Going frost for PvP is so Burning Crusade. The new hotness? Arcane, baby!
I prefer arcane over frost for general PvP, largely for the following reasons:
- Mobility
- Mobility
- Did I already say mobility
- Cause Seriously
- This spec is MOBILE
- Also stupidly powerful crits
Specifically, I use a specific kind of arcane spec, known as “arcane shatter”. It’s a kickass spec, full of ass kicking, though it’s honestly a rather cheap spec to use against the undergeared and underskilled. It’s possible to defeat most opponents by using only slow and arcane barrage. That poor ret paladin…
Anyway, the spec itself is rather simple. 51/0/20, picking up all the good stuff arcane power, icy veins, slow, ABarr. It detours from a “normal” arcane PvP spec in that it doesn’t use arcane blast or arcane missiles. The main nuke is, in fact, frostbolt.
Game play is a simple affair. General combat revolves around liberal use of slow, arcane barrage, and frostbolt spamming where possible. The primary power of the spec comes from using shatter combos, just like a deep frost spec, but using arcane barrage instead of ice lance.
And, of course, using PoM+FFB and AP to produce shatter numbers that edge dangerously close to “what the hell just hit me” territory.
To put it another way, I have killed prot pallies with 35k hitpoints and 900+ resilience in five spells.
Arcane shatter does not have PoM Pyro, though it might as well considering how hard PoM-FFB hits. I use a macro, bound to Q, which will blast my hand-mounted pyro rockets (Engineering: most overpowered profession ever? Discuss), activate PoM, then fire FFB. I almost always use this macro exclusively on rooted/frozen targets, in order to unleash the almighty shatter combo we all know and love.
Shatter, of course, provides an extra 50% crit. By activating PoM, I am granting that FFB an extra 30% crit. Factoring in my base crit rate, this gives that FFB a 102% chance to crit before resilience. Then, of course, stack ice shards and spellpower for 225% critical strikes.
Usually, this results in a wall of huge numbers, something like an 8k frostbolt crit, 9k FFB crit, 3k HMPR crit, which is almost always enough to end the fight right then and there. Keep in mind that all this takes a mere 4 seconds to pull off, even less if I don’t use frost nova and use a frostbite proc instead.
And that’s just one trick, if a pretty good one.
Mage Armor is the armor of choice; switch to ice armor when fighting warriors and rogues. The frostbite procs will help you more.
Glyph choices are a personal thing. Glyph of Evocate, obviously, but the other two are up to you. I use glyph of polymorph, as DKs, warriors and rogues are AoE happy fiends, and glyph of mana gem. The extra mana is astoundingly good, and combined with a 2 minute evocate it’s extremely hard to run yourself oom, even if you’re using mana shield a lot (which I do).
Glyph of IV is a good choice, even glyph of AP has its uses, and I can even see glyph of ABarr if you’re spending a lot of time slow dancing.
Oh, right, mayhaps you don’t know what that is.
Ignoring cooldowns, there are two very distinct forms of playing arcane shatter. The first involves spamming frostbolt, and throwing in ABarr whenever you need to move or whenever you get a frostbite proc.
The second is when you don’t frostbolt at all, but spend 100% of your time moving, essentially spamming ABarr and slow. I call this slow dancing, as that’s essentially what it is. You’re at maximum range for your arcane spells, keeping slow up on your target whilst hitting them with ABarr.
The idea is that this keeps you out of range of melee while stil hurting them, and is even ruthlessly effective against any caster that relies on casted spells, by “dancing” in and out of range of them.
In both cases this is merely a delay tactic. You can win fights this way, though most opponents will figure out how to counter this behaviour fairly quickly. Why delay? For a number of reasons.
Forcing cooldowns – case and point, ret paladins. By essentially spamming slow on them as fast as they can cleanse it, the vast majority of ret paladins will, sooner or later, say “screw this” and blow freedom to come pound your face into the dirt. Then freedom gets spellstolen, then you destroy them utterly.
Waiting for your own cooldowns – perhaps most importantly, frost nova. Keeping a melee class at bay until you’re ready to hurt them is a legit strategy, even if it drives them up the freakin’ wall.
Killing healers is also a simple task. Catch them in a cast (it’s surprisingly easy to do this, with the combined pressure of constant damage, slow, and spellsteal) counter them, then a single shatter combo is enough to either flat out kill them or put them in straights dire enough you’ll be able to finish them off in a couple more casts.
Personally, I find this spec, quote unquote, better than the 51/17 arcane/fire style specs. Gaining huge shatter crits and twin snares outweighs the advantages of burning determination and impact for me.
So far this expansion, arcane has generally been a brutal counter to other casters, whilst being kinda terrible against melee. Arcane shatter doesn’t change this too much, as you’re still powerful enough to be considered a hard counter to many casters, but you are better at fighting melee than any other arcane pvp build.
I’d say “go on, give it a try”, but after telling you I can deal nearly 20k damage in 2 GCDs you probably already did. Have fun!
My arena partner said to me last week, I kid you not … “have you ever thought of picking up shatter”? God, I hate when he’s right! I might have to try this, although … I love my missile barrage. It will be hard to let go, especially for BGs. WTB triple specs! Hm .. or do BGs in my raid spec and pvp gear. Tempting …
I need tri spec!
I just overwrote my second spec to IA last night so I have no open spot for a PvP spec. /sad
When I was doing 2s with another mage, he went frost and I went something similar to your arcane shatter spec. It was stupid painful when we could pull off both of us shattering the same target.
Interesting. I might have to go back to arcane for my second spec. I was running a 60/0/11 arcane spec for a while, but you make this one sound interesting.
And just when I was looking forward to the frost PVE changes too.
It’s almost enough to make me dig Rhii out of her mothballs and take it for a test drive. The last time I played her I hadn’t discovered I liked pvp yet.
sounds awesome. As soon as I’m home from work, I’m speccing that.
Sounds exciting and worth trying.
The only thing is I quit WoW last night right as subscription was going to be renewed.
Bought Aion and will be trying that tonight.
How much do you gear/gem for Haste? ‘Cause quick frostbolts are kinda important, but nothing else you use benefits from it.
I am curious about this too. I heard Arcane specs work better with haste but it sounds like the big numbers are really crit based…
I have been using arcane for pvp and love it! I am looking forward to dropping some points in the frost tree when I get some free time.
As always, thanks for the info, Euri. =)
I gem rather heavily towards haste, with basically only one goal in mind: frostbolt needs to be, at bare minimum, a 2 second cast without any outside buffs. Once I hit about, say, a 1.98 second cast or something, that’s enough haste.
Bear in mind that haste also lowers the GCD.
I had thought of that … I guess I never saw a lower GCD as being all that helpful in PVP. How often does a few tenths of a second mean the difference between a kill and a death? Sure, they add up over time, but so too do mana costs. Mmm, maybe that’s why you glyph for mana gem …
But I’ve never played anything even vaguely frost, and I’ve only PvP’d with the big old ABlast arcane build, so I’ve little experience in how helpful lower GCD’s paired with chain-cast instants can be.
Humm.. i tried play with that build… but my partner was a prot/holy paly, and i think the interruptions were bad… specially vs hunters.
I use like Tebla … 60/0/11, that gives a good combo too, but not in 4 secs… cause i have to buff “Arc Blast”.
…
I’m curious about killing Warlocks, with nether protection… is it good? or locks keep owning mages?
The disadvantage of Nether Protection is the same disadvantage DKs have with Acclimation: it can only proc for whatever school of damage it was hit with. For instance, if frost damage is reduced, that doesn’t help the ‘lock at all against arcane or fire damage. Generally speaking, nether protection is a non-issue.
Warlock fights are very rock-paper-scissors with this spec. It all depends on which pet the warlock is using. If he’s using Succubus, the mage has the upper hand. If he’s using Felpuppy, then the mage is at a disadvantage.
But I like Frost… Oh well guess since I PvP to win not for nastalgia I can try it out…after this weeks arena though, gonna need some time to get used to it before I go full bore in a rated match.
How much Resilience is too much though? I run 1021 but I saw you around the 600 mark gemmed exclusivly with Haste, I have all SP/Resil or Stam/Resil in my gear. You also ignored socket bonuses, maybe it’s the PvE in me but that sort of thing eats at me in my own gear =)
1021 is a little bit overboard. Generally speaking, resilience isn’t as important for DPS as it is for healers. I consider 600 a little low for arenas, if I did arena as a mage I’d probably up that to 700, though that depends on the comp.
Really, anything more than 700 is excessive.
Everything I’ve read says 900 is the mark to hit. Just curious why you stop at 700? More stamina, more spell? Is that so you can get the 130 spell pen without giving up the other stats?
Also, I looked at the spec. Why did you go with increase in increase arcane range/dampen magic talent vs taking the increase in armor (talent above)?
I play a shadow priest as my main, but the lack of cc’s at my disposal is very frustrating. When a lock can constant fear and a mage can sheep/slow etc you just don’t have a chance sometimes. Now I’m determined to get my 74 mage up to actually compete and get over that 950 rating hump.
It has to do with the feel of things, how you play, what your comp is, who you play with, etc.
I sit at 600 resilience because I use several PvE pieces. While this won’t be true next patch due to the changes to the set bonus, for now it’s the lack of spellpower that hurts.
More resilience lowers my spellpower, and 600 is a good balance for me where I’m survivable enough for BGs but still capable of rapidly killing opponents.
Again, though, the 900 mark is more for healers, not so much DPS types.
Hmmm I might have to try this, but when new patch comes out, back to the frost love.
Holy cow, just tried this spec out on my mage and me and my rogue friend ROCKED!
There was a pally sitting at 15k hp, not even a thought of bubbling. I frost nova, he had already used and I had already stolen Hand of Freedom. So he sat there… not knowing his own doom…
7k frostbolt 10k arcane barrage = dead pally
Showed complete disregard for silly things like speed limits getting home from work so I could try this spec. Replaced the hyper-speed accels with the HMPR, and spent some time on the target dummies, getting bars set up, then headed for the BGs.
Oh my!
I miss my Ice Barrier badly, but that just forces me to be more mobile, which is what this spec is all about.
Have seen some crazy battleground videos where this spec or something very close is used.
Worth a look, search for toorc on youtube and there are two vids there that come up.
Needless to say, my pvp deep frost spec is getting benched this weekend while I give this one a crack =)
I wonder if it will help my decidedly average arena experience!
PS: theres a movie on warcraft movies called Aciddagger something something, where this spec gets a bit of a test run against deep frost and deep arcane.
Result: dominates for burst, falls short over sustained periods of time.
My only concern about this spec is becoming a 3 minute mage again, but I guess the PoM FFB isn’t the only trick up your sleeve so it shouldn’t be too bad.
Bit of background. I play with three other casual, *cough* old *cough* players – two shamans and a pally. We’re getting my son’s DK leveled up to tank for us, as our pally doesn’t really like tanking/is still learning to play pally/has a consistently low framerate.
We’ve tried the HH about three times since Hallows End started, with the 72/73 DK tanking (sort of). I’ve been on a deep frost/TTW spec, with a dual spec of deep fire. We failed 4 of 4 summons each night.
Got the picture?
I respecced after reading this post, played one night on it, then last night we tackled HH again. A few pieces of gear different, throughout the group, but none on me. I’m outfitted in almost purely PvP stuff (Deadly and Furious, some Titan-forged).
Last night, we tried again, and took him down 3 of 4. My damage output went up significantly, and despite the fact that I didn’t have Ice Barrier, the increased mobility me alive. Not to mention Insta-Invis! The one time we failed, our pally got killed in the first 15 seconds, and we still made it to well into the third phase.
I didn’t notice any significant mana difference over the course of the fight, unless I started seriously spamming AB, at which point, I switched back to Frostbolt, until a pot or gem came available.
Hi, I play a destro lock, and my gf plays a mage; any tips on playing this spec, especially in 2v2 arenas?
We think we have the basics down: CC one while we both burst the other. If they focus on her, mana shield + slow and Arcane Barrage while running away.
If they focus on me, then she can frostbolt away, until her shatter combo is set up, while I flail around the keyboard trying to survive 😛
Anything else we should look out for?
Target swaps, especially against teams trying to outlast you (i.e. basically all DPS/Healer comps).
CC one, burst the other is the basic formula for success as any dual DPS comp, but you have to remember that the dude your CCing and the dude your bursting do not always have to be the same person.
As a very rough rule of thumb, swapping every time a cooldown (or something) of some sort is blown creates immense pressure that takes a lot to overcome.
For instance, take warrior/paladin. CC the paladin, open as hard as you can on the warrior. The paladin will have to blow a trinket or bubble (he might pop raid wall or HoS, so watch for that), or the warrior will have to play hyper defensive to stay alive, sometimes both. If you see Shield Wall, for instance, then switch. Swap CC to the warrior, hit the paladin really hard.
As an overall strategy, what you’re doing is forcing the other team to blow their cooldowns one by one, while most of your burst doesn’t rely on long cooldowns at all. Your target swaps are really only limited by the cooldown of Conflagrate and Chaos Bolt.
The specifics (watching for and dispelling HoSac, forcing the paladin into a position where he can’t dispel the warrior, forcing Berserker Rage to open a fear window) you just have to practice, really.
I never quite understood how to implement the “shatter combo”. Can you describe exactly what that entails step-by-step? Thanks.
Not playing a frost mage, I may get this wrong, but then someone will come along, call me a noob and correct me, so I’ll try.
1) Freeze someone; either through Frostbite or Frost Nova, or get the Fingers of Frost buff.
2) Cast Frostbolt/Frostfire Bolt. This will have the additional 50% crit chance from Shatter.
3) Before the Frostbolt hits (preferably as soon as possible) cast Ice Lance (or Arcane Barrage, if you are Arcane Shatter specced). This way, you have two spells, that both have the 50% extra crit (even if the first Frostbolt breaks the frozen debuff).
4) If you are far enough away from the target that your GCD has finished before the spells have hit, fire off another spell, such as another Ice Lance/Arcane Barrage, or a PoM-FFB.
5) Watch in wonder as 2 or 3 spells crit on your target and take away a huge chunk of it’s health.
Sorry to be n00b whats HMPR???
@ Atriusun : Very nice explanation. Thank you for taking the time to explain that for me.
Would you mind including your macros? I am currently trying to setup a shatter arcane macro and am having trouble getting it to work right. Thanks!
[…] As a mage, I am always looking for new things to try, and new things to experiment with. This post had me highly curious. I have foregone my usual Frost PvP Spec to give this a shot. I tried to […]
I tried out this spec, and I am enjoying a new challenge in places where frost may have been too easy.
For awhile, after dueling down in the dalaran sewers and outside IF for quite some time, I felt the need to buy a facemask from all the facerolling I felt I was doing. Not wanting to say frost is easy or overpowered, I will state that that I believe I am simply at the point where my skill in 1v1 has exceeded that of a normal person (from having exclusively dueled for many days of playing time), and it doesn’t take much unless the other person also has a thing for 1v1 combat too.
So I was doing some ABs today with a enhance shaman, resto druid and holy pally using this spec…
..and my god is it awesome.
The burst i provide along with our shaman kills most players in the first 5 seconds. Combined with the shamans Frozen Power talent that roots targets with frostshock.. needless to say we slaughtered.
I did find myself oom a lot having to spam mana shield to stay alive but overall this spec is extremely fun
[…] whoop. Sure you can kill people, but people also kill you. Then I tried Arcane Shatter, thanks to Euripede’s post about it on his blog, proclaiming to the world of it’s magnificance. That was all well and fun, but it […]
I modified the spec to include missle barrage and arcane empowerment, removing piercing ice.
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage#_CFwDHhVkV4YZ2,yQUORe,10676
Any thoughts? Better or worse?
[…] enough, and there’s only one man to thank for this. Euripedes he introduced me to the Arcane Shatter Spec basically 51/0/20. Important thing of course is Shatter/Slow/Arcane Barrage. The glyphs I […]
This seems really cool! Though, I must ask – http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#ofcbf0rcdcGuMthdZAc0Go0h:zwm would something like that be able to work aswell? Missile Barrage is quite good asfar as I reckon?
Thank you for showing me this spec btw!
I did ask the question on another post on your site for advise but then someone linked me to here from my site.
Wow….just what I’m after and I will defo try this tonight.
2 questions
1. Assume this still applies after the patch
2. You mention you still wear some pve gear. I do have full pve gear but last night I put on my pve boots and chest which reduced my resil down to mid 600 I think but did increase sp by just over 100 and my haste by approx 150
How many bits of pve gear do you wear out of interest?
Hopefully I may get good at this pvp magey stuff you never know 😉
*correction…..I have full pvp gear but last night I put on my pve boots and chest..
although not the best pvp gear I must add
[…] Spec (51/0/20) Thanks to Euripedes, I dabbled in this PvP spec, and it’s awesome and fun. I just missed my buddy Water […]