Mages, at 85, how would a 5 mage setup work for pvp?

[ZooljinX]

I've become very tempted to continiue my 5man mage team sitting at 60 atm, my only fear is i will get instagibbed at 85, the damage i can put out is insane, but defence wise i feel very squishy as a cloth, so if anyone has any input on mage boxing in pvp at 85, any comments or experiances they would like to share id be very greatfull!

I've been playing with the thought of going 4 mages one preist or maby a paladin, but i really like the idea of 5 mages, the damage is just wicked :D

Oh and sorry if i missed a thread on this, i couldnt find any that was fairly upp to date

thank you for your time!
Zoljin

[Ualaa]

I would lean towards the 4x Mage, 1x Priest (or druid) route.
A priest/druid is very mobile, and either gets you the option to rez.

I believe mages have roots on three or four different diminishing return timers.
Not sure how well you could use them all.
But still that is a lot of different diminishing return timers.

I would definitely go with Frost.
Anything that became frozen would be hit by 4x/5x Icelance, which would be pretty sick.

[fleaplus]

If you can survive until getting 2200 resilience, then you will have a lot of fun from then on. Even with our "non-standard" comps of 5x warlocks and 5x feral druids we can still just run around blowing up just about anything in our path. Healing is nice, but I got so fed up with my healer being focused back in season 8 that I have done away with them in all of my groups now.

[ZooljinX]

hmm yepp i can imagine the way to get to some good gear will be a pain in the ass.. but hey, we boxers arent afraind of some grinding are we? hah..

I also shot a glance on the Dranei racial, 20% Heal for 15 sec, and it stacks, so you can get 100% of your HP(say they focus your main) for 15 sec, it is a 3 min cd tho.. but it could be usefull in those situations where you get jumped and focused

[Ualaa]

The only thing I don't like about no healer, is one member dies but the rest survive.
Which happens fairly frequently, at least for me.

My Paladin is easily the hardest toon to kill on the team.
Armor, shield, bubble, self heals -- never out of range/LoS/IWT-running off, plus the DK's can Death Grip things off of me.

Any smart opposition of course do go for the Paladin.
Melee are without a paddle and up shit creek... the DK's constantly snare them.

Casters can hit hard, but the Pally can outheal the DPS of any two casters fairly easily, at least as long as the mana lasts.
And the DK's can Death Grip a caster into their blender, which includes the Mind Freeze every 2.5 seconds.

If you can work a healer into the team, and find a way to protect them...
I'd definitely include one.

[Emo?]

A bit offtopic; Ualaa, are u dooing HCs with you group yet? If so when u in PvP controll the fight from your paladin, how do you manage your team in HCs? Im currently clearing hcs on my 4x Dk team and i find it pritty easy cause i control from the tank and just have the slaves as dps with a random healer. But i can immagine the problems if i would have to controll the healer aswell ^^

[ZooljinX]

damn all this talk about Dks and paladins haha, i wish i thought they where fun to play.. my team is kinda stuck on 72 cant get the strength to lvl them atm.. will see how it goes with the mages :) typ for your input ualaa very good read as allways!

[Ualaa]

Mages should give your healer a bit of an edge.

The opposition will be snared a large amount of the time.
Or frozen, which is even better.

Each of DPS has the equivalent of a bubble to survive a bit of focusing; Cold Snap will get you a second Ice Block too.
So you don't necessarily need the biggest and fastest heals.

If your biggest need was a rezzer, possibly run with a Prot Paladin and 4x Mages.

I would probably go with a Disc Priest.
But can see going with five mages, and should one die... the others can either head towards the nearest graveyard or go suicidal.

[zenga]

The thing with rezzing a toon in pvp is that you need to get out of combat. You lose like half a minute with that, and quite often by the time you are out of combat and in a static spot, you meet new enemies. A shaman healer who can self rez might be an option here.

On a sidenote, I'm shifting away from the healer idea in pvp. I run pure dps at the moment. Also finding 5 to be 1 too much to handle properly, so really considering of focussing on 4 dps teams from now on.

[Noids]

I came up against a 5 mage team in 5s rated at about 1900. The key to 5 mages is more the massive CC options you have. They all started invissed, almost 1 shotted one of my team then sheeped the rest and just focussed them down one at a time.

The game was over so quick they hardly needed any healing. Between frost shield, ice block, healing through evoc I got 1 kill from memory.

The issue with having an effective 5s team like that is that cc is key though and I can't imagine how hard it would be to control the cc from each char. Doing it in PvE is one thing where sheep lasts 6 times as long and mobs don't have trinkets and dispels. Doing it in PvP where you are getting cced/dpsed too is a completely different story.

So as 5 individuals I reckon mages are a really tough team esp. against a 1 healer, all melee dps team like mine. As a multibox team though, it would take some serious organisation, low ping times and reaction times for regular wins to come.

[Pycno]

I had 4 mages and 1 priest since TBC. It was strong in TBC, even stronger in Wotlk, ridicilous in cataclysm. I did not level them past 80 but I think they would become much stronger at max level with good items.

I didnt bother much with arena, I prefer challenges in games not based upon grinding. My highest rating was 1600, tactic was to use everything I had and either win/lose within a few seconds. I used fire spec because of the massive aoe.

[Littleburst]

The advantage in Arena though, is that you can macro your sheeps. Which is a lot harder to control in BG.

[Ualaa]

Looking at each of the compositions I've played extensively in battlegrounds, at one point or another.
-- 4x Elemental + 1x H.Paladin // 5x Elemental.
-- 5x Feral // 5x Boomkin
-- 4x DK + 1x Paladin.

I never have an issue getting out of combat to rez a fallen toon.
Of course I stick to the larger battlegrounds, heavily favoring AV.
In something like EotS, once enemies are taken at a base, but the graveyard hasn't capped... a rez is easy.
Once the graveyard is held, it is so close that releasing is the best option.
In AV at say Iceblood Graveyard before it has capped, with Stormpike as the nearest alliance graveyard... having a rezzer is infinitely preferable to being half the map away from those who died.

[Toned]

I came up against a 5 mage team in 5s rated at about 1900. The key to 5 mages is more the massive CC options you have. They all started invissed, almost 1 shotted one of my team then sheeped the rest and just focussed them down one at a time.

The game was over so quick they hardly needed any healing. Between frost shield, ice block, healing through evoc I got 1 kill from memory.

The issue with having an effective 5s team like that is that cc is key though and I can't imagine how hard it would be to control the cc from each char. Doing it in PvE is one thing where sheep lasts 6 times as long and mobs don't have trinkets and dispels. Doing it in PvP where you are getting cced/dpsed too is a completely different story.

So as 5 individuals I reckon mages are a really tough team esp. against a 1 healer, all melee dps team like mine. As a multibox team though, it would take some serious organisation, low ping times and reaction times for regular wins to come.
/cast [@arena#] Yourspell = mass sheep/hex etc it's easy

[drevil]

any words on a frostmage nerf?

i just played 20x 2v2 games and got 15x frostmage+misc .. they don't even need to try hard .. blizzard failed so hard

if there is no statment from blizzard i'll start leveling up 4 mages asap.

.

[Ualaa]

There's nothing on nerfs to the control of a frost mage.
The damage is tweaked a bit, up and down.

But the snare and freezing, is on several different (four I believe) diminishing returns.
Sure with a bunch of mages you won't be able to use every root effectively.
But still you can round-robin a bunch of them.
Such that Freeze A, goes Mage A, Mage B, Mage C, Mage D, etc.
And try to not cycle through them too quickly, but instead of Root A (Mage 1), Root B (Mage 1), Root C (Mage 1), Root A (Mage 2), Root D (Mage 1), Root B (Mage 2)...

Blizzard stacked will suck for anyone caught in the AoE.
Not sure the team is overpowered from a damage point of view.
But if you can manage your CC effects, including Roots...
It will suck to play against your team.

You can Polymorph at Arena Targets, for coordinated CC.
You could Round-Robin sheep, in battlegrounds... even if its not macroed to specific targets (arena 1, arena 2, etc).
You can start an arena match invisible, and then basically blow someone up.
Not sure if you can go deep enough for Presence of Mind -- if you can, 5x Instant Cast something with a cast time, 5x Instant Cast... that's 10 nukes without warning.