3
2.New Spells
3.Stat Priority
4.Gear Setup
5.Macros
6.Specs
7.Glyphs
8.Abilities to have for focus
9.Tips
10.Enchants
11.Addons
12.Videos
1.Races
Horde:
You have quite a few options here.
Blood elf- AoE silence that silences for 2 seconds and restores 6% of maximum mana.
Undead - Breaks fear, sleeps, and charm effects on use, when used puts PvP trinket on cooldown for 30 seconds. Cannibalize is also pretty good, but not used too much in arenas.
Goblins - Rocket jump and 1% passive haste, probably the best race in my opinion.
Troll - On use 20% more haste for 10 seconds with a 3 minute cooldown. 5% more damage on beasts at all times (could be useful) and reduces duration of movement impairing effects by 15%.
Alliance:
Not as many options here as horde but still have very good racials.
Gnome - On use remove movement impairing effects with a 1.5 minute cooldown and 5% more maximum mana.
Night Elf - Vanish, can be used to avoid a lot of damage if used while the cast is mid air, also removes you from the targets focus. Reduces chance to be hit by melee and ranged attacks by 2%.
Human - Can wear 2 trinkets, since their racial is a PvP trinket. 3% increased spirit which is pretty useless for a mage.2.New Spells:
Only use i've really found it good for is when a rogue or druid is getting out of a Polymorph and is about to restealth casting this without having to target them and cast an ice lance. Also causes spell pushback so if you drop it on top of a caster it will keep giving them spell pushback. Oh and it eats grounding totem so. (The Frostfire Orb with the talent is spectacular for phishing for fingers procs and brain freeze. Very useful in openers or when you are being trained and cannot get fingers or brain freeze off frostbolts.
One of the best spells in the game atm, causes a ring of frost (hence the name heh) for 10 yards to form around where you drop it, after 3 seconds it will become active and if anyone steps on (or jumps over) it they will become frozen for 10 seconds (shares Diminishing Returns with polymorph). However only the outer part of the ring will cause the target to become frozen, There is a safe zone in the middle. This counts the target as frozen and you will be able to shatter out of it, it will break after around 5k damage.
Basically blood lust, use it when the enemy is in a bad position or defensively to keep someone alive with peels and giving your healer quicker casts. NOT USABLE IN ARENA
3.Stat Priority:
Get spell pen capped (Minimum 195 from Resistance Aura which stacks with Mage Armor so the hard cap is 240) Hit capped is priority aswell (4%). Basically after you're hit capped / spell pen capped it's: Int > Mastery > Crit > Haste (for frost). For Fire the stat priority after getting spell pen cap and hit cap is Int > Crit > Mastery > Haste
4.Gear Setup:
I would suggest getting Tentacular Belt, Time Lord's Leggings or Firehawk Leggings if you cannot obtain the regular Time Lord's Leggings (Note: Firehawk 378 is better then the 384 LFR legs) (see Xandyn's Gear Thread for more elaboration on this). Ring of the Riven
is also amazing to have. Trinkets wise i'd say the BiS currently are Foul Gift of the Demon Lord and Cataclysmic Gladiator's Badge of Dominance.
5.Macros:
#showtooltip Blizzard /cast !BlizzardCauses you to be able to hit blizzard 2 times without losing the circle to place it.
#showtooltip Ring of Frost /cast !Ring of FrostSame concept as the one above, except with Ring of Frost
/cast [target=mouseover,help,exists] [target=target,exists] [target=player] Remove CurseMouseover remove curse macro if you aren't moused over someone it will dispel yourself, otherwise it will dispel your mouseover target. If you're not into partytarget macros then this is perfect for you, this macro saves you a lot of time when you're casting say a frostbolt on someone and you just have to mouseover your teammates portrait and hit remove curse rather than having to target the guy to dispel him then going back to your target.
#showtooltip Summon Water Elemental /cast [nopet] Summon Water Elemental /cast !FreezeOne button summon water elemental and cast ranged freeze (mashable!)
#showtooltip Ice block /stopcasting /cast !Ice block
This makes it so you can mash your ice block button without having to worry about canceling it instantly, if you use this macro you'll have to have a separate key bind and macro for this next one.
#showtooltip Ice Lance /cancelaura Ice block /cast Ice lanceCancels your ice block buff if you're using the macro above. Replace your current ice lance with this one so it saves an extra bind to cancel the ice block.
#showtooltip Counterspell /stopcasting /cast [mod:shift, target=focus] Counterspell; CounterspellStops casting if you're in the middle of a cast to cast a Counterspell, if you hold down shift and hit it, it will cast focus counterspell.
6.Specs:
Cookie Cutter Frost spec with impact
2/8/31
New meta fire spec:
2/32/7
7.Glyphs:
Prime:
Glyph of Frostbolt- Increases crit chance of Frostbolt by 5%
Glyph of Ice lance - Increases damage done by Ice Lance by 5%.
Glyph of Frostfire - Increases damage done by Frostfire bolt by 15%, and does 3% additional damage over 12 seconds. However it makes it so your frostfire bolt doesn't slow the target anymore.
Major:
Glyph of Frost Armor - Makes it so your Frost armor regenerates 2% of your maximum mana every 5 seconds. (Mage armor mana regen is still superior by 1%)
Glyph of Polymorph - Causes your Polymorph to remove all damage over time effects on your target.
Glyph of Ice barrier - Ice barrier absorbs more
Minors:
Glyph of Slow fall - Causes your slow fall to not require a reagent.
Glyph of Armors - Increases the duration of your armor spells by 30 minutes.
Glyph of Conjuring - Reduces the mana cost of conjure mana gem and conjure food by 50%.
8.Abilities to have for focus:
-Fireblast
-Polymorph
-Counterspell
-Deep Freeze
-Ice lance (if you have say a shaman on focus and he casts a grounding totem so you can focus ice lance it, or a warrior puts up spell reflect)
9.Tips:
-Before an arena starts you can cast Ice barrier and mana shield, they will not be removed when the gates open.
-At the beginning of every arena match right out the gates I always start out with casting slow fall on every teammate just so it's another thing for the other team to dispel.
-When casting a polymorph or having your teammate blind, spam pet passive if you have your mirrors out that way they don't break it.
-When a warrior puts up spell reflect the most effective way to remove it is to cast ice lance into it, but if you have fingers of frost cast fireblast so you don't 1 hit yourself.
-If you see a Death Knight cast a Dark Simulacrum on you, cast slow fall it will give them that buff.
-Counterspelling a Demo lock on Hand of Gul'dan will lock him out of his shadow and fire trees. Same concept for Starsurge for moonkins, Mind Spike for shadow priests, and Frostfire Bolt for mages.
-Counterspell silence on DKs causes them to not be able to cast any abilities, also if you cast it on a hunter they can't cast a trap.
-A good way to be able to tell if you were juked on cs or not is to check your buffs (only applies to 9/0/32 spec) and see if you have invocation up.
-When you see a Paladin cast Hand of Sacrifice you can spellsteal it and if you're getting trained it will redirect 30% of the damage to the paladin on the other team, otherwise if you're not being trained you can just take off the buff.
-If you're playing with a priest when he uses Hymn of Hope it will increase your maximum mana by 20% and his, so if you have to evocation you will get more mana back during this time.
-Deep freezing a druid out of form and casting a polymorph is the only way you can polymorph a druid currently if they're good.
-In a duel, start out against most classes by polymorphing and spellstealing all their buffs, then open up with a frostfire bolt, frostbolt. The reason to open up with a frostfire bolt is so you don't waste your early frost haste buff when you don't really need the haste yet.
-When you have an early frost proc and you're casting a frostbolt you're most likely going to be csd on it, currently if you stop casting when you are mid frostbolt cast with early frost it uses the early frost proc. So most people will think you wont waste your proc, this is a really good time to stop casting if they have cs up.
-If you nova a priest naturally he's going to dispel himself, start casting polymorph immediately, if you see him dispel you know he can't Shadow Word: Death your polymorph because he's mid global.
-Remember that frost nova is an 8 second CC! Warlocks, warriors, ele shamans, enahance shamans, mages (that don't have blink up), hunters, and rogues all cannot get out of frost novas without blowing a major cool down.
-If you're playing with a rogue and he drops a smoke bomb you can go into the smoke bomb and freecast to avoid being counterspelled, if you see someone coming into the smoke bomb you know they're going to interrupt you so stop casting as soon as they get the buff.
-Blanket csing a healer and novaing into a ring is the best way to get a guarenteed 8 seconds of cc out if you cannot cast a polymorph.
-Keep good positioning and think clearly when doing arena. Situational awareness is key in arenas.
-Silencing a Hunter while he's about to scatter trap will prevent him from shooting his trap.
10.Enchants:
Cloak- 50 intellect
Chest- 40 Resilience
Bracers- 50 Intellect
Gloves- 65 mastery
Pants- 95 Intellect 80 Stamina
Boots- 25 Mastery and Minor Speed Increase
Weapon- Power Torrent
Offhand- 40 Intellect
11.Addons:
Gladius - Arena Enemy Unit Frames
Quartz - Casting bars
Afflicted - Tracks Enemy Cooldowns - To get an updated version of this go to http://www.mediafire...a2u3tqvy7o3a3aa (Originally posted by Xandyn)
Interruptbar - Shows enemy Cooldowns on their interrupts.
OmniCC - Shows a timer on your abilities that says how many minutes / seconds there are left on that cooldown.
12.Videos:
A great way to learn how to play a certain class to it's maximum capabilities is by watching top PvP videos. I personally had to do this since my server is extremely low populated with barely any good pvpers. Watch how their playstyles differ from yours. You can learn from videos even if they're not in your current expansion, taking some concepts and turning using it in a different way. (Ex: I learned from watching Vurtne's videos to do a scorch then resheep for the +crit debuff, then later turned it into Frostbolt then resheeping for the Torment the Weak buff from when someone is slowed back when it did 13% more damage with everything.)
List of Videos:
Vurtne videos - Perhaps the greatest frost mage of all time. All of his videos (except for levels 60-66) are in vanilla wow.
Noone 3 - Another great frost mage with a lot of world PvP, this however takes place in The burning Crusade expansion, in season 3.
Gameking - Chinese mage, Gameking 10 takes place in the end of The Burning Crusade, but it has Wrath of the Lich King talents. This is all world PvP. Gameking 11 however takes place in Wrath of the Lich King (season 7) and has mostly arena clips.
Pookz - Pookz, not quite as entertaining as the other ones due to lack of editing but the gameplay is very skillful if you pay attention. This video is all arenas, and also is taken place in Wrath of the Lich King(Season 8)
Vilden - Frost mage from Spirestone, half of his videos are during The Burning Crusade, and the other half are from Wrath of the Lich King.
Vidra - 2 Movies, one of RMP very early season 7 and one of half Priest Mage 2v2 and RMP 3v3.
