Dual mages, fight style suggestions.

[jettmartinez]

I've got a 70 frost mage, and my style in fighting a mob has always been Frostbolt from max range, frost nova, run back to max, 180degree jump turn (for dramatic flair :D ), resume frostbolts.

Now I'm trying to 2-box frost and fire mages. Frost as the main and fire on follow. I start off with the above pattern, do my turn... and of course find my fire mage starting me right in the face 8| . I've got my arrow keys mapped passed to turn the slave back around, but by that time the nova's broke and I haven't got the feel yet of how long to hold the arrows to turn 180, so she frequently spins past 180 and is again not facing the target.

I've tried running around in a big loop to get her behind the main and facing the target. It's been marginally successful, but seems to take too long and the mages start getting beat on. (They're quite squishy,don't you know ;( )

So ... anyone out there with multiple mages have any different ideas to share? (And no, expand to 5-box and blow the mob away before it gets to there isn't helpful. :wacko: )

[crzywolve]

I have a dual mage team that is 25ish so i'm not sure if this will help. I had to change mine to more of an arcane build with hybred frost. run into the mob, frost them in place then just jump around and arcane blast everything down. I did mine this way for the same reason you mentioned about your follower not really being "right" where you need them for fire aoe or whatnot. just my 2cents.

[jettmartinez]

Mine are only at 15, so I don't have AE yet, but maybe I'll give that a try when I get it. I'd have to change their names though!(see sig). Hmmm ArcaneTea doesn't sound too tasty. :P

Now that I'm thinking about it, Arcane missiles will turn you a little if you're off target, and may be a bit more forgiving. Maybe I'll try that before resuming with the frost/fire.

[Zug]

For normal leveling, is it really so bad to get hit by mobs? I have leveled a few mages and without ever using frost nova, I would always be OOM before I ever was really low on hp. If you are casting at max range to begin with with 2 mages, that mob should be down in like 2 gcds. Frostbolt/Fire Ball, Fireball/Fireball, Fireblast/Fireblast, right? Kiting elites and pvp are of course different, but getting hit by normal mobs isn't the end of the world. All that time wasting gcds on frost nova, repositioning, and running at max range, seems like you'd get low xp even while leveling just a single mage.

[fpanko]

For pvp, I've found this fairly successful against players a couple levels above me.
( at level 25) Main is frost - Alt is fire

- have the main sheep the target
- start pyroblast in alt
- at 3sec, start a frostbolt or fireball on the main.
( This will unleash a frostbolt and pyroblast at the same time )
- start arcane missles from both mages.
At this point, they are usually dead before reaching me.

However, If you find them coming close; stop missles on one mage, resheep and get your distance again.
Sure, they regain a little bit of health while sheeped. But they can't attack and it is easily knock right back off with one attack.

I usually only resort to the arcane blast if I get surrounded.
Then it's: frost them in place, aoe silence, and blink. If blink isn't up, I arcane explosion while running circles around someone.



For PVE:
I can just spam frost & fire bolts. Seems to kill thing pretty fast.
No running and jumping around needed. Just blow something up and move to the next thing to blow up.

[jettmartinez]

For normal leveling, is it really so bad to get hit by mobs? I have leveled a few mages and without ever using frost nova, I would always be OOM before I ever was really low on hp. If you are casting at max range to begin with with 2 mages, that mob should be down in like 2 gcds. Frostbolt/Fire Ball, Fireball/Fireball, Fireblast/Fireblast, right? Kiting elites and pvp are of course different, but getting hit by normal mobs isn't the end of the world. All that time wasting gcds on frost nova, repositioning, and running at max range, seems like you'd get low xp even while leveling just a single mage.Sure, in a perfect situation. But even in the lowbie areas there will be times when a patrolling mob aggros on you, or you pull more than you though you would, or whatever. Leveling, for me, isn't just about being as efficient as possible, it's about exploring what you can do with the class and how to get better at it. Add to that the unique aspects of multi-boxing for more of a challenge. And shhhh, don't tell anyone, but doing something more that just spamming a cast button for 70 levels, can be kind of fun.

[Unholy[S]haman]

Here is what I suggest, park him a bit behind you, off follow etc but still facing the mob, then Frostbolt the mob, frost nova, run,jump turn then frostbolt and fireball, the other mage will remain now a bit in front of you, probably next to the mob, facing him and able to fire away. Otherwise position him to the side.
I am a frost mage my self, let me give you a tip where you can do 5K dmg in one cooldown with about +-700 spelldmg.
Start pull: Frost bolt, frostbolt again. Mob is near then frost nova. Turn and blink away, turn to face the mob.
Cast frost bolt but then 2 seconds before frost bolt is sent, SPAM the hell out of icelance, and you will often see frost bolt and icelance sent at the same time.
If you specced frost properly, your frost spells will have an increased 75% crit chance or something like that.
This means that anywhere from 80-100% your spells will proc.
Normall I do an average 3.2k frost bolt crit + 2k icelance crit (=5.2k + the 2 previous frost bolts, there fore +- 7.6k dmg..) If this doesnt kill them fireblast, no need even for fire mage. Otherwise make it so that you have 4 frost bolt macros
e.g.:
Key board button:| Frost mage: Fire mage:
Think of it as a table.
______________________________________
1 | Frost bolt | N/A |
______________________________________
2 | Frost bolt | Fire ball |
______________________________________
3 | Frost bolt | Pyroblast |
______________________________________
4 | N/A | Pyroblast |

Now if your starting your pull, Press button 4 or 3
Then once pull has initiated Press either 1,2 or 3. By this time the mob should be dead, then just do a dual fireblast. (You could make it all button1 on keyboard but just say 1, shift+1, ctrl+1 etc)
Just play around with specs and spell combos, remember that it might help to say bind AWDS to your mains movement keys then Left, Right,Up,Down arrow buttons to alt movement keys, so if you alt is slightly off target just hit Left or Right arrows.
Also remember frost nova and sheeping is your friend, but honestly if you are 2 mages, the mob should go down in 2 ticks, Also you should soon get ice shield etc, doesnt matter if a mob touches you, just spam arcane explosion and it will die before your shield runs out.

I do the "park alt off behind me or somewhere near" method when I aoe farm with my mage and resto shaman. I just have my shaman as alt and pop ES on mage, and pop him and totems in a clear spot, agro all the mobs on the mage, bring them nearish to shaman then Iceblock (ES wont put the shaman in combat), frost nova, blink away, then have blizzard and arcane explosion marcos that will also make my shaman cast lesser healing wave on me (downranked to generate less agro).
So basically i get 1 or two blizzards in then just run in an arcane explosion, normally my shield holds but if it doesnt i got ES and healbot on me, helps ALOT.

[Gadzooks]

Just to add my 2 cents, I'm leveling 2 mages, one arcane, the other fire, and my solution was to have a macro that is just "/follow <main> /assist <main>, set it to a key (I'm using "f" right now), and then on the same key on the main, I set that to "Target nearest mob".

So, if I click on a mob with the main, or cycle to one with F, and move, the second mage follows and adjusts to fire on the mob. It seems to work most of the time, except mobs that run up behind - then it's arcane explode time. Most of the time, mobs are dead before they reach me, so I don't worry about up close fights.

I'm working out focus macros to sheep with the second, then return fire on the main's target.

I like it, because my secondary is always targeted to the same mob, unless I manually reset it's target. Works for my shaman pretty well, too. I don't know how well it would work with more than 2, though.

When the arcane mage pairs up with my druid, I have two macros - the one above, and one that's just assist, so I can feral charge and still be attacking from far away on the mage. For Mage/Lock, the follow/assist works fine, as the pet ties the pet up and I just burn them down.

When I get some time to play this week, I want to try setting the turn keys, or A and D, to Shift A and Shift D on the secondary to do emergency turning in combat. I just want to see how effective that could be as another tool to have ready at all times.

Criticism and advice very welcome. :)

[Otlecs]

When I play two mages for farming, I do pretty much what you describe - long-range nukage, frost nova, run / blink for distance, turn and fire.

To avoid the drone standing there staring you in the face, all you need do is take a couple of steps forward (towards the frost nova'd mob) with your main to turn the drone around.

That's much easier than trying to gauge how long to hold the turn key down, with the added bonus that they continue to follow, reducing the chance they'll be left behind :)