Fighting RLS: A Mage's Role

RLS is a hard comp for a mage to play against because of the many ways the RLS team can harass the mage's spells. With wind shear, spell lock, curse of tongues, kick, gouge, and grounding totem a Mage can easily feel useless against this setup. "Maybe I should just get burning determination.." you ask yourself bitterly. The truth is that it's not so bad if you learn to adapt to all the different interrupts of the RLS team. Let's start with your spec

Check yo' Spec

I like the traditional 20 points in arcane for Improved Counter Spell and Torment the Weak. Your frost tree can vary depending on your preference and also the spec of the enemy Warlock. If the warlock is destruction I like to get frost warding to potentially negate immo conflags on myself.  If the warlock is Affliction I drop frost warding, and pick up Piercing Ice.

Your spec might look like this against an Affliction RLS

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#of0frzMcZZAI0IobuhcdMfkt

And like this against a Destro RLS

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#of0frzMcZZAIbuobuhcdMfkt

Suit Up

Just like fighting RMP you want to try and get 8% hit because of the rogue's heightened senses. Spell penetration can be important since the shaman can drop frost resistance totem and the fel hunter has spell resist. You don't want the fel hunter resisting key novas when you need them. I usually play 121 spell penetration which is the same number I use for RMP.

Try and balance your spell damage and haste by using 9 spellpower 8 haste as opposed to 16 haste gems in yellow. You won't be hard casting as many spells as you normally would so a balance of spell power and haste rather than stacking haste might benefit you more. You also won't need Battlemaster's most of the time since it's hard for the RLS to drop the mage, unless he's destro which is why frost warding helps.

Glyphed Out

Your glyph decision against this match up is actually pretty interesting. Glyph of Decurse adds a flare in your game play since you can essentially "Immune" incoming hexes from the enemy shaman. What the Glyph does is makes the target you decurse immune to all curses for 4 seconds.

As you see the enemy Shaman casting Hex you simply decurse the Curse of Elements, Curse of Agony, or Curse of Tongues that's either on you or your teammate. If you do it in time the incoming Hex should be immune.

The other Glyphs should include Polymorph and either Icy Veins or Mana gem. You could even use Evocation Glyph depending on your opinion of its benefit.

Armored Up

Your ideal armor for this matchup is obviously Mage Armor but if the rogue does swap to you feel free to swap to Ice Armor to proc some fingers.

Once you feel comfortable about your spec, gear glyphs and armor it's time to queue.

Hit the Ground

Dealing with Grounding Totem can be annoying especially if you're accustomed to killing them with Ice Lance. Ice lance is a great way to kill grounding totem, but when you have fingers of frost procs the last thing you want to do is waste them on a grounding totem. When you have a fingers of frost proc and you need to kill Grounding try using Spellsteal to get rid of it. Spell steal only costs a bit more mana than Icelance and it also kills the Grounding instantly, since there's no travel time.

Since Spellsteal kills Grounding instantly, it is key to use if a shaman drops Grounding before a lesser healing wave or a hex to avoid getting Counterspelled. If you use Ice Lance to kill a grounding in this situation the travel time of the lance may be too slow for the incoming Counterspell.  Spellsteal will instantly drop the totem giving you plenty of time to interrupt the cast.

It's Shocking

The Shaman's Wind Shear can really set you back as the mage fighting against an RLS. Getting shocked cast after cast is not only annoying but it causes huge downtime and can lead to a loss.

Using range to your advantage is the easiest way to deny getting shocked since the Shaman simply can't shock the cast before getting close to you. Using minute LOS can also save you from getting shocked, this is where you just use little corners or angles of LOS to get a cast just before the shaman gets LOS of you. Finally, faking shocks is great as long as you don't cause downtime by trying to fake. It helps if you actually look at the enemy Shaman's character while faking just because it helps you “read” him.

Open Sesame

Your opener against an RLS team sets the pace for the game. It's best if you avoid getting sapped but not if it means sloppily running in and engaging combat. Depending on your partners you kind of want to “set up” your opener.

If you are playing with a rogue you should allow time for your rogue to get a sap on either the warlock or shaman. In this case you can even decide to just attack whoever your rogue doesn't get a sap on. For example, sap shaman go warlock or sap warlock go shaman.

If you are not playing with a rogue it may be best to run in and grab combat early before the sap run back a bit so your healer can get in combat from you then engage the fight.

Use Protection

Protecting your debuffs with trash debuffs like Winter's Chill ensures that your sheeps will stick when you want them to. I suggest binding focus Rank 1 Frostbolt in order to stack up debuffs before you focus sheep. Rank 1 Frostbolt is a quick way to put up winter's chill and the frostbolt debuff followed by Polymorph. This reduces the chance that Devour Magic will remove the Polymorph debuff.

There are times when you simply don't have the time to protect your sheeps and need the Polymorph to at least interrupt the incoming cast. This is fine, as long as you realize that your first sheep will most likely get devoured since there are no other debuffs.

Rogue Harass

Most of your snares and slows will stick on the rogue since Devour Magic is the only dispel and it's on an 8 second cooldown. Try and keep the enemy rogue snared throughout the entire match with nova and cone of cold since Crippling poison can be poison cleansed. If the enemy rogue is sapped, cone him out of the sap; if the enemy rogue is blinded cone him out of the blind. A snare like cone of cold out of a full CC can cause the rogue to sort of panic since he's been out of the match for so long, sometimes forcing a vanish. A vanish in this case is easily AOEd out since the rogue should still be near you.

It's important while trying to cone of cold the rogue to not get gouged, so be sure to max range cone the rogue and turn your character's back to the rogue the second you see him inch toward you.

Don't Lose your CC

If you open on the shaman try and counterspell a fear or a UA coming from the warlock to avoid him peeling. If the warlock is destro, counterspell the first Howl of Terror or fear since he's trying to peel at this point. Later in the game counterspelling Immolate or Chaos Bolt is good to do. If you do not have counterspell available sheeping Immolates or Chaos Bolts is extremely effective in preventing kills.

Your CC on the shaman is based around deep freeze, novas, sheeps and counterspells. Using deep freeze on the shaman can result in an easy full poly without worrying about it getting shocked. Novaing a shaman out of LOS of their low hp teammate causes problems for the RLS team. Counterspelling hex or heals can obviously lead to a kill.

Sheeping the enemy rogue's openers and kidney shots is key in this matchup. Prepare to fake cast the Polymorph since it's common for mages to try and sheep the enemy rogue's openers and shaman are aware of that.

Your positioning should be near the rogue to harass him and get him out of vanishes. Make sure to also be in the Shaman's LOS so he's afraid of polymorphs and CS.

DPS Rotation

You're probably thinking, “So if I can't cast, what do I do?” Well, you can cast you just have to take advantage of the few windows of opportunity against an RLS in which you can actually hard cast. Monitoring the warlocks spell lock, with a stop watch or an addon, helps to find this opportunity.

Try and use all your instants first like fireblast and cone of cold. It also helps to line up your cone of cold to hit everyone for max fingers procs, so you get two free ice lances which adds to your instant damage. After that you can either scorch for damage if the target is really low or attempt to waste the warlock's spell lock by faking frost bolts. After you fake spell lock call out for PI, lust and use Icy Veins and get those hard casts off while still being aware of shocks and grounding totems.  Sometimes your best damage is CCing the Shaman unless you are attacking Shaman in which it is much easier to get casts off since you can just hard cast while he's stunned.

 
Thanks for the read, be back next week. 

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