Mage Talent Setup

currently running 5/5 imp frostbolt, 3/3 frostbite, 2/3 permafrost.

probably going to swap to an elemental precision spec because resists wound my soul.

keeping it real, i can't imagine moving outside of the frost tree to prioritize dps--seems antithetical to the reason you run a mage at 19 to begin with.

keep in mind i'm new to the bracket and know nothing, having spent most of my time playing 39s. interested to hear input from others.
 
About to make a mage, I'm thinking 5/5 Imp Frostbolt, 3/3 Perma Frost, 2/3 Elemental Precision or 4/5 Imp Frostbolt, 3/3 Perma Frost, 3/3 Elemental Precision. Can any dedicated mage give thoughts?​
 
From the perspective of a mage with a lot of premade experience on both offense and defense: after switching from a cookie cutter frost spec to a resist build, I can't ever see myself going back. Resists, especially on defense, are so crucial and gamechanging that I do pretty much everything I can in order to counteract getting outplayed by RNG.

I have 9 talent points that I feel are mandatory in this style of build:

1 Arcane Subtlety - this overrides the popular +5 all resist cloak enchant
2 Arcane Focus
2 Elemental Precision - these two talents give you the necessary spell hit to remove the base miss chance of all of your schools of spells, leaving you with the 1% base chance that can never be removed. anything beyond 2 points in either of these is overkill in pvp

3 Improved Frostbolt - useful, but not as necessary as some might think. I never end up in situations where my I find myself thinking "damn, if I had .2 seconds off my Frostbolts, I could have caught someone else or did more there". The biggest problem with this talent is the fact that the GCD is 1.5 seconds, so reducing your Frostbolts to 1 second doesn't mean you can stand there turreting; you still have to awkwardly wait for the GCD anyway. Having 3 points feels like it makes Frostbolts flow a lot nicer with less of an awkward pause between bolts, but more importantly it enables you to access the next talent:

1 Frostbite - this talent is EXTREMELY good, so having at least one talent point here to allow the proc chance to exist is important. Frostbite has more capability to be a gamechanging proc than you might realize; landing an RNG Frostbite on a rogue sprinting at your FC completely changes things. I can't even count the number of times I've gotten myself or my FC out of huge danger just because of a Frostbite proc.

The last talent point can pretty much go wherever. Some good options are an additional point in Frostbite or Arcane Subtlety (to help further resistance gear and/or racials), Permafrost, or Frost Nova (which I don't think is good at all personally, but some do).

A note on Permafrost: be aware that one point in this talent will cause your Frostbolts to override your Warrior's Hamstrings, which can sometimes screw them over and make it easier for opponents to escape via being dispelled. Because of this, when I run Perma I'm very aware of my Warrior's positioning and who they are attempting to slow, and make sure not to override their Hamstrings unless I feel I absolutely have to. That being said, having the option to override it when necessary is part of the reason I like the talent and actually prefer it over the other options, the other part being the ability to have more control through slightly longer slows when necessary.

It's important to note that if people wear resistance gear, especially if they are races such as Gnomes or Dwarfs, you will still experience a decent amount of resists, but still considerably less than you would without these talents. In the average pug game, I almost never have any of my spells resist because only the 1% chance exists for the vast majority of players.
 
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I just made a mage and run a full fire damage build. I do 5/5 imp frost bolt and 5/5 imp fireball and it’s been good so far.
 
Stunning said:
I just made a mage and run a full fire damage build. I do 5/5 imp frost bolt and 5/5 imp fireball and it’s been good so far.
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Sounds like resist city. Seems crazy to go 5/5 Fireball and not take Impact though if you're going to do it. If you wanted to build for damage you'd need to pick +Fire anyways.
 
Outofspace said:
Sounds like resist city. Seems crazy to go 5/5 Fireball and not take Impact though if you're going to do it. If you wanted to build for damage you'd need to pick +Fire anyways.
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I currently have sub 700 hp (that’ll change after I get the fishing gear). I need the 1sec frostbolt to kite melee, can’t rely on frost armor.
 
As a rogue twink I find frostbite extremely annoying and useful for high hp mages. I would not skip it if I were you, even if it means cutting down on improved frostbolt and/or permafrost. Perhaps keep Frostbite on 2/3, 10% chance is good

As you may know, mages don't have any blink or shields at lvl 19 so any other defense is vital. Improved Frost Nova could be more reliable if you don't want to depend on RNG procs

I would go for this https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-calc/mage/--0320203
 
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use rank 1 to kite
saves on mana and applies the same slow
#showtooltip
/cast [mod:shift] Frostbolt (rank 1); Frostbolt
I believe or u can just use r1 on another keybind (so few abilities)

As a mage main, imo I think at 19 going deepfrost is best, with cc being the priority. https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-calc/mage/--203032 use rank 1 frostbolt, as to proc frostbite and apply the slow as fast as possible. also reduced frost nova CD for better control.

Can also do https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-calc/mage/1502--2 , better sheeping, use wand for damage.

Just my opinion, this topic has ben discussed fairly well so far. hope you find a style you like.

(edit) didn't mean to quote
[doublepost=1587393464,1587392167][/doublepost]
Funnystrike said:
what you guys think of this weird build for the highest possible hitchance on poly https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-calc/mage/25--003
curently i run with : https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-calc/mage/--0500023
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Elemental Precision doesn't help with sheep (only frost/fire spells)
 
i have the best mage spec but its top sekret sorry
 
Ichi said:
use rank 1 to kite
saves on mana and applies the same slow
#showtooltip
/cast [mod:shift] Frostbolt (rank 1); Frostbolt
I believe or u can just use r1 on another keybind (so few abilities)

As a mage main, imo I think at 19 going deepfrost is best, with cc being the priority. https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-calc/mage/--203032 use rank 1 frostbolt, as to proc frostbite and apply the slow as fast as possible. also reduced frost nova CD for better control.

Can also do https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-calc/mage/1502--2 , better sheeping, use wand for damage.

Just my opinion, this topic has ben discussed fairly well so far. hope you find a style you like.

(edit) didn't mean to quote
[doublepost=1587393464,1587392167][/doublepost]
Elemental Precision doesn't help with sheep (only frost/fire spells)
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It's not your opinion that mages priority is CC, so based off your introduction of your gamebreaking knowledge, your knowledge is irrelevant. Also, his weird build incorporates 10% resist reduction to arcane, which is incredibly overkill. The right response is that pvp hit cap is 3%. I'd say take time and learn your class(Maybe read/research) instead of posting here.
[doublepost=1588486652][/doublepost]
anatomyx said:
A note on Permafrost: be aware that one point in this talent will cause your Frostbolts to override your Warrior's Hamstrings, which can sometimes screw them over and make it easier for opponents to escape via being dispelled. Because of this, when I run Perma I'm very aware of my Warrior's positioning and who they are attempting to slow, and make sure not to override their Hamstrings unless I feel I absolutely have to. That being said, having the option to override it when necessary is part of the reason I like the talent and actually prefer it over the other options, the other part being the ability to have more control through slightly longer slows when necessary.
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While this is good info, the fact that it overrides the warriors slow is irrelevant to me because our premades only have mages on defense and warriors on offense. That being said, assuming that hamstring/frostbolt would never be a problem, would you value permafrost and likely incorporate it into the build? Maybe 1 or 2 pts from frostbite or is frostbite far superior to permafrost?

Separate question, but it's hard to find resist information for 19s.... but if pvp hit cap is 3% would 10-15 resist really go higher than the 1% gap?
 
Duro said:
It's not your opinion that mages priority is CC, so based off your introduction of your gamebreaking knowledge, your knowledge is irrelevant. Also, his weird build incorporates 10% resist reduction to arcane, which is incredibly overkill. The right response is that pvp hit cap is 3%. I'd say take time and learn your class(Maybe read/research) instead of posting here.
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it is my opinion, bc not everyone believe they should be prioritizing cc at 19. hell even at 60 we have a pom pyro build to blow mfers up.
yes its 3% so I guess you could put that 1 point into frostbolt for that sweet .1 fb reduction. man im so fucking dumb right. if that's the only thing you latched on to that makes me not "know" my class id ask you to reconsider the idea about attacking that 1 point the way you did.

frostbite is superior. a snare > extra slow.

Everything ive read about resist is that it isn't affected by hit, but rather just reduces the damage taken. so 20 resists reduces it by 5% damage. spell pen counters resist, so arcane subtlety can reduce it to 10 for only a 2.5% loss. at 19 frostbolt (r4) does 82.5 damage (no sp) so its damage reduction isn't much and isn't worth specing either.

EDIT: 3/3 for precision is important bc frostbolt is a binary spell. the 3% overage effectively acts like spell pen. yes the pvp hit cap is 3% but the additional 3% reduces the chance to be resisted.
 
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Ichi said:
it is my opinion, bc not everyone believe they should be prioritizing cc at 19. hell even at 60 we have a pom pyro build to blow mfers up.
yes its 3% so I guess you could put that 1 point into frostbolt for that sweet .1 fb reduction. man im so fucking dumb right. if that's the only thing you latched on to that makes me not "know" my class id ask you to reconsider the idea about attacking that 1 point the way you did.

frostbite is superior. a snare > extra slow.

Everything ive read about resist is that it isn't affected by hit, but rather just reduces the damage taken. so 20 resists reduces it by 5% damage. spell pen counters resist, so arcane subtlety can reduce it to 10 for only a 2.5% loss. at 19 frostbolt (r4) does 82.5 damage (no sp) so its damage reduction isn't much and isn't worth specing either.

EDIT: 3/3 for precision is important bc frostbolt is a binary spell. the 3% overage effectively acts like spell pen. yes the pvp hit cap is 3% but the additional 3% reduces the chance to be resisted.
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This is wrong on many levels, but it is a confusing topic. You should at least know there is a binary type and a reduction type resist check, and some spells have both. The immediate conclusion you should probably draw is that increasing your hit chance and/or lowering enemy resists is extremely beneficial.
 
Outofspace said:
This is wrong on many levels, but it is a confusing topic. You should at least know there is a binary type and a reduction type resist check, and some spells have both. The immediate conclusion you should probably draw is that increasing your hit chance and/or lowering enemy resists is extremely beneficial.
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so then 3/3 in precision is better than any points into frostbolt? as my original build said?
 
Ichi said:
it is my opinion, bc not everyone believe they should be prioritizing cc at 19. hell even at 60 we have a pom pyro build to blow mfers up.
yes its 3% so I guess you could put that 1 point into frostbolt for that sweet .1 fb reduction. man im so fucking dumb right. if that's the only thing you latched on to that makes me not "know" my class id ask you to reconsider the idea about attacking that 1 point the way you did.

frostbite is superior. a snare > extra slow.

Everything ive read about resist is that it isn't affected by hit, but rather just reduces the damage taken. so 20 resists reduces it by 5% damage. spell pen counters resist, so arcane subtlety can reduce it to 10 for only a 2.5% loss. at 19 frostbolt (r4) does 82.5 damage (no sp) so its damage reduction isn't much and isn't worth specing either.

EDIT: 3/3 for precision is important bc frostbolt is a binary spell. the 3% overage effectively acts like spell pen. yes the pvp hit cap is 3% but the additional 3% reduces the chance to be resisted.
Click to expand...


Yeah every single person is unanimously in agreeance that mages aren't for damage, but for CC. The second half wasn't directed at you for a reason. Again, your complete display of incompetence makes your opinion irrelevant.
 
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