Alca Dueling Guide Part 3

Helloguys I'm back from my vacation or get-wasted-like-f**k-trip in Gran Canaria/Spain, so this time it's not Yiska who writes some fanboying blog for Hydra, Hollow Inflame/Venom, Trig darling or Kalimist, it's a Mage blog that can't be more awesome. It's dueling blog part 3 baby!

In part 1 I described the tactics vs Rogue and Priest, in part 2 I wrote much about Mage vs Mage and this time I'm going to cover more classes!

Part 1:
http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/Alcaswayofwizardry/1on1-FrostMage-vs-X-Guide-by-Alca-Part-1

Part 2:
http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/Alcaswayofwizardry/1on1-FrostMage-vs-X-Guide-by-Alca-Part-2

This blog is 3.2-centered and I will start with Warriors.

Some people try to flame me (as if someone actually could flame the flamemaster number 1, HYMNNN YO) occasionally that I lost some duels to Boned (F**K ITS Proofyo cant get any more gangsta than this), god damnit who cares, I can still provide useful information for you my fellow Mages.

After the change with charge, Warriors became for Mages a true nightmare instead of the flower carrying hippie that couldn't touch us once. It's just annoying to duel a Warrior with seemingly no cooldown on charge/intercept. But there must be a way! There is always a way, right?

After being asked by many Mages including great ones as well at the start of 3.1, how I duel Warriors or if I could beat them (without cooldowns) I tried to figure out a way, but it was seemingly impossible to beat a Warrior on TR (with 29k life) and spec for Mages, without using any pets.

Ayrez and me duelled some top 10 Warrior from a German BG and had it really hard vs him. After splitting with him (and he wasn’t that good) I thought what would a good Warrior like Moldran, Redsea or Seb do with me!? They would rape the sh*t out of me fo real! After trying many new things I actually found a way to beat this Warrior on TR without CDs. Then I actually started to duel some of the best German duel Mages, with my Warrior, and hell its easy, 10 minutes setting up, I was able to outlast him completely! Time to get on live realm and the things changed, Warriors weren’t that big of a problem, especially with the strategy I evolved.

It got boring to farm scrubs (still daily business Stormscale Durotar is mine baby) so I challenged Boned, who seemed like a duel hero as well. I was surprised and he was way faster and better than I expected, but also way more arrogant than even “best Mage” Ayrez. If you started to regen up you got flamed for being lame, if you killed him with water lemental: “F**KING SCRUB MATE, FLYN NEEDS NO CDs YOU ARE SH*T!” which is the usual reply by everyone of Flyn's fanboys (maybe it's true but why is that the usual reply, when you lose, does it make you feel more comfortable or is it just to insult me!?), yes you know who you are!

BTW why is every forum full of this Flyn is the best Mage #%%%? He is a great Mage, top 3 in Europe but how can you say he is the best, when you never played with him versus him or duelled him? Just because of three tournaments?! Sorry Flyn, I like you, but it's getting so annoying I cant stand it anymore. It's not meant to flame you, it's something to flame your fans. It's even worse than all those Vurtne fans back in the day. Power to the people, I must stand up and let my emotions go their own way.


So what do I do versus Warriors?

After all that #%%% up there I'm coming to the point and talk about something useful that doesn't sound like it's written by a raging monkey!

All Warriors I duel are Bladestorm spec, with blood craze and second wind.

The duel usually starts with me buffing myself with all important buffs (arc int, ice armor, dampen magic, ice barrier and the only thing that's different is I'm using frost ward at the start(not fire ward, maybe later to catch the rocket if you are fast). You use that because of melee damage on your ice armor usually provides you instantly with a fingers of frost proc. Since rank 1 casts are to expensive and it's inefficient to use rank 1 scorch now, you need something to get rid of those nasty spell reflects, so you are using ice lance, and with fingers of frost it would crit you, so you buff yourself with frost ward (did I mention that frost warding is awesome;>).

You can be lame and mount up at the start and jump away from the Warrior so if he charges while you are jumping you get enough range so that you can poly the Warrior basically only with the snare of your frost armor. This jump is called disjump or whatever.

After you got the Warrior polymorphed you try to go to max range and drink some up after the 6 seconds and poly him again, then start using either frostfire bolt (in case he wants to spellreflect bandage soon) or the normal frostbolt. You can usually put in a scorch before your frostbolt lands which he could reflect, coupled with your rocket and icelance. Then try to kite him at max range while jumping with ice lance spam until he charges you.

This charge can be countered in 3 ways:

- You can either blink -> he will intercept, you are going to trinket while jumping and imp cs (Improved Counterspell = imp cs) him to not get piercing howled (does work for intimidating shout as well).

- Or you can try to jump while he is slowed and use your counterspell pre-emptively, someone would say Neilyo your counterspell into his charge to not get piercing howled, sometimes you are far enough away to not get hamstrung, then you can continue with cone of cold and kiting and of course blink the intercept.

- If you have FoF you can blink the charge and deep freeze the intercept (only if he uses it), this works best when you see the icon for berserker stance than you know it's time!


After you forced him to use both of his charges you can finally start nuking, try to stop your frostbolt in the last moments so you can force a spell reflect and after that is gone you got some time to get some frostbolts off, a good Warrior probably wont use spell reflect versus a good Mage, since he knows you will fakecast. But that’s just practice and knowing of your enemy.

When he uses his second charge / intercept combo you can try the same tactics as described above. If something doesn’t work like trinket cd or something, you still got your icy veins (if glyphed) to get rid of the snares and use a coc plus imp counterspell to get away.

One thing I learned from duels on the TR back in the day was, that every nova healed hI'm more than I can do damage, but this is different on live realm now, with 20% healing reduce and a lot more spellpower to nuke with, so you can either play the tactic of clicking away ice barrier if it would lead to a nova, and never nova him at all, or use the novas for nukes coupled with a deep freeze.


There are so many other things you can do, so I will describe how you can act in some special situations.


- If you need to get a poly off or desperately a damage spell (wouldn’t advice to nuke while Warrior on you) you need to fake cast your spell, but after you successfully fakecasted a pummel, you still have to be aware of the incoming spell reflect, that’s all anticipation and takes time.

- If a Warrior uses bladestorm and you just can't get away you got some options as well. If not snared nitro boost. If snared trinket or icy veins then nitro boost. Or just ice block

- If you expect a fear, while you are nuking you can imp cs him to not get interrupted. For example if you use mirrors while he has fear up he will probably charge you and use fear instantly so try to imp cs him then.

- If he used bladestorm and you got some distance NUKE him, he has to stop his bladestorm or he will lose to much life.


Deadzone Kiting isn’t only on max range its also on min range, which is 5-8 yards.

This isn’t easy but Boned says that this rapes him the most which makes Flyn able to beat Boned without cds. You need to strafe a lot after your blink is gone and try to keep him slowed with cone of cold and pair it up with imp counterspell and instant spells until your blink is ready again. You can also blink a charge and instant run into the direction of the Warrior and nova him, doesn’t always work though.

Don’t know if I forgot something. Oh it's actually pretty hard to reset to full now, since you usually slow the warrior with coc and run / blink away and drink. But now with 1.5 second mount you don’t get that many ticks anymore.

Thumbs up to Boned. The best Warrior I have duelled.



Versus Druids. Feral up first.

Well every Mage hates to duel Resto, but I will start with the description for Ferals.

Don’t know if Mages should lose to Feral Druids (except in arena, don’t know if you can win them on Dalaran anyway), but with CDs you shouldn’t have that much problems versus them. But since I couldn't duel that much good Ferals, except Deadly Gladiator Syllabear and the Korean feral druid hero Claw, I can't guarantee anything. The duel can start with you having all standard buffs plus mana shield or just with ice barrier only. You can either mount up and jump around to get a little range when you get pounced or play fair and stay on the ground.

-> The secret versus Ferals are that after they have used their trinket vs deep freeze you can either kill them or force them defensive (equals win) with the next deep freeze.

Versus some Ferals it was really difficult to survive (without block) until deep freeze was ready
again. For that matter mirror images can be very helpful since they provide constant snares,
and the druid is only switching forms because of it.

-> You should spell steal them early in the duel so you have it easier later if they go defensive.

Most Feral Druids use their trinket at the first deep freeze. If not, nuke them. If they use barkskin you need to spell steal it. Same goes for innervate or any kind of hot. As I said before, if they go defensive you have already won. If they trinketed the first deep freeze they will very likely use barkskin on the second so use counterspell straight after the deep freeze so he is unable to cast barkskin while deep frozen.

Yeah that’s about it, not much pro tips I can give you, except maybe polymorphing a heal xD

 

Lets come to the nasty part of druids, their big tauren d…, eh no, their Resto spec.

Resto druids are pretty simple, you cant die, they cant. Nah jk, if they go offensive you can kill them but otherwise it will be more difficult. But nothing is impossible not even Hollow Inflame the Vaizard on BEA!

You try to spell steal motw and thorns pretty early so they will either rebuff it or not, but it provides you with some additional stats anyway. Then you will start spamming frostbolts (of course you use mage armor and if possible two damage trinkets). Hammer the button baby until you get some good procs then you can either wait till he drops some of his hots, or he will likely go oom anyway if he constantly rebuffs.

If his hot timer is pretty low (4 seconds left) you can start nuking with FoF proc (otherwise damage will be to low) but before that you should use icy veins and pet than cast counterspell (so he cant re-hot) frostbolt -> frostbolt -> icelance -> frostbolt + petnova + deep freeze. He will either use barkskin or trinket otherwise he will be dead. If he uses barkskin and trinket it's jackpot.  Well that’s a basic strategy that you can combine on the next nuke with mirror images and your rocket.

 

Here are some basic tips and tricks vs Resto:

 

You can also steal hots if you go low on life.

If you want to evocate, you should deep freeze him before you do it.

And with the 20% ms debuff you can pretty easily oom him as well.

If he goes low on mana try to imp cs so he has no hots up then he will have to re-hot him before he can innervate or he will just use it and you can spellsteal it.

It's not that hard vs druids, you just need to time your cooldowns and lockouts pretty well.

 

 

Next Blog will be about Warlocks.

Ban Kai in and out.

Don’t forget in every troll there is still some truth inside xD

(I KNOW what you want, a downrate button for the blog!)