World of Warcraft at Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMOG Gamers to the Next Level!

Playing a Mage can be both simple and difficult. There isn’t a lot of skill to melting someone’s face off with a Fireball, but there is a certain finesse to doing it while dodging someone else’s attempts to stab you. In this guide we’re going to be going over how to utilize the various Mage abilities in order to stay alive and keep the opposition from doing the same.

Kiting

Kiting is one of the most basic techniques a Mage can do and is one of the oldest known magical techniques used in most fantasy based MMOGs. It can simply be described as dragging an enemy around by snaring it/slowing it down while you sling various spells at it. In WoW this process is made simple by Frost Nova, Ice Armor, Cone of Cold, Frostfire Bolt, and Frost Bolt.

Let’s say that your enemy is directly in front of you and just at the edge of your casting range. You’d start off by slinging a few Fireball or Frostbolt (depending on your spec) and continue until he’s directly in front of you. At this point, you would use Frost Nova to lock him in place and regain the distance. From here you’d continue to sling spells at him until he’s dead. If he does regain the range, you could easily use a single Frostbolt to snare him and then regain the distance again.

Using this process, you can easily avoid taking a good bit of damage (saving time after battle and removing a lot of risk) and keep the durability on your armor up. Just remember, once the enemy is in range of Frost Nova let it go! It recharges really fast and you can use it for most every battle.

Kiting is also a good way to give your Ice Elemental (if you have the talents for it) a chance to get a good couple of hits in . Deep Freeze, a talented stun, can also help you gain a good bit of distance by stunning the enemy for 5 seconds.

Polymorph

Polymorph is a strange spell in that it will often help the enemy (by quickly refilling their HP) at the cost of stunning them for extended periods. It only works on Beasts, Humanoids, and Critters and only lasts the full duration on NPCs (players will break out much quicker tha n your NPCs). Polymorph breaks when an enemy takes damage and has three versions (sheep, pig, and turtle the later two being available through quests and tomes at level sixty).

Polymorph is one of the major Mage spells and is essential in instances, PvP, or even while soloing! In instances, a Mage will often be called upon for the sole duty of keeping one target constantly polymorphed (taking it out of battle for extended periods of time).

Solo Play

When playing solo combat is rather easy. You can view our Mage 1-40 guide for details on how to play with fire alone.

Group Play

Mages are wonderful in groups because of their utility (especially the ability to Polymorph and portal) and their damage (which is some of the best in the game). Mages generally have two things to keep track of: their damage/threat and keeping things Polymorphed.

First and foremost is threat. Threat is how much a certain enemy dislikes you. The more they dislike you then the more likely they are to charge at and attack you. You can make an enemy dislike you by doing damage to it (or using any kind of ability on it). Certain abilities cause more or less threat then others (and some items can lower how much threat you cause all the time). Generally speaking, you should never be unloading all of your damage unless that’s what your job is (say a raid where you can’t possibly pull threat easily) Moderating your damage output so that the tank can hold aggro is key to a successful battle.

That said, in groups a Mage will be mainly doing two things. The first is the obvious, damage. As already been made clear, the Mage’s damage isn’t suppose to be ramping up as fast as possible but instead be moderated so that you don’t get aggro (unless that’s an impossibility, in which case going all out if preferred). Generally after a tank has enough aggro with an enemy then you can ramp your damage up, but it’s always best never to lead into battle with all your magical guns a’ blazing.

The next thing is the Polymorph. As mentioned above, this is very important in many instances and improper polymorphing can lead to the entire group perishing at the enemies hands. Often times you’ll be asked to do a “Poly pull” or “sheep pull”. This is simply you going up, just in cast range, and using the Polymorph spell. Once it’s completed casting you then move behind the group and do absolutely nothing. If any enemies get within melee range simply use Frost Nova and back up. After the tanks have enough aggro go into damage mode until that Polymorph is about to wear out. Feel free to recast Polymorph if it’s about to wear out. When everything is dealt with then the tank will go up and break it last. As a small note, Polymorph isn’t needed that much anymore in 5 man instances, unless the group is undergeared.

You may be asked to remove curses as well. This is important as Mage's are one of the few classes with the unique ability to strip a curse off of someone. It may be hard to constantly monitor health bars, do damage, and keep something polymorphed but with practice you can get the hang of it.

With all of that in mind, most groups will like Arcane Intellect on anyone with a mana pool. You’ll also be asked to supply food and water should anyone need it. Summoning a Mage table isn’t a bad idea in that case.