World of Warcraft

Will be updated soon™

1. Spec
2. Glyphs
3. Stats
4. Gear
5. Gems & Enchants
6. Macros
7. Addons

1. Spec

At the moment there are 3 different builds viable.

Frost with middle burst, and passive oriented talents.
7/3/31
http://wowtal.com/#k=kqbKKsHC.aei.mage.

Frost with middle burst but alot of stuns due Impact.
2/8/31
http://wowtal.com/#k=SHRH95L6.aei.mage.

Frost with high burst, i recommend this one.
9/0/31
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#oMhbbZZffdhsusd0o

You can change the spec if you're feeling that something is not right.

2. Glyphs

Prime:

Glyph of Frostbolt - Increases the critical strike chance of your Frostbolt spell by 5%.
Glyph of Frostfire - Increases the damage done by your Frostfire Bolt by 15% and your Frostfire Bolt now deals 3% additional damage over 12 sec, stacking up to 3 times, but no longer reduces the victim's movement speed.
Glyph of Ice Lance - Increases the damage of your Ice Lance spell by 5%.

Major:

Glyph of Evocation - Your Evocation ability also causes you to regain 40% of your health over its duration.
Glyph of Polymorph - Your Polymorph spell also removes all damage over time effects from the target.

The third one depends on your playstyle as there are 3 options available.
Alot of mages switched from Ice Barrier to Icy Veins or Blink because Ice Barrier is in a really bad state now.
Glyph of Ice Barrier - Increases the amount of damage absorbed by your Ice Barrier by 30%.
Glyph of Icy Veins - Your Icy Veins ability also removes all movement slowing and cast time slowing effects.
Glyph of Blink - Increases the distance you travel with the Blink spell by 5 yards.

Minor:

Here again it depends on your style, choose what you like.
Glyph of Conjuring - Reduces the mana cost of your Conjuring spells by 50%.
Glyph of Armors - Increases the duration of your Armor spells by 30 min.
Glyph of Slow Fall - Your Slow Fall spell no longer requires a reagent.
Glyph of Arcane Brilliance - Reduces the mana cost of your Arcane Brilliance spell by 50%.

3. Stats

First of all, get the hitcap. You don't want to lose an arena because you're Polymorph missed. The hitcap for mages is 4% and it isn't really hard to get it, if you're full PvP Gear you'll need probably 1 hit gem.
The Spell Penetration cap is 240, you have two options to get the cap:

Bloodthirsty cloak with 70 Spell Penetration enchant = 248
Vicious cloak with a hit gem = 251

Also, you need about 17% crit, otherwise youre shatters will never come off.

If you have these 3 stats it's: Int > Crit > Haste/Mastery.

4. Gear

PvE gear isn't viable in PvP anymore so i suggest to go full PvP gear. With Ice Barrier in this state you really need loads of resilience to stay alive. Most Mages are running with 3000-3400 resilience these days. NEVER gem for resilience because it isn't worth it. When you reached ~3300 you can choose to use Crit trinkets instead of resilience, but that's your choice.

If you have Engineering, make sure that you get Lightweight Bio-Optic Killshades with a +Crit and a +Resi cogwheel.

5. Gems & Enchants

Head - 60 Intellect and 35 Resilience rating
Shoulder - 50 Intellect and 25 Resilience rating
Cloak - 70 Spell Peneration/50 Critical Strike rating
Chest - 40 Resilience rating
Wrists - 50 Critical Strike rating
Hands - 50 Haste rating
Belt - Belt buckle
Legs - 95 Intellect and 80 Stamina
Feet - 30 Stamina and Minor Movement Speed
Main Hand - Power torrent or if you don't have the money Hurricane
Off Hand - 40 Intellect

Meta gem - Chaotic Shadowspirit Diamond
Red gem - 40 Intellect
Yellow gem - 40 Critical Strike rating or 67 Critical Strike rating if you have Jewelcrafting
Blue gem - 20 Critical Strike rating and 20 Hit rating or 50 Spell penetration

6. Macros

Freeze on your Frostbolt

#showtooltip Frostbolt
/cast frostbolt
/click PetActionButton4
Summon your pet if you don't have one or cast freeze

#showtooltip Summon Water Elemental
/cast [nopet] Summon Water Elemental
/cast !Freeze
Cast Ice block or cancel it, spam it for a debuff remover.

#showtooltip Ice Block
/stopcasting
/cancelaura Ice Block
/cast Ice Block
Sheep your focus if you have one, else it will cast on your target.

#showtooltip Polymorph
/cast [target=focus, exists, harm] Polymorph; Polymorph
And the same for Counterspell

#showtooltip Counterspell
/stopcasting
/cast [target=focus, exists, harm] Counterspell; Counterspell
7. Addons

Gladius - Arena unit frames - http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/gladius.aspx

Gnomish interrupter - Party chat info about your CC - http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/gnomish-interrupter.aspx

Quartz - Must have castbar - http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/quartz.aspx

OmniCC - Timers of cooldowns on your action bars - http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/omni-cc.aspx

8. Tips

Practice alot. All good mages started with killing boars. A good way to practice is dueling. Don't be scared outside the gates of Orgrimmar or Stormwind. Find someone of your skill level and duel with him, get revenge if you lose so that eventually you let him bite the dust.

Another way to train your skills for arena is... arena! Find someone to play 2v2 for fun, you will learn your own class but other classes too + you get the conquest points cap!

Watch Mage PvP videos. Vanilla WoW or not, skills are skills. You can still learn from old movies because killing is for the most part kiting/position work.
You can find some here or choose one down: http://warcraftmovies.com/movies.php?class=4&category=1&tab=dls

Vurtne - Probably the best mage ever. He doesn't play anymore so the movie is a bit old.
http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=39506

Noone - Movie captured in TBC.
http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=70655

Saru & Tharbad - 2v2 with double Frost Mage
http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=55762

Gameking - Arena in WOTLK, 2v2 and 3v3
http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=131789

There aren't much good Cataclysm videos because the expansion is young and it takes loads of time to make one.

Copied from http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1710233539 :

Always CS a lock on Hand of Gul'dan. It will lock his fire and shadow school.
The same counts for a druids Starsurge and Frostfire Bolt from a mage.

If a warrior uses Spell Reflect, cast fire blast to take it away. If you're low you can use Polymorph to get yourself up again.

If you spellsteal Hand of Sacrifice, 30% of the damage you take will still go to the paladin.

You can cast out of a rogues smoke bomb, you can't cast into it.

Spamming pet follow will stop your images to attack someone.

Flame orb hits rogues in stealth and brings them out, despite no animation of it hitting.

Save up 2 finger of frost procs, icelance twice, then pet nova and icelance twice more, potentially 4 gamebreaking crits.

You can use Blink to avoid fall damage, just cast it when you're almost about to hit the ground.

When defending a base in BG, position your pet twenty yards in front of you, you can use its freeze spell to stop horde in their tracks which lets the defence guys get the first hit in.



Critism is welcome as long as it's constructive.

Badass guide, altho i would prefeer arcane intellect glyph instead of food

Really well done guide, was actually looking for something like this. Amazing job thank you.

Also, so using some of those macros that I don't already have :D.

Oh and perhaps suggest some of your favorite videos to watch / good players. As I am somewhat interested in watching I just have no idea what to look for or to watch.

18/02/2011 8:03 AMPosted by Enthestorm

Oh and perhaps suggest some of your favorite videos to watch / good players. As I am somewhat interested in watching I just have no idea what to look for or to watch.

Added some videos

Thank you for adding the videos :).

18/02/2011 11:23 AMPosted by Enthestorm

Thank you for adding the videos :).

Hey, if i write a guide doesn't that mean you have to use it against me and kill me in arena ok? :P

Quite nice guide, and HUGE thanks for the videos! :)

why do mages need a guide, ICELANCE ICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICBLINKELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANBLINKCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICELANCEICBLINKELANCEICELANCE

^ - this
Super guide. I liked every single word in it. And a special LOVELY pro-skill game-breaking combo is just so 1337 that can be only described as WTB MOAR LANCES!

Add never ending kite for the melee classes. Then some more ice lances.

Nescafé, go get that dent in your head looked at.

Also, you need about 17% crit, otherwise youre shatters will never come off.

well.... i just dont get it, what do you mean by that ?
Just from dmg terms ?

With a lot of haste i feel a bit more flexible in arena. I can react faster imo, way faster
then just 15% seem to be, lolz, maybe a placebo ^_-

pure noob... PURE noob... try just using icelance in arena, any healer will outheal you.

Because ice lance hits for 3-4k * 1.5 sec GCD. In order to make 100k dmg
I'll need 100/4*1.5= 37.5 sec. Or thats obut 5 times more, a warrior needs to kill me :P

Great Guide. Most was known already but much appreciated.

Because ice lance hits for 3-4k * 1.5 sec GCD. In order to make 100k dmg
I'll need 100/4*1.5= 37.5 sec. Or thats obut 5 times more, a warrior needs to kill me :P

pure noob... PURE noob... try just using icelance in arena, any healer will outheal you.

who are these clowns? stop trolling and actually do some arena above 0 rating before you post and when you actually meet a skilled frost mage, you most likely wont survive 5 seconds let alone 37.5

awesome guide, although I would like to add, when your low on hp or 50% ish don´t cast fire blast if a warrior does spell reflect, polymorph so you will get full hp back, always works for me

also try the macro's,

/stopcasting
/cast Counterspell

for instant counterspell so you don't have to cancel your casting first. although this is better for fire when you can't intertupt casting by walking I guess it could have good use a frost too.

/stopcasting
/cast iceblock

same idea also more effective as fire because of cauterize but not wrong to have as frost either