by Christian Belt

In a game that is–stripped to its most basic components–about obtaining better and better gear, it’s natural that eventually, you’d begin wondering what the holy grail is. What is the ultimate goal? Which piece of gear is actually, finally, at the end of the day, the best? And how long until the next patch takes it from best in slot to third or fourth-best in slot?

In most cases, this isn’t especially difficult to determine. Which item has the best stats? If one cloak has 80 spellpower, and another has 90, chances are good that you can identify the best option of the two. Programs like Rawr can make it even easier. Plug in your character’s information, and viola! Here’s the robe that’s best for you. But where things typically get hairy is on those final two slots: trinket #1, and trinket #2.

Unlike most of your other gear, trinkets are often more…subjective. Here are two excellent trinkets:

Reign of the Dead

Talisman of Resurgence

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by Zach Yonzon

Mages are a slippery bunch. Don’t be fooled by those pansy dresses and flimsy wands. Mages are fearsome opponents on the battlefield, possessing wondrous abilities taken from the pages of classic fantasy — they can hurl gigantic fireballs, pop from one place to the other, turn opponents into critters, and even make their own food and drink (which is why it’s important to make friends with one)! Nowadays, they can even disappear and make copies of themselves, making them even trickier and more dastardly.

Today, we’ll figure out some basic things to consider when we’re fighting a mage. Some classes will have an easier time with mages, particularly those who can interrupt spellcasting and shrug off spell effects, while others will fall prey to their considerable abilities to snare, crowd control, and their remarkable burst damage. Mages are one-third of one of the most efficient, complementary, and successful 3v3 Arena comps and for good reason.

Starting the fight

As a caster class, mages will generally want to keep some distance from their enemies, enabling them to cast freely and without fear of interruption. One common tactic seen in PvP is a mage starting things off with a Polymorph and casting a long cast spell such as a Pyroblast or Frostbolt. If such spells land, they’ll usually take a large chunk of your health and gets the mage started on the right foot. Don’t let them. Unless you’re a healer or have ways to recover lost health or put up some immunity to even the odds, having a mage get off a long-cast, high-damage spell on you puts you at a disadvantage. Even as a healer, be mindful that mages have Counterspell at the ready, so letting them damage you also means they’ll be waiting for that heal.

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by Christian Belt

This is intended to be a relatively basic overview of the spec; I won’t be delving into much in the way of the more complex mechanics here. This will also be a PvE-centric column. So without further ado:

1. What is arcane?

The leftmost of the three mage specs, this tree focuses on magic that is neither fiery nor frosted. It is (for the next five minutes or so, at least) the current single-target pure DPS champ, as far as mage specs go.

2. Arcane Benefits

• Extremely high damage
• Simple rotation
• Low hit cap
• Provides good raid utility
• Missile Barrage is awesome

3. Arcane drawbacks

• Highly dependent on timely procs for mana efficiency
• Cannot sustain highest DPS rotation
• Rotation is fairly boring
• Sub-par AoE

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by Tuna @ Spicytuna

With the latest raid released with Patch 3.3, players will finally get to confront Arthas in the Icecrown Citadel. In the new 10 and 25 man raid, players can earn reputation with the Ashen Verdict faction while killing trash and bosses in the dungeon.

Like some of the previous raid dungeons before (AQ, Kara, and Hyjal), gaining reputation with this faction will award you with a ring which you can upgrade as your rep level increases. Here is what you can get as a Mage:

• Friendly – [Ashen Band of Destruction]
• Honored – [Ashen Band of Greater Destruction]
• Revered – [Ashen Band of Unmatched Destruction]
• Exalted – [Ashen Band of Endless Destruction]

Those are some very, very nice rings, and you definitely want to rep up with the Ashen Verdict for it. Join any 10/25 Icecrown Citadel raid you can. If you see players doing ICC rep runs, join them. But what if you aren’t in a raiding guild, and there aren’t any rep runs going on?

Solo Farming ICC Rep

As a Mage, you have a few moves in your arsenal which will allow you to go in and farm some trash by yourself. I wouldn’t recommend you doing this as your only means to getting rep. It is not a very efficient way to get rep.

You can only pull the first two mobs, then you will have to reset the instance and do it again. Remember: You only get 5 resets per hour.

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by Christian Belt

We’ll cover each enchantable slot in turn and list the best available enchant options for those slots. We’ll also cover a few more cost-effective alternatives for those slots that you haven’t upgraded yet, and might replace before long. Maybe you have a Volkswagen Rabbit and would rather wait to install a top-end alarm system in something with a bit more…flair. Or maybe you’re just cheap.

• Head

Your only real options here come from the various Northrend faction quartermasters, which of course means you’ll need to actually raise your reputation with those factions in order to purchase them. For mages, that faction is the Kirin Tor, and that enchant is the Arcanum of Burning Mysteries. It costs 150g, and you’ll need to be at revered to buy it. There are several pieces of good news there, though:

1. You’re a mage, which means you already start out at friendly with the Kirin Tor.
2. If you’ve been farming emblems in random heroics, and you’ve worn your Tabard of the Kirin Tor for even a small portion of those farming sessions, you’re probably at or beyond revered already.
3. If not, start doing that. It doesn’t take long. Really, this is probably the first Wrath faction you should start grinding rep with as a mage.
4. 150g is not a lot of money.

As of the last patch, these faction-specific enchants are all Bind-on-Account now, so if you have another character that’s at revered or better with the Kirin Tor, you can always buy this with that character and send it to your mage. But really, you’re a freaking mage. You should get in good with the mage faction.

1976 Volkswagen Rabbit option:

I still say 150g and revered with the Kirin Tor is cheap, but if you want a budget alternative, you can always go for the PvP head enchant, available in Wintergrasp for 40 Stone Keeper’s Shards. You lose 1 spellpower and 20 crit rating and gain resilience.
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by Christian Belt

Once you have the gear to put out quality DPS, maximizing that DPS through gems can often be a trial-and-error process, costing a great deal of time and gold.

Theorycrafters make it sound simple: Spellpower trumps all, every time, always, forever. And though this is largely true, the hard and fastness of this rule varies a bit between specs and playstyles. There is no cookie-cutter “optimal” stetup that will work for every mage ever, without exception.

What I offer here are a few guidelines to follow when gemming your mage, things that are generally true to some degree regardless of your spec or playstyle. When there are exceptions, I’ll try to list those too.

In most cases, spellpower gives you the most bang for your buck.

This is almost always going to be true. But it would be a mistake to assume that the optimal gem setup for every mage is always going to be a Runed Cardinal Ruby in every slot, regardless of the color of the slot. Past a certain point, more spellpower isn’t always the best policy. Once you get in the neighborhood of 4,000 spellpower, other stats, most notably haste for Arcane mages, start to creep up on something akin to equal footing.

Lets look at the current stat hierarchy:

• Hit rating – This is the single most important stat until it is capped. It varies depending upon talents and raid buffs. Once geared in full epic gear, this should be capped in most cases, without the need for hit rating gems. If you still need hit rating to reach your particular cap, then gems are a good place to get it. Once capped, this stat ceases to be useful in the slightest.
• Spellpower – When in doubt, go with spellpower. In most cases, a Runed Cardinal Ruby is the single best gem you can put in a slot. This is your primary stat.
• Crit and Haste – These are your secondary stats. Haste is of more importance to Arcane mages, while crit is more valuable to Fire/Frostfire mages. Both have effective caps, where stacking more ceases to add value, but they are so high that most mages will never see them.
• Intellect – This is largely valuable as a mana-pool increasing stat. If you find you aren’t running out of mana in long fights quickly enough to cause problems, you have enough intellect. In most cases, this isn’t a stat you’ll need to gem for. The exception is Arcane, which has talents that convert intellect to spellpower. For Arcane mages, the value of intellect jumps to the approximate level of haste, but is still well below spellpower in terms of pure point-for-point importance.
• Spirit is useful for adding crit rating through Molten Armor, but absolutely every other stat already listed is more valuable than spirit for mages, without exception. There is almost never a need to gem for spirit.

Meta slot

This is one circumstance under which there actually is one “optimal” choice: the Chaotic Skyflare Diamond.

The extra crit rating is minimal, and not worth factoring in here. The real value comes from the 3% increased crit damage. This is a flat-out DPS increase, worth around 200 DPS for the more crit-heavy specs. It’s the best meta gem by a long distance, regardless of any variable. You might look at one of the other metas and be tempted. You might think something else sounds appealing somehow. You are wrong. In terms of pure DPS, which are the only terms a mage should care about, the Chaotic Skyflare Diamond is the only choice worth making.

It requires at least two blue gems, which is a slight limitation. You’ll want to fulfill this requirement with purple or green gems, since the blue gems on offer all suck for mages.

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by Xerin @ tentonhammer

When gearing up your Mage in World of Warcraft you’re going to want focus on just one thing, damage. You’re going to want to smoke your enemies with your arcane wrath as fast as you can snap your fingers or do that funny looking casting animation. I seriously would think that it’d be awesome if Mages could cast spells while snapping, but I’m digressing from the topic.

Everything you need to pick up for a Mage should contain Spell Power, Critical Strike Rating, Hit Rating, and to some extent Haste. The most important thing when you’re gearing up for raiding is to focus on your hit rating. Hit rating, until the cap, is the biggest DPS boost you can have because it removes the chance to hit. When you have a lengthy cast time and miss then you lose A TON of DPS.

When you go to pick up gems and enchants be sure to look in your purse. You do not have to use epic quality gems which often sell for 200gold or more on items that aren’t truly epic quality.

Leveling Up

While leveling up you’re going to want to focus on snagging gear with Intellect. Towards TBC when gear starts branching off between healing (spirit and haste) and damage (intellect and hit) you’ll want to go for damage. Both sets have critical strike rating and for the most part neither bit of gear is bad unless you’re running random dungeons and taking the healing specific gear from the healer.

If you get any pieces of gear with gem slots then feel free to add in the superior quality Spell Power gems into them to make them beefier than ever.

The caster heirlooms are by default the best ones. Dreadmist Mantle, Dreadmist Robe, Headmaster’s Charge, and the Discerning Eye of the Beast are the ones you’ll want as a Mage, if you have a level 80 and a lot of time to farm ‘em up.

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via SpicyTuna

“Lord Marrowgar is a unique creature created of skeletons. He is the first boss in the Icecrown Citadel.”

He has one of the coolest boss character models- he is a 4-headed winged skeleton torso, with a big ice ax! As the first boss of Icecrown Citadel, he’ll serve as a gear check for Guilds to see if they are “ready” to tackle this raid instance.

Boss Stats:

• Hit Points – 5,200,000 (10man), 23,740,000 (25man)
• No Enrage Timer

Abilities:

• Saber Lash: Inflicts 200% weapon damage split evenly between the target and its 2 nearest allies.
• Bone Spike Graveyard: Hurls a spike at a random player, impaling all players between the boss and the target on Bone Spikes, inflicting 9,000 direct Physical damage, and additional 10% health as damage every 1 second until the spike is destroyed.
• Coldflame: Inflicts 6,000 (9k on 25man) Frost damage every 1 second for 3 seconds to anyone caught by the moving line of frost.
• Bone Storm: Inflicts 6,000 (12k on 25man) Physical damage every 2 seconds to players caught in the storm.

Recommended Consumables:

• [Flask of the Frost Wyrm]
• Spell Damage food of your choice or Feast

This is a simple fight with a bit of target switching, and a lot of raid awareness. You would want any consumables which may help your DPS.

Frost Mage Overview:

• Pet Friendly: Friendly
• Cooldowns: You may want to save your Ice Blocks, and Cold Snap for when you get trapped in a Bone Storm.

Your Water Elemental won’t be targeted by Bone Spike and is immune to the Coldflame- but he can be damaged by the Bone Storm. You pet will have a 80% damage reduction to AoE damage so you don’t have to worry about moving him around. Just have him keep on attacking.

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by Christian Belt

Bridging the gap between a fresh level 80 character and a completely raid-worthy character has never been easier, or more fun, to accomplish. The options are myriad. Even those of you who have been raiding consistently with your mages prior to 3.3 will likely find a host of new ways to plug holes in your gear set through this new tool.

So let’s look at our new options:

Gearing from scratch

Once upon a time (and not very long ago at all), hitting 80 was a milestone that ushered in a new weeks-long period of desperately trying to span the gulf between your mismatched greens and blues and the epicness you saw all around you. It required expensive profession mats, reputation grinding, and hours of waiting for instance groups to form. It took, as I mentioned earlier, weeks.

Now you can make more progress in an afternoon.

As I see it, there are two excellent options for a fresh level 80 mage, depending upon the resources available to you. If you have a group of friends or guildies to play with who are willing to carry you a bit at first, your single most efficient path is to head directly for normal Trial of the Champion and then farm it. Item-level 200 epics drop from every boss there, and you’ll find you can fill up a great many slots with quality gear in very little time without ever leaving that instance. It isn’t terribly difficult for even moderately geared characters on normal mode, and after a few runs, if the drops go your way, you’ll find you aren’t a liability anymore.

The other option, for those without access to that kind of in-game support structure, or those who simply wish not to be carried even for a short while, is to immediately begin queuing for random Lich King dungeons in the Dungeon Finder. Not the heroics…you aren’t ready for that. Just hit the normal versions of the level 80 Lich King dungeons, and start upgrading your gear to blue-quality and picking up Emblems of Triumph. Now, the problem with this is that you will likely get thrown into some random Trial of the Champion groups, or even more likely, some random Icecrown Citadel 5-man groups. The Icecrown 5-mans, especially, are a bit beyond your abilities at this point. Blizzard has implemented a hidden minimum gear-score requirement for entry into these instances, but in my experience, it doesn’t always work.

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