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More mage pvp tips. Next is how to gear and gem. Take the silk honour items as you need the crit. For gems it really depends on your setup and bracket, but in general take spell damage, resilience, stam and then spell crit in that order.
Mage pvp trinkets are really few and far between. Some like the lightning capacitor but personally I don’t. I use the honour trinket and of course medallion.
Enchants - boars speed on boots, 20 spell damage gloves, 22 spell damage and 14 spell hit head, epic aldor/scryer enchant for shoulders, 15 resilience chest, 15 spell damage bracers and 40 spell damage on weapon.
Good luck!
Missed the first part of this guide? Find it at mage pvp guide.
Are mages any good in pvp? Well that question is extremely broad and I cannot simply say “yes” or “no.” What I can attempt to do is convey the strengths, weaknesses and problems with mage pvp at the moment.
I hope that I am qualified enough, with my mage achieving 2.1k in all brackets at some point in season 3. My mage was my first character and naturally it took me a long time to become accustomed to playing him. Even now I have “off-days,” where I play terribly but generally speaking the more and more you play, the better your pvping will become.
Wow is ridiculously gear-based and you will need the season 2 set from honor at least if you want to compete in arena. Spec 17/0/44 - no arguments. If you are inexperienced or average at pvp with your mage you must spec this to have the best chance. Improved counterspell is almost a requirement to stand a chance of beating druid teams.
Start with a cookie cutter setup. Play RMP - thats rogue/mage/priest in 3v3. Watch videos from warcraftmovies.com and learn how to play it. 3v3 is easily the easiest bracket for mages to get high in and personally I hate 2v2, especially because mage/rogue is so luck and crit based.
Mages are excellent nukers when left to free-cast. Unfortunately this happens very little as most teams will target the mage. This means you must be very good at kiting and surviving in general. Bind your blink key to something readily available - I use the “c” key. Also make sure you use frost nova, cone of cold, pet nova, rank 1 frostbolt, sheep, ice barrier, mana shield (if necessary), frost and fire wards to keep as much damage off of you as possible. This damage mitigation is the most important part of mage pvp.
The second aspect is your role as a crowd control. You must master lining up 3 sheeps on a target and using your improved counterspell at the right time. This is game breaking. Make sure you use a focus bar and set your crowd control target as focus. Use rank 1 sheep to save mana. Have macros for sheeping and counterspelling your focus target.
Thats enough for today… go and practice… more tomorrow!
Read the second part of the mage pvp guide.
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