for adds and should instantly pop a polymorph on it as soon as it appears. The best case is that you work out ahead of time with your party what’s going to get polymorphed and what isn’t, to avoid sheep getting popped back into normal forms by an attack.

If you haven’t figured it out ahead of time and someone hit the sheep, try to polymorph again. Either target a different mob that isn’t the primary target (i.e. there’s at least 3 mobs in the fight) or try to polymorph the same one again and hope whoever hit it gets the message. Make sure to clear things up with the party as soon as possible, generally after the fight. If they just aren’t getting it, then don’t polymorph right away, and try to pick out someone who isn’t being hit, because it’s important to cut down on enemy crowd size. It’s worth doing, even if your party members are irredeemably stupid.

Great damage is a blessing and a curse, but it can be a blessing again, in another way. Know when you want to take aggro on to yourself. I’ve been giving advice to you to know how to keep your threat low and to keep the mobs stuck on the tank – and I still mean that. But your ability to generate sudden bursts of high damage can be useful, especially if your tank is underleveled or not particularly good at tanking.

You’re more expendable than the others are. You’ll just have to live with that. If the tank lives, they can get healed and go on tanking for a little while longer. If the priest lives, the tank can be healed. If either of them dies, though, you’re all in serious trouble. If you die, the trouble isn’t quite as bad, and you can get resurrected later. I am talking about difficult situations, where either the tank is underleveled and swarmed by too many adds or there’s been a serious breakout on the priest, but they happen. See Rule One. I don’t expect this kind of selfless play to happen naturally, but you should remember that if you die and are resurrected, the party loses minimal time, whereas if the whole party ends up dead you’re going to lose a lot more time getting back.

[Skandranon]

f) The Late Midgame: Levels 22-40

By the end of the late midgame, it’s possible for you to have had any talent you want, and at least the early versions of every skill in the game have been made available to you. Consequently, there’s a lot of variation in the way this part of the game can be played. Importantly, the mobs start throwing curveballs at you roughly around this time as well; different spells and curses that you need to watch out for.

--- The Late Midgame – Solo play ---

As you progress through this stage, elite quests and dungeons will begin to pop up with greater regularity. You won’t be able to solo quite as much as you could before, though some of the elite stuff is doable with effort (I don’t recommend it).

At level 22, you’ll pick up Scorch, Frost Ward and a number of rank increases. Get them all, though you can skip Arcane Explosion if you’re not near IAE. Frost Ward is just because of the whole not-at-24-yet thing. Your solo strategy should be pretty set by now, and so nothing here’s going to change that.

Level 24 brings Counterspell, so you can stop wasting money on weak anti-caster measures. Arcane and Fireball also go up, which is nice. You can ignore the Dampen upgrade; preventing an average 10 damage at this level is even sadder than 5 damage at level 12. Flamestrike’s up, too, but if you haven’t been using that – and chances are you won’t have been – you can skip it for cash.

Level 26 introduces Cone of Cold, which should alter your strategy only slightly. At the end of battles, you can Fireblast-Cone, which means you don’t have to wear them down quite as much. It also has a useless Frost Nova upgrade and a useful Frostbolt upgrade. Skip one, take the other, and if you need me to spell out which one’s which you haven’t been paying attention.

Level 28 – upgrades and Conjure Mana Agate, which you should take. Make one, carry it around. You may find yourself desperately in need of mana sometime, you’ll be glad you have it. As for the upgrades, take them all except Blizzard, which you should only get if you picked it up at 20.

Every level from now on is just rank-ups for older stuff. Upgrade what you use, don’t upgrade what you don’t. Don’t touch the Frost Nova upgrades, but you can start raising Flamestrike if you’re Fire specialized, and same goes for the Wards if you really want them. Eventually you may want to have Detect, but stay away from Dampen and Amplify.

--- The Late Midgame – Group Play ---

At the beginning of this range, you got Scorch. Learn to use it. You’ll be surprised at how much damage you can do with it, without drawing aggro. A large hit doing the same damage would break the target out on you, as would a volley like from Missiles, so Scorch is a definite addition to your damage. You need to get a feel for two things: how early you can Scorch, and how soon you can switch off Scorch and get to something meatier. This depends mostly on the skill of the tank, but with enough practice you’ll be able to observe the tank and quickly come to a realization of how long you should be Scorching.

In general, you’ll need to Scorch longer with small parties (2-3) or with parties where the tank is underleveled. In full 5-man parties, you may need only one or two, and if there are at least three tanks you may need only one or even none. Again, knowing how long to Scorch is something mostly obtained through experience.

AoE spells. Until about the early thirties they will have been useless for all the reasons that I outlined in my Blizzard and Flamestrike entries. Around this time, however, in the Razorfen Downs and Gnomeregan, among other instances, you’ll start seeing situations tailor-made for AoE damage. Swarms of five or more lower-level, non-elite creatures will attack the party all at once, just begging for an AoE response. Your three options will be Blizzard, Flamestrike, and Improved Arcane Explosion.

If you’re using Blizzard, you’ll be using it because you have Improved it with the chill effect. Blizzard makes a fine choice in these situations, ensuring that you get the entire spell off and dealing decent damage for a reasonable mana cost. Flamestrike, Improved or not, works well for a single shot at the beginning.

Just because AoE is the right call, however, doesn’t mean that the problems go away. You are still going to aggro the entire horde on you, it’s just that they’ll die fairly quickly if you can do enough damage. For that reason, the best option is Improved Arcane Explosion. Since you’re going to get aggro anyway, the restriction that they have to be within 10 yards of you is mostly irrelevant. IAE also has the best damage-per-second of any of the AoE spells, though it swallows your mana fast. In situations like these, you can start with either Blizz or Flamestrike and then simply chain together Arcane Explosions as they get close. Don’t stop casting until you’re dead or they’re dead, and hope your healer is smart enough to keep you alive. If he or she isn’t, you should consider not casting AoE spells, or resolve to take one for the team.

You might end up doing some elite quests with a small party for lack of people. In this small parties, you should remember again that you can take aggro virtually whenever you want it and that sometimes it’s a good thing.

When my mage was level 29, I received the Bride of the Embalmer quest in Duskwood. For those of you who don’t know, this quest revolves around a tomb. When opened, it releases a level 31 elite undead (the bride) and three normal level 29 guardians. Not for soloing. However, after an hour I could only find a level 29 paladin to go with me. The odds weren’t so great, but we decided to try anyway.

In this case, I knew I couldn’t wait for the mobs to stick on the tank. He simply would not be able to take four creatures, one a higher-level elite, for long enough to get enough aggro for me to fire spells without breakouts. Even if he somehow managed that feat, he wouldn’t long survive it.

The moment the spawn hit, I opened up cannons blazing at one of the 29s, drawing him away from the paladin who had done the opening. I wore him down with missiles, keeping an eye on my partner’s life to see how he was doing. About two-thirds of the way down my target’s life bar, I noticed how my partner’s life and mana were draining at an unsustainable rate. I opened fire with missiles again – targeting one of the undead attacking the paladin.

Naturally, I yanked it off and it came running at me. The resulting fight was close, but a health potion later my original target was dead and I was slowly handling the new one. As the new one was nearly dead, my partner’s mana ran out and I had to use missiles to fish out the last normal guard before finishing the second one. After they were all dead, I used Evocation to fill up, then opened fire on the elite (who by this time was stuck quite firmly to the paladin). We both made it with literally slivers of life and mana left.

My point: there are going to be times when you want aggro, mostly in non-optimal party situations. They happen, and you should know how to deal with them.

I’m not going to say it. You know what I normally say.

[Skandranon]

g) The Lategame - Levels 41-60

Nothing here yet.

[Skandranon]

h) After the Level Cap - Levels 60+

Nothing here yet.

[Skandranon]

i) Glossary of terms

AI: Artificial Intelligence, referring to computer control of mobs’ actioins. Also used for Arcane Instability.
AE: Arcane Explosion
AP: Arcane Power
Aggro: Aggression. Also, “threat”. Something that determines which member of a party a mob is likely to attack.
AoE: Area-of-Effect
Break out: When a mob fighting the tank chooses to run past the tank and attack another player, usually a cloth-wearing caster who shouldn’t be attacked.
Caster: An enemy that uses magic, even if they don’t necessarily cast it.
Cooldown: Time after an ability has been used during which it can’t be used again.
IAE: Improved Arcane Explosion
IAM: Improved Arcane Missiles
Mob: Short for “mobile object”. Also “monster” and “enemy”. All refer to a hostile AI-controlled creature.
Nuke: Any mage spell that does a lot of damage, usually to a single target. Fireball, Frostbolt and Arcane Missiles are all nukes.
PvE: Player versus Enemy. Refers to combat against computer-controlled opponents.
PvP: Player versus Player. Refers to combat against other players.

[niz]

This badly needs an update. Unfortunately I'm not sure it warrants the time it would take at this point before the Burning Crusade Expansion.