Mage gear for Arena and BGs?

[Trick]

So I'm about to cap honor on 4 of my 5 mages and need to purchase something for use at 80. Now I know that I'll need at least a little bit of hit for PvP, so the i264 cloak with hit is one option. But I'm more concerned with the option of haste or crit gear.

My playstyle puts me using nearly all instant-cast spells and PoM-something, and nearly all of those instants have cooldowns. This leaves me questioning gearing with haste.

But then resilience on opponents reduces both my chance to crit and the damage the crits will do. Which causes me to question gearing with crit.

Anyone with some experience to add to this?

[Shodokan]

If you are arcane haste is close to useless for a boxer. Especially if you are relying mostly on missiles and barrage. Frost mages use haste so they can get extra casts off for shatter combos.

[genocyde]

I guess PvP might not benefit as much from haste as PvE (haste is pretty much the only arcane stat in PvE) but I'm starting to switch out some of my crit gear for haste for arcane PvP. Missiles benefit from haste and you have to have huge haste to even get an arcane blast off in arena and crit is getting near useless to me since I run an arcane / shatter spec for PvP (80%+ base crit chance on frozen targets).

Really it's up to playstyle but arcane / crit is slowly getting me no where in arena now adays.

[Trick]

Yeah, but here lately I'm not using AM or AB at all. That's why I'm thinking haste won't help.

My cast keys are basically ABarr, Fire Blast, Cone of Cold, Arcane Explosion, Ice Lance, Frost Nova, and whatever I have macroed to PoM.

[Stealthy]

I'm gearing up mages at the moment as well...similarly to you, I'm arcane spec'd and most battles I just run around using instant nukes, so I focus on crit over haste - using Slow / Barrage/ Fire blast to soften targets as they run in, then nova / ice lance to finish off (Arc power where needed for extra burst). Although PoM / Icy Veins / Arc Blast can be good alternative too. ;)

My advice - I would go for the set pieces first - the two cheapest items (legs & hands) will cost you 78K honor and give a nice set bonus of +29SP and +100 res, as well as decent stat boosts on stam, SP and crit. The extra res really helps because initially you'll be very squishy...

Cheers,
S.

[genocyde]

I'm curious are you doing arena at all or are you doing BG's and gearing up still?

[Trick]

Still leveling up actually. Just about to hit 76 with 4 of the mages; the 5th is already 80.

I was about to cap honor, so I've just purchased the i264 Hit cloak (which will put me around 5% on all spells with talents) and will enchant it with SpellPen.

Based on the chatter so far on this thread, I think I'll be going Crit with the rest of my gear.

[Stealthy]

Something else to consider - the WG shoulders are pretty easy to get and have hit: Titan-Forged Shoulderpads of Domination.

I'm only doing BG's with my team, I have no illusions about their viability in arenas (i.e. none ;)).

Cheers,
S.

[genocyde]

I have no illusions about their viability in arenas (i.e. none ;)).
I aim to prove that wrong :) If only I had the time to finish my gear off.

I had some good fun doing arena at the end of last season 4 mages + priest. I had a few really good games (won in under 10 seconds) and a few really bad games, but I'm pretty sure it's worth trying. I have no illusions of this team passing 1800 though. I think it would be possible with a dedicated healer but even then it would take some luck as to what kind of team I get matched against.

I've been busy leveling another mixed team but they are 76 and I'll get back to gearing as soon as they ding 80 and can start the gear grind.

[Stealthy]

Ok, you got me curious now - what spec were you running doing arenas?

How did a normal match play out? Did you pop mirror image and nuke like hell? :)

Cheers,
S.

[genocyde]

Ok, you got me curious now - what spec were you running doing arenas?

How did a normal match play out? Did you pop mirror image and nuke like hell? :)

Cheers,
S.

My spec was something like http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#o0xiczrczLGu0tjdZhfbhk0h. I don't remember exactly but thats the general idea. Plenty of stuff you can move around.

The way I started a match depended on the team but most of them I ran to a LoS object of some kind and waited for someone to get close. First person within range ate an arcane barrage followed by a PoM+Arcane Blast, which either killed them instantly or brought the rest of the team running to save them.

Then I immediately blew all cooldowns (trinket, icy veins, arcane power, mirror image, etc) and cast 4x blizzard on as many people as I could making sure I got my original target if he lived. This puts a weak mortal strike effect on everyone, spreads some damage around, slows everyone (+12% damage from torment the weak) and starts freezing people in place. As soon as a good target choice gets frozen I hit them with arcane barrage + fire blast. They hit at the same time which means if the target was frozen you'll get 90% crits and probably kill them off. Then toss some ice lances at anyone else thats still frozen.

If you've scored some kills at this point you can just run around finishing people off with counterspells and normal play. For the rest of matches just get creative with a sheep arena1-4 and slow arena1-4 macro.

The map with the elevators is by far my favorite. I cant count how many times i opened by blowing all cooldowns and casting blizzard as soon as the gates dropped and killed everyone in seconds. (4x blizzard + mind sear is like 10K + damage per tick aoe and with icy veins/power infusion up it ticks very fast)

[Stealthy]

Thanks for the tips...going to give this a go when I get a bit more geared and see how well it goes. :)