4x mage priest week 1

[genocyde]

While I jumped in to my first round of arena this week as 4x arc welder and disc priest.

Went pretty well at 6-4 allthough one match I was up against a shaman 4 box with a dedicated healer thats somewhat practiced :) Curse you budkin!!! :) I didn't even know what to do when I saw your team. I was 5-1 at that point and all I could think about was your grounding totems eating 20+ of my spells (lousy grounding totem absorbing infinite spells that hit at the same time!!) I tried just aoeing you down. Didn't see thunderstorm coming til it was over. GG!!

Anyways I've found that being able to kill anyone in 2 gcd's with instant spells really wrecks house. The first team I played sent a warrior in to fear me and he did not live through his charge, dropped dead halfway through. Proceeded to nuke them all one by one after that.

A couple games they grouped up and ate 4x blizzard. That was pretty much a team 1 shot. I think i'll call this build Blizzard Cleave lol.

Anyways i'm only around 16k - 20k health on my guys with 200 resilience or less. 6-4 didn't seem too bad considering that. I'll keep you all posted.

[remanz]

Very encouraging. I am curious to know how do you start your battle. Just mount in, nova, and pew pew ? I am assuming you are by urself to 5 box arena.

LOS is the biggest issue to casters. And arcane mages die super quickly. Seems like all you got is iceblock. Your initial burst somewhat = elemental shamans. Though you got more burst after that vs shamans only frontal burst.

And I'd imagined biggest problem for you will be warlocks again. He can probably just stand there and let you nuke him while smash all of your characters to the ground with shadow fury.

[David]

I tryed 4 mages starting in the outlands and I hated it.
The LOS problems and the control isn`t to good compaired to a single char. Tho it`s clear that I needed a healer for them.

Keep us updated tho, would love to know how it goes.

Btw, are you playing the priest as well?

[genocyde]

Ya, I'm playing the priest as well.

For starters, the low survivability of an arcane mage is countered pretty good by a disc priest. I can pre-stack mana shield and power word: shield on all 5 and their livability is actually pretty high. Pair that with fire ward, spell steal, counter spell, slow, etc. I pretty much laugh at casters.

Warlocks are no exception, unless someone else has me distracted they get pummeled into the ground. In fact warlocks are among my first target as is any other char with fear. I always keep fear ward up on the priest and mass dispel is a .5 sec cast do get rid of aoe fears if i'm fast enough. Or I just trinket them. Also shadowfury doesn't effect me I can just blink out of the stun hit interact with target and start blowing instants while running at my target.

I'm not sure how to compare my burst with shamans. I'm not sure any other class in the game is similar to arcane mages. I can hit for 4K+ every 3 seconds with arcane barrage which is instant cast, another 4K with Fireblast every 6 seconds which is instant with no travel time. If I arcane barrage and then fireblast they all land at the same time for a near gauranteed instant kill. If I pop my cooldowns my damage just gets worse and if you give me a chance to stand still I'll just spam arcane blast which can hit for upwards of 15k PER MAGE at a fairly quick pace.

As for opening... I have a macro that hits my target with 2 spell steals, counterspell, slow, and dispel and cycles through which mage is counterspelling so its hardly ever on a cooldown. I hit any target with this as you'd be suprised what it does to some targets (even warriors hate getting silenced). So right off GCD one my target loses up to 4 buffs, 2 of which go to my mages, get silenced for 4 or 8 seconds and get their attack/cast/movement speed reduced by 20% and procs torment the weak giving me 12% increased damage on them. Then I pop arcane power, Icy veins, trinkets, and mirror image giving me 20+ mages that they have to figure out who is who, increased damage and haste. Then it all depends on the situation.

LoS is actually a huge bonus for arcane mages as all my damage is instant and arcane missles will track through walls. You get out for a split second for me to start an arcane missles and all 20 hits will track you down through a wall at 2-5k per missle for an easy 50k+ dmg. And I love hiding just around a corner so that i can nail people with a quick instant as they round the corner. If a whole group comes around the corner I can spam arcane explosion and holy nova for ~10k AoE per GCD while getting some minor heals too.

My big weakness for sure is 5x cloth armor. Melee hurts like crazy, especially in my current bad gear. Disc priests can pump out an enourmous amount of healing but playing the healer and 4x dps limits my reaction times. A good warrior can take me out in just a few swings or a single bladestorm if i don't have iceblock up.

Overall my favorite thing about this group so far is the mobility. Shaman may be better defensively but I can nuke very hard on the run with no special cooldowns and there isn't too many classes that can pump out the dps an arcane mage can if I get to stand still. I can't wait to see what this group is capable of when geared properly.

If nothing else it's extremely fun.

[Seldum]

If nothing else it's extremely fun.

Which is very important.

Keep us updated, it sounds like alot of fun.

[Kromtor]

I've seen no mention of polymorph. Given it doesnt require target facing it's a very powerful spell for multiboxers. Use a /cast [arena#] polymorph macro (replace # with 1,2,3,4) for a method of attempting to poly much of their team, also consider a second cast soon thereafter assuming they'll trinket. There may or may not be a good time to use this, just keep it in mind. It works well for some shammy teams with hex.

[Phoenix_King]

Which toon do you drive with or do you swap constantly? I can see advantages to controlling a mage or the priest.

[genocyde]

I drive with the priest as much of my healing is mouseover (with all healing macros /targettarget backup for when i'm driving a mage)

Ya, being week one I figured I was going to forfeit 10 games as some mages are still around 16k health. I honestly hadn't counted on having a chance so things like poly haven't even been set up yet. I was very happy to go better than 50%.

[outdrsyguy1]

that's awesome genocyde, i actually tried it with 5 fire mages which was fun but didn't go well. I would invis before doors opened, try to guess where they were standing then pop out and go boom lol. I don't have a priest healer, i wonder how it would go with my druid healer.. probably not good lol, the aoe fear is huge.

[remanz]

duh, i have forgotten about arcane mages' slow. With multi target sheep and slow, your team is definitely looking good.

Arcane mages are all about controllable burst. It is somewhat like shaman, but more OP lol, since the main spells are instant for burst. I think if you can land that sheep (let them trinket). It is pretty much over for them. Just make sure you cc or burst them down before they CC your priest to fuck up your target assisting (this is driving me nuts by the way, main gets blinded, slaves can't assist. Even after my main wakes up, slaves still have their target stuck. I have to do a leader switch to solve this.)

[Multibocks]

/cleartarget also works to fix the assist.

[Boyl]

I dunno, my experience with squishy classes is that you can end up losing quite a bit even if you burst down the first 1-2 targets without dying. I sense that you may have problems losing 5v3 scenarios as you start to fight better opponents.

Using polymorph on arena1..5 target macros might help there, though, since you can re-cast it so easily.

Good luck!

[Emo?]

duh, i have forgotten about arcane mages' slow. With multi target sheep and slow, your team is definitely looking good.

Arcane mages are all about controllable burst. It is somewhat like shaman, but more OP lol, since the main spells are instant for burst. I think if you can land that sheep (let them trinket). It is pretty much over for them. Just make sure you cc or burst them down before they CC your priest to fuck up your target assisting (this is driving me nuts by the way, main gets blinded, slaves can't assist. Even after my main wakes up, slaves still have their target stuck. I have to do a leader switch to solve this.)
Thats why you dont use assist focus and use the FTL leaderless setup instead :D if main get blinded i just swap window and have a new main in 1 second.

[remanz]

Thats why you dont use assist focus and use the FTL leaderless setup instead :D if main get blinded i just swap window and have a new main in 1 second.

Ya. I am actually on FTL setups. The switch takes time. 1 sec is life time when I am trying to burst down someone. And in the 5 v 5 chaotic craziness, I often can't tell if my main is CCed right away (being tauren not helping here). More often, it is "HOW COME my slaves are NOT attacking". Then "OH, my main is CCed" lol.

[Nulkunpissija]

allthough one match I was up against a shaman 4 box with a dedicated healer thats somewhat practiced :) Curse you budkin!!! :) I didn't even know what to do when I saw your team. I was 5-1 at that point and all I could think about was your grounding totems eating 20+ of my spells (lousy grounding totem absorbing infinite spells that hit at the same time!!) I tried just aoeing you down. Didn't see thunderstorm coming til it was over. GG!!



I'm not saying i'm an expert but you'd think a round robin macro for ice lance would solve this problem pretty easily :p

[remanz]

huh ? So you are in LOS of arguably the most bursty class in game. You shoot at his grounding totems expecting nothing in return ? If anything, you would have to silence the shamans. And grounding totem eats counterspell too.

I see the only chance is to bait the lava burst with a ICE block. and mirror image pew pew after that.

[genocyde]

I'm not saying i'm an expert but you'd think a round robin macro for ice lance would solve this problem pretty easily :p
The way that grounding totem works is just plain unfair imo. Ice lance has a travel time so it won't kill the totem until it reaches it. I would have to wait for that travel time before firing at the next totem and so on giving grounding totem the chance to absorb an insane amount of spells. I have thoughts on how to counter this but I won't waste much thought or setup time in worrying about running into the only other boxer on my battlegroup (that has posted here). If it becomes a problem or a common encounter (he is on my server as well) then I will worry about it.



huh ? So you are in LOS of arguably the most bursty class in game. You shoot at his grounding totems expecting nothing in return ? If anything, you would have to silence the shamans. And grounding totem eats counterspell too.

I see the only chance is to bait the lava burst with a ICE block. and mirror image pew pew after that.

I would consider shaman among the less bursty classes in the game to be honest. With the exception of their long cooldown instant lava burst they have zero instant abilities that bother me while everything I do counters them and is instant. The sheer fact of the matter is that grounding totems odd way of stacking and allowing it to absorb several spells per totem is all that really worries me about a shaman team. Take away those totems and I would think I should win 100% of the time

Oh and no... I'm not just going to stand out in LoS for a shaman, I simply was not prepared to fight a boxer my first week of arena while having 16k health and <200 resilience. I simply zerged with AoE so as to not waste his time when he outgears and out experiences me + running a dedicated seperate healer. I look forward to running into him once I am somewhat geared so I can test my theories about a boxer vs boxer match. I will still be at the insane disadvantage of running my healer myself.

[Ualaa]

Once your toons are more geared, you'll always have the option of finding yourself a dedicated healer friend, to even things up in that regard.

It is an interesting composition for arena.
It is good to see people thinking outside of the box, so to speak.
Mages + Priest; Rets + DK; Locks + Heal; Rogues + Heal...... etc... more options then 4x Shm.

[remanz]

The way that grounding totem works is just plain unfair imo. Ice lance has a travel time so it won't kill the totem until it reaches it. I would have to wait for that travel time before firing at the next totem and so on giving grounding totem the chance to absorb an insane amount of spells. I have thoughts on how to counter this but I won't waste much thought or setup time in worrying about running into the only other boxer on my battlegroup (that has posted here). If it becomes a problem or a common encounter (he is on my server as well) then I will worry about it.




I would consider shaman among the less bursty classes in the game to be honest. With the exception of their long cooldown instant lava burst they have zero instant abilities that bother me while everything I do counters them and is instant. The sheer fact of the matter is that grounding totems odd way of stacking and allowing it to absorb several spells per totem is all that really worries me about a shaman team. Take away those totems and I would think I should win 100% of the time

Oh and no... I'm not just going to stand out in LoS for a shaman, I simply was not prepared to fight a boxer my first week of arena while having 16k health and <200 resilience. I simply zerged with AoE so as to not waste his time when he outgears and out experiences me + running a dedicated seperate healer. I look forward to running into him once I am somewhat geared so I can test my theories about a boxer vs boxer match. I will still be at the insane disadvantage of running my healer myself.


Oh my comments are not towards the way you might have played against the shaman team. I was just saying that grounding totem is NOT as simple as RR ice lance. You can take it out, but you have to move in and out of LOS. This is what those solo mages do. With you playing priest + 4 mages, this might be risky. As the 4 shamans can instantly grib you with focus. And you don't even know who would eat the 4 lava bursts.

As for beating shamans, obviously you got the tools. Open with image on 4 try to eat as many as groundings you can. Be ready to bait that instant lava burst. If you see lava burst flying, Ice block on 4. PS on priest. Then just counterspell arena1,2,3,4. Then it should be your game. Not saying this will win everytime. But you sure have the tools.

[BobGnarly]

Neat. I always like hearing about different comps, and I'm sure yours has some play.

I think I speak for all of us when I say: MOAR VIDEOZ PLZ!!!