Here’s a list of the addons used:

Omni CC – Visual cooldown counter

Kitty Cleave (Hpally/Warr/Feral) – Kitty cleave, is known as one of the strongest comps in arena today. Its amazing because of the synergy between the three classes, the cc, and just pure damage output

PHDK (Hpally/Dk/Hunter) – This comp. will be a lot more powerful come 4.0.6 patch with hunter buffs. This comp. is very strong for the fact that it can pump out so much damage on multiple targets. With spread diseases and the ability for hunters to swap so easy, it makes this comp one of the best swapping target comps out there.

WLP (Hpally/Warr/Lock) – This comp is similar to WMP, but in this case the lock can/needs to over extend to gain an advantage on the opposing team. This comp is great for warlocks, because it allows them to play extremely offensive and to control the other team. Its also very good for swap kills. Whenever the lock can fully dot an “off target”, its good for the warrior to swap and assist burst on this target.

WMP (Hpally/Warr/Mage) – This comp involves a lot of coordination and needs perfect positioning to be successful. The mage and warr cannot over extend to put the pally in a spot where he can get cc’ed or swapped too. This comp can create tons of situations to get kills through swaps and mage cc. Swap a lot when playing this comp.

Shadow Cleave (Hpally/Lock/Dk) – This is one of the strongest comps out there right now. Dk damage and survivability is through the roof, and seems to be getting better. Dk and lock have unreal synergy, and coupled with strong pally heals, this comp can almost seem unbeatable.

RLP (Hpally/Rogue/Lock) – This comp is also very similar to RMPally. The biggest difference with the lock vs. mage is, the fact that its now more about rush down kills, than playing defensive. With lock dots, and the ability for rogues to swap combo points, makes this comp very viable and potent. This comp. is great for shutting down cleave teams; such as TSG.

RMPally (Hpally/Rogue/Mage) – This comp requires a lot of coordination and can be compared to RMPriest. The main difference having the pally over the priest, is you can save your offensive cool downs a little while longer. With the priest version, its pretty much blow all your cd’s at the same time, and usually at the start of the game, to get a kill. With a pally, you can hang tight and survive through more damage, and set up a kill. This comp has tons of survivability but will require a lot of synergy between your mage and rogue.

TSG (Hpally/Warr/Dk) – One of the most popular comps in arena. It is known as one of the best rush down team. The pally’s job in this comp. is to basically keep the warrior and dk free at all times. The zergy style of this comp. allows for a lot of enjoyment and fun times. Although the comp. has some weakness, mainly to heavy CC teams, its one of the best comps to grind out rating.

Private Lessons!

So, I’ve been getting a ton of mail about private lessons, and what we do on them. Basically how we do things, is we schedule a date that we can both meet on, you stream on x-fire, and we hop on vent/skype, and go from there. Most people choose to do live arena games, and I critique/fix your game play. Some people choose to just go over the basics, and get a firm grasp on gems/enchants to bindings/mods. It’s basically, whatever your game needs, we will work on.

Lately, people have been throwing the idea around, that if we cant find a time for you and your partners to meet and play arena while you stream, you could instead, fraps your arena games that you have played at a prior time, and I will watch with you, and go over them in great detail. This might be a very interesting and successful way to improve, watching your own game play and noticing your flaws has been known as one of the greatest teaching methods out there for everything (Ex: NFL teams watching footage of prior games, to fix positioning/etc).

It is an hour long session, that usually goes about 15 – 20 mins over to make up for time we may have lost (sitting in queues). It’s $20 for first lesson, and then $15 if you schedule another lesson within 3 weeks of your last. Everyone that has done a lesson with me so far has been very pleased, and if you get a chance to talk with any that have, you should.

Find Part 2 here: http://www.arenapwnage.com/2010/08/10/video-lesson-mage-tactics-pt2/

Find Part 3 here: http://www.arenapwnage.com/2010/08/10/video-lesson-mage-tactics-pt3

Melee Kiting Tips

Hey guys!  I’m finding it a little challenging to find really good clips for kiting stuff, so in the meantime I will try and give you some tips for kiting each class as a mage.

General Tips

You should try and be aware of all your tools to kite each class, and what you have up and roughly how much time until something comes up.  Because mages have so many tools, this can be challenging to think of everything that is up and keep track of it.  Cooldown timers or Omni CC or power auras can help with this, and I highly recommend using one.   The best thing you can be doing on your mage for kiting is to plan out at least your next step or option for getting away, the less time it takes you to react to something your enemy does the better!

So you have the following tools at your disposal:

Shattered Barrier (Broken Ice Barrier gives a frost nova)

Frost Nova

Cone of Cold

Blink

Ice Block

Cold Snap

Mirror Images ( they cast frost bolts and slow the target, also can help you get away because it removes you as a target from your enemy when you cast it)

Brain Freeze procs

Fingers of Frost procs

R1 Frostbolt

ALL OF THESE ARE USEFUL TO KITE TARGETS!!!

It would be impossible to list all of the possibilities on using these tools, and that is why mages are the most dynamic class and have one of highest skill caps in my opinion.  However, here are some general strategies vs. the various melee classes.

Warriors

Once a joke to kite in BC, things have changed quite a bit.  Warriors have a much shorter cd on charge, and between that and intercept, they can stick on you much easier.

-you want to avoid blinking charge if you can, because you know you will just get intercept stunned and eat lots of damage, or have to blow a trinket or block.  Generally the first charge on you, you want to try and sheep them and get max distance.  Be ready to sheep them a second time in case they trinket.  This will give you an advantage because you can get out of range of his next charge/intercept and get a decent amount of damage into him right out of sheep.

-Try and know when the warrior puts out spell reflect and avoid casting a frostbolt into it.  Juke a frostbolt to bring out the spell reflect and then ice lance to get rid of it, preferably with a frost ward up to eat the damage and maybe proc some mana back. 

-If you want to reset the fight a bit, nova the warrior blink away and get to LOS to drink or sheep him and reset.  Or if you just want to get a lot of distance and then bash damage into him and you blow your blink throw out mirror images and then continue to kite.  This is helpful sometimes when they blow shield wall  and you don’t want to sheep them back to full health.  It will keep their health about the same and keep you away from the warrior.

-There is also a dead zone in which a warrior will not be able to charge/intercept you.  Its 5-8 yards that he cannot hit you and cannot charge you.  This is called 5/8 kiting.  It can be very useful at times, but is challenging to do.  Practice with a warrior outside doing this, you will definitely want to keep him slowed doing this.  You can land some big damage with this strategy at key times.  Nova warrior frost bolt – Cone of cold and spam instants like fire blast and pyro rocket while he is helpless to get to you!

-Blocking blade storm is usually the standard thing to do, I recommend almost always using it like this, but if you want you can eat the damage or blink it and then reset the fight afterwards with a full sheep and you go eat/drink or evocate with the glyph.

There is a lot more to this, but those are some tips to do better.  Just practice dueling warriors and you will improve.  Kiting them in BGs as well is good practice.

Rogues

Rogues are extremely easy to kite when they do not have cool downs.  Even if they are shadow step its generally pretty simple to kite them because they cannot use shadow step if they are rooted.

-Blink Kidney shot unless you have frostbite on them out of cheap shot so they cannot shadow step kidney shot you.  Mut rogues will not open with cheap shot unless they want to get kited or blow their cloak right away in which you can iceblock.

- when you get distance the first time, you want to get a frostfire bolt onto a rogue so he cannot vanish and reopen.   This spell puts a dot on the rogue and a slow thus being very useful. 

-If a rogue vanishes on you, always be ready to cone of cold immediately to get them out of it.  The main goal in kiting/beating rogues is just to screw up their attempts at trying to resteatlh and get another opener on you. 

-If you blink on a shadow step rogue with a shadow step up, you can mirror images immediately out of the blink and that sometimes will make him screw up and shadow step to a mirror image instead!

-Block is usually best used if they catch up to you in cloak. 

- Do not use an ice barrier to mitigate damage during cloak of shadows!  You want to be able to get use of the shattered barrier to kite him after the cloak. 

- Out of a garrote, you will get a shattered barrier:  Deep freeze him out of it, he will either trinket vanish, vanish immediately in which case you want to Cone of Cold him out of it and then sheep him, or if he just trinkets, nova him again and then get distance enough to sheep.  Force him to use as much cool downs as he can so once his cloak is down there is little he can do to get away and reset. 

If you get low versus a rogue , don’t panic, because resetting the fight is so easy.  Once you get a rogue in a full sheep, that is pretty much game!  Frost fire bolt, pull out a pet and you will have no issue getting away again, just get good distance when you get the full sheep on him. 

-Afflicted is a very good mod to show enemy cool downs, extremely helpful for keeping track of what cool downs a rogue has left/up.

Feral Druids

This is one of the harder classes to kite, because they can shape shift out of everything you do except deep freeze and do massive damage!  Here are some tips

-Deep freeze him as soon as you can, he will trinket it always to stay on you so the second time it is up you will be able to get a lot of damage into him. 

-watch and make sure he does not get a restealth, that will really hurt you, mostly only way he can do this is a well timed shadowmeld.

-Mirror images really help in keeping slows up on a feral druid bc you don’ t have to cast on him.  Best time to blow them is after the first blink to try to get him to jump to one of them instead of you or feral charge them.

-Blink whenever you need to, but if you get into a maim or bash out of blink, you should be ready to trinket or block. 

- You won’t be getting lots of frostbolts into a feral druid with him on you outside of a full deep freeze, so you want to use your pets for lots of damage and besides that you will be strafe kiting him and trying to snare him every single time he shape shifts.  Nova, cone of cold, r1 frostbolt, shattered barrier all very useful for this.  The first 30 seconds out of pounce are going to be the most challenging. 

-If you notice the druid has hots on him, spellsteal them if you have the spare globals, it only will help your health and stop him from healing himself.

-Once you get the second deep freeze, you should be able to land a nice shatter combo, have some distance and between that all your pets and instant casts, you should be able to get him down!

Enhance shaman

Hard for the first 45 seconds with his wolves, then easy to deal with afterwards. 

-Invis can be used to screw him over during this time if you can get it off.

-getting a sheep off early helps because he will trinket it and you can full deep freeze him.

-watch for grounding totems eating key spells like deep freeze.

- Cone of cold the pets always as much as you can and avoid the damage from them as much as possible.

-  If you are fighting the enhance without wolves, try to save your ice barrier when he gets near you so he can’t just purge and connect damage with you.  Will save you if he gets close.

Death Knights

This fight is a pain…I am still trying to improve a lot kiting this class.  Things to keep in mind are that the deathknight cannot use really any abilities while silenced, so using an imp counterspell on him can be very useful.

-Block should be up for when he pops a gargoyle.

-in a 1v1, it is ok to trinket chains of ice or a ghoul stun if you need to.

-Blinking when death grip is up can be deadly, avoid doing so unless AMS and IBF are down.

-you will want to try and get max range on the death knight as much as you can.  If you  do blink before deathgrip, you can mirror image and hopefully he will grip your image instead of you!  Even if you blink  after the deathgrip, you might want to use them right then because you will be able to get a shatter off before he can strangulate you probably.

-  Best Damage combo on a deathknight will be Frost nova on him- Frostbolt into deepfreeze-Shatter- imp cs and more damage.  That should take a very large chunk of his health, and will not allow him to use AMS or AMZ until its over. 

-Cone of cold kite the ghoul if you can so his stun might not be timed the way the death knight would like.  Also will save damage on your ice barrier for when the DK might actually connect a melee attack on you.

-Use Frost ward as much as you can!  A large chunk of DK damage is frost damage!

Hopefully these tips will be helpful to you.  I am frapsing almost everything I do on my mage in pvp now so if I get some good clips on kiting these classes I will be sure to save them for a video lesson! 

Mage PVE Talk

I have had a few requests for some pve information from the forums, so  if you are not interested in this, feel free to check out other content, its coming sorry guys.   However, there are some useful items you can gain from raiding, and you’ll want to do good Dps and have some good logs to get into a good guild.  So maybe this will help you improve your pve game as well!

Options: Fire or Arcane?

Arcane is generally the best option unless you have insane gear available with capped hit and tons of crit.  Fire will tend to consistently out DPS arcane eventually, but this is far down the line on Heroic Mode Guilds with full gear, so I will go over arcane as that is what I use.

Spec: 57/3/11

Standard spec linked here: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#of0ifd0fzLGuRxekcZbhf0o:Nzi

Key Points:  1/3 incanters absorbtion- now that this has been nerfed by blizzard, 1/3 is enough as it is only useful on fights you can ward yourself to absorb damage.  You will not be using mana shield in raiding 99% of the time.

Student of the Mind: With molten armor glyph, spirit= crit at a higher %, crit is good!

Rest are mostly mandatory talents that you will want.

Glyphs

Arcane Blast

Arcane Missiles

Molten Armor

Stats

Hit- 8%, 7% with drainai- a major benefit of being arcane is you get lots of hit talents that make you not really need much hit with full raid buffs.  If you don’t have a shadow priest or boomkin aim for 11% hit, but you should have at least one of those.

Haste- HUGELY BENEFICIAL FO R ARCANE

Crit- Very good, you end up starting to stack it more and more as your gear gets in the 5.8ks on gear score.

Spell power- obviously

Rotation

Unlike other PVE specs, arcane has kind of a situational DPS rotation.  First the basics:  Arcane Blast, Arcane Missiles (missile barrage), Arcane Barrage.  The last you barely use, only to break a stack of arcane blasts that will eat your mana too heavily if you keep chainin without a MB proc, or just adding a little dps on the run.

So your damage rotation will be determined on the following: CDs, Mana, Length of fight

Start out the fight with a heavy DPS rotation while you are popping Arcane power, images, icy veins.

5-6 Arcane blasts-missile barrage.  MANA GEM..

Now you want to resume a normal rotation.  This is generally as following depending on your gear and mana.

4 AB- MB Rinse Repeat.

You can also do 3 AB- MB if you feel tight on mana, but the above is generally going to be slightly higher dps, even with 2pcT10 Bonus.

If you do NOT get a MB proc from 4, go to 5 max unless you get innervates and then use an Arcane Barrage and resume normal rotation. 

Try to use arcane power in conjunction with your other big cooldowns whenever possible. 

WHEN/IF to EVO- you want to try and use your evocation at a point where you are going to lose the least amount of DPS.  Also you can use your Presence of Mind after it to catch up a bit.  Between Phases of a fight, right after a stun or knockback happens, or if you get taken out of a fight for a few seconds- all good times to use it.   Also, if you see yourself at 35-40% mana and its semi convenient, that’s when I tend to look to evo to maximize my cooldown time.  On a short fight like festergut, I try not to evocate at all. (5 min fight).

My DPS philosophy

Arcane is based around your mana pool.  So you want to maximize the amount of damage you do with that mana.   Your goal as arcane should be to OOM yourself at the end of a fight.  How you accomplish this will change your dps a bit, but you want to not have much/any mana left when the boss dies, while  DPSing  the entire fight.  If you have extra mana you know you aren’t going to use, spam arcane blast and get rid of it!

Mods

There are plenty of great UI setups and addons to use for PVE.  Here are some of them.

Grid- Tiny condensed raid frames easy targeting and out of the way for a mage

DBM- must have pretty much.  Timers for encounters and messages broadcast about about a fight.

Recount- DPS meters- detailed and pretty accurate.  Always good to make things more interesting and see where you are at with the rest of the raid.

Sexy Map- Just a nice mini map

AVR- a controversial mod, it puts 3d images on your map that tell you where not to run, who to run to, and other movement related helpful tips.  It is pretty easymode using this, and blizzard is going to nerf it.  Still extremely useful on hardmodes in ICC.

Customizable Unit Frames/Action Bars- anything that will make your ui look cleaner.

Omni CC- shows a numerical value of how long your abilities are on cooldown on your bars.  Helpful for knowing how long on Arcane Power, IV, etc.

Skinner- Can separate all your bars and grid and recounts and stuff from your actual screen view.  It is mostly just an aesthetic thing, check it out if you like.

Prat- A great chat addon, highly recommend, not really for raiding but it can be useful with the class coloring names in chat.

Finally here is my PVE UI, let me know if you have any questions about it!  Hope this guide was helpful and good luck topping the meters!

http://img230.imageshack.us/f/irremageui.jpg/

Rawr

Rawr is a program that I have found very helpful in determining gear upgrades  for raids.  It is a giant collection of data of gear in the game and can show mages of all specs what pieces will be better for them to improve DPS.  It even gets specific with gems and enchants.  You can find this program via Elitist Jerk Mage forums, or by http://rawr.codeplex.com/

Before I get into the logic behind my UI, let me talk about the mods I use, particularly the first 3 listed, which I consider to be essential for most mages, especially if you’re just getting started. By the way, CC = Crowd Control, meaning polymorph, blind, fear, deep freeze, frost nova.

Gladius Arena Frames: These bad boys are incredible for anybody playing arenas, but for mages, they’re just tops. Gladius gives you everything you need to know about what’s happening to the other team in one little box on your screen. You can instantly see what team you’re playing against when you zone, whether or not those players have used their PVP trinkets (you’ll notice I chose the BIG Icon to show PVP trinkets), but most importantly, you can see all of your CC on these players, and how much time is remaining on that CC. This is critical information for me as the mage, because I can control a player very effectively by simply watching my Gladius frames. I can sheep a healer right as a blind ends, or wait until I see my priest’s fear expiring before I deep freeze. Without this mod, it can be very easy to overlap CC with your partners, or even worse, have a gap between CC and allow a healer to get a heal off when you would have otherwise killed that dude.

Power Auras: This mod makes it really easy to see Fingers of Frost, Brainfreeze, and Missile Barrage procs immediately, which can equate into a quicker Deep Freeze, or not missing that missile barrage proc to explode your kill target. As I mentioned before, you have enough things to do during a match-get this mod to make your life a lot easier.

Interrupt Bar: Some people will use Afflicted here to keep track of counterspells, kicks, and shocks, but I like this mod better because it’s simple and compact. As soon as one of your opponents uses an interrupt on anybody in the match (not just you), an icon will appear with that interrupt’s remaining cooldown time. Keeping track of every available interrupt is critical for timing your frostbolt shatters and polymorphs – this is definitely the addon I don’t think I could do without.

Kunits Unit Frames: Some of you early WoW players might remember Nurfed Unit Frames, which were a huge hit back at level 60. I absolutely loved the layout for debuffs and health bars, but this is purely personal preference. Thanks to Kollektiv, you can play with Nurfed frames to this day. Insert your own favorite unit frames here.

Ecasting Bar: These are personal preference also, but I’ve been using EcB for a long time because they’re simple (notice a trend yet) and customizable. Default Unit Frames and casting bars work just fine in place of #4 and #5.

Snowfall Key Press: This mod allows your spells to cast the split second you press the keys on your keyboard, rather than when you release them. Every little bit helps to increase your reaction time and give you lightning fast counterspells, I’m just mad I didn’t find out about this mod until recently.

As you can plainly see, I have most of my UI clumped up on one part of my screen, instead of spreading out my frames all over my nice spacious screen. I do this because the mage class is the most fast-paced class I’ve ever touched in WoW PVP, and you need to keep your eyes on many, many things at the same time to be successful. For example, this setup makes it very easy to monitor everything going on with both my target (usually the person I’m exploding) and my focus target (usually that person’s healer). I barely have to move my eyeballs and I can see when counterspells have been used, or if one of my opponents has used his PVP trinket. If everything was spread out across my screen, my reaction times would be slowed, and I could miss that critical counterspell on a heal or screw up a long CC chain. You’ll notice my party frames are missing, but they would normally sit on left side of my screen, next to Gladius.

Stacking your target frame and focus frame right next to each other is something I highly recommend as a mage, having tried infinite variations of this in the past. I can’t stand watching videos where focus frames and cast bars are waaaaaaayyy off to the right of the screen, as I know that player’s eyes are just darting back and forth constantly, wasting time and possibly missing other things going on. You’ll also notice that my Gladius frames are directly under my own health bars, instead of my party frames like most people. I do this because I’m much more concerned about the players on the other team, their health bars, trinkets, and cooldowns, than watching my partner’s HP bars. If I was a healer, I’d probably do exactly the opposite, as keeping track of health bars would be more important.

Now let’s get to my keybinds:

1-Frost Nova

2-Fireblast

3- Frostbolt

4-Ice Lance

5-Cone of Cold

6-Mana Shield

Alt 1-Frostfire Bolt

Alt 2-Ice Barrier

Alt 3-Blink

Alt 4-HP Trinket (battlemaster’s x)

Alt 5- Icy Veins

Alt R- Water Elemental Macro ( #showtooltip Summon Water Elemental/cast [nopet] Summon Water Elemental/stopmacro [nopet]/petpassive/click PetActionButton5/petattack)

`-Iceblock Macro (/stopcasting/cancelaura Ice Block/cast Ice Block)

Alt T-Cold Snap

F1-Deep Freeze

F2-Arcane Explosion

F3-Scorch

F4-Mirror Images

F5-Pet Stay

Shift F-Invisibility

K-Evocation ( yep you’re reading that right I actually have “K” bound to something important )

Alt `-PvP Trinket

MouseButton5-Spellsteal

Mousebutton4-Pyrorockets (engineering- 100% incredible for mages, it’s all about the burst)

NumPad0-Mount

Shift V-Wand

V-Arcane Missiles

B-Arcane Blast

F-Assist teammates macro (/assist XXX)

Alt F3- Fireball

Alt F1-Focus Deep Freeze macro (/cast [target=focus] Deep Freeze)

Alt F2- Blizzard

Alt G- Rank 1 Frostbolt

Alt V-Mana Gem

Shift R- Focus Polymorph (/cast [target=focus] Polymorph)

A-Poly Arena 1 (/cast [target=Arena1] Polymorph)

S-Poly Arena 2 (/cast [target=Arena2] Polymorph)

D-Poly Arena 3 (/cast [target=Arena3] Polymorph)

Z- Will of the Forsaken ( or any other racial ability )

X-Frost Ward

Alt X-Fire Ward

G- Decurse

R- Polymorph

T-Counterspell (/stopcasting/cast Counterspell)

***Mousewheel Up- Focus Counterspell (/stopcasting/cast [target=focus] Counterspell)*** <— I highly recommend this keybind for your counterspell, I’ve found it’s the fastest reaction on CS I’ve ever had

Shift +- Mage Armor

Alt + – Ice Armor

- -Bandages

Alt F- Pet Attack

C- Focus (/focus)

I had to fuss with my binds to get them where I wanted them, and I still don’t like some of them. I’d advise changing bad habits early, rather than get used to something dumb for years ( I seriously have my Evocation bound to K and I can’t remember how it happened, but it’s been like 2 years now and there’s nothing I can do about it). You want to avoid putting spells like Iceblock or Cold Snap in a super accessible spot to avoid fat-fingering them at bad times- I can honestly say I’ve never fat fingered cold snap thanks to it’s lonely spot at ALT -T. And of course, you want spells you use a lot (frostbolt, polymorph) to be in VERY accessible spots because you will be using them allll the time ( mine are bound to 3 and R respectively, aka very natural keys for your fingers). Lastly, your 2 most important keybinds are Counterspell and Focus Counterspell, so chose wisely. They need to be in spots that you can strike at a moment’s notice- your counterspell bind is your trigger finger. A good bind for your counterspells means you can hit super fast casts like Fel Domination or hasted Cyclones, and you’ll find that you miss your counterspells less and less because you’re much harder to juke.  

Look for some instructional video coming from me very soon. PM with any questions you have regarding these mage basics, I’ll work on an advanced article next!

Hey guys, I decided to put some mage content up.  Not the best opponents you will see but good examples of some hard comps and the strats you want to use vs them.  Hope you enjoy!

RMP Strategy Guide Part One

So recently I’ve been seeing quite a lot of people asking about RMP strategies on the rogue/mage/priest class forums among others so I have decided to start putting together a guide that will cover an RMP strat for just about every popular 3v3 comp that’s floating around out there at the moment. I won’t be including every strategy in my first article so you will have to keep checking back from time to time but you can expect to be a master of RMP by the end of the month!  Keep in mind that I have played RMP for over 3 seasons now with various partners and from all three classes point of view. I am currently playing RMP on my main Rogue with a 2800 MMR and 80% win ratio.

RMP vs. Warrior/ Disc Priest/ Holy Paladin (Dispel Cleave or Double Healer)

Many people consider this to be a hard matchup for RMP but in truth RMP is actually a counter. What you want to do to start off on the right foot is have your rogue get a sap onto the opposing priest. To do this successfully your priest and mage will have to hold back to give your rogue time to wait out the warriors rage so that he doesn’t get pulled out by a shout, the enemy team will probably not charge in and risk an easy sap so you won’t have to worry about that. The only reason your rogue should not be able to secure a sap on the priest after waiting out the blood rage would be because you are playing on Ring of Valor, if that is the case then that sucks for you and you will just have to continue on without the sap.

After the rogue has sapped the priest your team should then charge in as your rogue cheap shots the warrior, at this point the paladin should be sheeped, making sure to dispel sac if it goes up, and all three of your teammates should spam DPS into the warrior with your priest being sure to dispel the sacred shield, power word shield, etc. Your goal in the opener is to force as many trinkets and cool downs as possible, in a good scenario all three trinkets will be used in the opener, however usually just one or two of them will be forced to trinket. If the paladin is indeed sheeped full then your priest should fear the enemy priest out of the sap as the pally goes into another sheep and the warrior goes into a kidney shot.

It is at this point where you will start to see the trinkets and cool downs used, more namely pain suppression on the warrior. Ride the warrior and avoid burns from the priest until your rogue has another kidney up, your mage and priest should now be communicating and telling each other what cc they have and for whom. Distribute the cc whether it is sheeps onto the pally and fear/mind control onto the priest or vice versa all that really matters is that it goes out at the same time so that they cannot cleanse each other. Your rogue can also blind the paladin but you must make sure he is not on diminishing returns from fear, however IN MY OPINION it is best not to use it quite yet. Once the healers are cc’d the three of you should once again burst the warrior in the kidney shot, unless the priest is mind controlling obviously and then just your rouge and mage will be doing damage. If the warrior is able to come out of the stun alive make sure your rogue is ready to dismantle as he puts a shield on so that he cannot shield wall, unless of course your rogue already had to use it during a blade storm that might have happened at some point during the first phase of diminishing returns. If the warrior already used shield wall in the opener then lucky for you. Also at this time is when the paladin will probably bubble, have your priest dispel it.

At this point you have two options, blind the paladin and then vanish sap him while putting sheeps onto the priest (if you have already been sheeping the priest and used fear/MC on the paladin then blind/sap the priest instead and sheep the paladin) and kill the warrior, or you can sheep the priest, blind the warrior (keeping DR’s in mind) and kill the paladin. The way In which you will choose is usually by the paladins positioning, if he is out in the open after his bubble is dispelled then it is probably best to switch to him and kill him in a vanish cheap shot, if not then use the plan where your rogue blinds a healer according to what CC you can put out where. If you do not win here or soon after then it means something went wrong and you will probably lose because your priest will shortly be out of mana.

• Recap and Important Notes:
• Make sure to line up your kidney shots with fresh CC’s onto the healers.
• Make sure your mage and priest coordinate their CC properly and keep diminishing returns in mind.
• Always make sure you do not use a CC ability until your partner can also distribute their CC so it is not wasted by an opposing healer’s cleanse.

RMP vs. Warrior/ Death Knight/ Holy Paladin (TSG)

This comp is usually a good chance at a secured win but there is always that one 2100 TSG that will gib your priest in the opener, hopefully with this strat that will happen less. To start off you want your rogue to get a sap onto either the DK or the paladin, whatever is easier however the paladin is the better choice. Sometimes it will be hard to get a sap as most TSG’s will charge as the gates open, on maps like RoV, Blade’s Edge, or Dalaran it can sometimes be better to just rush an opener on the warrior before they can get close enough to engage your priest, you will have to be the judge on that one. Regardless of whether you get  a sap or not you will want to open on the warrior, your mage and priest should be coordinating their CC as always and trying to get both the pally and DK into some kind of CC, if the priest is under heavy pressure this might be difficult especially if the DK uses cool downs. Nevertheless get a sheep onto the paladin and if you are in a good position to burst the warrior put him into a kidney.

The goal in this matchup is to make it quick because the longer it draws out the less chance you have of winning, hopefully the paladin will trinket the first CC that is put on him and bubble the second, make sure to be careful and not waste a sheep while sac is up. If you can get the DK to trinket a fear or sheep (a good time for this is when the pally has sac up or is on DR and you are putting a lot of pressure on the warrior) you can blind him whenever the priest is under a lot of pressure. If you cannot get a kill on the warrior for whatever reason, maybe your rogue had to use dismantle on a bladestorm or the paladin is on sheep DR after bubble and trinket and your priest cannot get to him to fear and your rogue has already used blind on the DK, then you should now make a switch to the paladin. Usually the paladin will die in a cheap shot/kidney when his cool downs are gone, however in the case that blind is still up it would probably be safer to blind/sap the paladin or even just blind him and use your vanish on the warrior and finish him.

• Recap and Important Notes:
• Do not let the TSG get to your priest before they open.
• Get your cc out early and force early cool downs.
• Only blind the DK if the priest is under a lot of pressure.
• Have your mage use his novas defensively to peel for your preist.
• Another side note would be that sometimes this team will train your mage; in this case you will probably have an easier time winning anyway because your priest will be more open to CC and DPS and your mage will still be able to get the sheeps and damage out that is needed to win.

RMP vs. Enhancement Shaman/ BM Hunter/ Holy Paladin (Beast Cleave)

This comp is extremely gay and a really good one is quite hard to beat. It is usually impossible to get a sap against this team and more than likely not even worth trying because you are going to want to open onto the shaman as fast as possible. Many people will tell you to try and wait out the bloodlust/heroism which is probably a good thing to do if they are focusing your mage, but that is actually a bad idea if they are targeting your priest. If they are indeed on your priest you are going to want to put out as much pressure on that shaman as you can as fast as you can. Have your mage get sheeps on the paladin, making sure to avoid sac, early because the hunter will probably BM close to the start, as soon as he does make sure your rogue dismantles him to negate damage onto your priest. By the time wolves and lust have faded hopefully you have at least made the paladin trinket because this is when you will go for a kill. Hopefully you can now force a bubble and put the paladin into some form of cc afterwards so that you can kill the shaman, if you can’t then it is probably better to switch to the pally and kill him as fast as you can.

If they target the mage at the start then you are going to need to use your defensive cool downs wisely, as in don’t pain suppression when he uses his first ice block because you will need to use it during hypothermia. Try to get into a position where your mage can still get some damage out onto the shaman while under fire by either standing on top of the hunter, line of sighting him, or even using pain supp when the shaman is taking large damage.

No matter what this team targets you need to win before the 2^nd BM is up or it’s not going to end well for you.

• Recap and Important Notes:
• Open up fast before the Beast Cleave has time to get a good start on your priest or mage.
• Always try to play offensive because any time you are on defense you are losing.
• Make sure your rogue dismantles BM.
• Keep in mind this comp is very situational and you will have to be very open minded about things like when to use blind because you might need to blind the hunter in order to save your priest instead of saving it for a kill.
• Like I said this is a very dumb team to fight for RMP but the key to victory is playing offensive and never letting them get the upper hand, because once they do it is hard to come back.

Well that’s it for the first part of my RMP guide, I hope it helped. Make sure to look for more sometime next week.

Like I said in my other article playing a mage in arena, in any bracket the better than mage is, the better you do. These strats are all not fool proof, you can wiggle through them and make your own strats out of them, but this is just the base of what you “should” do. (Whenever I type MR it means Mage/Rogue.) A main thing you do as a mage is use your Frost Nova as a cc more than as burst etc.

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• MR  vs. Warrior/Druid

This is a very easy lineup for MR because, they have no dispelles and you can reset a million times etc. What we usually try to do, is start on the druid to force a bark skin and trinket (this doesn’t always happen we will almost always get either one or the other). What you want to do is put up Ice Armor, because every time the warrior hits you, you want a chance to get a Frostbite proc etc. Run in “mounted” and frost nova the warrior and druid together (always keep an eye out for spell reflects). That Frost Nova will last 6 seconds on the warrior at the very last second deep freeze him while you and your rogue are putting damage into the druid. After that deep Freeze put the warrior into a polymorph (he might trinket so get ready to re polymorph him if he does). If the warrior has already trinketed, and the druid isn’t dead yet, you can either do 1 of 2 things, you can blind warrior and re frost nova him after blind into a deep freeze, or you can do a fast and quick swap to warrior (if he druid has used his trinket blind him). And from there you should win easy, if your rogue needs to eat/reset just polymorph the warrior etc.

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• MR vs. Paladin/Death Knight

This matchup can really go either way, just depends on how good they are. What I usually try to do is sap the Death Knight if he hasn’t already sent his pet in, if he has try and sap the Paladin (make sure your rogue watches out for Death and Decay etc). (You usually will not get a sap on the Death Knight so I am going to explain what happens if you don’t.) Start spell stealing the Death Knight so whenever sac comes up you can get it off first try (I listed a macro into my other article to cancel sac whenever you spell steal it etc). The Death Knight will probably trinket the first Kidney and paladin will probably trinket the first polymorph. (Make sure if your rogue gets low hp i.e. from dots/garg, tell him to eat while you tank the dk.) Pretty much from there once they trinket, you can easily reset etc. What I usually do, is as soon as the paladin trinkets the Polymorph (make sure he doesn’t have sac up) we put the paladin into a blind and force a bubble. Once the Paladin has bubbled you can do an easy swap to paladin, while cc’ing the Death Knight. Really you can get on either target, just try to make them pop CD’s before you switch that way it is easier to cc them or switch back etc.

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• MR vs. Priest/Rogue

This matchup really just depends if you are good at pealing or not, and if your rogue gets the opener etc. What we usually try to do, is sap priest so you can spell steal him then open. (As I said in my video make sure you invs at the start that way you can’t get sapped, but don’t stand too close to your rogue that way if he gets popped you don’t etc.) Before you open on the priest you want to try to get Power Ward-Shield off, so all your opener isn’t absorbed etc. While you shatter the priest (keep your eye open for the rogue because as soon as he opens you either want to frost nova/deep freeze him or put him into a polymorph that way your rogue doesn’t have to trinket the first kidney shot etc). If the priest trinkets the first Kidney Shot or uses Pain Suppression, you can switch to the rogue easily and get a quick gib. Watch out for DR’s on the priest before you polymorph him (always juke cast first so he doesn’t shadow ward death the polymorph). Make sure whenever your rogue puts the other rogue into a Kidney Shot he has at least a 1 point rupture on him, that way if he vanishes he gets pulled out etc (the priest will not have enough time to put up a shield on the rogue before he vanishes so it will almost always pull him out). And from there you can get on either of them.

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• MR vs. Priest/Ret Paladin

This is the absolute hardest team for MR to beat, because of the double dispels. What you want to try to do is sap the paladin and open on priest hard that way he either has to trinket or has to use Pain Suppression. After the sap breaks try to get 2 winters chill on the paladin and then into another sheep, or frost nova him, so it takes a while to dispel etc. (A lot of people like getting on the Paladin, but I can’t stand doing that, just because it leaves him open to dps you etc, because he can freedom out of kidney shots.) If the ret trinkets any of your polymorphs put him into a blind (ALWAYS WATCH OUT FOR SAC). From there try to burst the priest as much as you can in that blind, because if you don’t land a kill in that blind the chances of you winning are very slim.

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• MR vs. Warlock/Healer

Most of the time it just depends on what healer it is, but you always want to try to sap the healer and get on the warlock and force the healer to trinket. (Make sure whenever you are facing a warlock to always juke cast the spell lock.) The only time you can really switch off the warlock is whenever the healer is either a shaman or a paladin that has already bubbled. Have your rogue try to interrupt every single Fear. While you are focus counter spelling the healer. (Also make sure you always have a winters chill on the healer before you try to polymorph, that way the devour magic doesn’t auto take off polymorph.)

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• MR vs. MR

What I like doing against a mirror is having my rogue sap the mage (while you are invs). After your rogue gets a sap on the mage start spell stealing him (if the other mage also goes invs just pull him out with a spell steal). Try to get off his Frost Barrier, once you do get it off: you are going to have your rogue open with a garrote on the mage and open hard on him (make sure you juke cast the counter spell). Whenever the other team’s rogue pops out, put him into a frost nova/Deep Freeze, he might trinket, so if he does either have your rogue blind him or you polymorph him depending on whom he is on etc. From there the mage will probably of already used ice block, so once he does help your rogue get a clean vanish off, because you are going to switch to the rogue HARD. Put the other mage into a polymorph while you are opening, and if the other mage hasn’t counter spelled yet, only use instants i.e. pet nova/ice lance/fire blast/cone of cold etc. And from there it is an easy win (but make sure whenever the other team’s rogue dies you peel for your rogue, because a mage can kill a rogue very easy with no cool downs).

Anymore strats that you would like to know feel free to post them below in the comments, I will try to update  the list =].