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    TwinStar team

Mage AOE grinding

As the video contains music that's not available in germany I can simply assume you're looking at a blizzard mage similar to this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8E6-mZrU4I

I already did that back in the days and as fun as it seems, it's pretty much difficult.
When planing to do this solo you can quickly get overpowered by the last few mobs chasing, you not having enough mana to simply pop a single AE :D

The most important thing to skill for the mentioned Blizzard / Frost area of effect leveling / farming would be the improved blizzard, improved cold and anything you can get to make the mobs slower in general.

I'm not entirely sure but think to remember the most early level you can start grinding like that being around 24-28.
After that you can expect clearing large (5-6 mobs) groups to be quite easy if you know how many Blizzards/Frost Nova's/Arcane Explosions your mana-pool allows.

Playing a mage like that is quite fun if you finally figure out how and what abilitys to use. But expect to get eaten quite a lot at early levels, 2 mobs pulled too much can easily beat you to death with no mana ^^
 
First vid is not something to go by (srsly, hard cast a pyro and then immediately pom'd a fireball?????). Frost is much better for aoe grinding than Fire, though if you have the mana for it, Flamestrike is pretty good to use in addition. This is another area where mages excel in the leveling process, especially for quests that require a lot of killing/collecting, such as the Southsea Pirates quests.
 
Hm....just test pirat's in Tanaris...i think no work correct...pull-->nova->run away_>blizzard...all ok for now.BUt,when mobs go under 20% start ""Run away in fear"and split.Here at 2:27 can see no split.Any idea its a bug or i do something wrong.Try it with mage 50lv
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTielX9fyTw
 
Quite a point there.

The only thing I miss is the source on what server he recorded that vid :3
Think in the last changelogs I saw chero just fixed the 'Run away in fear' and I actually love it.

Still enough other, non-fleeing creeps around to kill :w00t:
 
Well...that video is made on blizzard(TBC but still).Last night test it...npc run awas in fear and split.
 
Regular humanoid npcs should always run away in fear when close to death, thats working as intended.


Watch the vid you mentioned closely, you see it even there:
While casting the first Blizzard the npcs come in a straight line.
After that he casts Cone of Cold, causing the npcs to run away, followed up by a Frost Nova freezing them in place (preventing them from fleeing) for the final Blizzard.
Watch the moment just before his Nova, there is one npc running to the left and one to the right -> fleeing.


To deal with this either:

a) Freeze them with Frost Nova to prevent them from fleeing, finish with Blizzard / CoC / AE depending on hitpoints left (like in the vid, however timing Nova and fleeing is pretty hard, not every pull works out as intended ;-) ).
b) Keep casting Blizzard as long as they are close enough to make it worth the mana, hopefully finishing them off

or

c) Wait until the npcs come after you again (they only flee for a few seconds, then they turn around and try to fight you), herding them on a spot again like when you first pulled them an finishing them with Nova and Blizzard / CoC / AE.

Waiting until they charge you again is usually the best way in my opinion, since the few seconds they are fleeing gives some valuable time to refresh your Ice Barrier without caring about the global CD and a few extra seconds for your cooldowns to finish.
If you need to buy some more time for a cd (like Frost Nova) you might even want to run a bit away yourself while they are fleeing.


Some other things I learned while AOE farming (or got from tutorials):
- Start running while in Ice Block!

- Turn with your mouse (much faster than keyboard - simply hold down right mouse button and move the mouse sideways)

- Use jumpshot CoC to kite until an importand cd runs out (only possible with mouse turning and keybindings):
Run away from the enemy, while running jump und turn 360° while in the air until you face the same direction again, during your jump use CoC when facing the npcs, never stop running while doing this. This way you cast CoC on them without slowing down while running away.
Even better: A CoC jumpshot followed by blink buys you enouth time for a Blizzard, nice when Nova is on cd.

- Always cast Nova first and blink / run away a few steps before reshing Ice Barrier after Ice Block / dismount.
Reason:
Refreshing the Barrier causes a global cd, delaying your Nova, usually giving the npcs enough time to destroy your Barrier thus you just wasted the cd for it and saved a few hitpoints. If you cast Nova first they might destroy the Barrier und damage you but once you run a few steps after your Nova you are save. This way you can refresh Barrier in case 1-2 npcs resisted the Nova which happens quite often, preventing them from disrupting your blizzard on the main group.
 
I'd definitely recommend getting Arcane Concentration asap if you plan to level like this. With enough targets you can essentially keep Clearcasting up full time while channeling Blizzard, making all your Blizzards after the first free. It makes a huge difference with downtime and how much you can take on, with Blizzard costing a lot of mana.
 
Kanariya said:
I'd definitely recommend getting Arcane Concentration asap if you plan to level like this. With enough targets you can essentially keep Clearcasting up full time while channeling Blizzard, making all your Blizzards after the first free. It makes a huge difference with downtime and how much you can take on, with Blizzard costing a lot of mana.
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If with asap you mean lvl 50+ I agree.
While Arcane Concentration is great to have, you need a lot of points in the frosttree to even play Blizzard-AOE to it's full extend:

Precision:
One or even more npcs resisting your Frost Nova is bad since damage interrupts the channeled Blizzard, besides Nova your most important spell (and pretty expensive).
Even with 3/3 Precision this happens annoyingly often and without Cold Snap / Ice Block / Ice Barrier there isn't much you can do but get mana shield up (spending even more mana) or get out of combat.

Improved Nova, Permafrost, Improved Blizzard, Arctic Reach:
All of them maxed to freeze the mobs with Frost Nova, getting at max range and casting 2 full length, not overlapping Blizzards with the mobs arriving just when the cd of Frost Nova runs out => repeat ftw

With Cold Snap, Ice Block and Ice Barrier (great oh s*** buttons) the soonest i'd get it to 5/5 would be 50.
 
I don't agree. CS, Ice Block and Ice Barrier aren't needed. No mobs should be hitting you in the first place if you're aoe farming. If, for some reason, they do, and Frost Nova is on CD, you should blink away to force leash and start over. Barrier is just a waste, assuming you even have the mana to cast it. If mobs are in melee range and Frost Nova is on CD, you've failed at aoe grinding and should reset. As for Precision, it definitely helps with the mobs, but if you're grinding mobs over your level, Frost Nova will be resisted no matter what. Stick to grinding same or lesser level mobs. One mob resisting Frost Nova is manageable anyway.
 
Kanariya said:
I don't agree. CS, Ice Block and Ice Barrier aren't needed. No mobs should be hitting you in the first place if you're aoe farming. If, for some reason, they do, and Frost Nova is on CD, you should blink away to force leash and start over. Barrier is just a waste, assuming you even have the mana to cast it. If mobs are in melee range and Frost Nova is on CD, you've failed at aoe grinding and should reset. As for Precision, it definitely helps with the mobs, but if you're grinding mobs over your level, Frost Nova will be resisted no matter what. Stick to grinding same or lesser level mobs. One mob resisting Frost Nova is manageable anyway.
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Most likely I just don't value Arcane Concentration as much since in my experience it rarely proccs often enough to skip regging while Cold Snap, Ice Block and Ice Barrier help much more in lots of situations.
Ordinary equipment "of the eagle" provides enough mana with your occasional managem to do the job and even with drinking mana and conjuring managems I usually still got to wait for respawn, not losing time while regging.
To me AC is a 10 point "do it a bit smoother, wait longer for respawn" talent most times.

One thing I don't understand is how you deal with 1-2 npcs resisting your initial Frost Nova and interrupting your Blizzard without the deeper frost talents.
This happens quite often even when fighting mobs 3 lvls below (99% hit chance).
Kiting until next Nova or running away, resetting combat, returning and herding mobs again takes more time and is more of a hassle than simply casting Ice Barrier to prevent the damage of those 1-2 while nuking the rest and drinking a bit longer after the fight.
Sure, you might use Mana Shield but why use a rather high mana cost spell to make use of a 10 point talent that saves mana?

And thats not even taking lag, npc movement (we will see both after release) into consideration, the cds might be even more usefull.
Add to that the fact that lots of farmspots are in questareas you might be forced to move on to spots closer to your lvl due to shortage of mobs (rendering aoe useless, this already happened an a low populated pve server to me) or even pvp...
I also love AC but prefer the survivability and simplicity first.
 
AoE leveling is very feasible to do, but with a few caveats.

1) It gets tremendously easier after level 40 with ice barrier. Prior to that, you use mana shield to avoid getting hit (especially avoid getting dazed!) and it sucks mana up quickly. Learning to round up as many mobs as possible while taking as few hits as possible takes awhile to learn.

2) You need good gear to do this right. After most pulls (before 40 anyway) you will likely end each fight with no mana and very little health (this gets better later on). You NEED of the eagle/dungeon blues to really do this comfortably. Also, I strongly recommend mana pots, because blizzard is a very expensive spell, and running out of mana with the mobs at 15% health is a good way to die.

3) You probably don't want to AOE grind all the way to 60. Firstly, it gets boring. Secondly, there are lull periods where you need to start grinding higher level areas but you haven't gotten the next rank of blizzard. It gets hard to do this right when you can't kill the cluster in 2-3 blizzards.

That being said, AOE leveling is extremely fun and entertaining, but only in measured doses. You absolutely should do it and get a feel for it, because it's such an essential part of what it means to play a mage. It's also a great way to take a break from questing, and provides fast XP.
 
The biggest issue you have while AoE grinding is Kronos' population. Every single popular AoE grinding spot is going to have other mages there, or other people killing the mobs for quest(s).

That and, mob pathing is VERY buggy in a lot of places. I've been killed so many times during AoE pulls, because half of the mobs randomly decided to walk off to the side for no visible reason, and avoid my blizzard.

AoE grinding is not worth it at all on Kronos. Too high population, and pathing is too buggy.
 
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population is fine, was way worse to do this on nostalrius and some managed just fine.

Pathing makes it almost broken though.
 
UDdruid said:
population is fine
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I've tried AoE grinding a plethora of times between level 24 and 45; every single time I tried, I ran into the issue of other mages / other people already at the spot killing the mobs.

Unless you play at like, 8am server time, you're going to run into this issue.
 
1) AOE grinding with mages on the server right now is very rough due to server pop. It's starting to ease but just only a bit. Ran into and fought with multiple horde aoe grinders on the Duskwallow Islands and even one UD rogue and one dwarf priest. I guess they didn't get the memo those places were for mage grinding only. Likewise, an aoe grinding mage is a VERY tempting target for ganking. And if that wasn't enough, even players of your own faction will hate you for it and will quite often do everything they can to steal your mobs, pull their mobs into your aoe so you get the aggro, and generally f**k with your pulls. And FYI, after having a run-in with a gnome mage with my mage in Duskwood on the worgen, because this is a pvp server, it is perfectly acceptable for other players to screw with your pulls, even from the same faction. So don't expect any solace from a GM either. As it stands right now, it's pretty much easier to just go with a nuking build and blast your way to 60 as the lost time trying to fight over good grinding spots is just not worth the effort atm.

2) "Of the Eagle" is the primo gear. AoEs scale poorly with spell damage. For aoeing, the only stats that matter are your mana and health.

3) It seems that Clearcasting is not working as intended with Blizzard atm. It's only proccing on the initial cast, not a chance on every wave.

4.) Frost has always been a whore of a talent point tree. To get good damage out of it, you pretty much either need to go whole hog or nothing. That said, if all you're interested in is using Blizzard to AoE and plan on using another tree for your nuking build, it is possible to only go up to Imp Blizzard (and I'd suggest Imp FN) to aoe grind with Blizzard effectively. Which brings us to the comments on the value of CS, Ice Block, and Ice Barrier. Are they NEEDED to AoE grind. No, otherwise you wouldn't be able to do it until 40. But they are EXTREMELY valuable and make your life much much easier. IB is an extra 400-800 health every 30 seconds (or back to back if you time it right) and is the ONLY way Frost has to prevent spell interupts from damage. It's the talent that allows mages to do those insanely huge pulls as the amount of damage you can sustain on the gathering up part of the pull is your biggest limiting factor. IB gives you a 10 second window of immunity often used to ignore damage while the mobs gather around you, however on a 5 minute cooldown, your not likely to have it available every pull so I don't depend on it typically. Resists are what they are. But even a 1% chance can be common when you're pulling 10, 15 and 20 mobs at a time. That's why the talent that allows you to reset your frost abilities is so valuable. FN resist, pop it and recast FN.

4) Not all mobs are AoE-able. Any groups with casters or ranged in them are a major pain. Humanoids near death always run, but beasts and pretty much everything else won't. Anything that traps, stuns or silences is pretty much undoable.

AoE farming is bar none, THE fastest way to level in vanilla, and an excellent way to farm mats/gold/drops. However, it's a very high risk, high reward style of play and requires patience and time to master. This only applies, though, if you can find a nice secluded spot on the server to do it unmolested.
 
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Yeah, AoE grinding is great, but so far I have found it to be impossible on Kronos due to the population. Every spot I tried at any hour of the day would always have other mages there, or other players there already killing the mobs.

FayWrey said:
Ran into and fought with multiple horde aoe grinders on the Duskwallow Islands and even one UD rogue and one dwarf priest. I guess they didn't get the memo those places were for mage grinding only.
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There's a quest based around those murlocs.
 
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i have been doing some AoE lvl farming for alot of times, but the problem is that the respawn of mobs take like 5min-10min, in 1 hour i did'nt see all that amount of xp coming...whats wrong? A dude said me when he farmed hillsbrad mobs they would respawn the first group right before the second were dead, but ive killed all those mobs and they take more then 5 min to respawn....something is wrong...(kronos 1)
 
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