World of Warcraft: Mage Questions and Answers

Q. Which spec offers the highest DPS?

A. When Wrath of the Lich King was released, a new build became available for mages that utilised an ability added in this expansion. Known as the FFB build after its primary spell, the Frostfire Bolt, this build is essentially a deep fire build with some additional critical hit modifiers from the frost tree and maintained the highest DPS of any build right up until patch 3.2. Since patch 3.2 was released, however, a new arcane build has become extremely popular, and if it is straightforward DPS you are after, this is the tree you should now be looking at.

Q. Which spec offers the greatest survivability?

A. The answer to this question has pretty much been the same since the very beginning of WoW. Frost mages have a lot of abilities – not least of which is Ice Barrier – that make them far more resilient than other mages. Other benefits to frost include better control of damage output, strong burst damage capabilities and exceptional area of effect damage and kiting ability. Frost mages are also known to have the greatest damage per mana ratio (DPM) and with the Replenishment ability on top of this, rarely run out of mana. The downside to all of this is that frost mages tend to output lower DPS than the other specs, but it isn’t always about damage. Whilst it may not be the best spec for raiding, sometimes a frost mage in the raid can be a good thing, and in terms of player vs. player combat a good frost mage is very hard to beat.

Q.  What is the best way to level up a mage quickly?

A.  A good power-levelling guide will be necessary to achieve max level as quickly as possible.  If you have Horde mage, you should look at Joana’s Horde Levelling Guide.  This is the best guide for levelling a Horde character.  And if you are playing an Alliance mage, Zygor’s Guide is simply the best.  With one of these two guides, your mage will be max levelled quickly and you will learn many great tips to master the mage using one of these two guides.

Q. What responsibilities does a mage have in a raid?

A. While many DPS focused classes rarely have other jobs to do in raids, mages can often be called on for a number of other skills unrelated to damage. The first of these is the famous polymorph. Although crowd control techniques have been somewhat neglected in WotLK content thus far, there are still a few fights (such as the Faction Champions in the Trial of the Crusader raid) which call for it. Polymorph is one of the strongest single-target crowd control techniques, in that it can be used in combat, has no cooldown and lasts for a relatively long time. Polymorph’s main weakness is that it suffers from diminishing returns, so the more you use it on a single target, the more likely it is to fail. Other things a mage may be asked to do in a raid include kiting monsters around using spells with slowing effects on to keep them busy, removing harmful curses from raid members and stealing beneficial buffs from monsters and even raid bosses such as Lord Jaraxxas. You will also be expected to use buffs such as Arcane Brilliance on the raid, to provide food/drink via a Refreshment Table and to use Amplify/Dampen Magic in scenarios where they will help out.

Q. Which stats are important for a mage?

A. First of all, the most important stat for a mage is hit rating, until you reach the hit cap. Against a level 83 raid boss, a level 80 player will have a 17% chance to miss the target, meaning you will need +17% spell hit in order to never miss. By taking points in Arcane Focus (arcane tree, 3 points) and Precision (frost tree, 3 points) as part of your talent build you will gain +6% spell hit, leaving you with 11% hit needed from your gear, gems and enchants. You will gain +1% for every 26.2 hit rating you acquire, so in terms of hit rating you will need around 289 hit rating to reach the cap. Once you are hit capped, you will mostly need to focus on spell damage and critical strike rating or haste rating. The intellect you need should come easily on your gear so you should never really need to gem for it. Different types of mage have different weightings assigned to crit and haste and which is better for you can often also change depending on your current gear.

Q. Which are the best gems for a mage?

A. Gem/enchant priorities should be roughly the following: until the hit cap, gem yellow sockets with hit and use hit enchants. If necessary you can also use orange gems to put some hit with your spell power gems. After you reach the hit cap, always gem red sockets with pure spell power, fill yellow sockets with crit/haste or once these stats are very high, with split gems including more spell power. On blue sockets, use either a Nightmare Tear if you don’t have one already, or use split spirit and spell power gems otherwise.