Mage team tips needed

[Stealthy]

A few suggestions I have for the other mage teams. I've been playing 4mage + priest since WotLK release.

1) Get an IWT button + stop moving button ASAP. Me personally I have IWT on mousewheel forward and move backwards on mousewheel backwards. This fixes any blink issues you'll ever have. You can always arcane barrage or fireblast while IWT is helping you face your target. When I blink a quick roll forward then back on the mousewheel faces all my mages at the target.

2) Get used to arcane missiles. Nothing is more hilarious than having some pillar runner step out into LoS for an instant only to have 5x arcane missiles trained on them. This cast will finish right through a wall if it has to. They cannot escape it and it does massive damage. You can easily kill a geared player in one round of arcane missiles while they hide behind a wall thinking they are clever. + if you proc missile barrage on enough mages that is your highest burst skill period.

3) If you do arena. Get macros to sheep all + slow all. by the time they find a way out of this you've blown at least one person up. I personally open with slow then PoM+Sheep arena 1-4 and then blow all cooldowns and nuke.

4) Get round robin frost nova ASAP. It will keep melee away for a long time. Save blinks for bladestorms or after a good frost nova.

5) Use this spec and tune it how you like. Blizzard is your friend. It puts the 20% healing debuff on all and procs a lot of freezes you can then use for some shattered arcane barrages.

Thanks for the tips...how do you manage the missile barrage procs? That is the one thing that puts me off spending 5 points into it...

Cheers,
S.

[Trick]

Not wanting to do a direct hijack here, but I finally got my mage team to 80 about 8 days ago and I'm still trying to figure out the best way to move forward with them as well. I would love to give you an armory link, but I can't seem to find any of my toons or guilds on the Armory today

I find myself using nearly nothing but instants against other players, and cast times for Bal/Vann/tanks only. So I'm speced deep arcane currently, with splashes of Frost and Fire for cooldown reductions
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#ocxifzMcdcGuGtedfZ0h

I've started gearing with nothing but required hit and Crit, which has me looking at a new spec -- http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#of0ifzMcdeGzMt0dfVZbI0b
My goal is to maximize the damage of every crit (with Fire and Frost also enjoying Spell Power from Arcane) and use Frostfire Bolt for PoM and for stationary burndowns. I'd love some comments.

Also, I'm still searching for a good Slow and Poly macro. I wrote one, but I'm starting to think that the evaluation logic works from right to left, and not left to right. When I try to use these in arena, I end up just focusing on my then-leader's target.

#showtooltip Slow
/cast [@arena1,exists,nodead] Slow, [@focustarget,harm] Slow, [@focustargettarget,harm] Slow, [@focustargettargettarget,harm] Slow
 
#showtooltip Polymorph
/cast [@arena1,exists,nodead] Polymorph, [@focustarget,harm] Polymorph, [@focustargettarget,harm] Polymorph, [@focustargettargettarget,harm] Polymorph

[genocyde]

Thanks for the tips...how do you manage the missile barrage procs? That is the one thing that puts me off spending 5 points into it...

Cheers,
S.

I have two different ways I manage missile barrage procs. One for PvE and one for PvP. The PvE one is fairly simple I run a modifier macro for arcane blast with a different modifier for each mage. When unmodified > arcane blast when modified > missile barrage. Then just watch for procs on my party bars or addon of choice.

For PvP however I use PowerAuras. I set up a graphic that looks like the missile barrage icon in a convenient area of my screen. I modified the graphic into 4 separate files that were each 1/4 of the missile barrage icon. I used power auras to track the missile barrage buff on each mage while lighting up a separate 1/4 of the icon. When all mages currently have the buff it lights the whole icon and begins flashing.

I find it worth casting arcane missiles when situationally appropriate really no matter how many mages have missile barrage and when I see that icon near fully lit I generally target switch and blow someone up. I've seen a 4x missile barrage kill a full health target before even finishing the cast. Missile barrage is insanely strong. Especially glyphed against a frozen target (OMG damage).

As for those of you not speccing into the frost tree. I promise the first time you frost nova a warrior mid intercept before he's within melee range and cast a full arcane missiles at him watching him go from 40K health + spell reflect to 0 health and humiliated in 1.5 seconds you'll never stop smiling. Shatter + healing debuff is amazing. I've killed an entire 4 DPS beast cleave team in under 20 seconds with an arcane power + icy veins + improved blizzard.

Also, make sure you evaluate incanters absorption right. Odds are you aren't using it and if your speccing into it your wasting 3 points all together.