1on1 Frostmage vs X Guide by Alca Part 2

Second part of my Mage dueling guide



Mage versus Mage

Difficulty Level Frost vs Arcane 5, Arcane vs Frost 1



Well, there are many different ways a mage duel can occur, with cooldowns (pets, snap,…),
or without cooldowns.

First of all you have to differ between regions here, since I played in china (TBC server),
in Korea (Event Realm), and of course my main character on the EU realms,
there are a lot of differences in duel´s, in Korea, people love to duel, hell,
they even had a 1on1 dueling tournament recently with 2000$ price Money
for the Winner (remember Regionals Finals got 15000$ Price Money split up to 3).

From what I know, the mages all used cooldowns in duels,
since it is far more balanced then without cooldowns also and a better practice,
if you go into a 1on1 in arena, after your teammates died (happens so often to me in 2on2).

The whole flair of duels is very different too.
You are well respected for being good in duels on the asian servers,
but in europe nobody of the pro`s gives a damn about it,
except maybe some of the people that watch warcraftmovies about duels
(can recommend Trig 2 Mage dueling movie btw).

The easiest way to learn a class to it´s full potential is dueling,
you learn your strengths and weaknesses and later you can learn to use them in a team
environment (hell even Saori/Flýn did duels 24/7 and became one of the best arena mages later after rerolling).



I have one thing to say to the whole Mage community in Europe that bothers me since months if not years and this guide is probably the best way to address it.

Start playing with cooldowns in Mage duels, it’s the better practice, it´s more skillful,
if you count in your pet control and it leaves less margin of error,
so please don’t insult people starting to use pets in duels,
instead use it yourself or find a way to survive his pet phase.



Another thing is mage duels change a lot on which stage you duel, arena´s is
more of a cooldown war, arcane missile usage,… and in durotar it`s just different.



I`ll describe the basics of frostmage vs frostmage in this guide plus some additional advices for frostmage vs arcane!



Buffs:

You start with all possible buffs

Basic Buffs

- Arcane intellect

- Dampen magic

- Mage armor (stop trying to duel without mage armor, it is just dumb and very bad for practice if you want to be successful when it lays in your hand to win a 1on1 in arena)

- Ice Barrier should be up

- Frost Ward should be up, fire ward is also a possibility,
since a lot of mages use pyro rocket, or like to scorch a lot

- Slow Fall, as an additional Buff protection for ice barrier and frostward against spellsteal
(get the Minor glyph, since light feathers can be expensive after an excessive usage of slow
fall :P)

This is mostly every buff you use, but I really love to play a very different style of
mage vs mage.
I use mana shield as buff protection aswell (full rank), you can go for rank1 too in some cases.



Description if you duel without pet:

Now the duel should start in 2 ways.

Some prefer to try to poly the other mage and fake cast it, others start with nukes
(noob way lol) and some start with spellstealing right away.

It depends on which way you start, vs a person with the mana shield tactic and frost ward up,
I would try to scorch and fireblast until his barrier is gone then nuke pyro rocket into his
mana shield, which leads to a big amount of mana loss (3k mana or more).

Versus others you can fake poly, if the other mage doesn’t counter you,
you can go for spellsteal and look at your own buffs,
and on his buffs, after you got barrier -> fireblast + rocket him.

But if he gets your barrier right away you need to click manashield away or use a macro,
which cancels the aura of manashield.

If he gets slow fall first, rebuff it, you can win the mana war by simply doing this.
Keep your own shields up at the perfect time and don’t nuke into wards that often
(frostwarding could proc and mess up your whole duel).

If you got his barrier and he spellstole your manashield, then my tactic worked perfectly,
since you can instantly nuke him a fire / arcanespell (if he has frostward up)
or a frost / arcanespell (if he has fireward up).

He will lose massive amount of mana if he isn’t fast enough with clicking.

You see, there is a lot of things in those duels of what you have to take care of, to difficult?
Maybe, but sometimes you should try to run before you can walk (hi tony stark !).



That´s a typical mana duel war, but there is another way which is fakecasting until the other
mage used counter -> icy veins ->spam spellsteal protect your own buffs,
and spam bolts on him. If someone does that with you, try to outrange,
fake poly spellsteal back use your own shields perfectly
(maybe a lucky frostwarding proc can occure) try to deepfreeze frostbolts,
until so he can lose his advantage, or just nitro boost away.


Slow fall is really important in so many ways and if you are engineer you have a clear
advantage, you can also go for a lightning generator,
and use it when the other mage has no barrier up.



Advices:

- watch out for your own buffs

- protect yourself not only with condoms

- Watch out for your enemy buffs, try to find the right moment, when to nuke and when not rebuff slow fall as fast as you can when it gets spellstealed

- Watch out for your cooldowns

- Get a feeling for the duration of a counterspell (2seconds imp cs 8 seconds full cs)

- Get a feeling of cooldown of a counterspell (24 seconds) only gimps need a
fucking ingame clock or cooldown addons after 4 years of wow

- If you don’t have barrier up, you shouldn’t use manashield, only if it can prevent your incoming death

- If someone loves to spellsteal while he has no barrier up, rebuff manashield infight
he might get it and you can react with a fast swap, also it gives you the edge in the mana war
(don’t forget you also got 30% dispel resistance)



When to use evocation?

Well this spell can decide a duel pretty much, since it gives you 60% mana and 60% life,
so when should you use it?

The other mage has 4 tools to prevent it you also have the same tools for his evocation:

- Deep Freeze with fingers of frost or with a fast pet summon -> petnova (can resist often,
not in 3.2 anymore tho:> deepfreeze, or a normal nova + deep freeze,
this can take time and he will get off one tick (15%)

- Counterspell, best method, since you also lock his arcane shool
and can instantly strike back with nukes

- Polymorph him, if he doesn’t have full life use an ice lance instantly after to get him out
again.

- Nuke him with instants to force a pushbacks of the cast so he doesn’t get out more than
one tick (sometimes you need to use that if you are countered in arcane and to far away to deep freeze him)



How to prevent the following, well fakecast a poly, then poly him right afterwards,
doesn’t matter if he has low life, you need the mana advantage everything else doesn’t
matter that much, use icy veins or a shield to prevent pushback of damage
(icy veins also makes your evocation 20% faster, which can give you 1 tick or 2 more)

The problem is, he can still trinket and poly you, or ice block.

Well mostly you evocate late in the game and if you had fortuna not against you,
you shouldn’t evocate as first.

You need to be sure that he doesn’t have trinket up anymore, if not you can also
blink / nitro boost away after your poly and evocate then,
which leads to more ticks because of the globals he will receive because of the blink.



If he uses evocate you should always be able to get out of a poly late in the game
(save the trinket or iceblock).

Try to use scorch if you get countered in frost, if he only has frostward as shield up and you don’t wanna waste mana to get it.

Use arcane blast if he has only fireward up and your frostshool is locked down.

Arcane blast + arcane missile combo can be devastating for him sometimes.



Additional advices:



- If you got countered and someone is casting a bolt on you, try to blink through him,
or away from him if you are far away enough already to interrupt it

- If you are really close to him, running in circles around him or jumping / running over him
can interrupt his castings too, since you are los to him (doesn’t always work of course,
but even I get fooled by this sometimes, not because im to slow,
but latency and the engine of wow is just simply bad sometimes.)

- If you polyed him at the start and get the icebarrier through spellsteal in the
first 5 seconds of the poly, repoly him and use frostfirebolt, if he has a frostward still up,
since it negates the effect of any ward and you get a slow for your torment of the week,
arcane blast is also an option.

- Use 120-140 spellpenetration



Vs arcane mages, you need to use a lot of cooldowns, a really good strategy that worked for
me often is, water ele nova -> icy veins to get rid of slow -> imp cs frostbolt + icelance shatter
when he has no frostward up and because of icy veins and haste gear your frostbolt is below
2 seconds and he cant get out in time.



If you don’t have cooldowns and the arcane mage uses slow + spellsteal you have a
hard time in arenas, its really impossible to beat one at this situation.

Versus Mages in a pet fight, try to survive his first pet phase with poly fakes on the mage,
run out of range or kill the pet with arcane blast + arcane missile + fireblast combo, while the mage is either polyed or you got enough shields up and he used his cs already, or try to play with full force and use your pet yourself and play a similiar strategy as described above.



Mage duels are a bit nasty, thumbs up and thanks to the fellow mages that dueled me and gave me a even match and made me try figure out new strategys: Flýn, Trigz, Ánother, Mingz/Manga, Minaegi, Syrezx/Sorrowz (Syrez Mage alt)


Im also sorry that gameriot doesnt allow me to share with you any of the dueling clips of the
wow inven tournament.
(me vs minaegi with 500 ms or me vs mingz, or mingz vs minaegi grand finale), since they dont allow to post links of this page here, if you send me pms about it, dont expect a reply either.

Next Guide will have more classes

Kind Regards
Alca





1on1 Frostmage vs X Guide by Alca Part 1

Hello dear mage community,
today i have come up with a duelling guide for mages versus several classes,
you might not understand every move and also mostly the execution is far more difficult than it looks like,
but atleast you got some advices from a top duelling mage.
(doing nothing else since wotlk than duelling)

I could have also done a movie, but thats far more time intensive and also i dont play much WoW lately because of the imbalance in Arena, but maybe i will do a Movie in 3.2.

This guide is written with this kind of gear
http://armory.wow-europe.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Stormscale&n=Alc%C3%A1
and this Talent spec
http://armory.wow-europe.com/character-talents.xml?r=Stormscale&n=Alc%C3%A1&group=1

Some Notes about gear and talents/glyphs:

Equipment:

First of all and very important, to be successful as frostmage you need alot of haste so
GET HASTE!

For that you could go for the Haste Honor pieces (Neck, Cloak) and the wintersgrasp stuff
You should hit around 350+ Haste atleast,
otherwise you will get problems at a deep freeze nuke.

Spellpenetration should be around 120 (140 for arcane mages).
Get the offhand and wand and 1-2 Penetration gems to achieve that,
or go for the Staff and put one more gem into your gear.
There are no excuses in duels if you loose because you didnt have enough spell penetration,
dont forget that!

Spellhit is also very important, if you dont have access to PvE gear
go spec one point additionally into Elemental Precision (also 1% less mana cost).

How much spelldmg and haste is your own choice, i prefer having more haste, which fits my fast playstyle.

Talents:

Arcane:

- Arcane Subtlety for Dispellresistance of your buffs

- Arcane Focus for 3% less mana cost and 3% more hit for your arcane spells (you spec these anyway because arcane missiles uninterruptable isnt worth a point as frost)

- Magic Absorption for the Resistence of course

- Now you can choose between Clearcast or more armor, i prefer clearcast, it can be an ass saver!

- Magic Attunement 2 Points, you need the range for arcane, especially vs slowed priests, since their shadowword death range isnt as high as your poly range.

- Focus Magic got this for Arena.

- Spell Impact, more damage, why not?

- Improved Counterspell, must have

- you can go for arcane shielding which is a big plus in duels or for torment of the weak, which is better for arena, since i play both i choose torment of the weak

Frost:

- Frostbite ive got only 2 Points in it, and i dont think it procs less often

- Frostbolt, must have

- Ice Floes, must have

- Ice Shards, must have

- Frostwarding is really nice, alot of mages dont spec it, but in my eyes its one of the biggest ass saver talents you can get, i had games in 2on2 vs DK´s where i was totally oom and through the absorb of diseases i could get alot of mana back, awesome vs mages and warlocks too.

- Permafrost, 2 points are minimum, otherwise rogues with fleet footed get out of coc snare before you can use it again

- Icy veins, must have

- Piercing Ice, more damage why not?

- Improved Blizzard, i love to have one talent point in it, but since it doesnt overwrite the slow of your armor on rogues anymore, it is less effective

- shatter and arctic reach both must have

- Coldsnap must have

- Improved Cone of Cold, well it´s awesome but you have to decide between some talents to go for it.

- Shattered Barrier and Ice Barrier must have

- Fingers of frost brainfreeze, deep freeze and water elemental are must have

- 1 Point in Enduring Winter is awesome too

- chilled of the bone really nice talent.

Glyphs:

- Icy Veins, one of the best glyphs for duels, if you have it or not have it can decide alot of duels vs melees

- Ice Barrier really nice glyph, 1100 HP absorb more for each barrier, without counting spellpower.
(Ice Barrier aroudn 6400 HP Absorb with my gear)

- Evocation, 60% heal additionally nothing more to say about it.

Enough about this talent and gear crap, it has been discussed for years already, lets start with the duels!

DUEL Section: Rogue and Priest in Part 1

Difficulty Level 1 = Easy, 5 = New York minute

Mage versus Rogue:
Difficulty Level 2 with CD`s, 4 without CD`s

This matchup depends alot on cooldown usage, will the rogue use prep or not, will you use
snap and pets or not?

Well first of all, if you meet a good rogue, like Syrez, Shaderlol or Naviz, that are consistently
performing top versus mages, as dance or as mutilate,
they might hate you for using pets, but they will understand it when you use them.

Dont hold back using CD´s if your opponent uses them aswell, if you dont want to loose.

The Duel should start with Mana Shield and Ice Barrier up.
You can mount up if you wanna play lame, so you can maybe jump a bit away,
when the rogue uses garrote, which mostly forces him to open with a cheap shot,
but you can also start without mount, which is fair.

Most Rogues wait for you to refresh your barrier before they will sap you, so they dont have to nuke 2 barriers away.

I will describe a way i will play:
rogue starts with either garrote or cheap shot:

Garrote, use deep freeze on your shattered barrier,
react fast when he trinket so you nova him instantly into the trinket,
look in his direction try to poly, he will either cloak or vanish,
if vanish use CoC then fakecast poly
-> Cloak -> Ice block, get out after it, new barrier up,...

Cheap Shot, Blink, preactively blizzard if he destroyed your barrier and sits in nova he will
vanish so you can predict it and get him out.
Try to poly or deep freeze with a fingers of frost proc you might have
-> cloak -> ice block or icy veins nitro boost...

If you get rogue into a full poly without using snap and he used his cloak,
you won the duel, just evocate
-> frostfirebolt -> frostbolt... use mirror images or counterspell a mob around you,
if you dont have trinket up anymore (to not get blinded easily)

Additional advices:

- If something goes wrong and the rogue did really well
you are also allowed to use snap for a second deep freeze to poly him away.

- Try to keep up Ice barriers, but dont use them when they cloak,
you dont want your shattered barrier nova get wasted.

- Be fast with blizzards or pet novas.

- learn to utilize fakecast poly with mass amount of haste,
every rogue will kick you.

- if a rogue doesnt want to vanish when you have pet out and nova ready,
you can pet nova him and instantly blizzard at that point since he is 100% about to vanish

- If a rogue runs toward your pet or while you are in iceblock,
use a keybind for pet follow or passive,
to fakecast with your pet, especially you have to do that,
if you still got pet nova ready.

Mage vs Priest
Difficulty level 2-3

Versus a disc priest and versus a shadowpriest i usually play with the same strategies,
run them oom.
A good priest wont die in a nuke from you, so you have to lengthen the duel,
until he is out of mana.

Start with a all buffs you can use,
including manashield (you need to click that away or write a macro to remove it),
slow fall, fire/frostward, ice barrier,...
A priest is able to remove 2buffs with one dispell (dont forget your 30% dispellresistance)
so sometimes it is worth to rebuff slow fall during fight, to protect your ice barrier or icy veins.

You can play with 2 damage trinkets if you want that or stay with your trinket.

Start the duel not close to the priest, try to poly him and stop before finishing the polymorph
(fakecast versus shadowword death), priest is properly on the way to fear you,
before you can get second poly off, with some practice you know the range level of fear.

Before he comes close to you blink away, sometimes he uses fear,
with more practice you will be able to juke a fear more often.

After Blink, poly him, check the duration of his buffs (renew, prayer of mending, shield)
that can run out soon, if they last long start spellstealing,
if they run out in some time wait for it then start to spellsteal.
Repoly him, then use Water elemental-> Icy Veins, Pet Stay
-> run away from your pet so he cant fear both of you start with a shatter and
spam frostbolts, try to spellsteal shields, nuke him,
he will probably use pain sup, if not he will try to heal.

If he tries to heal, there are 4 possible outcomes:

- He fakecasts you miss counterspell.

- He doesnt fakecast you hit counterspell

- He fakecasts you dont counterspell

- He fakecasts and you are fast enough and hit the counterspell.

Versus a priest you duel the first time and dont know how good he is,
try to counterspell as fast as possible, if he fakecasts you know it better next time.

You try to nuke him as much as possible but if he uses painsup he will heal himself up,
fakecast poly versus shadowword death again,
poly him then and try to run away drink send your water elemental on him,
pet nova before he is in range to interrupt you, you should be on same mana now.

You poly again, nuke him, with deep freeze combo
(with low amount of haste you cant get frostbolt ice lance out)

Always when he runs towards you, try to blink away at the right time,
if you get hit, trinket or wotf.

He will go oom when he tries to damage you, you can try to poly + evocate then,
you probably have to snap to kill him in the end.
-> mirror images at final nuke.
If the priest uses shadowfiend try to coc -> nova him, priest will dispell it maybe, then you need to imp cs him, he shouldnt get mana, otherwise ice block.

the final nuke is pretty easy, since he is almost oom and you got your second mana gem,
and probably damage trinket up again aswell to finish him off.

If he wins the mana battle reset with polys try to drink and maybe wait for second evocation,
you cant die.

Shadowpriest is a bit similiar, only that the match doesnt last that long,
you can get him oom pretty fast and get to full hp with one evocate, not that difficult.

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