4x mage priest week 1

[genocyde]

While I jumped in to my first round of arena this week as 4x arc welder and disc priest.

Went pretty well at 6-4 allthough one match I was up against a shaman 4 box with a dedicated healer thats somewhat practiced Curse you budkin!!! I didn't even know what to do when I saw your team. I was 5-1 at that point and all I could think about was your grounding totems eating 20+ of my spells (lousy grounding totem absorbing infinite spells that hit at the same time!!) I tried just aoeing you down. Didn't see thunderstorm coming til it was over. GG!!

Anyways I've found that being able to kill anyone in 2 gcd's with instant spells really wrecks house. The first team I played sent a warrior in to fear me and he did not live through his charge, dropped dead halfway through. Proceeded to nuke them all one by one after that.

A couple games they grouped up and ate 4x blizzard. That was pretty much a team 1 shot. I think i'll call this build Blizzard Cleave lol.

Anyways i'm only around 16k - 20k health on my guys with 200 resilience or less. 6-4 didn't seem too bad considering that. I'll keep you all posted.

[remanz]

Very encouraging. I am curious to know how do you start your battle. Just mount in, nova, and pew pew ? I am assuming you are by urself to 5 box arena.

LOS is the biggest issue to casters. And arcane mages die super quickly. Seems like all you got is iceblock. Your initial burst somewhat = elemental shamans. Though you got more burst after that vs shamans only frontal burst.

And I'd imagined biggest problem for you will be warlocks again. He can probably just stand there and let you nuke him while smash all of your characters to the ground with shadow fury.

[David]

I tryed 4 mages starting in the outlands and I hated it.
The LOS problems and the control isn`t to good compaired to a single char. Tho it`s clear that I needed a healer for them.

Keep us updated tho, would love to know how it goes.

Btw, are you playing the priest as well?

[genocyde]

Ya, I'm playing the priest as well.

For starters, the low survivability of an arcane mage is countered pretty good by a disc priest. I can pre-stack mana shield and power word: shield on all 5 and their livability is actually pretty high. Pair that with fire ward, spell steal, counter spell, slow, etc. I pretty much laugh at casters.

Warlocks are no exception, unless someone else has me distracted they get pummeled into the ground. In fact warlocks are among my first target as is any other char with fear. I always keep fear ward up on the priest and mass dispel is a .5 sec cast do get rid of aoe fears if i'm fast enough. Or I just trinket them. Also shadowfury doesn't effect me I can just blink out of the stun hit interact with target and start blowing instants while running at my target.

I'm not sure how to compare my burst with shamans. I'm not sure any other class in the game is similar to arcane mages. I can hit for 4K+ every 3 seconds with arcane barrage which is instant cast, another 4K with Fireblast every 6 seconds which is instant with no travel time. If I arcane barrage and then fireblast they all land at the same time for a near gauranteed instant kill. If I pop my cooldowns my damage just gets worse and if you give me a chance to stand still I'll just spam arcane blast which can hit for upwards of 15k PER MAGE at a fairly quick pace.

As for opening... I have a macro that hits my target with 2 spell steals, counterspell, slow, and dispel and cycles through which mage is counterspelling so its hardly ever on a cooldown. I hit any target with this as you'd be suprised what it does to some targets (even warriors hate getting silenced). So right off GCD one my target loses up to 4 buffs, 2 of which go to my mages, get silenced for 4 or 8 seconds and get their attack/cast/movement speed reduced by 20% and procs torment the weak giving me 12% increased damage on them. Then I pop arcane power, Icy veins, trinkets, and mirror image giving me 20+ mages that they have to figure out who is who, increased damage and haste. Then it all depends on the situation.

LoS is actually a huge bonus for arcane mages as all my damage is instant and arcane missles will track through walls. You get out for a split second for me to start an arcane missles and all 20 hits will track you down through a wall at 2-5k per missle for an easy 50k+ dmg. And I love hiding just around a corner so that i can nail people with a quick instant as they round the corner. If a whole group comes around the corner I can spam arcane explosion and holy nova for ~10k AoE per GCD while getting some minor heals too.

My big weakness for sure is 5x cloth armor. Melee hurts like crazy, especially in my current bad gear. Disc priests can pump out an enourmous amount of healing but playing the healer and 4x dps limits my reaction times. A good warrior can take me out in just a few swings or a single bladestorm if i don't have iceblock up.

Overall my favorite thing about this group so far is the mobility. Shaman may be better defensively but I can nuke very hard on the run with no special cooldowns and there isn't too many classes that can pump out the dps an arcane mage can if I get to stand still. I can't wait to see what this group is capable of when geared properly.

If nothing else it's extremely fun.

[Seldum]

If nothing else it's extremely fun.

Which is very important.

Keep us updated, it sounds like alot of fun.

[Kromtor]

I've seen no mention of polymorph. Given it doesnt require target facing it's a very powerful spell for multiboxers. Use a /cast [arena#] polymorph macro (replace # with 1,2,3,4) for a method of attempting to poly much of their team, also consider a second cast soon thereafter assuming they'll trinket. There may or may not be a good time to use this, just keep it in mind. It works well for some shammy teams with hex.

[Phoenix_King]

Which toon do you drive with or do you swap constantly? I can see advantages to controlling a mage or the priest.

[genocyde]

I drive with the priest as much of my healing is mouseover (with all healing macros /targettarget backup for when i'm driving a mage)

Ya, being week one I figured I was going to forfeit 10 games as some mages are still around 16k health. I honestly hadn't counted on having a chance so things like poly haven't even been set up yet. I was very happy to go better than 50%.

[outdrsyguy1]

that's awesome genocyde, i actually tried it with 5 fire mages which was fun but didn't go well. I would invis before doors opened, try to guess where they were standing then pop out and go boom lol. I don't have a priest healer, i wonder how it would go with my druid healer.. probably not good lol, the aoe fear is huge.

[remanz]

duh, i have forgotten about arcane mages' slow. With multi target sheep and slow, your team is definitely looking good.

Arcane mages are all about controllable burst. It is somewhat like shaman, but more OP lol, since the main spells are instant for burst. I think if you can land that sheep (let them trinket). It is pretty much over for them. Just make sure you cc or burst them down before they CC your priest to fuck up your target assisting (this is driving me nuts by the way, main gets blinded, slaves can't assist. Even after my main wakes up, slaves still have their target stuck. I have to do a leader switch to solve this.)