Hurling arcane fire and frost in all directions, teleporting over short distances with Blink, and possessing some of the most dangerous abilities in the game, mages in World of Warcraft Cataclysm are also weak melee combatants if they cannot keep their enemies at a distance. The advice of a WoW mage guide is indispensable if you are new to playing the class, while veterans already know the unique style of play that is needed to make a mage effective, and to keep them alive in Azeroth’s perilous situations.
Mages are a damage class in World of Warcraft, able to inflict huge amounts of damage to opponents at range with their spells (which, incidentally, bypass most armor protection). They are incapable of either healing or tanking, the other two main roles of the game. They bring plenty of utility to raids, instance groups, and PvP, however, due to several of their spells. As any good WoW mage guide will tell you, conjuring water for group or raid members is a major utility role for mages in PvE situations. Crowd control in the form of Frost Nova, which freezes opponents to the ground for a brief period of time, is useful in some dungeons, and extremely useful in PvP, when it can immobilize a good part of an enemy team for several crucial seconds.
Crowd control comes mostly in the form of Frost Nova, which creates an area of effect burst that can freeze several foes to the ground, or Polymorph, better known as “sheeping”, which temporarily transforms an enemy into a small, harmless animal. The conjured water from mages is usually somewhat inferior to purchased mana drinks, but this WoW mage guide reminds you that it is free.
When you are power leveling your mage character, Frost is the most useful talent specialization, according to most WoW mage guides. This is due to the fact that many frost spells and talents have a crowd control element in them, either reducing the speed of a foe who has been struck by these spells, or freezing them in place outright. This feature also makes the frost mage the preferred spec for dealing with PvP situations, where keeping death knights, paladins, rogues, and other melee classes away is paramount.
Frost mages are the only spec of mage with a summonable pet – since Cataclysm, this water elemental has been the signature move of the spec, available from level 10 onwards.
Fire mages are capable of inflicting the most damage of any mage spec, and are the spec of choice for many endgame raiders and dungeon aficionados for this reason, as WoW mage guides will tell you. Their spells are all designed to produce the highest damage possible, searing their foes to ash swiftly. They are very vulnerable in PvP, however, because of their lack of movement-limiting spells.
They have a few talented stuns, allowing them to deal with NPC foes on a more equal footing, and a few mobility-enhancing abilities that can help keep them out of melee. However, this WoW mage guide notes they are more easily killed while leveling than frost mages, and, as mentioned, are very fragile in PvP.
Arcane mages were formerly the weakest tree of the class, but now reside somewhere between fire and frost. Arcane offers more damage than frost, but less than fire, and more survivability than fire, but less than frost. The talent spec is useful in both PvE and PvP, and has enough tricks and interesting spells to make it the Swiss army knife of mage specs.
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