Using a fraction of my mages abilities.

[shaeman]

My mages are 39 now, and I've realised that I pretty much only ever use fireballs and arcane explosions.

I've added abilities as I've gone along but don't seem to have progressed with my mage abilities.

Is it just the fact that mages burn things down so quickly I generally wont need the other spells , or, and be honest here, do I suck at mages and should be using a larger number of spells.

To be honest if i hadn't subbed the druid/pally in as lead (and dropped a mage) I would probably have stoped boxing them.

[Zaelar]

Could you kill things faster than whateverbolt or aoe spam? I'm guessing no at your level. Ideally you want to be able to just spam one button so you can concentrate on other things.

[davedontmind]

I have a single level 70 frost mage, and to be honest they're not very complicated to play anyway.

I find I mainly use frostbolt, with the occasional frost nova, or ice lance. Oh, counterspell and blink sometimes too, but I imagine blink would be somewhat of a gamble with a multibox team...

So I don't think you're limiting things too much.

[Griznah]

Fireball, Fireblast, Frost Nova, AE and Counterspell(on round-robin). All I ever used on my 5 mages, up to level 45.
yeah, and Blink.
Blink is doable, but situational, I made it work very good. It breaks follow tho.

[shaeman]

I suppose really I don't need to worry too much about using all the abilities.

I do frost nova occassionally - but am more likely to arcane explode.

I have got Iceblock now and that would be useful in an emergency, then again with my pally I can pretty much get aggro back with righteous defense, and mobs don't live that long. (not instancing with this crew either).

I think I will have to solo play a mage a bit when I level up so I know how to play the class well.

At that point I will have a better idea of how to access more of the mage abilities.

In retrospect I probably didnt use too many of the shaman talents on the way up - considering it was lightning bolt, chain lightning, heal and drop totems (optional) but I didn't feel too bad about it as I knew how to play the class already.

[davedontmind]

In retrospect I probably didnt use too many of the shaman talents on the way up - considering it was lightning bolt, chain lightning, heal and drop totems (optional) but I didn't feel too bad about it as I knew how to play the class already.

Hehe. I'm having the opposite problem to you then. I have already solo'd a mage to 70, but I've just started 5 shamans, and all I really use at the moment (level 30) is lightning bolt and earth shock. It isn't even worth dropping totems most of the time because I'm killing mobs so fast that I'm not in one place long enough to make use of them. I keep promising myself that I'll stop and learn all the different spells/abilities, work out some totem rotations etc, when I get to level X, but when level X comes around I just want to do 1 more level, 1 more quest ...

[Sarduci]

Hehe. I'm having the opposite problem to you then. I have already solo'd a mage to 70, but I've just started 5 shamans, and all I really use at the moment (level 30) is lightning bolt and earth shock. It isn't even worth dropping totems most of the time because I'm killing mobs so fast that I'm not in one place long enough to make use of them. I keep promising myself that I'll stop and learn all the different spells/abilities, work out some totem rotations etc, when I get to level X, but when level X comes around I just want to do 1 more level, 1 more quest ...

About lvl60 you'll start to care. Before then it's just OP'd goodness.

[TheBigBB]

The point of other mage skills is to maximize DPS or keep yourself out of harm's way. In a group of 5 or whatever mages, there will never be a reason for either of those things from normal quests. Also, the dynamics of what makes a great spell rotation change as you gain more spells past 60 and probably now up to 80, so setting up complicated casting macros until then might be a waste of time.

[moji]

Hehe. I'm having the opposite problem to you then. I have already solo'd a mage to 70, but I've just started 5 shamans, and all I really use at the moment (level 30) is lightning bolt and earth shock. It isn't even worth dropping totems most of the time because I'm killing mobs so fast that I'm not in one place long enough to make use of them. I keep promising myself that I'll stop and learn all the different spells/abilities, work out some totem rotations etc, when I get to level X, but when level X comes around I just want to do 1 more level, 1 more quest ...

I always drop my water totems, 1 mana spring and 4 healing streams... more out of habit than anything. Mana spring usually will replenish the cost of the totems in 6 ticks. So if you're in range of them for more than 15 seconds, you'll be gaining mana back, plus with the healing streams going, you won't have to worry about casting a heal spell to top of health bars. I guess this also depends on how you grind, if you're just picking things apart as you go, in succession, I guess it wouldn't make a difference, because you'd be out of range and have to redrop every 3-4 mobs. But I prefer to run into a pack of mobs, even body pulling on my way in, droping totems and laying waste to everything in range, so I'm next to my totems for up to the full 2 minutes as I kill off over half a dozen mobs and loot and skin them.

as far as using abilities go, 90% of a class's abilities are situational, survival based, or just fluff. Warlock curses? yeah you'll really only need 3 for most occasions. raiding as dps, for a fire mage, in my experience is fireball spam with a few scorches, that's pretty much it. As a rogue, it's count to 3, Slice and dice, count to 5, rupture and stay away from the head.

[Griznah]

As a rogue, it's count to 3, Slice and dice, count to 5, rupture and stay away from the head.

Don't forget to watch out for the tail as well