Observations on Mage leveling... or The thinkers class...

Messaggio di MrFredII

Although I've leveled a number of mages, it was not until I was discussing it with a good friend that this topic suggested itself.

My friend (met through WoW) is an exceptional player. He leads raids, is an excellent tank (DK), a phenomenal healer ( shaman), outstanding DPS (warlock or hunter), and a very capable in PvP. He's never played a mage. Recently some friends moved to a new server so he shifted one of his toons there and decided to start a mage as well.

I had started a new toon there (a mage of course) and when I heard that he'd started one offered to help him get caught up and level with him. I was astonished by his reply. "I abandoned my mage. I was always dead and got tired of running back. I don't want to have to plan every pull just to level."

This made me realize just what I love about mages we have no pet, we can't heal, we (normally) can't tank, so if solo any non-trivial pull requires us to think about it, set it up, and execute our plan. While we allow for all the things that can go wrong. If you think about AOE leveling it is in some ways the epitome of mage leveling. I've leveled every class except hunters into at least their mid 40s. My (previous) guild needed some alt slots filled and I'd promised to level a tank and healer to help share the load. Rapidly I found it very boring. Because once in my 20s-30s whether on my shadow priest, warrior, pali, druid, shaman, or DK I basically never had to worry about dying. 90% of the time no planning was required. The priest required a bit of care but the ability to bubble and heal was almost always a sufficient fall back. Locks come with a decent tank, and rogues are just death merchants.

Its completely true that learning to play any class well, requires study and thought. In that regard mages are not unique at all. And a number of classes have more complex (some far more) rotations than mages. But in my experience leveling a mage is at one end of the spectrum. We can level very quickly, but care is almost always required.

When the leveling questions about class choice, speed, spec etc are raised we usually give the same advice about play style and so forth. The advice is sound, but I suspect misses the point because we already work from the assumption that the questioner understand the almost unique constraints on how mages level. So in addition to the observation that at various points you'll have to "drink a lot", we might want to add "but you won't mind because you'll be planning the next pull while you are drinking".

Comments?

Messaggio di 200565

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Messaggio di 288048

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Messaggio di Skyfire

I think what reared it's ugly head here is that all the classes your friend played can go charging in. Hunters can a drink while their pet is in combat. Paladins can practically leave the keyboard... so on and so forth.

So yeah, in that respect, there's a tad more planning.

What your friend probably didn't do was get to the point where it's a rote movement. Do this, double check that, then go pew pew, rather than "Chaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarge!" or the other "Did I get that? Did I miss this? What if there are other mobs around? Is FN up?" so on, and so forth.

I spent a bit of time dead before I got Polymorph. Even then, I had problems leveling through Westfall, as I didn't understand yet that you could run through a zone to hunt down the FP and such. After that though, it was largely a breeze (if tedious, occasionally).

Mages live on the edge, either way. It doesn't take much pew pewing to take us out at the early levels.

Messaggio di Madmick

Any class requiring cc control in arenas is cerebral in nature. Not to say we aren't the most, I dunno, I don't spend any time on my alts. Just my two cents.

Messaggio di Squishalot

I think what reared it's ugly head here is that all the classes your friend played can go charging in. Hunters can a drink while their pet is in combat. Paladins can practically leave the keyboard... so on and so forth.

Not quite true. Paladins can literally leave the keyboard. Not just practically.

I agree and disagree though. Warlocks and Shamans aren't exactly the 'charge in and wait' classes (to my experience). I've stolen pet aggro regularly levelling as a lock just off the face of my dots.

I do agree however that mages do require a little more planning at earlier levels, up to around L20-30. Any higher, and it's just like any other class - spam single damaging ability to kill single target. AoE levelling is more challenging, of course, but you could say the same with any class. Despite the rumours, you can't just round up 5 mobs with a Prot Paladin and leave the computer. You could argue that melee AoE'ing is more intensive than Mage AoE'ing, because it requires more positioning work to keep mobs in front of you.

I don't see much difference with Mages compared to any other class, to be honest, the process is the same. Spam Frostbolt, wait for procs, keep spamming Frostbolt. If you get in strife, Ice Barrier and Evocate - not incredibly different to bubble-healing as a Paladin or PW:S-healing as a Priest. Having said that, I couldn't solo Hogger at L10 on my Priest or Rogue.

Messaggio di 200565

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Messaggio di Bazar

i love my frost pvp mage at 80
He sucked ass leveling
He REALLY sucked arse leveling from 10-20.

I nearly quit 3 times from 10-20 because the spells were so badly balanced in mana costs.

I'll put this in perspective.
Decked out my mage with the best heirlooms possible, and rolled away.
Untill i was level 10, it was faster just to wack things dead with my staff then it was to cast things at them.

from 10-20, you alternate between spells. You get fireball, then it becomes so costly to use due to the broken upranking system that when you get frostbolt you use that, even if your using fire talents.
This continues to level 20. At which point your left gasping for air everytime you kill something

I would go in a bliz mobs, blowing them away as fast as i could. After killing just 3 mobs, over a minute. i'd be OOM, then spend the next 35 seconds drinking to full mana.
My mage had the best you could get, enchanted.
Sholders, chest, double trinket, staff +30sp enchant.
And yet his kill rate was terrible, as was his mana efficency. I don't even want to think how unbearable it'd of been to try without a decked out mage.

At level 20 i got evocation and things finally became toleratable. But still tedious.

Lets compare it to my warrior i'm leveling.
I geared my warrior up same treatment. He'd simply run upto something and kill it. 2 shoting it actually, autoattack would drop it to 20% life, the following rend ensured it was dead as well as its parents, siblings, and anything else it held dear.

My mage would spend 3 minutes clearing the entrance of a cave of frost yeti's killing about 9, and nearly dieing in the process.

My gnome warrior in 3 minutes had killed about 30, with body parts flying past his bloodied sword. Slowed only by the fact he couldn't wade fast enough though the blooded pools and fallen bodies that littered the cave walls

As for planning.
Well my mage was single target up untill he started getting blastwave/dragons breath/living bomb, even then that was only during groups.

My warrior at only level 30 is duel target the entire way (sweeping strikes). every 5 minutes he likes to pick up about 8 mobs at once and cleave (3 targets), sweeping strikes (x2), + retaliation = upto 20 attacks resulting in a pile of dead bodies.

What am i getting at.
Mages suck at leveling due to neglect from blizzard (hopefully fixed this next patch)
The "planning" they do is really more of a "prep work". Its not something i'd consider advantageous
And the fun factor leveling is minimal until you get into groups or at least get the fun talents/spells at 60.

They are great fun at 80, but starting them off, not something i'd recommend untill blizzard massively improves their starting stats and scaling,

Messaggio di Nelfshane

I must admit it is a rather large shock of going from a plate wearing class or a cloth class with a pet to a mage. I believe I've deleted at least 7 of my attempts at creating a mage. Priests follow in the same category for me. I didn't like going oom every three seconds. I didn't like things being able to one shot me that on my pally or my warrior I could run guns a blazing... or in some cases hammers a blazing... and completely and utterly wreck face and house. PvP (though I won't deny lack of experience) I loved being able to melt faces with my lock or causing my wolf to run down druids and eat them alive on my hunter, but to get annihilated on my mage was a slap to the face. I think that's why I've just recently started enjoying it more. WoW's become a bit dull and boring for me as everything's seemingly become too darn easy to do. To finally have a moderate challenge in leveling again has been great.

Now my only complaint I've been having is about frost glyphs stinking at low levels (I want my movement speed slow on my frostbolt darn you), and the fact of why the heck I can't learn to conjure food and drink at the levels when I'd normally be able to eat and drink them. Being able to make Conjured Purified Water at the same level or maybe even one level higher of when I can consume Melon Juice I don't think is too much to ask. But then again I'm probably just nit picking.

Messaggio di 165390

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Messaggio di Raistlan1991

I originally Started out playing a Warrior , And i found it tedious when I got to lvl 55, But then Lich Dropped and I picked up a Dk and played it all the way to 80 , But I got bored of the Stomp in and own things with Aotd and a Ghoul, SO I went and rolled a new class, I tried sevral , and my friends all said don't start a mage you won't like it, so I listened to them for awhile. Found I didn't like the other classes that much, and I rolled a mage, and fell in love

I didn't find the lvling Tedious at all, but that might be because I was walking all over mobs with Fireballs, Sitting down and drinking and saying to myself, hmmmm Fireball or Polymorph.....lets Do both just in case. This class did take alot more thought then the hack and slash melee. BUT IS TOTALLY WORTH THE THINKING!

Messaggio di 236298

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Messaggio di Skyfire

Messaggio di nickseng

A bunch of stuff about mage levelling ...

Having levelled at least 4 mages, I couldn't disagree more. I love the mage levelling experience, there's nothing more satisfying than killing stuff before you can touch you (not so much in the earlier levels, but close).

Levelling a Mage is a lot different from almost any other class, in that you have that much more spells to use. With judicious planning, you can go quite a while without having to drink. The key is looking at the DPM of a spell (usually, the latest spell you learn will have the best DPM, regardless of whatever spec you use), and not wasting mana on frivolous kill, ie. casting a frostbolt that does 200 damage on a mob with 20 health.

My worse levelling experience was with the warrior, due to how bored i got with him. There was a serious lack of interactivity early on, due to the fact you're gonna be auto-attacking 80% of the time, and the fact that you had not much options if you take on more than you can handle.

In the end, I suspect this preference on class leveling is really dependent on each person, and their playstyle. There is no 1 class that everyone will prefer.

As an aside, I cannot understand all the talk about "suffering through the first 40 levels, then the class gets enjoyable". IMHO, if you don't like the class within the first 10 levels, you're probably not gonna like the class. Preference may vary. :)

Messaggio di 466571

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Messaggio di MrFredII

Because once in my 20s-30s whether on my shadow priest, warrior, pali, druid, shaman, or DK I basically never had to worry about dying.

Editing is good.
Admittedly that was, perhaps, poorly put. My point is that on virtually any other class once you hit a relatively low level you generally don't fear dying. Since DK's start at level 55 they are part of that group.

As for pulling groups, (remember I mentioned planning non-trivial pulls) once you get poly, pulls of up to 4 mobs at your level are quite possible long before you get an AoE (other than frost nova). Movement is your friend, say you want to kill the named target surrounded by 3 adds. Sheep one add and start backing up (or strafing) fire blasting the named target asap. Then run a couple of seconds and fire blast him again. Repeat this until either you've pulled him clear or you've chipped enough off him to frost nova him and (usually the one add still interested in chasing you) kill him (if needed poly the add) kill the add and loot for the quest. You can do this even before you get poly but usually you have to pull two of the adds out of the group first. If you're frost spec ( at middle levels), you have more CC options which generally means you need less room to kite which generally means you have less clearing.

As for OOM issues, yes we have to pause more but as was mentioned above if you tailor your mana expenditure to the mobs remaining health you can kill at a pretty good pace without drinking much. With the following observation, if you let your mana get too low and something unexpected happens you are probably going to die. So your effective mana pool is inversely proportional to your paranoia.

Messaggio di Bazar

You've got to be joking. Spells are always more powerful than melee for a clothie. Only time I melee'd at all was to finish off mobs in the starter area, and that was just so I didn't oom after 2 of them.
You haven't used a heirloom staff then, 2 other guildies who also rolled alts and geared them with the heirloom staff made simlar remarks. Its faster to just melee at the start then it is to cast spells.

from 10-20, you alternate between spells.

Yeah, you do end up alternating spells for a little bit, what's your point?
My point was that the system is dodgy.
I've leveled 2 mages before. The first was more enjoyable, and made more sence then my more recent attempt because the mana cost of spells didn't skyrocket each time you leveled.
Having fireball cost 50% more because you've leveled twice since getting it isn't fun.
Having 9 points in fire, and using arcane missles because its mana efficent is counter-intutitive, and just plan retarded.
If you kept casting fireballs even when it wasn't mana friendly, then you would go OOM in seconds.

If you can't understand why i keep going on about mana, then i honestly have to question if or how you played the first 20 levels as a mage. Either you were oblivous to how slowly you were leveling and drinking, or you leveled before the downranking nerf was introduced.

Eitherway blizzard finally after months seems to be fixing it for mages. I'll quote this from the PTR notes

Spell Mana Costs: These costs have been reduced for almost all lower level spell ranks. In general, if a spell decreased in cost with a higher level rank in patch 3.2.0, that spell now has the decreased cost at all ranks. In addition, spells learned before level 20 with reduced cast times and/or durations have even further reduced mana costs, proportionate to their reduction in cast time or damage.

Final time i'll mention it.
Mages as of the live servers, have a terrible time with mana while leveling to 20, and it only slowly becomes balanced as they work towards 30.
At 30 onwards its still an subsiding issue, but at least you can kill more then 4 mobs without having to drink.

As an aside, I cannot understand all the talk about "suffering through the first 40 levels, then the class gets enjoyable". IMHO, if you don't like the class within the first 10 levels, you're probably not gonna like the class. Preference may vary. :)

I liked the class, i hated with a passion how ineffective it was at leveling.
Just because a holy priest hates leveling, doesn't mean they hate being a holy priest, or they hate priests as a class. It just means they hate how they level.

Messaggio di zkreso

My priest was much harder to level in the early stages than my mage. You'd literally not have enough mana to kill something and would have to wand it before it meleed you to death. If you accidentally pulled an add after the mob was dead, you would be screwed as you had no hp left and no mana to heal yourself with

Messaggio di Squishalot

I don't know why people are raising mana while levelling as an issue. As a % of base mana, you can cast the same number of Fireballs on a full mana pool irrespective of what level you are assuming that you've stripped butt naked and aren't levelling your gear at the same time.

But you only disagree slightly. You still admit that it's more a process of (for example) "Send pet in and I'll Fear if I pull extra" rather than "is there an extra? Gotta' Poly first".

For Shamans, you get to heal. 'Nuff said.

While neither of those classes are as boring as Hunters and Paladins, their OH$%^& button among other items make them easier to ignore the planning stage, or at least lessen the number of steps required at that stage.

Mm, I'll disagree a bit more than that. Shamans get to heal, fair enough. But last night (note, my mage just dinged 49 shortly after), I charged into a pack of 3 oozes, ran along to get a couple more for a total of 5, frost nova'd them in place and blizzarded them down. It's not really any different to what I'd do on my Prot Paladin, except that at 80, I'd get about 2 or 3 times as many mobs.

I mean, your playstyle can be one of two possible ways - you either AoE down mobs, or you take them down one by one. If you're going one by one, you're not going to be pulling mobs on the side, because you'll be methodically clearing on route to where you want to go. If you're going AoE, then you won't care, as you grab everything in an area. Melee classes have more OH$#!7 buttons, but they are also more likely to overaggro, on account of the fact that they *have* to get up and dirty with a pull.

If you need to deal with multiple mobs, and you use your AoE abilities and your frost nova. I don't see why it's so hard.

Messaggio di Raistlan1991

I have no issues with Mana now, im Doing the Frostfire build while i lvl, i picked up the base cost of your spells is cheaper in Frost, and then the refund on mana when you crit, and i crit alot, at lvl 46 im killing 7 to 9 mobs in a row before i have to drink.

Observations on Mage leveling... or The thinkers class...

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