#0 - Aug. 24, 2006, 11:09 p.m.
-- Legos --
This is my effort to bring good stickys to the new forums, right now u can help the comunity by doing the same for other forums right now i've done hunte, rogue, warlock and now mages most important stickys, but not all of em, so i need ur help on other forums and this for whats missing.
U can go to the old forums via: http://12.129.217.203 help while they're up
-- Legos --
Ive decided to write a FAQ guide for the class, simply because Ive seen so many posts in this forum about the same questions. Hopefully this guide will answer a majority of questions new Mages have and come to these boards seeking guidance about.
Thanks to the many of the excellent guides in the Profession forums, which I used pieces of to form the format of this guide. A special thanks to all of us Mages on these forums who try to help one another by answering the questions of our fellow Mages.
Wheres the official Blizzard guide on the Mage class?
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/mage.html
Wheres the unofficial guide to the Mage class?
Visit the Mage forums for a wealth of information by your fellow Mages here: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.aspx?fn=wow-mage
You can find more unofficial Mage class information here: http://wowvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Classes.Detail&id=3
What is supposed to be the role of the Mage class?
The Mage class is primarily a ranged damage-oriented support class that has three separate schools of magic available to them: Arcane, Fire, and Frost. The three different forms of magic schools available to the Mage make it a very flexible class to deal damage to almost any type of creature in the game. The Mage also has the strongest multiple target area of effect (AoE) damaging spells/abilities in the game. Other support functions that a Mage can provide include single target control [Polymorph], and short-term crowd control [Frost Nova/root effects]. The Mage class is also the only class that has the ability to conjure food and drink This saves a great deal of cash for the Mage and his/her friends. The Mage is very highly sought after class for groups, raids, and instance dungeon crawls.
Although the Mage is a very strong group-role class, it makes a very effective character in soloing many same-level quests and creatures on its own. The general rule is:
-Anything below your level is safe
-Anything one/two levels above your level will cost a good portion of your mana but is usually safe and you should expect resistances at around 10-25%
-Anything three levels above your level will cost you a majority of your mana and a decent supply of your health and you should expect about 50%+ resistances.
-Anything four levels above your level or higher will cost you all of your mana, all of your life, potions/mana gems, and you should expect around 75% or higher resistances. Success is not ensured and may result in an unplanned visit to the Spirit Healer in some cases.
What character stats are most important to my Mage?
How important a stat is to your Mage truly depends on how you wish to play your Mage. It is the general understanding of the Mage community that Intellect and Stamina are the two top priority stats a Mage should focus on: intellect impacts your Mages critical strike chance with spells and increases your available mana pool; stamina increases your Mages health points. Spirit, although the description states it regenerates your mana and health pools, is largely seen as insignificant by the Mage community simply because of its diminishing returns at higher stat levels and lack of effectiveness during spell casting. Agility and Strength stats primarily affect melee-based characters defensively and offensively. Although these melee stats can affect a Mages melee abilities, the benefit from these stats alone will not impact your function in combat as greatly as the others [intellect, stamina, and spirit].
What armor, weapons, and tradeskill professions can a Mage learn?
- Mages start out with proficiency in Cloth armor; Mages cannot learn any other armor types, regardless of their character levels.
- Mages start with the weapon skill Staves. Mages can also learn how to wield Daggers and 1 handed swords in addition to their existing weapon skills.
- New spells become available to Mages on every even-numbered level: 2, 4, 6, etc to 60. Be sure to visit a Mage trainer as soon as you can upon reaching an even-numbered level: you will be finding it more difficult to fight creatures at your new level without updated spells.
- Mages, like all characters, have the ability to learn any two of all the available tradeskill professions.
Where can I find more information about tradeskill professions?
The official Blizzard profession guide can be found here: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/professions/
The player community has put together an awesome amount of in-depth information [FAQs] regarding all available professions, here: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-professions&t=40&p=1&tmp=1#post40
What tradeskill professions should I train into for my Mage?
Tradeskill professions vary in effectiveness on a per-player and per-character basis There is no one perfect profession that is absolutely best for every Mage; all of us play our Mage differently and have different goals/needs for our characters. It would be strongly advised to read through the above mentioned links to better understand tradeskill professions and decide upon which, if any, you would like to explore with your Mage. It is a general rule of thumb that the gathering professions have the potential to make money without as much effort, time, or money as the crafting professions gathering professions can sell their items directly on the auction house whereas crafting professions must gather/buy resources, learn how to create the item, create the item, and then sell it. However, the crafting professions do provide your character with the ability to produce useful items for your character without the need to purchase them from someone else.
What are talents and which are available to the Mage class?
All classes obtain the ability to train in class talents upon achieving level 10 with their character. Talents are ability/spell enhancements for your character classes. Once your character reaches level 10, a new icon will be placed on your action bar that allows you to access your class talents allocation page The keyboard shortcut key is by default the N key. Training in your class talents requires one talent point per ability/skill/spell ranking you wish to learn. Your character will gain one talent point per level from level 10 through level 60 51 talent points in total at level 60. A character cannot move allocated talent points once they have been spent. The only way a character can clear their talent point allocations is to visit their class trainer and ask them to reset their talents. Please remember that this will reset ALL your talent points, it is not a selective process and you will be refunded all of your talent points as if you never spent them. This talent reset process is expensive: 1 gold for the first time you reset your talents and the price increases steeply afterwards; try to plan ahead on a talent roadmap if you can.
For a Mage, talents are split into three categories: Arcane, Fire, and Frost. A character can train in any of the three available talent trees [tabs/categories available on the talent allocation page]. As a matter-of-fact, a majority of players train into two or more talent trees because they wish to have spells and abilities within multiple talent trees available to their characters. Remember that just because your Mage trains into one talent tree does not mean that your character cannot use any other schools of magic. For example, if your Mage character has trained extensively into the Frost and Arcane talent trees it does not mean he/she cannot use the Fire-based spells any longer; although you may find it more effective to use those magic schools you have placed talents into.
Where can I find more information about available Mage talents?
Blizzard's official talent calculator can be found here:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/mages/talents.html
An excellent resource for creating a talent roadmap for your character is here: http://wowvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Talents.View&category_select_id=4
What is this 33/18, 30/16, 31/20 talent thing I keep hearing about?
Class talents are broken down into categories, as mentioned previously, and players tend to create what are called talent builds for their characters. Talent builds are usually represented in the form of numbers and slashes: numbers representing the number of talent points into a talent tree and the slashes separating different talent trees. For example, if you see a 33/18 Frost/Arcane talent build, you would expect 33 talent points allocated into the Frost talent tree and 18 talent points allocated into the Arcane talent tree.
Alcaras began a thread in the Mage forums whose sole focus is on talent builds and explanations of talents. This excellent guide/thread can be found here:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-mage&t=23&p=1&tmp=1#post23
Most popular talent builds, for all talent trees, can be found here: http://wowvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Templates.List&class_select_id=Mage
I am having some problems understanding what some of these spells do, help!
Do not panic, you are not alone in having a difficult time understanding all your spells. Not only are some of the Mage spell descriptions misleading or very vague, they are sometimes just insufficient in explanations. I will list some of the most popular spell-related questions here:
- Amplify Magic: This spell can be cast upon yourself or your group mates and will amplify [increase] any magical effects on the character; th
