Frost Mage

[Perrigrin]

So, I want a macro that pops trinkets, icy veins and elemental when available - and otherwise just spams frostbolt - Is that even possible?

Or do I have to do a click macro and get the timing right?

Was hoping that this would do the trick:
/use 13
/use 14
/click BT4Button73
/castsequence Icy Veins,Summon Water Elemental

the click is just a /cast frostbolt

[Perrigrin]

The above seemed to pop icy veins, but never get to the elemental, so tried:

/use 13
/use 14
/castrandom Icy Veins,Summon Water Elemental
/click BT4Button73

which seems to be working, but not 100% :P

EDIT: Nope, gets stuck when one of the first spells are on CD....

[Perrigrin]

And sorry to spam, but the above after further investigation turned out to do nothing once the elemental is on CD.... so now im stuck with just spamming FB.

/use 13
/use 14
/cast Summon Water Elemental
/click BT4Button73

wont go passed the elemental if it's on the CD....

[Solon]

The way I understand it, boxed frost mages are usually just frostbolt spam with another key to pop elemental when it is up. Can you now glyph for permanent elemental? Then it's just frostbolt lol.

My frost mage is only 15 so I have no real experience, this is just what a thorough search concluded.

Otherwise you are looking at


/castsequence [@] reset=whatever frostbolt,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, (whatever commas you need for frostbolt cooldown at your clicky speed)
/cast elemental
/cast icy veins
/use13
/use14That will likely cause some dps loss on the frost bolts though. It also assumes IV is still an instant cast buff. If you want you could add a couple of commas BEFORE frostbolt that would make sure your IV , trinkets, and elemental were used ASAP.

[Sam DeathWalker]

Ya, glyph of eternal water.

[Ualaa]

My mage is using:

#show Frostbolt
/cast [nopet] Summon Water Elemental
/cast [pet] Waterbolt
/cast icy veins
/cast focus magic
/cast presence of mind
/cast Frostbolt

[Perrigrin]

My mage is using:

#show Frostbolt
/cast [nopet] Summon Water Elemental
/cast [pet] Waterbolt
/cast icy veins
/cast focus magic
/cast presence of mind
/cast Frostbolt

Are you using any addons to handle macros, for the life of me I can't seem to get macros with multiple /cast to work :(

[Ualaa]

That one is a straight wow macro.

[Fursphere]

I tries a frost Mage 75 when 3.3 went live. The dps was pathetic

if you want dps for boxing, go arcane. Frost still sucks IMO

[Ualaa]

I would go frost on a mixed caster team.
You are gaining a lot more then from a higher dps spec.
The snare and freezes, virtually guarantee the mobs are dead before they reach your team.
It can be pretty nasty in battlegrounds as well.

On a team with a tank, it is no longer essential to drop mobs before they reach your team.
In which case, additional dps is almost always preferable.

My frost mage does comparable (80-90%) dps to my destruction warlock and boomkin druid, both in mixed quest blue/greens as new to 80th toons. The elemental shaman is doing more then the others at this stage of gearing.
I would suspect the gap will continue to widen, as they gain gear.

[pinotnoir]

What is the dps sequence for an arcane mage? My frost mages just spammed frostbolt which made boxing pretty easy. If arcane was that easy it may be worth trying.

[Fursphere]

What is the dps sequence for an arcane mage? My frost mages just spammed frostbolt which made boxing pretty easy. If arcane was that easy it may be worth trying.

Arcane Blast x3, then Arcane missles. Just castsequence it.

When you get geared, go AB x4, then AM.

Its pretty awesome DPS, even at 75.

[pinotnoir]

Does arcane missles break follow still? I remember having that problem in BC with my 3 mages when I did arcane back then.

[TheFailTrain]

With the changes that they made to deep freeze has anyone been able to find a way to add it to their /click macro rotation? I did some testing on a target dummy but it didn't work very well because the dummys aren't actually immune to stuns.

[Perrigrin]

Since we are sliding over to arcane here, I dropped that since my button spamming didnt work well with Arcane Missile as it's channeled and my button spamming interrupted that - Is there a way to fix that?

[Pallarfo]

/castsequence [nochanneling] arcane missiles,
something like that

[Nolife]

/castsequence [nochanneling] arcane missiles,
something like that

or you can add " /stopmacro [channeling] " at the start of your macro. I use that on my boomkins.

[outdrsyguy1]

if anyone has a macro they use for arcane i'd love to see it. Even with a decent click macro I don't see how you could not end up doing nothing at times from either clipping your channel or not having your click timing EXACTLY right and end up waiting for a couple seconds after the missiles (i think there's a proc to cast them at like 2.5 sec vs normal 5 sec)

[Zektar]

This is what I'm using on my (lvl 76) arcane mage:

/castsequence [nochanneling] reset=combat/target Arcane Barrage, Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Missiles

Reading the above posts, maybe I should dump the arcane barrage, but all my other characters start their dps rotations with instant casts too, meaning I can use it while they're still moving into position during trash etc.

I dont use click macro's at all, so if you're looking for something specific to that I cant help you I'm afraid.

[outdrsyguy1]

does the [nochanneling] keep you from interrupting another channel with a cast?

[Fursphere]

does the [nochanneling] keep you from interrupting another channel with a cast?

Yes.

[Perrigrin]

Ahh thanks a lot guys, I'm yet to implement this all around.

[daviddoran]

my mage is usually my top DPS toon, despite being the worst geared. I added mana sapphire to my dps macro, and still pop mirror image manually, but its a TON of dps. I have been spending some solo time with each of my toons, tweaking macros, UI, gear, gems, etc. I recommend running pugs solo with the new dungeon finder, helps you learn more about your class. Ive seen mages in ToC 10 doing 8k DPS on bosses, and on Twins like 12k... Mages can dominate the dps charts when geared.

[pinotnoir]

respec my mages to arcane and have not noticed much dps increase on the target dummy. I am using this macro.

stopmacro [channeling]
/cast icy veins
/cast arcane power
/cast presence of mind
/castsequence [target=focustarget,harm] [] reset=target/combat arcane blast, arcane blast,arcane blast, arcane missiles

I will test it in heroics thursday. I am thinking frost is better because the elementals do damage while I am running around.

[daviddoran]

if you are in decent gear (no greens) you should be oding 4 arcane blasts before arcane missiles. Ideally you would keep casting blast until the hasted missile procs, but you have a ~90% chance of it proccing once you get to the 4th cast of arcane blast anyway. That old macro of mine was before a recent patch where they buffed the stacking buff you get from arcane blast to have 4 stacks and cost less mana. Hell just straight casting arcane blast is theoretical best dps provided you have the mana for it.

also, at the end of my macro I added

/use mana sapphire
/cast mirror image

and that can help boost DPS (moreso back when we had T8 set bonus)

[pinotnoir]

if you are in decent gear (no greens) you should be oding 4 arcane blasts before arcane missiles. Ideally you would keep casting blast until the hasted missile procs, but you have a ~90% chance of it proccing once you get to the 4th cast of arcane blast anyway. That old macro of mine was before a recent patch where they buffed the stacking buff you get from arcane blast to have 4 stacks and cost less mana. Hell just straight casting arcane blast is theoretical best dps provided you have the mana for it.

also, at the end of my macro I added

/use mana sapphire
/cast mirror image

and that can help boost DPS (moreso back when we had T8 set bonus)

I will change the macro up and test it thrusday. My gear is decent. I am in full epics but I lost the meta gem bonus due to upgrading. I am not going to regem to get it active again until the upgrades I want are purchased. I just need the head and chest and my meta will be working again.

[genocyde]

I run 3x arcane mage for my heroic group and 4x mage for PvP group. I've run several different configurations of arcane and for me I just spam arcane blast until the boss is dead. If you don't do enough dps total in the group that may not be an option but i would be willing to be /castsequence is hurting your dps.

Casting arcane missiles will hurt your dps unless you proc missile barrage.

you could try something like
/cast [mod:shift] arcane missiles; arcane blast (not sure on syntax)
that way spamming that button will spam arcane blast and basically you hold your mod key and press button to cast arcane missiles and clear your arcane blast buff.

When I ran this type of setup on my arcane mage i used mod key as kind of a mana throttle. If my mage had less mana % then the boss had health % i started cating arcane missiles every 4th arcane blast / missile barrage proc etc.

My 3 mages can kill most heroic bosses just spamming arcane blast and not run out of mana. Granted they have 24k mana and do 6k-8k dps.

Edit: I just thought I'd point out that my mages have absolutely no raid gear, all their gear is heroic / triumph gear.

[daviddoran]

you could get crazier, and have each mage have a different modifier key for missiles, shift control alt for instance, if you wanted to get crazy about micro....

I should set up a /clicker for arcane, it worked wonders for my fire mage and lock and shaman....

something like this maybe?

/castsequence ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,arcane missiles

/cast arcane blast

[Ghallo]

I run 3x arcane mage for my heroic group and 4x mage for PvP group. I've run several different configurations of arcane and for me I just spam arcane blast until the boss is dead. If you don't do enough dps total in the group that may not be an option but i would be willing to be /castsequence is hurting your dps.

Casting arcane missiles will hurt your dps unless you proc missile barrage.

you could try something like
/cast [mod:shift] arcane missiles; arcane blast (not sure on syntax)
that way spamming that button will spam arcane blast and basically you hold your mod key and press button to cast arcane missiles and clear your arcane blast buff.

When I ran this type of setup on my arcane mage i used mod key as kind of a mana throttle. If my mage had less mana % then the boss had health % i started cating arcane missiles every 4th arcane blast / missile barrage proc etc.

My 3 mages can kill most heroic bosses just spamming arcane blast and not run out of mana. Granted they have 24k mana and do 6k-8k dps.

Edit: I just thought I'd point out that my mages have absolutely no raid gear, all their gear is heroic / triumph gear.

Could you provide a link to your Armory? I'd love to see your spec/gear so I can figure out the upgrade path!

[genocyde]

Could you provide a link to your Armory? I'd love to see your spec/gear so I can figure out the upgrade path!

Sure thing.

My Mages:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Hellscream&n=Blaztwave
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Hellscream&n=Fireblazt
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Hellscream&n=Mirrorz
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Hellscream&n=Pyroblazt

You'll have to be a little careful inspecting me as I've started to run more and more PvP gear as I get it.

For arcane PvE look for spellpower & haste over all other stats. In my best gearset i'm around 6-700 haste with 0 raid gear. The PvP cloak is one of the best back pieces you can get still sadly.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

does the [nochanneling] keep you from interrupting another channel with a cast?
Yes.

Also, most of us setup the DPS macros such that they can be spammed, and if you're spamming like mad anyway, you won't notice more than about a few hundred milliseconds of delay in there.

[genocyde]

Oh, and btw my arcane spec on armory is a PvP spec atm. I was testing out fire a little too.
This is the arcane DPS spec that I run in PvE: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#ofxVcz0czxGuGxedZbIc0k Theres a few points in there that are movable for a bit more single target DPS or AoE dps.

[Fursphere]

you could get crazier, and have each mage have a different modifier key for missiles, shift control alt for instance, if you wanted to get crazy about micro....

I should set up a /clicker for arcane, it worked wonders for my fire mage and lock and shaman....

something like this maybe?

/castsequence ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,arcane missiles

/cast arcane blast

I actually put a lot of thought into this idea. A /clicker is normally used to deal with classes with multiple cooldowns of various lengths. The clicker builds a priority list for spells, and attempts to maintain that.

With an Arcane Mage, you have a static rotation with no cooldown abilities - so *maybe* you could get a little more with a clicker, but I'm no convinced.

You're dead on the money with the above macro concept though, just need to tune it. :)

[thmsn]

Just figured I would post my lvl 75 frost mage macro, it does have the glyph endless water that makes the water elemental permanent.

/stopmacro [channeling]
/cast [nopet] Summon Water Elemental
/click KillTargetFirst
/use 13
/use 14
/use Icy Veins
/castsequence Frostbolt,
/cast Deep Freeze
/stopmacro [exists,harm,nodead]
/assist {FTL}

[Zaelar]

/castsequence frostbolt
/cast deep freeze

Add in whatever off gcd cooldowns and targetting you want. Against trash you won't be doing great dps since deep freeze will be stunning and not doing damage, but against bosses you'll be doing decent damage. Iirc using [nopet] summoning will get your macro stuck if your pet is dead and still has a cooldown. I also suggest adding in /stopmacro [channeling] if you plan to use blizzard so you don't interrupt it.

And make sure you glyph for permanent pet.