PvP'ing as a Tank

Arguably the hardest thing to do in WoW, attempting to PvP as a Protection specced character, the classic sword and board style, is an exercise in incredible frustration.
The hugest problems you have is the fact that your damage output is... well, embarrassingly low. You'll have all these people running around with 200 resilience, and you'll be like "Why bother? I have, like, 11% crit. I couldn't critically strike a critter if I tried"

The problem is simple, really. You cannot think to yourself "Ok, how the hell am I going to kill this guy?".

Ask yourself. Do healers see a hunter running up to them and think, "Holy crap, how am I going to kill this guy?" No, no they don't. They immediately look around for someone else who CAN kill the hunter, and then help them do it.

Quite bluntly, you cannot think only with yourself. You have to think about how you can interact with those around you to be successful.
Go read this post about tunnel vision.

The biggest key about being successful in PvP is realizing that you are not alone. There are other people around you, you don't have to kill that evil mage all by yourself. In fact, you most definitely couldn't. You have to start thinking with those around you.

If you are a mage in PvP, what do you do? You crowd control, you deal damage, and you stay at range. Thats what we're good at, thats what we do.

If you are a Prot Paladin, what do you do? You get up close, try to get aggro, and give the DPS people as easy a time as possible to kill the badguys.

Of course, PvP =/= PvE, but some principles hold the same. There is still such a thing as aggro, for example.
Aggro, essentially, means somebody wants to kill you. If you charge somebody and start hitting them in the face with an axe, they will want to kill you.
If a Paladin starts healing you, if the person your hitting is smart, he will switch to trying to kill the Paladin. The Paladin can wipe his aggro by bubbling, therefore rendering him invincible. Its temporary, but the enemy player will no longer be able to kill him. Hence, aggro wipe.

If you are a prot spec warrior, you cannot simply whip out a massive 2H mace and start hammering people. You aren't going to be good at it, thats not your role.
Same way as a rogue cannot suddenly switch to a ranged DPS role, or a warlock to thinking she can go around melee'ing people.

I mean, you can, but you'll fail. Quite miserably.

Let's take a completely hypothetical example.
Say you are standing at Blacksmith, there is a mage on your left, and a holy paladin on your right.
The mage is currently sitting down, and drinking.

Suddenly, you see a hunter come around the corner of the building, and target the Paladin. You are not in combat.

What do you do?

This should be easy. Your healer is in danger! Help him!

Charge the hunter, grats, you stunned him. Now the hunter, if he wants to kill anything, needs to get you out of the picture.
Act like a standard warrior, slap him with hamstring as soon as possible (the pet too, if you can), and start laying the smackdown, as best as you can. Whip out dual weilding swords if you like, and unleash a Devastate.
Suddenly your Frozen! Oh noes! Trapped! You trinket out, and then...
LOOK AROUND. NO TUNNEL VISION, REMEMBER?

Remember that mage who was drinking? Guess what? He just got Ambushed. Move yer ass over there and get in that rogue's grill!

Intervene, whatever, save the squishy!

Keep in mind that, if the mage is thinking like you, he will see that hunter out there, you on the rogue, and get around to sheeping the hunter at some point. If the mage isn't that smart, well... you did your job.

Ideally, you will tag the rogue with Rend and Hamstring as soon as you can. Keep that rogue stuck next to you, and a DoT ticking so he can't Vanish or anything like that. Keep that bleed effect up, and some of the rogues best tricks will be gone.
If the mage is smart, he's already running from the rogue, running through his own head what he can do here.
Loose hunter? Off goes a polymorph. Whirling around, he immediately starts hitting the rogue with everything he's got. Oh noes! You got blinded by something, and the rogue shadowstepped right behind the mage.
Trinket out, intercept to the rogue, keep on him. Give the mage as much breathing room as possible to unleash some more painful hell on the rogue.

The key is to be as ANNOYING as possible. Rogue pop sprint? Hit him with Concussive Blow, whatever it takes to keep him as pissed off at you as possible. Stay on the rogue until the mage can take over, like when the rogue reachs 30%, is rooted, and the mage is charging up a Shatter combo. Keep Rend up to prevent any last ditch Vanishes.

Same thing versus the hunter, when you have the opportunity.
Concussive Blow, devastate while dual weilding, hell, even stack up some sunders to piss him off.

Whether the made up WoW players did the right thing or not, doesn't really matter. The fact is, YOU are a TANK, so act like one.
You are NOT a mortal strike warrior.
You have a shield. You have Vitality for goodness sake. PLAY like a tank.

See a rogue suddenly leap out at your healer? Intervene! Intercept! Lay some quick movement impairing smackdown to give your healer time to get away.

See an enemy mage near you starting to cast sheep at your healer? Shield bash him!

And if people start hitting you with stuff, thats exactly what you want. You can take the damage, the Holy Priest behind you can't.

For Paladins, its exactly the same. Except replace Concussive Blow with Hammer of Justice, and Rend with Consecrate.

The hugest problem with this is that you will, in essence, depend a great deal on the people around you. And sometimes, they will not come to your rescue.

Sometimes, you will make the perfect setup for escape.
Like that mage earlier. You intervene, slap the rogue with hamstring + rend, and the mage promptly Ice Block. Great. Just great.
Even better is when the mage leaves the hunter unchecked, and the hunter goes off and starts trying to kill your Paladin.
Frustrating? Damn straight it is.
Yo gave that mage the perfect set up to get to range and unleash some delicious damage without having to blow any of his cooldowns, and he goes and immobilizes himself right next to the rogue.

And that happens, it really does.

But again, you really have no choice. You are a tank. You have to depend on those around you to do the damage for you, to heal you, to keep you up, and it is your job to protect them as best as you can.

A hunter trying to flee from a warrior? Hit the warrior with Avenger's Shield. Slow the brute down.
Intercept him. Throw down some Sunders, so the hunter can do more damage. Nail him with Hamstring, so the hunter can easily run away.

Warlock trying to fear your healer? Shield bash it, hamstring both the 'lock AND the 'locks minion, especially if its a felpuppy. Keep those evil things off your healer.

Keep this in mind. You have a specific role, according to your spec. You should know what it is, and play the spec. Do the best you can with the resources you have available, and try to work with the people/classes around you.
Some of them will know what they're doing. Some of them will recognize a perfect hamstring combo as the perfect opportunity to get the hell out of there.

Quite bluntly, you are a tank. Act like it.

I'm Tired

I'm tired. I'm sick. I cannot take another minute of this madness.

I am talking about Subtlety rogues, obviously.

Am I sick if losing to them? No, that is not the case. As class versus class, the dynamics haven't really changed.

What I'm sick of, what I'm tired of, is these subtlety rogues taking themselves seriously. I am sick of these rogues who run around battlegrounds pretending they have a real spec. I am sick of them using these... gimmicks.

I won't say I'm sorry for these somewhat harsh words, because I'm not.

These.... rogues... these so called Subtlety rogues, are annoying me to death.

In all honesty, the subtlety tree doesn't make sense. It seems to be an incoherent mishmash of stuff, that is better off as a collection of engineering trinkets.

Criticize me if you want, but it doesn't feel like I'm playing against an actual spec... it doesn't feel like an actual talent tree to me. Most talent trees in the game have a built in synergy to them.
Like the mages fire tree for example. Crit enhancing talents, and then talents that feed of crits.
Or, say, the arcane tree. Increases the mana cost and damage of abilities, and has an ability that does more damage the more mana you spend. It also has talents that increase intellect, and then a talent that increases spell damage based on intellect.
Y'see how this works?

And then we have the subtlety tree, which is like... people taped abilities to a dart, blindfolded themselves, spun around, then hurled the dart in a random direction.

I guess thats a little too harsh. After all, the talents do kinda make sense... I mean, it is a PvP tree for the rogues. I mean, it has to be. Look at all those survivability talents in there.

But, see, it's supposed to develop into something. Something awesome, something powerful and sexy. But the subtlety tree never actually... gets there.

Fire Mage: Check me out. I got, like, all this awesome crit stuff. And check it, whenever I crit, I do even more damage!
Rogue: Oh yeah, well, I can get more combo points after resisting your spell!
Fire Mage: Uh... huh... yeah, well, listen, whenever I crit, I also get mana back! And check this out... an active spell that vastly improves my crit rate! Isn't that awesome?
Rogue: HA! When I'm almost dead, I'm not dead, 'cause I can cheat death, you see, see? And then I take, like, no damage ever and I keep living for like an eternity and awesome, and you'll crit me for, like, 4!!
Fire Mage: Uhhh... what... what are you even talking about? Was that even a sentence?
Rogue: I CAN TELEPORT!!
Fire Mage: K, I'm gonna go talk to this warrior over here...
Rogue: GHOSTLY STRIKE!!
Fire Mage: What the... did you... did you just... what the hell?
Rogue: Can't touch this I am dodgy! I am teh MASTAH of Decepshun!

Exaggerated? Not by much.

Seriously, these subtlety rogues are getting on my nerves.

They are.... annoying. Really, really annoying.

Cheat Death is a really cool idea, but as far as I can tell, it just makes me angry.

Look, you're already dead. Seriously, stop trying. Stop fucking around, just lay down, and die. You think an extra three seconds is going to do anything? C'mon, man, you're just wasting my time, and yours.

And why, oh why did these rogues steal my precious Blink? I mean, c'mon, I'm a bloody MASTER of the Arcane! I can shoot fire from my hands! I set a damn dragon on fire with MY MIND, and now some petty thief has the same skill I do? What. The hell.
Was it really necessary to let rogues teleport? Was this really needed?
Yeah, rogues have mobility issues, but seriously... just handing them an exclusive mage spell seems kinda... unimaginative.

It's not like I hate them. It's not like I get ganked by them.

But they piss me off. It's one of those senseless things that gets you riled up for no apparent reason.

Its similar to waking up, and realizing somebody moved your slippers, and you get entirely pissed off.

"WHO THE %$^@ MOVED MY GODDAMN SLIPPERS?!"

There's no real reason...

But BLOODY HELL man these rogues piss me off.

A Disturbing Trend

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Theory of PvP? Mobile Fighting!

A deep mind for deep thoughts.

This whole thought process was sparked by a comment I left on Galoheart's website.

To reiterate here, World of Warcraft can actually be divided into two separate games. One of which is the PvE, and one of which is the PvP.
These two worlds do not interact with each other, much as players and developers alike would love to say they do. They don't.

One version is the technical detail, the precision, that goes into player versus environment. This is pitting live, human players versus artificial intelligence, and in WoW's case, its almost always not intelligent, just scripted. Not a criticism, just a statement of fact, is all.

Then we have PvP, where it is a player versus another player. Nothing is scripted, little is preset. It's simply players killing each other in a competitive environment with the tools they have.

PvE does not mesh with PvP. PvP does not mesh with PvE. You can have one or the other. A player character does not react to "aggro". A prot warrior cannot use taunt to save his healer. A hunter cannot use disengage to drop aggro. In PvP, a PoM Pyro would be a great opener, dropping a huge amount of damage right at the start. In PvE, this is called "suicide".

But I need not go into depth here.

Quite bluntly, PvE and PvP each require completely different talent specs and gear sets to be successful in each.

If you're a heavy disc priest sporting 400 resilience, you are going to be a very poor raid healer.

If you show up to an arena with your epic Tier 5 healing gear, able to keep a tank up solo for an entire boss encounter, you're going to be annihilated by a rogue named Zephirotth.

You can find hybrid specs, you can put points into both PvE and PvP talents... but in most cases, this will leave you sorely lacking in both spots.

Take mages, for example. In order to be successful arena wise, you must put hefty numbers of points into frost to be widely successful. You won't go anywhere in a competitive arena as a raid fire mage, except for a quick and speedy dirt nap.
Likewise, if you try and raid as PvP frost, you will find yourself being out DPS'd by the main tank.

So. Now that we've got that out of the way.

The developers at Blizzard have made substantial efforts to attempt to make every class viable in both PvP and PvE. Not at the exact same time, but the tools are there. The tools to be successful in PvP are present, so there is no reason you should suck, as long as you know how to use these tools.

Let's generalize.

There are two "classes" of classes in PvP. There are the melee attackers, and the ranged attackers. That's all there is to it.
Some classes attack/heal from range, other classes attack from point blank.

Each of these generalized classes need to have certain tools to be successful.
Still speaking generally, the melee attackers are restricted by the fact that they must be, well, in melee range to be able to do anything. This means, to be successful, the melee class needs to have these 2 key tools:
1) A way to very quickly close with a target;
2) A way to keep that target close.

Warriors, for example, can charge to a target, thus getting to point blank range swiftly, and can use hamstring to keep the target close.

The ranged attacking/healing classes require pretty much the opposite tools. They need to have:
1) A way to very quickly leave melee range;
2) A way to keep their target away from them.

Druids, for example, can swap to a movement form and quickly run away, and can also flat out root their target, preventing him from moving.

These abilities can be further generalized as ways to "control" the encounter. This is the essence of player versus player combat in any and all games. CONTROL.

If you do not have control, you get killed. If you have control, you are the one doing the killing.

Think about it. If you're a warrior rooted to the ground, while your target stands about forty feet away shooting burning arrows into you, who's in control here?

If you're a rogue, plunging your daggers into some poor priest's behind while he sits there, writhing in pain, due to the sword you shoved into his kidney, who's in control?

And if that same priest suddenly unleashes a Psychic Scream, and melts your brain while your running about, guess who regained control of the situation?

This is the greatest principle behind PvP in WoW: keeping control of both your movement and your opponents.
You want your opponent's movement to be as hindered as possible. Have them moving slower, in the wrong direction, or not at all is very much desired.
Keeping yourself moving as fast as possible, always in the correct direction, and at a standstill as close to never as you can manage, this is what you must strive for.

Turning to mages now. We are one of those ranged attacking classes, depending on our ability to flee our melee attackers to win in a fight.
In my rather humble opinion, mages are an extremely well equipped class in the war of mobility, and every spec adds at least one more tool. Let's go over them, shall we?

• Frost Nova. This is an AoE that roots all targets around the caster. Natch, an 8 second root is an incredibly potent ability, and rightfully so. This leaves our opponent motionless, leaving them helpless while we can safely get to range.
• Blink. A spell that simply fires the mage 20 yards forward. It breaks any and all roots, as well as stun effects. It is an incredibly potent spell. Breaking movement impairment affects on yourself, as well as instantly gaining twenty yards on your opponent... it's probably the best tool you have on the mobility front.
• Frostbolt. Simple. Damaging spell that also slows the target down to 60% of his base movement speed. This spell is most effective if the mage is specced into the frost tree. Namely, it will do more damage, take less time to cast, can root the target outright, and can reduce the movement speed down to 50%.
• Polymorph. Turns the target into a cute farm animal. This is a pure form of crowd control. The target cannot move, and cannot use any abilities.
• Frost/Ice Armor. Only bother with this pre-Molten Armor. When you get hit with a melee ability, the target is almost always slowed, and if specced frost, can be rooted some of the time as well. Use this for PvP up until Molten Armor becomes avaliable.
  
• Slow. This is a spell that is at the end of the Arcane tree, and is the only snare/root the Arcane tree has. Many do not like this spell, seeing as how it is rather lacklustre for an end tree talent. Nevertheless, it's here, an excellent kiting tool right up until it gets dispelled. Excellent to use against other ranged attackers/healers, as it vastly increases the amount of time they spend casting. It also increases the time between a hunter's ranged attacks, so there ya go.
• Impact. An extremely handy talent, it adds a 10% stun chance on any and every damage-dealing fire spell. Stuns are extremely effective in PvP, and these are no different.
• Blazing Speed. Essentially, it makes you run real fast, as well as dispelling movement impairing effects. A very nice ability, it is limited by the fact that it is random. Maybe it will proc and allow you to escape from hamstring, maybe it won't. If it does, it is a golden ability that will have your enemy in fits of rage.
• Permafrost. Increases the effect of the mages slowing effects. With this, spells like Frostbolt become more powerful.
• Frostbite. 15% chance that a frost slowing effect will instantly freeze the target. Basically a frost nova that procs at random.
• Water Elemental. A handy little minion who deals extra damage for you, and also comes with his own rooting ability wired in.

Anyone see the natural synergy that the frost tree has? Go take a look at the talents in the frost tree. DO IT RIGHT NOW!! You see whats in there? More powerful snares? More root spells? The chance to proc an additional root? And of course the incredible high power frost spells have against rooted targets?
See why mages go frost for PvP? The spec is designed for it.

So when should we use these abillities?

With all these tools at our fingertips, knowing when to use these abilities requires a cool head, and knowledge of the class you are fighting to avoid doing something incredibly stupid.

If a warrior charges you, and you frost nova and blink away, that same warrior is simply going to intercept and start beating on you again. This is not smart.
Blinking away from a rogue, and then watching them sprint + cloak of shadows and run straight at you again is also not smart.

The first step is to familiarize yourself with the classes you are fighting. Learn what other classes have to control mobility. Go check out an ability list on wow wiki if you must.
Learn that warriors have Charge. Know they cannot use it while in combat. Realize that they can Intercept in combat. Learn what its cooldown is.

This can be the hardest part about playing a mage in PvP combat, is knowing what abilities your opponent is going to use, and how to counter them. So let's quickly run through them, shall we?

WARRIOR

Remember, only EVER use blink AFTER the warrior has intercepted. NEVER BEFORE. EVER. If you blink and he has the spell avaliable, he WILL use it and you WILL be anally raped. That's just how it works.
When going into combat, try your best to prevent them from charging. Open with ice lance to get them in combat before they can charge.
When the warrior first closes to melee range, either by charging or simply walking up to you, use frost nova then and simply walk away from them. Get off a frostbolt and/or Shatter to do some damage and get them snared.
Don't forget about Cone of Cold. If things get intense, use it. It is a better snare than Hamstring.
Use the water elemental liberally. Its root effect can be targeted, meaning you can root a warrior thats so far away it isn't even a threat yet.
And Blink right after Intercept. It'll blow there MIND.

DRUID

Notorious escape artists. Spam them with snares/roots as much as possible, laying it on thick with instants. The goal is to wear down their mana, so as to render them unable to shapeshift.
Treat Feral Charge the same way as a warrior's intercept. Wait for them to use it before you blink.
Mobility wise, they will most likely break anything and everything you throw at them very rapidly. Hit them with something new every time they shapeshift. If they shift out of frost nova, nail them with cone of cold right away. Pop a water elemental freeze on them ASAP. Pray for a frostbite proc.
An excellent strategy is to silence them, then Shatter combo the druid. That will force them into caster form to get heals off, which is your cue to unload with everything you have. A druid is vulnerable while in "normal" form, and really cannot take very much damage at all.

ROGUE

Your biggest enemies here will be cloak of shadows and sprint.
CloS removes all magical effects, and gives them a 90% immunity to all spells while it is active. You have little choice but to simply flee when they use this. Hit them with at least one ice lance during this time to prevent them from leaving combat. Once CloS fades, get them re-snared/rooted ASAP.
Sprint, by itself, is not a huge threat. Once they use it, hit them with a snare/root of any kind to defeat the running boost.
The true threat here comes from when CloS and sprint are used simultaneously. At this point, you CANNOT run, because they will catch you. This, is when you Ice Block. Tag them with ice lance first to give you the full 6 seconds to out of combat. You must break ice block early, or the rogue will stealth. Alternatively, have the elemental out to keep them in combat, letting you remain ice block for the full 10 seconds if you wish. Get them resnared/rooted right as you come out of ice block. CloS will be gone at this point. Also, you can use blink upon emerging from ice block, and land a snare from there. With CloS/sprint burned, the rogue will have almost no means with which to get at you.
Dealy Throw is not very deadly. A simple snare, simply ignore it. It is not a threat. If your spells get interrupted, oh well. No big deal. Deal with it like you would a counterspell or shield bash (?) or whatever reason.
Shadowstep is an interesting development, and would be the bane of you but for one, slight problem on the rogues side. It does not break snares or roots.
Obviously, if they CloS then shadowstep, you have a problem. Well, one that can quickly be solved by Ice Blocking, but whatevs. Usually, the rogue should end up behind you, rooted to the ground. If they aren't, root them ASAP, or use blink then root them. Blinking from a rogue is usually their cue to hit sprint or something, so try and refrain from using it until after CloS, at the least, has been burned.

SHAMAN

Shaman are embarassingly easy in the whole mobility department. They have only two ways to keep you close. Frost Shock, which is a "meh" snare, and Earthbind totem, which is another snare, with the added difficulty that they already have to be in melee range for it to be useful.
As a class, shamans are going to have a lot of trouble fighting you as a mage. They will never have an opportunity to use earthbind on you, since they should rarely actually close to melee, if ever. If they do, blink, and their totem is officially useless.
Frost shock will be a hard use for them. If they use it, they'll have a standard snare on you, and will be unable to earth shock your casts.
Mobility wise, spam them with roots, stay out of the earthbind.

PALADIN

Paladins really only have the one way to affect your mobility. Hammer of Justice, we all know it. The uber paladin stun. You can blink out of it; do so. They will have nothing left at that point.
Also, beware of them Blessing of Freedom..ing... themselves, rendering them immune to roots and snares. It is highly worth a spellsteal attempt or two to snag it. Otherwise, wait it out and immediately root them again once it has expired. The cooldown will be ruinous to them once they have used it.


Please note that I have only covered stuff that has to do with Mobility here. Stuff like counterspell has been ignored, as that has nothing to do with mobility.

Questions? Comments? That's nice, I don't care.

I'M KIDDING!! Jeeeezzz.....



Edit: can someone tell me why the line spacing is all buggered up after the list in there? I can't seem to find anything HTML wise, the only stuff in there is the <> tag at the start, <> and < /li> throughout, and the < /ul > tag at the end.

Mind Boggling Stupidity

So I've spent the weekend, desperately attempting to enjoy PvP.

What was once one of my favorite things to do, and something I was good at to the point where it was my pride and joy, has become a quagmire of idiocy and moronity.

Quite simply, I cannot take it anymore.

I'm done. I simply cannot do another battleground at 70.

Wondering why I'm upset? I bet you are. Allow me to iterate my frustrations for you.

1) The introduction of the PvP dailies was, in my opinion, a great idea at the time. It still is a great idea, but the fear that it would attract people to battlegrounds for the sole sake of getting money has proven to be incredibly true. Battlegrounds are plagued with utter nimrods who haven't the slightest idea of how to play their class. These are the same types of people you see with one fantastic epic PvP piece, and the rest are random greens and quest rewards. And not good ones at that. When you see a hunter, with a turtle pet standing at its side, spamming Aimed Shot while getting beat on from behind by a rogue, something is wrong. Even more so when you realize its a blood elf who's tossed spirit enchants on all their gear.
I still think its a wonderful idea, to give the PvP'ers a source of income doing what they love. But its attracted endless reams of ruthlessly undergeared people, who have obviously never seen the inside of a battleground before.
Even worse are the (still) rampant AFKers. Its just they're smarter now. I've seen close to two dozen separate toons running path bots, to run them across a pre-set path through a battleground. I've even seen a rather high tech one that would automatically cast lifebloom every 60 seconds.
And its in battlegrounds that used to be AFK free. Eye of the Storm, Arathi Basin, ruined because there's 3-4 people standing in the starter area. I've even seen an AFKer in Warsong Gulch!

2) The pre-mades. Ever since the new daily quests, alliance pre-mades have sky-rocketed. Whereas before, they were a rarity, now its almost expected the opposing team would be a pre-made. I've run 15 Eyes this weekend, of which all 15 have been against an alliance pre-made. We did win one of those 15, so yay horde.
Arathi Basin gets five-capped against horde unnervingly frequently, but this is largely due to the horde players not having a FUCKING CLUE how to play that particular battleground.
Warsong... is embarrasing. Don't speak to me about that.
Even Alterac Valley has seen pre-mades, mostly from Andorhal. The closest we came was 377 : 0 reinforcement wise.

3) The boycott. If you didn't know, the Alliance on my battlegroup (stormstrike) have been running a boycott of Alterac Valley. It's to the point where the average queue time is an hour and a half.
Why are alliance boycotting? Lemme go ask them myself!

"We have TRIED to use these strats (well, some of us). We cannot get anyone to listen. Over and over we will tell people to cap IB, or that some need to stay and defend, etc.

However, these are constantly met with "I WANNA WIN, ZERG DREK" or "ZERG GALV".


We are TIRED of this. We constantly lose, and nobody on the Alliance will listen to the team strategies. There is 0 teamwork. Stop acting like you are all high and mighty because you clicked a button on the right instead of left when creating your character.

This is why we don't queue. Sick of trying hard as hell to get people to play as a team, only to have nobody listen, play a 40 minute game, and get no reward.

Then you call us pitiful cowards for doing this? Not only is that unbelievably stupid, but it only makes more people want to not queue, just to spite you."

There you have it. Alliance couldn't win, so they simply stopped.

Which sounds just great. Fine. You can't win AV, because you're players are terrible. Ok, no problem. I feel your pain. Oh, god, do I feel your pain.


Because now, I'm in the same position. I cannot get anywhere in PvP, because either my teammates were born with fetal alcohol syndrome, or I'm fighting a pre-made. Either way, horde gets destroyed, I get next to nothing honor wise, and I didn't enjoy any of it.

" What is the reason the horde are QQ'ing so much here about AV?

Are they not winning in other BG's and getting any Honor?

Is AV the only place they can get honor?"

says the little gnome rogue Peaquop from Stonemaul. Why would you say that, knowing full well I do nothing but fight endless alliance premades?

On the bright side, most AV's that DO come up are fine. In general, Horde dominates, in general ending up with 300+ reinforcements to zero. It's fun, its lucrative. Its just waiting two hours is bothersome.

If horde could actually play the same way in the other battlegrounds, I wouldn't be having this problem.

Horde is naturally adept at following instructions in AV. "Defence meet at Galv" "Need support Tower Point", and so on, is always followed up on rapidly, with efficiency and effectiveness.

Remember those AV pre-mades I mentioned? Even then we managed to hold our own for quite a while, managing to hold the graveyards for not one, not two, but 8 waves of attacking alliance before we lost it and fell back to the next.

Then stick those same people in Eye, Arathi, or Warsong. Its like someone threw a mental switch from "Intelligent warrior" to "total fucktard".
Most players seem to just mentally throw a stupid switch, stop listening, and go off randomly doing their own thing, get killed, and call the rest of us idiots.

So.

I'm done.

I'm through with battlegrounds until alliance figures out how to play AV, or horde stops being a bunch of morons. Most likely, this means I'll never play a BG again.

Excuse me. I need to go play some arenas on the PTR. I have Ret pallies to annihilate.

AFK Players

This is a list of known, and repeat, AFK players that I have encountered in my battlegroup.
(This encompasses Horde side only, as I cannot take seriously the members of the Alliance past a threat that must be terminated)
The following players should be reported on sight, for they are assholes.


Warcrak, Level 70 Blood Elf Warlock - Manïfest Destïny, Scilla

Derrid, Level 70 Tauren Warrior - Veritas Invictus, Archimonde

Fätty, Level 70 Tauren Druid - Apathy, Andorhal (Something really fishy about this one. Has almost the full set of Gladiator's gear, but the rest of his gear are random stupid greens. AND he has NO PROFESSIONS. I smell an e-bay)
**UPDATE** He was active in Warsong Gulch. Even ran the flag. Did not, however, deny being afk in EotS.


(Will be updated every time new and annoying AFKers are found)

(Updated as of December 28th)

Deep Fire: Battleground Domination

How to leave a swathe of destruction in your path as Deep Fire.

I am not talking about Arenas here. Frost is still the best there, in my humble opinion. We are talking about PvP anywhere except Arenas. Battlegrounds, World PvP, whatever.

The blunt fact is, Fire is good at battlegrounds. Fire is damn good at battlegrounds.

1) The Theory

Ok, this right here might be the most contraversial part of this post. Let's take a broad look at this. Mages do damage. Fire is a tree that amplifies the damage dealt. It increases damage, and crit rating, etc. If you look at a raiding mage, a standard spell rotation is to Scorch up a target to max debuffs, then fireball spam away. Most of a fire mages DPS comes from these fireballs. Max out Emp and Imp Fireball, and the damage is riding high.
However, we cannot cast Fireball in PvP. Well, ok, we can, but it is highly NOT recommended to do so (explained below). Therefore, sans fireball by the very nature of PvP, fire mages lose out on a spell that is their greatest source of damage.
Therefore, in a PvP battleground, compared to other classes, on a straight up DPS scenario, fire mages are way behind the average. Warriors, hunters, rogues, et al, do not lose a major source of DPS because of the mobility issue of PvP. They can still use their heaviest hitting attacks, and pump out plenty of damage.
Can fire mages match that? Of course we can, in fact, fire mages usually find themselves at the top, or near the top of the damage chart in battlegrounds. But the fact is, out of the classes involved in PvP, we do not have the same DPS potential as many other classes.
For example. At ~800 damage, Scorch hits for 750. Two of those in the time of a fireball cast is 1500 damage. In the same time span, fireball will hit for about 1700 (2200 if scorch debuffs are present). Fireball does more damage, but effectively roots you to the ground. Which is very bad.
As a fire mage in a battleground, you will not come close to matching the DPS of pretty much any other class in the game. Even kitty druids can school you in this department.

HOWEVER.

The theory of PvP is not to DPS. DPS is not your job as a mage in PvP.

So what are we there for? If not to DPS, then what?

Quite simply, we are there to purt the hurt on people. "Huh? Isn't that DPS?" Nope. Not in PvP anyways.

See, in both PvE and PvP, each class/spec has a "job" that they do. Mages are there for Crowd Control and DPS in PvE. In PvP, we are to disrupt the enemy team, and significant Burst Damage.
For burst damage, we have plenty of Ice Lances we can rely on. I mean, plenty of Instant Casts we can rely on. Fireblast, Ice Lance, Blastwave, Arcane Explosion, the list goes on. We have a very hefty arsenal of PvP spells we can use.
Now, the job that I think we mages are the best at doing is shutting down and destroying healers. Can we kill other classes? Sure, but we're best at removing healers from the picture, either permanently or temporarily. Failing that, we can make their lives miserable.
Think about it. A 10% chance for stun every fire spell? Ability to unload plenty of burst damage? On ten targets at the same time? And able to counterspell the first heal they cast, locking them out for 8 seconds? Even outright silencing them? Perhaps sheeping them and destroying their allies whilst they can do nothing?
It's a beautiful thing.

2) The Spells

In PvP, the faster you can get stuff done, the better. Due to the nature of PvP being fast as hell, you want to avoid casting anything that's going to take longer than 2 seconds to get off. What this means... NO FIREBALL. Sorry, mages, you're going to be skipping that spell in this here PvP.
Spells like Scorch, and any and all instant casts will be used and abused by you. Fireball, Pyroblast (unless you have PoM), skip them. "Why?" you ask. Simple.
One of the hugest things about PvP is mobility. You want to stay mobile, and keep your foes as immobile as possible. As a mage, if you let something get to melee range, you are going to get hurt. Seriously. Like, a lot of hurt. If you are sitting there, for 3 seconds, casting a fireball, you are not mobile. You are stuck there, essentially rooted to the ground. Thus, you become an instant target.
Second, if you're PvP'ing, you have Impact. No question. Impact is a 10% chance to stun on any fire spells. The more fire spells you cast, the more stuns that occur. If you cast a fireball, that takes 3 seconds. You have a 10% chance to stun in those 3 seconds. You can cast two scorch's in that time frame, thus giving you two chances to inflict a stun. Thus, 20% chance to stun in those same three seconds.
Blastwave and Dragon's Breath are essential tools of the trade. Blastwave is just nasty, and DB has the capability to shut down a group of people. And it hits really hard. Harder than Blastwave.
Fire Blast should be used as much as possible. Use it as a finisher, opener, or every time the cooldown is up. Spam it.
Counterspell is extremely deadly. Use this every time you can, especially on healers. 8 seconds is an eternity in PvP, especially for a healer type. It can also be used to blanket paladins/ice mages to prevent those "Immune" abilities.
Abuse Polymorph. Everyone hates it. See a healer? Sheep it. See a rogue? Sheep it. See a druid in caster form? By gum, sheep it! Polymorph forces your opponent to either be useless for 10 seconds, or to use a major cooldown to escape. Thus being vulnerable to something else. Like cyclone. Or fear. Or even frost nova. Teamwork, people.

3) The Spec

Right now, this is an excellent PvP spec. Icy Veins has no home in a deep fire PvP spec.
Improved Counterspell is ESSENTIAL. You MUST have it. A 4 second silence is incredibly cruel, and incredibly deadly to any class that casts spells. From paladins to to druids, it is deadly as hell. Try to remember when you got silenced at some other point. Think of those thouhts. "Oh, hell." "Shit!" You are useless when you are silenced. Ask a healer. ^_^
What you do with the other 15 points in the arcane tree is up to you. Generally, get clearcast, and the rest put anywhere. Get Imp. Arcane Missiles if you plan on doing the whole "Clearcast/uninterruptiblemissiles" thing.
In the fire tree, you MUST get the following:

• Impact (Stuns? You cannot skip this)
  
• Imp. Fire Blast (More instants = more damage without sacrificing mobility)
  
• Burning Soul (spell pushback. Duh)
• Blastwave (Instant AoE? Just say yes)
• Fire Power (10% more damage. Kinda duh)
• Blazing Speed (Incredibly useful mobility tool)
• Dragon's Breath (Instant? Stuns? Fuck yes!)

The rest are up to you. Generally speaking, crit rating is not nearly as important in PvP, due to the survival mechanics of Resilience. You will suffer an immense loss to your crits, depending on your opponents gear. Talents like Incinerate/Ignite are far less awesome if your target has 300 resilience. Do I recommend you still take them? Yes, I do. They are still good talents, just not as good.
Obviously, you have to take Critical Mass and Combustion, so you can get at Dragon's Breath.
The scorch debuffs are a tossup. Generally, your target will not be able to stay alive long enough to get th true benefit from them.
However. It's something that has to be dispelled. If a Paladin tries to dispell Curse of Agony, but hits this instead... heh, thats cool. If you think about it, each scorch will hit harder, and makes dispellers pissed off.
Skip MoE.
In general, anything that gives a percentile increase to fire damage should be taken. Even Playing with Fire.

PvP as a fire mage is NOT about surviving. It is about killing off the other guy before they can kill you off.

Your play style has to be frantic. You have no time to waste. When you die, leave the enemy survivors in as bad of shape as possible. Blastwave, DB, do something to make your presence felt before you die.
And always REMEMBER:

KILL THE DAMN HEALER.

PoM Pyro For Nubs

In the old days, back when level 70's were still fresh and the majority of us were still getting boned in Hellfire or goofing off in Nagrand, the mage forums were alive with cries and screaming about PoM Pyro.
Specifically, the Arcane Power + Presence of Mind + Pyroblast + Damage Trinket that was causing mages to output incredibly high numbers with a single spell. Especially when the thing crit. (See above picture)
Many, many people called for nerfs, for cooldown to Pyroblast, for anything and everything to lower the damage that mages can output.

Idiots, the lot of them.

The forums have quited down about this issue, but roughly once or twice a day, a new thread pops up complaining about PoM Pyro, complaining about being one shot, on and on and on.

Now, I hate to take the standpoint of many other trolls, but I don't really have a choice here.

Y'all are idiots. Seriously, L2play, nub.

You will only ever get hit by incedibly high amounts of damage from PoM Pyro in the following situations:

1) You are an idiot, and do not know how to play or gear for PvP.

2) You have yet to spend enough time gathering resilience, and you are squishy and mine eyes. And when thou art squishy, thou gettest squished.

First off, every class in the game has options to survive / become completely immune to a Pyroblast. You might not always have these options avaliable to you, but then again, the mage is not always able to PoM Pyro you for insane amounts of damage.

Druids have little choice but to take the damage and hope for the best. Bear form can take an incredible beating, and you always have the options of Heal over Time spells. If a druid's reaction time is fast enough (which it will be if your any good at PvP), you will be able to shrug off a Pyro without much, if any, difficulty.
Of course, if you're a Bad Druid, you will get rofl-stomped

Warriors have a load of hitpoints avaliable to them, and most of them will simply raise their eye-brows at Pyroblast. Spell-reflect is also avaliable to be used, and quick warriors can knock up a spellreflect on a PoM Pyro fast retro-actively.

Paladins can bubble, and are usually in the same boat as Warriors HP-wise. No, you will not always have bubble avaliable to you, but you will always be able to heal yourself. And when our Counterspell is on cooldown, there is shit all we can do to stop you. The fact is, you're a Paladin. You can survive a Pyro. Not a problem.

Rogues can CloS. Oh, look, no damage. And don't complain about that being on cooldown. It's 1 bloody minute. You have that sucker ready to go, don't you? I have never, ever fought a rogue (since CloS became trainable, mind you) that was not able to pop CloS while fighting me. And if you're Subtlety spec (I see you little blink-stealing buggers), then you probably won't be killed by Pyro anyways. The laws of gambling and cheat death are in your favor.

Fellow mages can shield themself, Spellsteal Presence of Mind, Arcane Power, whatever, Ice Block themselves, even silence the other mage to prevent a Pyro. There are a lot of options avaliable to cut down on some of the damage, avoid the damage for a while, or completely avoid it.

Warlocks are strange in that some of them can take the damage, some can't. Some will be totally immune to fire damage for a while, some will simply be impossible to get high damage with (Soul Link, dontchaknow?), and some will simply deathcoil/chain fear/pinkhearts you when they see major cooldowns being used. Or spell lock you. Or simply eat your Arcane Power/Presence of Mind. Warlocks quick on the uptake will be like "What is this mage doing? Arcane Power? /sigh... spell lock... deathcoil... hrm, that was fun, wasn't it, mister wasted 3 minute cooldowns?"
Some warlocks simply will not have the reaction speed/spec, and will eat a lot of damage. Which they'll usually shrug off anyway, use a health stone, or fear / drain life you. Whatever they're into, I guess.

Priests are one of the more vulnerable classes to a successful PoM Pyro. They only have one lousy bubble, which even in its buffed form, can be knocked aside rather quickly. Specced into Disc, the priest will be hurting the mage substantially as well, but thats not much of a consolation when you suddenly eat 4k damage. A priest practically has to be disc spec to survive a PoM Pyro, because Pain Suppression / Improved MiniBubble are simply that good. Holy is pretty much boned, as is Shadow. Its certainly survivable, they are just a wee bit more vulnerable than other classes.

Shaman can have a lot of trouble with PoM Pyros. They only have one reliable way to avoid it, and thats Grounding Totem. Which the mage will probably shoot an Ice Lance at. /shrug. Without that, you are naked to the massive damage. At this point, only earth shield and praying Counterspell is on cooldown can save you. Thats no fault of your own, its just you class doesn't do good againt Mages.

Hunters are the worst off class versus a PoM Pyro. They're only defence, Feign Death, is little more than a distraction that might buy a second, or two if the mage is slow on the uptake. The only real defence hunters have is to try and keep the mage locked down as much as possible. Scatter shot, Wyvern Sting, Intimidation, even Arcane Shot and hope it dispells something important.

But even if you don't have the cooldowns ready to go, even if you don't have any real defences against a PoM Pyro, it should not be hard to shrug off the damage if you have any level of decent gear.
You're here to PvP, right? Then pick up some stats that are suitable for the job.

Pyroblast taking too much out of your hitpoints? Get more stamina. Pyroblast critting you for 7k? Grab some resilience, and watch that crit damage steadily fall.
Watch that 7k turn into 4k, assuming it crits at all anymore.

If you get the right gear, and all those shiny 3 minute cooldowns and 21, 31, 11 tier point talents will amount to is hitting for 2-3 thousand damage, and maybe critting for 4000-ish. Assuming it crits at all. And seriously? Thats not very much damage at all.
Literally any PvP spec (besides healers) can easily deal out that much without a lot of effort.

And just for speccing to get PoM Pyro, that mage is squishy as hell. We pay through the nose to get a crap load of damage, and watch it all amount to practically zilch thanks to Resilience.
A single Holy Light spell from a Paladin in any decent amount of healing gear will be able to heal up the entirety of a PoM Pyro.

In conclusion.

Stop whining. Learn to Play. Get some fuggin' resilience. PoM Pyro ain't that great, when you bother to build even a half-assed defence against it.

A Spartan way of Life

So.

Fire in PvP.

I've been specced fire on the Public Realms for a couple weeks now, and I feel it is only fair that I provide a somewhat more in-depth analysis of how it plays out at 70.

Well.... where to start?

The first thing you notice is that the damage you can unleash on hapless foes is... ridiculously high.
Like, we're talking I three-shotted a fellow mage in Arathi Basin. With fireball, fireblast, and Dragon's Breath.
We're talking I fight a rogue, and they pop sprint and run for it. To slow them down, I hit Dragon's Breath... which outright kills them.
We're talking a fireball/fireblast combo that drops a hunter from 100% life to 20%.
We're talking sheeping a warrior, killing the paladin in 6 seconds, then slaughtering the warrior in another 8.
We're talking a stalemate on the alliance bridge in AV, where a bunch of hunters/healers are bunched there holding off the entire horde offensive. And Blastwave/Dragon's Breath scattering them like flax. And netting me over 20k damage done in 3 seconds.

If that isn't a good enough idea, it's effortless to top the damage charts when you're in the game. The damage fire dishes out is at an unholy level, and I found myself the #1 kill target within minutes of each fight.
In a Warsong Gulch, I fought middle with a warrior and a holy priest. 66 honorable kills later, the alliance stopped trying to attack us. Needless to say, I was top of the damage meter, beating the number two slot by... get this... 202k damage.
I was even responsible for killing 5 alliance flag carriers, who made the fatal error of trying to "Go Tun".

Quite simply put, Fire is devastatingly power of you leave the mage alone for 2 seconds or longer. And even then, it still kicks ass.

Also, sheeping something and getting off a full-cast Pyroblast is an incredibly evil and fun thing to do. Especially when it drops half their health in a non-crit. L2Trinket, imo.

The second thing you learn is that you are incredibly squishy. Like, we're talking three shotted by a dual-weilding warrior squishy.
A geared Season 2 Warrior killed me in under 4 seconds.
That's how squishy a fire mage in PvP is.

But to be fair, we have better survivability than arcane mages, because Dragon's Breath, quite simply, is a godly spell. About 1k damage on non crits that stuns for 3 seconds? AND it's an AoE?
I fully support renaming it "Summon Warlock" because it can be that devastating. It can shut down 5 or 6 healers at once, and do enough damage to them that they won't be healing anyone else for a while... or ever.
As fire, there is no end to how badly you can fuck with a healer. First off, you have a ton of damage. Then, every fire spell you cast has a 10% chance to stun. Third, you have a ton of damage. Second... err... fourth, you have a spell that interrupts, stuns, has a chance to stun more, and does more damage. Oh, yeah, and Counterspell, which prevents any healing spells from being cast for 8 seconds.
Now, go find a Holy Priest. Make it your bitch.
Paladins are also acceptable. Please be sure to Spellsteal Blessing of Freedom and Frost Nova the hapless Paladin.

The tl;dr version: Dragon's Breath is a sadistic spell, that causes emotional anguish among anyone and everyone who gets struck with it. Used properly, it's like an AoE deathcoil with a twenty second cooldown.
Used wrong, you look stupid.

A critical problem with any non-frost build is the lack of a certian reliable crowd-control breaker.
Every mage has access to Blink and (unless you suck) a trinket. That gives every mage two reliable ways to break things like fear and stunlocks. But... thats not enough.
What if you need blink to escape Intercept? What if you escape Kidney Shot with it, but then find yourself Blinded seconds later? Hmm? What then?
Quite simply, to be better able to survive this highly unfortunate situations, you want, nay, NEED to have a third reliable stun-key (opposite of stun-lock... get it? Oh, I'm so classy!).
And that skill, that tool, is the godly Ice Block.
Damn, I'm like a priest for that ability.
I should go form the church of Ice Block or something.

I cannot believe how incredibly awesome that ability is.

And I am finding hard to believe how I survived without it.

TRAINABLE ICE BLOCK KTHXBY!!






Also.


HADUKEN!

Holy PvP Trinkets, Batman!

Just hitting the PTR are brand, spanking new PvP trinkets. Epics, dont'cha know.

There are five of them, only 2 of which are applicable to mages.

[Battlemaster's Audacity] and [Battlemaster's Depravity].

And no, those don't link to anything. But purplez are awesome, yes?

Anyways.

Audacity increases damage done by 47, and Depravity improves spell crit rating by 40.
Think thats all well and awesome? Check this out:

Use: Increases maximum health by 1750 for 15 sec.

Now, if you're sitting there saying "HOLY FUCKING ZOMG", you, sir, like to PvP.
Essentially, what we have here is a trinket that supplies a solid boost to spell damage/crit, and an on use +175 stamina.
This, my friends, is the MECCA of PvP trinkets. I don't care what you say about the Elementals Deck, Bloodscryer Gem, Vengeance of the Illidari, whatever, THIS TRINKET IS FAR BETTER.

However. It will cost you a great deal to get your grubby little hands on this trinket of golden awesome.
Thirty thousand honor and 40 AV marks, to be precise.
Still worth it? Fuck yes.
I don't even need to explain myself, do I? C'mon! 1750 hitpoints! Do you have any idea how amazingly powerful that is?
Ok, yeah, totally useless in PvE, and somewhat limited in battlegrounds, but in arenas... this could quickly become a make-or-break trinket, especially for low stamina classes (READ: MAGES).
And besides, 47 spell damage is incredibly spiffy for a trinket slot. 40 crit... just not worth it. Really.

Crit rating is already one of the worst stats you can stack for arenas. If you're going to take the time and effort to gather 30k honor, and waste it on the crit version of this gem... please, resign from this class immediately. There is NO LOGICAL REASON to choose crit over + spell damage.
Resilience eliminates your crit rating. People in arenas have a lot of resilience. Therefore your crit rating is moot. If you stack crit, you negate their resilience... well, at least part of it. You negate their defence against being hit with a crit. When you do crit, you still suffer quite a loss of damage through the same resilience.
Spell damage, however, is mitigated by stamina. Stamina is what keeps your opponent alive, it gives them hit points. The more damage you do, the faster they die. Therefore the more + spell damage you have, the faster they die.
Crits are a random occurence. You cannot depend on them for sufficient damage, and it is counter-acted by a static stat that doesn't directly effect how fast the target is killed. Spell damage is a constant. You can always depend on it to do damage, and it is counter-acted by a stat that directly effects how fast a target is killed.
Besides, if you try and stack crit, you are gimping yourself. You sacrifice stamina, your own resilience, spell damage, and intellect, just to counter-act resilience.

So. Go with the +47 spell damage trinket. You cannot go wrong with it.

Also, there is a sudden change to what the PvP Daily Quests give you.
These quest used to award 11g99s, about 2k honor, and some marks of honor from whatever the instance was for.
Now, the marks have been dropped... in favor of another 2k honor.

Can we get a hell yes?

S1 gear going for honor, brand new trinkets costing a boatload of honor...

My business is puntin' gnomes, and business is good.

An Argument Against Frozen Shadoweave

So, you're trying to be good at the arenas, and slowly coming to the horrible realization that You. Just. Aren't. CUTTING. It!

You, my good mage, are not specced Frost.

Now you've made the leap, or are considering the leap, to spec into Cold Smacking.

Say you have tailoring, and are sadly looking at your spellfire set. "Farewell", you say, "You have served me well".
The tailoring sets are very expensive items to have. The mats alone are nothing to scoff at.

SPELLCLOTH - 26
PRIMAL FIRE - 38
NETHERWEB SPIDER SILK - 10

That is a LOT of mats to get. Also consider that to make the spellcloth, thats going to run you another 13 primal fires, and 13 primal manas. Oh, yeah, and 13 Imbued Netherweave, which will run you 234 netherweave cloth, and throw some Arcane Dust in there...

AND if you've actually done some PvP with this set, chances are pretty good you've dropped a couple hundred gold into this set in gems and enchants.

So now you want to make the leap to Frozen Shadoweave. That'll cost you 26 Shadowcloth, 38 primal waters...and so on and so forth. Oh, and one hundred gold for the tailoring respec. Oh, and all those gems and enchants you have? Yup, you're getting new ones.
And you can just forget Raid viability. You will never see anything past Karazhan as Frost. Well, unless the people you run with are very desperate.

So, to you, the unfortunate mage, I present the following argument AGAINST spending a month or more simply getting the cash together to become Arena viable.

Patch 2.3 is coming, and you are definitely going to want to get you some welfare epix. (See last Friday's post)
Let's run the numbers again.

CHEST
Frozen Shadoweave --> Gladiator
-40 Spell Damage
+21 Stamina
-2 Intellect
+24 Resilience

SHOULDER
Frozen Shadoweave --> Gladiator
-18 Spell damage
+21 Stamina
-2 Intellect
+21 Resilience

And let's toss in the boots versus the PvP boots

Frozen Shadoweave --> Veteran's Dreadweave (The 70 PvP vendor gear)
+25 Stamina
-25 Spell damage
+18 Intellect
+27 Resilience
These gains here are somewhat offset by the fact they have no sockets. But, no matter what gems we toss on the Frozen Shadoweave, we're still going to lose out on Stamina and Resilience
And you GAIN intellect by moving from a PvE piece to a PvP piece? LOL WUT?

In total, for getting Gladiator/PvP gear instead of the Shadoweave set, you net:

STAMINA = +67
RESILIENCE = +72 (107 counting Gladiator Set Bonus)
INTELLECT= +16
SPELL DAMAGE = -83 (Yikes)

So... you tell me. Is 670 hitpoints, 240 mana and over one hundred resilience worth 83 Frost damage?
Considering the nature of arenas emphasizing survivability above anything else... I say it's self-explanatory.

And if you're like me and already have the Frozen set, leave it as is. Replace all you're other gear first, take apart the Frozen set last. And don't vendor/disenchant it, either. Re-gem/enchant it for PvE, on the offchance you get called on for, say, Heroic Shattered Halls or something.

I can haz moar daily quests??!?!?1

SWEEPING CHANGES.

Ok, not really, but there are some very large changes in regards to battlegrounds in patch 2.3

Daily quests have been added targeting a random battleground for that day

Hmm... this could go either way. On the one hand, it provides hard-core PvP'ers a way to earn gold doing what they love to do best. Will this also serve to increase reputation with those said factions? Could it be that I won't have to cap the flag in Warsong 1133 times to hit Exalted? Perhaps that title of 'Conqueror' isn't as far away as it used to be...
On the other hand, this means that the gold farmer type people are going to be clogging up my battlegrounds... this, again, is a mix. I could end up in an Arathi with 7 people horde side only there for the cash... or maybe most of alliance side is only there for the cash. Each daily quest seems simple enough “Win the battleground, get 12 gold!”
Either way you look at it, every battleground could be full of the nubs you see running around AV, freaking out when Alliance caps snowfall.
Will I get essentially free kills from a druid in 65 greens? Or will I be hampered when my whole team decides to zerg mines, and /dance because that was the daily quest?
Gonna have to delve into the PTR's to test this one out... Speaking of which, Dr. Boom data is ridiculously hard to get off the PTR’s. We’re talking competition from 6 or 7 other people. AT FOUR IN THE MORNING.

Player's will now be able to cast spells for free for a few seconds after being resurrected, and before a battleground begins.

I cannot believe how awesome that is. Typically, after rezzing, I'd just pop Molten and hop right back into the fray. With this, I could hit every self-buff I have. You get about 5 seconds of free casting. And that pre-BG free spellcast is nothing short of awesome. I think I'll go spam Ritual of Refreshment because I can.

ALTERAC VALLEY

Hoo boy, some major changes here.

1. Additional Warmasters no longer report for duty upon destroying an enemy tower. However, enemy warmasters still despawn on destroying the associated tower. Easier boss pulls ftw?
2. All Warmasters are linked to each other and their respective generals, and can no longer be pulled individually. No more Vanndar only pulls? Aww... *single tear*
3. Honor from capturing towers has been increased. Presumably, this is to counter the following change:
4. No more Commanders and Lieutenants. While the patch notes state this much more delicately, the fact is simple. Mancuso, Randolph, Murp, all those wonderful elite honor farms are hereby removed. Such a pity, considering solo'ing one of those was an excellent way for a young mage to test his kiting skills. This, I think, will prove to be a general decrease in the amount of honor gained from an AV. I dont care what this says:
5. Bonus honor is only given in battle for destroying enemy towers and killing the captain (Read, That Orc Dude / Annoying Blonde Mage). Upon conclusion of the battle, bonus honor is given fro surviving towers and surviving captain. Now would be a good time to mention the new mechanics of AV.
6. Horde and Alliance have a limited number of reinforcements avaliable. This number is reduced by player death, loss of towers, captain deaths. If the reinforcements reach zero, that team loses. If the General dies, reinforcements default to zero. Basically, this is going to turn AV into a prolonged battle of attrition. The constant Zerg rush of the current AV will pretty much die off completely. Alliance could win the whole game by turtling at that damn bridge. A fear-bomb, causing the opposing team to wipe on Drek'Thar could hugely swing the game in Horde's favor.

Look at it this way. With these changes, AV is going to return to the old days, where AV could go on for hours. The difference is, with the reinforcement cap, it will have the same kind of "time limit" that EotS and Arathi have (Warsong, sadly, still lacks this time limit). We're going to get a feel for the new AV in Patch 2.3 here, and report back our findings. Should be interesting to see if the new AV turns into a bottle-necked war of attrition (think First World War) or game that requires some serious coordination and tactics (think a Starcraft 2v2 team match). The way the patch notes are making it look, we're going to get honor based on what we have left at the end. So, the longer the battle goes, the more stuff gets asploded, the less honor we get.

Goodbye Honor Cow.

Additional bonus honor is now awarded upon completion of Arathi Basin, Eye of the Storm and Warsong Gulch.
So does this mean that AV will not be the honor-cow it is now? Will we see Arathi and the rest of them be competitive from an honor/hour perspective? We'll have to give this a run on the PTRs as well. Could be, we're going to look at a lot more PvP gear making the rounds.

Hmm... PvP epix. We need a discussion on that too. Look for it later this week : Welfare Epix.

!BOOM! Headshot.

Hunters and PvP. Blech. Anyone who's played a mage in a battleground knows that, as a general rule, hunters are to be avoided.

To put it quite plainly, hunters are designed for squishies. Sometimes they save our tissue paper wearing behinds, other times they giggle and shoot pointy sticks into those same behinds.
Anybody who's fought more than a dozen hunters in PvP knows that there are some general rules to fighting a hunter.

1 - Take the pet out of commission. (Fear, Frost Nova, Hamstring...)
2 - Take away the hunter's mobility. (Frost Nova, Hamstring, that druid root thingy...)
3 - Unload as much damage as possible on the hunter, as fast as possible.

To quote a certain large angry feline, hunters provide "Massive quantities of sustained, ranged DPS".
The key word here is "ranged" and "sustained". Countering both of these is the only way to win against a hunter that has any experience in this game.
As a mage, your guiding principles are simple. Polymorph the pet if possible, root the hunter, and the whole time, unload any and every instant spell you have to get that hunter down as fast as possible. As a general rule, taking the pet out removes anywhere from 30% to 50% of the hunters damage, depending on their spec, and marksman hunters are the only ones with any real amount of burst damage.
So, as mages, our strategies are as follows:

• Polymorph the pet, if time allows. This is risky to do, BM's will simply break it and trash your squishy behind. As well, you waste at least 1.5 seconds of the encounter to this, which is time you could be damaging the hunter. Another downside, the hunter gets a free 1.5 seconds to do whatever they want. Shoot you, drop a trap, whatever.
• Blink is a very effective spell to use againts hunters. It has two uses: 1 - getting into dead zone territory faster, 2 - breaking LoS when hunter pops SquishyKiller...err, Beast Within.
• While first running at a hunter, use every instant you have. Fireblast, Cone of Cold, Presence of Mind, Dragon's Breath, Blastwave, hell, even an Arcane Explosion won't hurt.
  
• If you're fire, use Dragon's Breath to get off a fireball, or at least a scorch or two. You will desperately need that damage. If you're Frost, pop Frost Nova as soon as you can, and try very, very hard to get off a Shatter combo. Chances are very good you'll be met with "Scattershot" or "LOL MY PET IS BIGGER THAN THRALL'S CHAIR". If the former, trinket out of it if possible, and at least get an Ice Lance nuke out of it.
• Beast Within is very dangerous, if you let the hunter use it to it's full potential. This is your strategy for countering it : RUN. You have to survive the next 19 seconds on your own. Break LoS, blink away, /beg, have a paladin bubble you, whatever it takes. Having Ice Block immensely alleviates the difficulty. You only need to survive 9 seconds. Again, break LoS, whatever. And congratulate yourself if you survive, you just wasted a BM's most powerful weapon. Feel free to /giggle.
• DEADZONE! This is your best weapon against a hunter. They cannot melee you or ranged attack you, and is currently the only way to deal anything remotely approaching serious damage to a hunter. If you can manage to get a hunter rooted with none of the "IWIN" buttons, you can get a full cast off here.
  
• Silencing Shot. /shudder. If you get hit with this, two things you can do. Ice Block out of it, or break LoS so the hunter can't take advantage of it. Drop behind a pillar, run into a building, whatever.
  

At this point in the game, unload your instants again. If the hunter's not dead by now, chances are pretty good you're going to lose. BM's are easier than the others, they have nothing now. Frost Nova again, Shatter combo, you win. Marksman may have Scattershot up again; if you have a cooldown monitor addon, it is invaluable against hunters. If you don't have one, get one. If he doesn't have it, Shatter with impunity. If you're not frost, props to even living this long.

Please note that having a Water Elemental is incredibly useful for fighting a hunter. Basically, free extra damage, and an extra root. Heck, you can even get another Shatter combo off of it, if you're deadzoning.

If you can make it into a second deadzone cast and pull it off, you've basically won at this point. Some hunters are tougher and require another Instant Cast smackdown, but they drop easy once their cooldowns are gone.

If you find yourself unable to break LoS when you need to, unable to somehow get the pet out of the picture, or find yourself trapped/wingclipped to a standstill, be prepared to eat some very painful pointy things. Blink can be a help here, if you have the cooldown, you must make every effort to stop that hunter from gaining range on you.
If the hunter does get range and keeps his mobility, you've lost control of the situation. And when you lose control of the situation, you lose the fight. Plain and simple.

This also why Blizzard's announcement of dispatching the dead zone worries me so much. A class flaw it may be, but this class flaw was the only thing we mages had to get an actual cast off against a hunter. Without the deadzone, we will be stuck with Instant Casts. With only instants, we simply will not have enough damage to drop the hunter before they drop us

IN CONCLUSION

How to beat a hunter
1 - Remove the pet from the equation
2 - Take away the hunters mobility
3 - Drop them as fast as possible with Instants
4 - Abuse the deadzone so hard, the hunter trainers /cry



APPENDIX

Ever wonder how a hunter does so much damage to us? It's simple. Almost all of their attacks are based on physical damage. This is mitigated by armor... and guess what? You got it. We mages have no armor. This is why we eat auto-shot crits of over 1k damage each, from undergeared beast master hunters who didn't put points in marksman.


EDIT: Fixed a few typos

A swift kick in the pants (Patch 2.3)

Patch 2.3 is on the way, and as any serious wow blogger must do, here is my thoughts on it.

Ritual of Refreshment will allow players to pick up their own stacks of food and water

Any mage that complains about this deserves a swift kick in the pants. There is no downside to this. It summons mannabiscuits, which restore both HP and MP. Each Ritual has 50 charges. The fact that it costs a reagent is a minor inconvenience to an otherwise great, and long overdue, spell. I don't care what some mageholes say, the ability to get food/water to an entire raid group in one spell is fantastic. If you're running Gruul's, which would you rather do...
1 - Summon a stack of food/water for every single member of the raid.
2 - Cast one spell, and let everyone else take what they need.

Seems obvious to me.

Damage coefficient reduction removed from Improved Fireball and Improved Frostbolt

FANTASTIC. It's about time this senseless nerf was removed. Mages doing too much damage, my sweaty ass. Over half of "damage" IS "mage" for crying out loud. While this will not have much of an impact in PvP, a 10% increase in damage is still nothing to sneeze at. In PvE, especially high-end raiding, this could have a huge impact. Fire will climb right back up those DPS charts (assuming standard rotation of Scorchx5, fireballx2). Raiding mages, rejoice. Unless your Arcane, in which case you're going to be looking jealously at those fire mages again. Sorry 'bout that. And for any frost mages in the PvE area, you will notice this right away, since frostbolt is about the only spell cast in an instance.

Evocation changed to restore 15% of your total mana every 2 seconds

Thank you, so very very much! As it stands right now, 8.5k mana and no + spirit, I get 3k mana from evocate. Embarrasingly sad for an 8 minute cooldown. This new way will grant me 5.1k, which is far better, but still leaves evocate as "meh". I mean, its an 8-minute cooldown! Why not have it restore our entire mana bar? It's channeled and can be interrupted by literally anything. How is it overpowered to have it simply restore 25% of our mana every 2 seconds?

Arcane Meditation increased to 10/20/30% mana regeneration

. . . ? Ok, now I'm just confused. The new evocation basically says "Ok, sorry about spirit there. You'll never need it again". This new change says "STACK AS MUCH SPIRIT AS POSSIBLE" Confusing, yes? Nonetheless, a very solid buff (arcane mages rejoice!).

Ice Barrior gains additional benefit from spell damage bonuses

Learn to spell, Drysc. Anyways, on the surface this looks cool. But lets dig deeper... The base damage absorbed by Ice Barrier is going down, and will benefit from (correct me if I'm wrong) 10% of bonus frost damage. For me, at a sad amount of +625 frost damage, this lands me a nice... 62 damage absorbed. Woo. Awesome.
This will provide some much needed scalability to this spell, but depending on how much + damage you have, ranges anywhere from a mild nerf to a huge buff. If there are any raiding frost mages out there with 1200+ spell damage, congrats. Your Ice Barriers will be the envy of everyone.

Fire Ward and Frost Ward now gain additional benefit from spell damage bonuses

See Ice Barrier above. Hazzah Scalability, boo for reduction in base damage absorbed.

Detect Magic removed, all players will see their target's beneficial effects at all times

Very, very interesting. This will certainly shake stuff up on the PvP scene. Being able to see all positive buffs will provide a LOT of information about your opponent. In a 3v3 arena, and two peeps are visible? Check 'em out. What buffs they got? Arcane Intellect, and no mage? He popped Invis, prepare for imminent nukeage. Mark of the Wild? Can't see a druid? Kitty is incoming. No out of place buffs? Paladins, beware, there's a rogue behind you.
As for mages in specific, some are lamenting the passing of this debuff. Gone are the days of detect magic/polymorph macros. Now paladins can debuff their allies at will, blah blah blah. Shut the hell up. Seriously. If you see a Paladin and a warrior running at you, who do you polymorph? If you answered Warrior, you failed. Ice Lance the warrior to prevent Charge, then sheep the Paladin. Then unload an instant or two on the warrior (Cone of cold is best). This forces the paladin to bubble/trinket to keep his warrior buddy alive. Then you kill the Paladin. Simple. Put it quite simply, paladins can heal one thing at a time. Themselves or someone else. Attack the paladin's friend, he heals his friend. Attack the paladin, he heals himself. Make sense? Hit the warrior, pally will try and save him. Thats your cue to mess that plate-wearing healbot up.
Detect Magic was only ever used as a way to protect a sheep. Detect Magic/Polymorph would tie a mage up, easily, for 3 seconds. And for what? To keep an opponent player sheeped for an extra few seconds, while waiting for a cleanse/dispel magic/somethinglikethat.
And who has enough time to spend a GCD on Detect Magic in the smaller arenas anyways?
This change will be, basically, an inconvenience to mages in 5v5, where they could afford the time to spend 3 seconds on sheeping a target.
This change will go largely unnoticed in 2v2's and 3v3's. Right now, it's simply too much time spent on a single polymorph. Time that should be, nay, NEEDS to be spent elsewhere.

There are a couple of other changes in 2.3 that are pertinent. The most alarming change is this:
Arcane Shot will dispel one magic effect in addition to its normal damage

Well, so much for frost being able to fight hunters. "You're overreacting!" No, no I'm not. As frost, how you fight a hunter is pretty much always set. As you get in close, you unload with at least 2 instants (fireblast, cone of cold), root them (by them I mean hunter and pet). Sheep the pet if you have time. Get to Deadzone. Shatter combo. Instants again. If they're still alive at this point, try to get another frostbolt off while waiting for an instant to finish its cooldown. Or, if you have the incredibly useful WE out, root 'em again, and repeat the Shatter combo.
In order for this scenario to work, you have to assume some things:
Assumption #1 - the hunter is not beast master spec, and if he is, BigRedSquishyKiller is on cooldown
Assumption #2 - the hunter is not marksman spec, and if he is, Scattershot is on cooldown.
Assumption #3 - you have Ice Barrier up, so the hunter doesn't kick your ass before you can start unloading some damage.
Ice Barrier is an incredible tool against hunters. At the very least, it allows us frosties to close to dead zone without getting too banged up. At best, we get an uninterrupted frostbolt.
If Arcane shot destroys my precious Ice Barrier, there is very little chance I'll win. No longer is having all my cooldowns and WE out the best scenario, it is the only scenario, and contingent on the hunter not having scattershot or any ability that breaks a root.
For arcane, this also can have a huge impact. How'd you like to see Arcane Power, a 3 minute cooldown of sheer awesome, get eaten by a glowing arrow on a 6 second cooldown? Or better yet, watch Presence of Mind get dispelled.
Fire mages, this won't change anything. Ok, nevermind, kiss goodbye to combustion, yet another 3 minute cooldown defeated by a shiny, pointy stick.
Well, hey, at least we get spellsteal. Situational and very expensive. Woot. /wrists
So it seems I'm going back to the days of getting my ass kicked by hunters again.

One other change I want to talk about before wrapping this up. Blizzard is changing the way the servers communicate with the client, effectively removing the need for /stopcasting macros, unless you actually want to stop the spell. Again, the mage forums are alight with people crying about how this effectively nerfs Shatter combo, Goodbye super burst damage, all this stuff.
So far, Dr. Boom tests on the PTR compared to the real servers seem to be producing... no real result. I'll post the data later, right now, it looks like mages are, once again, whining about nothing.

Oh, and one other thing... "Hypothermia" is being increased in duration to 45 seconds.

*Goes and swears in a corner*

Blizzard has kicked me in the balls, and my life is pain. Mechanics like this shouldn't even exist in competitive PvP. Arenas are, in essence, a battle of cooldowns. Forcing people to wait even more time to use a cooldown is simply ridiculous in a competitive environment.
Mechanics such as Hypothermia, Weakened Soul, Forbearance... they simply shouldn't exist.

IN CONCLUSION

2.3

PvE = HUGE THUMBS UP

PvP = Swift kick in the pants