Tag Archives: talent

Useful Mage Macros and Talents

Posted on by
Reply

I have started to play my mage once again in end game raiding, and made a few macros that some people may find useful and/or beneficial for them to use or alter to suit there individual playing style.

I have a deep fire and a frost spec for my mage so you will see that some macros can be used for both specs with the [spec:1/2] conditional.

Clones: (all specs)
#showtooltip Mirror Image
/use [spec:1] Icy Veins; [spec:2] Combustion
/use Mirror Image

This macro will work regardless of what spec you are currently using, saving 1 slot in your macro interface, this should be able to use be used in all specs as you will either have Icy Veins and/or Combustion.

Polymorph: (all specs)
#showtooltip
/focus [modifier:alt/ctrl/shift,harm] target; [target=focus,harm,exists,nodead] focus; [harm] target
/cast [target=focus,exists,nodead,harm] Polymorph; Polymorph

Every mage or cc class should have a focus macro so here is one for mages.

CS: (all specs)
#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast Counterspell

For those times when you have to interrupt during a cast of another spell.

AE: (all specs)
#showtooltip
/cast [modifier:alt] Arcane Explosion(Rank 1); Arcane Explosion

Macro to spam rank 1 arcane explosion with use of the alt key to find those pesky stealth classes in battlegrounds and arena, and to use highest rank at all other times.

Cycle: (fire spec)
#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=target/nocombat Fireball, Living Bomb, Pyroblast, Scorch, Fireball, Fireball, Fireball, Living Bomb, Fireball, Fireball, Fireball

This macro only applies for fire builds, it will reset when you change target, and when you leave combat.

Cycle: (arcane spec)
#showtooltip
/castsequence [nochanneling] reset=8/nocombat Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Missiles, Arcane Barrage

This macro only applies for arcane builds, it will reset after 8 seconds, when you change target, and when you leave combat.

Boost: (arcane specs)
#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=200 Icy Veins, Arcane Power, Presence of Mind, Arcane Power, Presence of Mind, Arcane Power

I made this macro so I could easily spam my boost type buffs, and keep them always on cooldown, it works well for me maybe it will for you too.  The final last Arcane Power in most cases will never be cast as the macro should reset before you can get to this, but have noticed on odd occassions where Arcane Power has come off cooldown but Icy Veins hasn’t so am hoping this will cure that so can cast another Arcane Power.

Flamestrike: (arcane spec)
#showtooltip Flamestrike
/cast Presence of Mind
/cast Flamestrike

I read somewhere that for arcane builds flamestrike and then blizzard should be there aoe rotation, cant quite remember where I read it at now tho, but this macro was copied from wowwiki on there useful mage macros article.

Blizzard: (arcane spec)
#showtooltip Blizzard
/cast Icy Veins
/cast Arcane Power
/cast Blizzard

The blizzard macro for arcane builds to be used after flamestrike macro for aoe spell rotation.

Frostbolt: (frost spec)
#showtooltip Frostbolt
/cast Icy Veins
/cast Frostbolt
/cast Deep Freeze

Not really a rotation spell macro like the ones for fire and arcane, but use this with my frost spec when farming and doing the odd daily quest, works for me can kill pretty much most things before they get to me.

WE: (frost spec)
#showtooltip Summon Water Elemental
/cast [nopet,harm][nopet,target=targettarget,harm] Summon Water Elemental
/petattack [harm][target=targettarget,harm]

This will cast your water elemental spell and also make it attack your current target, if you have no target the spell wont cast.

IB: (frost spec)
#showtooltip Ice Block
/stopcasting
/cancelaura Ice Block
/cast Ice Block

To save your ass in those near death experiences, and to get you back into the thick of it as fast as possible.

IB: (frost spec)
#showtooltip
/cast [modifier:shift] Fire Ward
/cast [modifier:ctrl] Frost Ward
/cast Ice Barrier

I do use this macro but cant remember why I made it probably just as a space saver on my action bars, mentioned here just for reference.

Spell Rotations:

Pop the “Clones” Macro mentioned above, followed by the “Boost” and “Cycle” macro’s also mentioned above.  Should Hot Streak proc during the rotation, use Pyroblast.

Talent Builds:

Deep Fire Spec 20/51/0: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage#_7oE3ZbVllDnzUY,,11159

Arcane Spec 57/3/11: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage#B20yFCO3dHu5t,,11159

Frost Spec 20/0/51: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage#_CNgvVlO7cSU9TL,,11159

, Arcane Power

Popularity: 88%

Mage raiding build

Posted on by
Reply

My guild has moved on from Karazhan, were we only go occassionally in un-official raids, which is kinda ok I guess, but means I cant get my tier set complete and get exalted.

Anyway the purpose of this post was mainly to just write out what my new build will be, i’m currently arcane/frost (40/0/21) and I love my build but in Serpentine Caverns the mobs seem to be mainly elementals that are immune to frost. I just hope that I can learn to love and find the some fun in a fire build once again, has been a long time since have been fire.

Current build: link

Revised build for raiding: link

Popularity: 70%

Burning Crusade

Posted on by
Reply

In anticipation of the burning crusade coming out and the release date being confirmed had a little look on the recent developments in it especially the new spells and talents the mages will be getting, as currently my most played character is a mage.

I must admit some of the spells do sound questionable as regards to just how useful there going to be, but cant really comment as of yes, they might be suprisingly good and useful but they might not aswell, but with this in mind I had a bit of a play with the new talent calculator and decided on this build, its very similar to what I already have with a few bits added that I would of liked now but unable to have due to not enough talent points and a few new things mixed in aswell.

Talent calculator builds

Please note these builds/links are subject to break if things get changed on the calculator itself, I will try keep them working though as they change things.

Mage build

Popularity: 78%

Mage talents in world of warcraft

Posted on by
Reply

Its been a while now since the mages had there talent review in world of warcraft, and its not been a bad review in my opinion.

But I kinda not that impressed with the build I made on the previous post I made on this blog, for end game I thought it would be a great build after speaking to a fellow mage in game about it, and although it was significantly different from the build I made I looked it over and it seemed much better.

I have some nice gear in my opinion, got tier 1 (Arcanist Regalia) on shoulders, belt, boots, gloves, robes, and tier 2 (Netherwind Regalia) on crown, pants and finally my wrists are from Zul’Grub (Illusionist’s Attire).

I have been finding that on the adds at General Drakkisath in UBRS, my frostbolt gets resist so much, like i’ll hit something like once every 3 or 4 casts, the rest of the time it gets fully resisted, which I think its a bit rubbish really since that the fireball spell can be partially resisted but the frostbolt can’t, I questioned about it being a bug but a GM told me no that it was meant to be like that.

So anyway i’m considering respeccing once again, especially when I am always last on the damage meters but my gear isn’t that much different from the other mages in my raid group.

I’m thinking of leaving some points in a lot of what I have now, but moving a few points around in the frost tree.

This is my current mage build.

What I am considering move around is losing improved frost nova and permafrost altogether purely cause there not that much use to me in end game raiding, Frostbite isn’t that much use either, however saying that I like Frostbite its good for soloing, so I will be keeping that. I have also remove 2 points from Improved Blizzard it only added a chill effect to blizzard, and removing 2 points keeps the chill effect but only slows movement speed to 50% which I think is still good, that frees up 7 points which was what I was looking for, I think those 7 points should be spent as follows 2 points in Elemental Precision and 5 points in Ice Shards, I’ve also dropped 1 point from Arcane Focus and put it in Wand Specialization.

This is my revised mage build.

Popularity: 68%

Mage talent review

Posted on by
2

Seeing as the servers were down for maintenance this morning I did a bit of reading up on the status of the mage talent review.

I must admit I was a bit stressed about that they might ruin the class for me in the way I like to play it, but all in all its not all that bad in my opinion, don’t think its going to affect my playing style too much at all.

If you would like to see a post detailing a little more indepth of the changes you can do so on this url here.

Patch 1.11 mage information

My current 1.10 build is as follows :-

Improved arcane missiles: 5/5
Gives you a 100% chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while channeling Arcane Missiles.

Wand Specialization: 5/5
Increases your damage with Wands by 25%.

Improved Arcane Explosion: 5/5
Reduces the casting time of your Arcane Explosion spell by 1.5 sec.

Evocation: 1/1
While channeling this spell, your mana regeneration is active and increased by 1500%. Lasts 8 sec.

Arcane Meditation: 1/5
Allows 3% of your Mana regeneration to continue while casting.

Improved Fireball: 5/5
Reduces the casting time of your Fireball spell by 0.5 sec.

Ignite: 5/5
Your critical strikes from Fire damage spells cause the target to burn for an additional 40% of your spell’s damage over 4 sec.

Improved Fire Blast: 5/5
Reduces the cooldown of your Fire Blast spell by 1.5 sec.

Flame Throwing: 2/2
Increases the range of your fire spells by 6 yards.

Burning Soul: 3/3
Gives your fire spells a 65% chance to not lose casting time when you take damage.

Critical Mass: 3/3
Increases the critical strike chance of your fire spells by 6%

Fire Power: 5/5
Increases the damage done by your fire spells by 10%.

Combustion: 1/1
When activated, this spell gives your next Fire damage spell a 100% critical strike chance.

A lot of whining as per usual, however I have come up with the following 2 builds I am thinking of specing to in the 1.11 patch with a little thought sharing between friends.

Build 1: Arcane / Frost

Build 2: Arcane / Fire

Build 3: Arcane / Frost

The one I finally choose in patch 1.11 was build 3 Arcane / Frost as it was a good end game raiding build which is what I need at the moment.

05/06 Forwarded mage class concerns

The concerns the other mages have brought up are actually pretty good, our talent review looks like it could get a lot better, I agree with pretty much all there concerns now having read them.

Popularity: 54%