Focus Magic: New Mage Grouping

In this edition of Focus Magic, to go along with the overall "Newbie" theme of the AIE podcast, OMF was forced by the evil and dastardly Gufoni to do a segment on Instance grouping as a New Mage

Intro

All right folks. It's that time again. The intro is done, the voice of liquid sin has been heard, Dills has told you he loves you, and Warak probably complained about something (I'm going to guess Noblegarden this time). Some other segments were then played. When those are done, it's time....time to dive deeply into the powerful thrum of energy that pervades our world, to sieze it, and take control of it's raw form. To take raw powerful magic and enforce our own will upon it, creating devastating effects which will shatter the very foundations of the world. Or summon a table full of mana strudel, whichever. Ladies and Gentlement it's time once again, for the mage class segment of the AIE podcast...Focus Magic. I am your host, Dahkar. Or as you folks probably know me, Old Man Franks!

Gufoni made me do it. He's Mean

This time around, we're breaking our promise to you, we're NOT going to talk about Deep Fire builds in raiding, because Gufoni won't let us. "This is a low levels podcast, Mister Franks, and you're bloody well going to give us something low levels can do as well" he said. Seriously. That was almost a perfect recreation. Well, we can't very well talk about leveling your mage, as we covered that already in previous podcasts. So what to do instead?

Grouping! Go do it!!

We're going to do a quick rundown on grouping as a mage. I've seen a lot of folks who, for whatever reason, have never done a group instance before, and have or are solo leveling their way to 80.

I must encourage you people: Please don't do this. You miss out on SOOO much not grouping up and doing instances along the way! You learn so much about what it means to be a mage and a player of World of Warcraft, and you're doing a BIG disservice to yourself to not experience this awesomeness.

But I understand it. Some of you are shy folks. Some of you are terrified of screwing things up and being yelled at by your group members. Some are both. I get that fear. Luckily you're in an awesome guild that isn't likely to do such things, and if they DO, you can tell someone about it and they'll work to solve the problem.

Also luckily, you've got me here who's willing to help you learn your role in an instance so you can pwn stuff.

What you Bring to the Table. Besides Conjured Consumables

So here's the basic rundown of how these things are supposed to work. Your typical 5-man group consists of a tank, a healer, and 3 DPS. You, as a mage, fit squarely into the last role, regardless of your spec.

Your job is simple. Do as much damage to your opponents without overtaking the tank on threat, but quick enough that the healer has enough mana to keep the tank alive.

The concept of "threat" is fairly nebulous, but here's a brief explanation. Threat is a numerical value that each mob has for each player in your group. Whoever has the most threat is what that creature will attack. You generate threat on a creature by attacking it with your various abilities. Some of them generate more threat than others. You basically will be generating threat along the way, but as long as you stay under the tank's threat level, they won't come slap you in the face and mess your robe up.

So how do you know if you're under the tank in threat? Well this shouldn't be difficult. Tanking classes have many abilities which generate LOTS of threat quickly and consistently build it up, so if your tank is doing his job right, you should be doing fine. But if you want to see it in action, you can try installing a threat meter mob like Omen. The bad thing about Omen is that it only reports the threat of people in your party who ALSO have Omen installed. If your tank doesn't, it won't help much.

The key to doing all of this well is group communication. Make sure that you don't AOE unless the tank and everyone else is agreed that you're going to handle the next bunch of mobs that way. If you AOE, but the tank is expecting single target DPS, you could wipe the group. If the tank or whoever is leading the group is using the raid symbols, be sure you all know what each symbol means. Typically Skull is the first mob to be killed, and X the second, but after that there's no "real" conventional standard what each symbol means, so be sure you all set that in advance if "Moon" means you need to Polymorph it, or if Square does, or whatever.

Stuff to note about Polymorph

Speaking of Polymorphs, there is an issue of timing here. Be sure you work it out with your tank if he wants you to sheep a mob before or after he pulls. You can "sheep-pull" a group, but they're going to come after you first if you do, and your tank has to be on the ball and ready to pick them up. If he would rather pull first, then position yourself in such a way that you either are, or quickly will be, in range of your assigned polymorph target. The quicker you get that thing polymorphed, the better. And keep an eye on it as well, you might need to use another Polymorph on it before your group's ready to fight it.

The other major thing with Polymorph - Sometimes other classes don't know the limitations of this spell. If they tell you to polymorph something that isn't a humanoid or beast, you be sure to tell them that it won't work. They need to know, don't be shy about piping up.

Okay, they pulled. Now what?

Okay, so you know how to work out everything before a pull starts, you know what you need to sheep and what you need to kill first. So what do you do during the actual fight?

Well, sheep your assigned target if you have one, and KEEP IT SHEEPED at all costs. If that thing breaks, you re-sheep it right away. Stop what you're doing and get it re-polymorphed. Good crowd control is often essential for a successful group, and you have one of the best out there. The tank will let you know if he's ready to pick the mob up.

After you get your mob sheeped, switch over to the Skull and start your DPS. Use a good rotation to maximize your damage, and pour it on. If you're frost, and if you're leveling, you should be frost, you'll be hurling frostbolts constantly. If you're high enough level to where you have Brain Freeze or Water Elemental, use those every time they're ready. If this is a group that you've decided you're going to AOE, dump Blizzards on them. Easy as pie.

Just keep that other guy sheeped, and make sure you don't overtake the tank on threat, and you're doing fine.

Oh crap oh crap oh crap!

Until you're not. Okay, lets say some bad luck has happened. You got a really nice and huge crit on that one mob, and the tank wasn't doing as good as he should have been on the threat meter. Now you've pulled aggro on it, and it's coming to you. What do you do?

Number 1 - STOP casting. Immediately. If you throw off another spell, it's only going to make your threat problem worse.

Number 2 - Chances are the Tank's going to be chasing it down and trying to pick him up again. Minimize the amount of moving he has to do - Hit Ice Block right away. Ice Block will essentially temporarily take you off the creatures threat list, so he'll go back after the next highest creature, hopefully the tank. The tank can then build up threat again. However, once Ice Block fades, you're going to be replaced on the threat list right where you were before you hit Ice Block, so if your tank isn't above you yet when it fades away, it'll come right back after you, so the lesson here is don't pop Ice Block and immediately jump out of it. It doesn't wipe your threat permanently like Feign Death or our other spell, Invisibility.

If your ice block is on cooldown and he's getting really close, try hitting it with a frost nova. This will lock it in place, and the tank can whack away on it without it chasing you down.

General Advice

Okay, so now you know what to do when setting up the pull, and what to do during the fight. You're pretty set to go here, so lets rundown some general advice.

• In your talent point choices, be sure you grab threat reduction talents as soon as you can, this will help with the whole threat and aggro issue.

• Keep folks stacked with food and water before the instance starts, especially your healer. Give your healer lots of water. Later on when you can summon a table, this will be very easy.

• Keep your Arcane Intellect buff stacked on everyone, especially your fellow mana users, and put up Mage Armor or Molten Armor if you have it. Frost Armor won't do you much good, as you shouldn't be getting hit anyway.

• At the end of the run, if you're the right level, you should put up a portal to a city so people can repair, sell things, and the like. If you're 60 or below, you'll likely be sending folks to Orgrimmar or Undercity. You don't get the portal to Shattrath until level 65, so make sure your Outland groups know you can't send them to Shattrath until then. After you get to level 74, you can start portaling folks in Northrend to Dalaran as well.

This is a Mean Trick and You TOTALLY Should Do It

If your group is the good natured sort, you can play a fun game called "Portal Roulette" with them. The idea is that you cast a portal to someplace most folks don't want to go (such as Thunder Bluff or Stonard) and then cast the portal to the place they all WANT to go right on top of it (which you can do by simply not moving between casting the two portals). When they mouseover it, the tooltip will constantly shift between the two, and it'll be a random chance on where they end up going! You can keep stacking portals for more random chance if you like, but this costs you another rune each time of course.

Now obviously, you should of course teleport yourself to wherever you sent the poor souls and give them a legitimate portal to wherever they want to go, you don't want to be a big jerk, just have a nice chuckle. And of course, be mindful of the people you're running with. Some folks are bad sports and won't appreciate you doing this even IF you offer to go get them.

Outtro

All right my fellow mages, that should be enough to get you started in grouping! So go forth and get some sweet instance gear and have fun with your fellow guildmates. No need to be shy, we're all friends here. This is Dahkar, aka OLD MAN FRANKS, reminding you, help control the gnome population, roll a troll today!!