Mage Class Guide
Mages are one of two support dps classes (the other being Warlock). Their main job is to not only provide good dps, but also constantly apply crowd control and silences on the opponents. Mages have Sheep (a great CC) which turns the opponent into a sheep therefore preventing them from doing anything and they also have counter spell, which either silences all trees for 4 seconds or if a person is counter spelled during a cast, they cannot cast a spell in that tree (fire/holy/shadow/frost) for 8 seconds.
Alongside this, Mages have great dps, which makes them a great support class. Mages also have great kiting abilities and they can keep melee out of range very easily. They have blink (shoots them 15 yards ahead), frost nova (freezes everyone in a range for X seconds), and armor that when hit slows or freezes opponents. In order to maintain balance, though, Mages are notorious for being very weak and can die very quickly.
Mages have various specs that they can effectively use in arena. Most Mages go deep frost, which provides more survivability where they otherwise lack it. Some Mages with exceptional kiting abilities will play as 21 fire or deep fire, which provides substantial burst dps.
Frost Mages are most often on more defensive teams where the fight will be prolonged, as a Fire Mage cannot survive consistent damage for a while. A Frost Mage has 2 ice blocks (frozen and immune to everything but heals), an ice barrier (absorbs damage), more kiting options (chill armor), and a pet, with its own frost nova and abilities that greatly increase the Mages' overall dps.
Because of these defensive abilities, Warriors will usually only hop on a Frost Mage if it has Blessing of freedom to get through all the kiting. Frost Mages are not often targeted in 5v5 arena, though, as a ice block will stop all dps on him. Although this does not apply until very high brackets of 5v5, Mages high up often spend the majority of their time crowd controlling opponents and mitigating heals and dps through CS and kiting. Mages will only really start to dps once one of the opponents drop below the 50% range, then the mage goes all out hoping to drop the target.
Fire Mages are more often seen on very aggressive teams, such as PvE Clickers and some 4 dps lineups. They have considerably less survivability than their Frost Mage counterpart, but they make up for that with the ability to put out extremely high burst dps.
Fire Mages shine even more when they are played by people who have learned how to kite effectively with one. Deep Fire mages have a chance to get a sprint when attacked, and they do not lose the frost nova and blink that allows them to keep people off them.
This damage definitely comes in hand with 4 dps teams, where their goal is to kill an opponent extremely fast. The Mage is usually targeted first in this scenario (unless their is a Shadow Priest) so its job is to get a sheep and/or a cs off during the initial phase and then unloads all of its abilities on their target before it dies, although as mentioned earlier some top players can stay alive.
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[...] Mage: You deal heavy damage with ice, fire, and arcane spells. Upside: Mages do crazy damage and can polymorph other players during PVP. Downside: All that crazy damage and no way to mitigate it gets you killed…a lot. [...]