Classic Mage: Advanced Guide

First let me state that this is called the advanced guide not because the things presented and discussed are especially hard to execute. This is called the advanced guide because it goes beyond the basics of the class (like talent builds, stats, leveling, etc) and delves into more specific aspects of gameplay.  

This isn't an exhaustive guide, but is limited to general gameplay regardless of talent build and situation (i.e. PvE or PvP). In the future I plan to do more specific articles focused on specific aspects of the game, like PvP.

Learn Where Blink Will Bug

There are certain spots in the world where Blink will not teleport you forward even though there appears to be nothing in the way that would prevent moving forward. A good example of this are the tunnel entrances in WSG (at least the Horde tunnel, I haven’t personally tested the Alliance tunnel). Looking at them there doesn’t appear to be anything blocking the way forward, but if you Blink at the entrance (i.e. at the arch) you won’t go anywhere. There are many similar spots throughout the world that act in this same manner: there doesn’t appear to be anything in the way that would prevent you from teleporting forward, but for whatever reason you don’t move forward.

Blink has been this way since Vanilla beta, and iirc in order to fix it Blizzard would literally have to rebuild the entire world. So basically it’s not getting fixed and you just need to learn to deal with it.

Kiting

Learning to kite mobs and players is fundamental to success as a mage. We do not have massive health pools and we have very little defensive abilities. If you don’t keep melee at distance you will die. While you don’t need to be a master at kiting, you do need to be able to do it effectively. Here are the things that I consider necessary in order to kite effectively:

1. Learn the range of Frost Nova. The range on Frost Nova is larger than the animation makes you think. It is in fact possible (in both retail and Classic) to Frost Nova a mob or player while they are still out of melee range. Practicing with Frost Nova and learning its range can save your hide if you are low on hp and a mob or player is bearing down on you.

2. Don’t Blink after Frost Nova. Blink and Frost Nova are the two primary ways you have to put distance between you and an enemy. If you use them both back to back you are out of options to gain distance. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but 99% of the time you don’t want to use these spells back to back.

3. Learn to Cone of Cold from behind. It is possible to exploit the game latency so that you execute Cone of Cold without facing your enemy. In order to do this (while running away from an enemy):

1. Jump
2. Turn your camera quickly so you are facing the enemy
3. Hit Cone of Cold during the split second you are facing your enemy 
4. Immediately after you hit Cone of Cold turn your camera
back to the direction you were originally running

You have to do all these steps fairly quickly, like in less than a second, but if done properly you will land Cone of Cold on your enemy without losing much speed on your part.

4. Use rank 1 spells effectively. Primarily this means using rank 1 Frostbolt in order to land a quick snare on an enemy. If you put points into the Improved Blizzard and/or Permafrost talents rank 1 Blizzard and rank 1 Cone of Cold could potentially be useful also. More on these later.

5. Strafe and mouse turn. Strafing (running sideways) is much quicker than backing up and it will still allow you to cast instant cast spells. By default the game binds strafe to ‘Q’ and ‘E’ so I recommend rebinding them to ‘A’ and ‘D’ and using your mouse to turn your camera. It will take some getting used to if you’ve never done this before, but it is worth it because of the speed you will gain.

Use Rank 1 Spells Effectively

Classic, unlike retail, has spell ranks and some of the lower ranks are useful. Primarily it is healers who benefit from using lower ranks of spells (because they cost less mana), but mages can also benefit from using rank 1 spells in certain situations. I personally didn’t find myself using rank 1 spells a whole lot during Vanilla, but player skill has increased significantly since then so using these will probably be necessary in order to play at the highest levels. 

I am going to break this section into 2 parts. The first part will be rank 1 spells that I know will be useful because I used them in Vanilla. The second part is going to be speculation on which rank 1 spells could potentially be useful. There are potentially other uses for rank 1 spells than I mention here, so be on the lookout for more opportunities to use rank 1 spells.

There is also the potential that all these rank 1 spells can eat into your available keybinds. Plus it might also be confusing to have your max rank of a spell bound to one key and the rank 1 version to another key. In order to save keybind space and make things easier to remember you “should” be able to use the following macro:

#showtooltip
/cast [modifier:shift] Frostbolt (Rank 1); Frostbolt

Classic is shutdown right down, so I cannot verify that it works, but if it uses the same macro API as retail it should. The way this macro works is: if Frostbolt is bound to ‘2’ pressing ‘shift + 2’ will cast rank 1 Frostbolt, but simply pressing ‘2’ will cast the max rank. Doing it this way will save you action bar space and keep things consistent (e.g. you know Frostbolt is always on ‘2’ and that rank 1 is always ‘shift +2’ and that all your spells are bound this way). You can swap out the spells and use this for every spell you want to use multiple ranks of.

Known Useful Rank 1 Spells

Frostbolt. As mentioned above a rank 1 Frostbolt can be used to kite enemy players or mobs. Its cast time is quite short, it puts on the same level of snare as the max rank, and it costs a paltry amount of mana at max level. It is also good for keeping players in combat (e.g. rogues and warriors) in order to prevent them from using certain abilities (e.g. stealth and charge).

Although I found using this spell to be more trouble than it was worth as fire due to not having Improved Frostbolt. Your experience might be different though, so give it a shot if you’re playing fire and see if you like it. If you do great. If not it isn’t a huge loss imo.

Blizzard. A rank 1 Blizzard can be used to break enemies out of stealth. I found myself using this spell a lot in AV when I was guarding a tower, bunker, or graveyard waiting for it to cap. If you know, or suspect, that an enemy is stealthed nearby use this (or rank 1 Arcane Explosion) to find them and break them out.

Arcane Explosion. I found myself using rank 1 Arcane Explosion to interrupt flag caps in AB and AV. You could use the max rank of Arcane Explosion to do this also (and do more damage), but the mana cost of the max rank will limit the number of times you can do it. I found that using rank 1 was better if I was just interested in interrupting a flag cap, but the choice is up to you. I suppose the “best” way would be to start with the max rank and then switch to rank 1 once your mana starts getting low.

Potentially Useful Rank 1 Spells

Potentially any rank 1 spell can be useful, so this list isn’t exhaustive, but it is my speculation as to what rank 1 spells could be useful and when they might be useful.

Arcane Intellect/Dampen Magic/Amplify Magic/Armors. In classic it is possible to spam dispel abilities; the only limitations are the mana pool of the player, the global cooldown, and how fast you can target an enemy. Rank 1 buffs could potentially be useful to run a player who is spam dispelling out of mana. I personally didn’t encounter a whole lot of spam dispelling back in Vanilla, but player skill is much higher now, so perhaps spam dispelling will be more of a thing this time around. 

I also played a fire mage and there really wasn’t a whole lot of useful things to dispel from me. So I suspect dispelling classes saved their dispels for things like Power Word: Shield, Blessing of Freedom, HoTs, and other buffs on WSG flag carriers and “PvP tanks.” Presence of Mind is a useful dispel, but I always used it macro’d with my trinket and Pyroblast. So it was up for a split second at most, which is impossible, or at least very hard, to dispel. I didn’t run with Arcane Power, so can’t comment on how often that was a target of dispels.

Fireball. This spell has a DoT on it so it could potentially be used to keep rogues in combat, and more importantly from vanishing. I ran without Improved Fireball during my HWL run though, so I didn’t bother using it because the cast time was too long.

The End

That’s it for this guide. If you have any more rank 1 suggestions let me know and I will review and add them. Hope you enjoyed it!