Dual boxing mages spec?

[nFuriate]

Hello all!

To start i'm fairly new to the dual boxing scene. Only recently bought a second account to take advantage of the RaF scheme a week ago. In that time i've leveled my dual boxing shamans to 59 but not to 60, otherwise I believe they lose the ability to grant levels. Now that went very smoothly and was very easy to manage, as I specced them both Elemental.

Now, according to my goal to level every class barring the ones I already have at a high level, i've moved on to a mage. I'm debating what spec to have on these. On one side I could go both full fire and just nuke things down. However I could go full frost as i've heard (from these forums) that dual Frostbite and Shatter would be a great combo. Also I could spec fire/frost, but I think this would be shooting myself in the foot so to speak, with the different spell ranges, cooldowns etc.

I am here to ask of you for your opinions on what spec should I level these mages? What works well? At the moment i'm very tempted by the dual frost spec.

Thanks :thumbup: ,

nFuriate

[Rudi89]

I would use two Frost mages. You get good synergy with Frostbite and Shatter and I would think it would be more mana efficient than a Fire build. At least through the beginning levels.

[Akoko]

Two frost mages can keep a large group of people frozen indefinitely. It'd be scary to imagine what 3 or 4 could do.

Assuming fear bombs don't exist however.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Frostbite/shatter works great on dual mages and to some extent on 3 mages. With the changes to crits against frozen mobs a few patches ago, 4+ mages would be much better suited to going fire or arcane/fire.

[Zub]

Frostbite/shatter works great on dual mages and to some extent on 3 mages. With the changes to crits against frozen mobs a few patches ago, 4+ mages would be much better suited to going fire or arcane/fire.

Hi Ugh,
Could you elaborate on that bit a little please? is it that fronzen mobs only allow a number of crits before the freeze breaks or something?
I've started magex3 and was thinking going fire in any case, as i cant see how i'd manage the water elem novas anyway, but i'm interested in this.

Thanks

[Akoko]

Frostbite/shatter works great on dual mages and to some extent on 3 mages. With the changes to crits against frozen mobs a few patches ago, 4+ mages would be much better suited to going fire or arcane/fire.

Hi Ugh,
Could you elaborate on that bit a little please? is it that fronzen mobs only allow a number of crits before the freeze breaks or something?
I've started magex3 and was thinking going fire in any case, as i cant see how i'd manage the water elem novas anyway, but i'm interested in this.

ThanksYes and no. A frozen mob always breaks its freeze after a certain (somewhat random) amount of damage. Basically, if your mages aren't casting at the exact same time, your first mage could break the shatter 1 or 2 seconds early, and the clone(s)'s frostbolt(s) will not get the shatter bonus.

The guy playing the Don's is slightly wrong... A theoretically infinite number of mages could shatter on the same target, providing they all frostbolt at the same time and immediately let loose an ice lance (or a fireblast before you are level 66) and all frostbolts and ice lances will gain the shatter crit bonus. Shatter is decided as soon as the spell is cast, not when the spell hits. So a frostbolt/ice lance that is finished casting while the target is frozen will probably crit regardless of whether or not it is still frozen when the missile actually hits the target.

With 2 mages you'd probably be better off not speccing fire... You don't have the sheer power of 4-5 mages so you need to synergize some survivability by having both frost. Four on-demand shatters is nothing to scoff at.

Impact procs would probably only be effective with a large number of mages spamming scorch on the same target.

[Naysayer]

Two frost mages can keep a large group of people frozen indefinitely. It'd be scary to imagine what 3 or 4 could do.

Assuming fear bombs don't exist however.How do you keep them frozen with diminishing returns?

[Akoko]

Two frost mages can keep a large group of people frozen indefinitely. It'd be scary to imagine what 3 or 4 could do.

Assuming fear bombs don't exist however.How do you keep them frozen with diminishing returns?By "indefinitely" meant "as long as it takes for you to actually kill them". Usually a pet frost nova and a regular frost nova is enough, add in a couple sheeps here and there if you need additional CC.

But yes, more than 3 or 4 frost mages is redundant. I think the general rule is 2 box is frost mages, 4-5 box fire or arcane/fire, and 3 box would probably work either way?

Anyway, if you insist against fire, remember there is 40/0/21 with shatter. My 70 mage with almost 1200 spell damage can pull off a 6.5k frostbolt and 3.5k ice lance shatter combo with arcane power and trinket. When he's actually specced for it, but for raiding I use 40/0/21 arcane blast spam without shatter.

If I had 4 mages, I would make 2 frost and the other 2 arcane/frost.

[Zub]

Thanks for the clarification, akoko


Two frost mages can keep a large group of people frozen indefinitely. It'd be scary to imagine what 3 or 4 could do.

Assuming fear bombs don't exist however.How do you keep them frozen with diminishing returns?
Btw are diminishing returns for the fearer or fearee? i mean with 2 people fearing one enemy, will they still both reach the 'immune' after (lets say) the 4th fear, or will they both have 4 fears each (making it 8 fears before they both see the immune message) ?

[nFuriate]

Seems like i'll be speccing Frost then. Sounds all round good and looks fun as well. Thanks for the advice everyone, i'll start leveling them tomorrow.

[pinotnoir]

2 pom pyros are fun. I have 3 and will be testing them out once I get more gear. I plan on 2 shaman 3 mage when grinding bg's so I will have EM NS CL + 3 Pom Pyros every 3 min

[Tasty]

Scorch and impact are great until diminishing returns kicks in :(

[Millz]

I've got 4 frost mages at level 40 currently, and frost is definately a nice spec. Yes 1 char can break the freeze, but with winters chill stacking, the ice barrier shield, water elementals, and frostbite.. the target mob is constantly frozen.. and drops incredibly fast.

I was taking down elite mobs in SM without the target being able to move from its original spot when i first attacked it....

[aluminex]

Hello all!

To start i'm fairly new to the dual boxing scene. Only recently bought a second account to take advantage of the RaF scheme a week ago. In that time i've leveled my dual boxing shamans to 59 but not to 60, otherwise I believe they lose the ability to grant levels. Now that went very smoothly and was very easy to manage, as I specced them both Elemental.

Now, according to my goal to level every class barring the ones I already have at a high level, i've moved on to a mage. I'm debating what spec to have on these. On one side I could go both full fire and just nuke things down. However I could go full frost as i've heard (from these forums) that dual Frostbite and Shatter would be a great combo. Also I could spec fire/frost, but I think this would be shooting myself in the foot so to speak, with the different spell ranges, cooldowns etc.

I am here to ask of you for your opinions on what spec should I level these mages? What works well? At the moment i'm very tempted by the dual frost spec.

Thanks :thumbup: ,

nFuriate
Don't go fire.. you can't flamestrike....

[Naysayer]

Thanks for the clarification, akoko




Two frost mages can keep a large group of people frozen indefinitely. It'd be scary to imagine what 3 or 4 could do.

Assuming fear bombs don't exist however.How do you keep them frozen with diminishing returns?
Btw are diminishing returns for the fearer or fearee? i mean with 2 people fearing one enemy, will they still both reach the 'immune' after (lets say) the 4th fear, or will they both have 4 fears each (making it 8 fears before they both see the immune message) ?The fearee.

4th fear from any source before diminishing returns have cooled down is going to be an immune to fear.

[Aethon]

2 pom pyros are fun. I have 3 and will be testing them out once I get more gear. I plan on 2 shaman 3 mage when grinding bg's so I will have EM NS CL + 3 Pom Pyros every 3 minCompletely fun. Until you see them go to 2 grounding totems and you scream at your laptop :-/

[Ughmahedhurtz]

The guy playing the Don's is slightly wrong... A theoretically infinite number of mages could shatter on the same target, providing they all frostbolt at the same time and immediately let loose an ice lance (or a fireblast before you are level 66) and all frostbolts and ice lances will gain the shatter crit bonus. Shatter is decided as soon as the spell is cast, not when the spell hits. So a frostbolt/ice lance that is finished casting while the target is frozen will probably crit regardless of whether or not it is still frozen when the missile actually hits the target.[edit: note to self: drugs R bad, mmkay?] I played mine before and after the change and the nerf to damage was dramatic and killed the last reason I had to stay frost. This is a subjective impression of mine but I recall it being a dramatic and obvious change. /shrug

To clarify for previous questions, pre-2.0, you could chain critical with huge damage bonuses against targets that were frozen in place (a result of the synergy of frost nova/frostbite + shatter + ice shards). With the introduction of Ice Lance, mages were deemed to be able to do too much damage to rooted targets and was nerfed to compensate. Here's the 2.0 patch note for the change:
Increased the chance Frozen effects are broken when the target is critically struck by a spell. The question arose, shortly thereafter, whether the change was done such that a "certain increased number" from damage or the RNG would cause the break or whether it was an absolute "all criticals will break the frozen effect" change. My play experience supported the latter as my subjective impression was that I had a LOT harder time killing things before they got to me due to a dramatic decrease in multiple frostbolt/ice lance crits against frostbitten targets. Posts from Blizzard CMs seem to only reinforce ambiguity on this, as noted in the following two posts:

The chance Frozen effects are broken when the target is critically struck by a spell has been increased.

This should only affect Frozen targets that are hit with a spell crit; the Frozen effect can be broken by a spell crit from any player, not just the player that created the Frozen effect. However, please keep in mind that this is already how the game currently works. Only the chance of the Frozen effect being broken has been changed; the types of attacks that can break the Frozen effect will not be changed.

It is still possible to score Frostbolt followed by Ice Lance on a frozen target and get double crit, however the situation will still be closely monitored and may be adjusted in the future.

The change affects Frost Nova. Frozen targets were never intended to be frozen after a critical. However, the usage of Ice Lance made it very noticable that being frozen was persisting through being crit, whereas normal damage had a chance to break the state. By insuring that a crit will break the frozen state, back to back crits from Ice Lance won't be occurring and such spikes in damage disappear. The obvious result of this for multiboxers is that once the first critical hits the frozen target, it immediately breaks, preventing your other 2-4 frostbolts/icelances from gaining the critical bonus against frozen targets from Shatter. This renders having more than two frost mages in your mage group a pointless proposition as the whole reason to spec frost is for control and shatter crit damage. When you start killing things that are immune to the slowing effect, the only thing remaining is the shatter crit damage. Thus, my point about having more than two mages being pointless to remain frost.

Just in case I missed some recent mechanic change since I last verified this, I'll go respec my fire mages to frost tonight and pull some logs.

Cheerio.