Comments on: What’s your Mage good at?

By: gnomeaggedon

gnomeaggedon — Thu, 28 May 2009 00:48:06 +0000

@theerivs: I love those odd portals… I actually use them a lot…

@Troutwort: /agreed

By: Troutwort

Troutwort — Tue, 26 May 2009 16:10:16 +0000

You know mage AOE always sounds easier in theory than in practice….

By: theerivs

theerivs — Tue, 26 May 2009 15:46:48 +0000

My mage is good at opening portals to cities no one wants to go anymore, like Stonard, and Thunderbluff.

By: gnomeaggedon

gnomeaggedon — Mon, 25 May 2009 03:00:43 +0000

lol that video is awesome... Thanks for the extra tip too... Now go away and give us a blog post of your own with something more than OMG I found it!

By: zupa

zupa — Mon, 25 May 2009 02:54:24 +0000

Oh and I just thought of one other essential AOE tip you need to know about.

Sometimes a mob will resist your initial frost nova. This can totally get you killed.

What you need to do is macro cold snap + frost nova, and be ready to use it if needed immediately after the first frost nova.

Of course if a mob resists the second nova… Well you are just going to have to deal with it.

Favourite mobs to do this used to be in netherstorm, but the crocodiles in ZG were a bit more challenging

By: zupa

zupa — Mon, 25 May 2009 02:51:11 +0000

check it out I found the vid! OMG I found it!

By: gnomeaggedon

gnomeaggedon — Mon, 25 May 2009 02:27:06 +0000

lol, I knew there was a reason I didn’t touch on AoE… apart from it being a death sentence for me…

Thanks Zupa

By: zupa

zupa — Mon, 25 May 2009 02:10:14 +0000

Pro emergency sheeping is a matter of life or death! Great tips there, I particularly like the one about refreshing your sheep should be the last thing you do before you die.

Too right.

Well since barnyard management is already taken, and my mage isn’t level capped anymore so I can’t really comment on raid tactics… I’ll go with AoE grinding

Before I started playing a mage, I saw a video that blew my socks off, and also made it clear which class I would be playing from that point on.

If I could find the link I would but it’s really ancient history now (just been searching, if anyone can find it pls let me know), the vid may even have been from general beta. Either way, in this video was a mage.

… A dead mage…

he was in the tunnel in AV, surrounded by what looked like the entire opposing team.

He rezzed up, and started blasting. There were arcane explosions, blast waves, frost novas, I think also a blizzard.

And there was the damage, an entire screen full of numbers popping up everywhere…

And there were the HKs! dozens of them! In a matter of seconds the entire opposite team was on the floor, and at this point my passion for mage AoE was born

There are a bunch of aoe grind guides around these days, but it really is one of those things you can only master by practice. Lots of practice.

There are plenty of different ways to AoE as a mage, but this sequence is still my favourite. Requires that you have improved blizzard, ice barrier, water elemental and NO frostbite.

1. barrier up.
2. mount up.
3. gather 8 – 20 melee mobs.
4. iceblock.
5. wait for all the mobs to gather around you in a neat circle. (don’t too long or the mobs will get bored and wander off)
6. pop your iceblock, drop a frost nova, and blink the hell out of there.
7. blink + a few steps should put you at max blizzard range. (pop trinkets)
8. get your pet out.
9. cast a blizzard so it is covering the mobs
10. use pet’s freeze when they break
11. time for another blizzard on top of the pack
12. third blizzard, this one closer to you so the mobs will walk through it when they get out of the freeze.
13. frost nova + cone of cold when the pack gets close to you again…

… spend 5 minutes looting corpses

I still plan to make a video one of these days if I can just get around to installing fraps one day!