Mage: Full Guide!

Hey guys! Tristie here, and as promised, Raynor's very own Frost Mage Guide for all those 2 shot enthusiasts out there. But first, I have a surprise for you!

Yeah, like that mouse? It's called the Razer Naga. You may or may not have heard of it, but what I will tell you is, it has over 17 buttons, won several awards for best gaming peripheral, and I'll be giving one away NO strings attached to one lucky commenter!

Now, without further adieu, Raynor-

First off, I want to clarify something. Frost mages do NOT take skill. They might have during Wrath of the Lich King, but now the skill cap has been dropped to sub-par level. In fact, the class is so bloody easy a guide shouldn't be necessary, but I've chosen to write one out for you guys despite this fact. Let's start with talents.

There are dozens of builds for the Frost tree, some go into fire, most go into Arcane for Improved Counterspell. But what all have in common, is the fact that they are all arena composition specific. Let's say for example you have a Rogue who uses Wound Poison (Reduces healing done to the target by a certain amount) in your 2s team. Would specializing into Permafrost (Also reduces healing by a certain amount) really be that necessary? These are the things you need to factor into your build when specializing, not just for Mages, but all classes.

Now that that's out of the way, I've managed to squeeze Frost into one basic, cookie cutter build that should be viable no matter what you're doing.

Talents: 7/0/34

 Advantages: Just the amount of Fingers of Frost charges you will be getting out of this build are enough to take a target down in a few Frost Novas and Ice Lances. This build is damage centric.

Disadvantages: Mana. Since this build does not include Enduring Winter, or any mana gain talents for that matter, prioritizing what spells you're going to be using to max out your mana pool in any fight is going to be important, but as I mentioned above, depending on your composition in arenas, you can specialize out of certain talents and put them into another. It's up to you. 

Glyphs: When choosing glyphs, always keep this in mind. As a PvP mage, survivability always out weighs damage. You get most of your damage through talents, which also voids out the need to socket or enchant critical strike. 

 This is your basic glyph setup, it will differ from specialization to specialization, but for Frost mages focusing on PvP, you always want a setup similar to the one pictured.

Macros: There aren't to many beneficial mage macros out there, but here are a few I use that I deem to be completely necessary.

 Auto-Stop cast macro to enable you to hit blink. In other words, you can blink mid-cast if you find yourself in trouble. 

 Auto-Stop cast macro to enable you to hit Counterspell. In other words, you can Counterspell mid-cast if you find yourself needing to silence your target. 

Iceblock cancel aura macro. What this enables you to do is, click once to iceblock, click again to take off iceblock. This voids the GCD (Global Cool Down) caused when trying to click it twice without the macro. 

 Auto-Stop cast macro which enables you to mitigate against incoming spells mid-cast. 

My personal favorite, click once to summon your Water Elemental (Frost specialization only), then click again to bring up the cursor to Frost Nova with your pet. Saves key binding space, and can increase your APM by tenfold.

- Raynor

I hope you guys enjoyed this World of Warcraft Frost Mage Guide, and as always, have fun, play to win.






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