Mage One-on-One PVP Technique

One-on-One PVP Technique

As a mage, you shouldn’t have any problems taking out other ranged classes, such as hunters, since you will almost always deal more damage than they do. A duel with another mage will generally come down to a contest of skill and equipment, assuming both mages are of equal level.

Your main problem, then, will be in dealing with melee classes, especially warriors and rogues. If you want to stand any chance against melee opponents, you need to put distance between yourself and your foe; slowing abilities like Frost Armor work, as do roots like Frost Nova. In a pinch, you can use Blink to instantaneously warp out of harm’s way, or use Polymorph to give yourself time to flee from an enemy that’s gotten the jump on you.

There's a host of techniques here dependent on which talent trees you specializes in. The general technique is similar. You normally have no problem outgunning ranged classes (such as other casters, hunters, etc). So your main concern should be to put distance between yourself and melee capable classes (warriors, paladins, rogues, shamans). Do this by using frost armor, blink, frost nova, and poly is a great way to take the advantage away from someone who got the jump on you.

One thing to note is that many mages on PVP servers tend to sacrifice pure specialization in one talent tree for a mix of talents in a pair of trees, usually Arcane/Fire or Arcane/Frost. In Arcane, the big PVP spells are Arcane Missiles and Arcane Explosion, but you’ll usually want to have a few Fire talents for increased damage or Frost for slowing enemies. You can also specialize on Fire or Frost, while gaining a few Arcane talents for versatility’s sake. The usual split is 31 talents in the specialization tree and 20 in the other, since 31 is the minimum required to access the powers on the seventh tier of the talent tree.

Group PVP

As with group PVE, you’re going to be responsible for taking down specific targets with your nuke spells, but you’ll have to be even more careful about staying alive, since you can’t rely on your warriors to hold aggro. On the other hand, you can cast AE spells without automatically gaining the attention of every enemy on the opposing side, so things like Flamestrike and Blizzard are great to cast on the point where most of your melee classes are duking it out. If you stick to spells like these, you probably won’t draw too much attention to yourself, but if you insist on using Improved Arcane Explosion while standing next to the melee fighters, you’re going to become a priority target right quick.

In addition to pure damage, you can use your crowd control and rooting spells to cause havoc on enemy forces. Polymorph is great to use against any enemies that look to be a specific threat against you, especially those that are outside of any main melee areas, while Counterspell and Frost Nova can also be fairly annoying for your foes.

Your job in group pvp is similar to that of in PVE. Your main focus here is dishing out dmg fast while making life difficult for the other team through careful use of polymorph, counterspell, and frost nova. Since you're sure to have multiple targets, using AE spells such as arcane explosion is certainly a good choice but spamming ae is a sure way to gain the attention of the opposing force.

Equipment

You’re going to want to look for three specific types of equipment, with one of the most important (and most expensive) types being those that add damage to spells from a particular tree. E.g. you will sometimes find a staff that adds six damage to all your Fire spells, or something similar. These will often cost a fair amount at the Auction House, but are well worth your while if you can find one that augments your primary spell tree.

The only other things on equipment that are important for mages are bonuses to Intelligence, which increases your mana pool, and Spirit, which increases your mana regen. The balance between these two skills changed fairly often in beta, but in general, you’ll probably want to focus on Intelligence, since it also increases your chance to get critical damage on your spells. Besides those two, though, Stamina is always useful when it crops up, as your low life total and poor armor will make you a knockover in combat.

Commonly a mage concentrates his gear on that particular tree by equiping items that add dmg to his primary line of nukes. Intelligence is also good as it increases spell critical chance as well as mana pool. Otherwise, spirit and stamina are always good choices.