What I Do Now

When I first started on this little gnome mage about a year ago, I was a member of the guild called "Molly Maguires" who, at the time were a raiding guild, and quite good at it. This was back before Burning Crusade came out, so my goals were as follows:

1) Hit level 30 (halfway to max level!)

2) Hit level 40 (Get my cool green mechanostrider mount!)

3) Hit level 60 (Max level! Ony, BWL, MC, Naxx, here I come!)

Unfortunately I only made it to goal #2 before the expansion came out and ruined my carefully laid- out plans. "Ten more levels isn't so bad. I made it this far, right?" Yeah, right.

Anyways, the mage was almost a pure dps class with some fun CC abilities (who doesn't like watching a mob or Hordie get turned into livestock?). I could sit back, spam fireball and blow everything up. No one could touch me on the damage meters. It was glorious.

Then two things happened:

1) Warlocks kept getting better and I kept getting nerfed.

2) Beast Mastery- spec'd hunters became all the rage for uber- dps ability.

Suddenly I wasn't needed. I was even told I'd probably not get a shot at Karazhan because a warlock could outlast me and provide CC (which mages lack against anything not a humanoid or beast) while I could spam my paltry fireballs and frostbolts (pyroblast in raids makes me laugh at the mage who does it) and last about 3 minutes. Damn.

This turnaround bummed me out and actually caused me to lose interest in my main character, the one who made me as much as I made him. I swore I'd never roll another clothie again, because my mage was simply too limited. The only time he was needed was to make food and water.

True story, I actually went to Molten Core for the sole purpose of filling bags with food and water for a raid I didn't actually participate in. Gotta love guild loyalty.

Anyways, I was reading the excellent blogs of Big Red Kitty and Mania's Arcania and an epiphany dropped on me like a dozen ogres. I was playing my mage all wrong.

This was huge, as I had been a kinda unique 17/0/44 frost mage who hated PvP but was very good in PvE and raiding/ instancing. Since I can't out- dps a properly played hunter or warlock, and AoE (the mage's other overrated calling card), I should focus on the one thing my class can do better than any other class in the game, hands down: crowd control.

Now, I know what you're thinking. "Priests can Shackle and fear" or "Warlocks can fear and banish" or "Hunters can trap" or "Druids can CC better than a mage" or any number of things. You're all wrong.

Priests can only Shackle what, demons? Undead? That's handy when you walk into Heroic Ramparts, right? And let's not get started on the headaches caused by Fear.

(An aside. Fear is not Crowd Control. Do I need to say it again? Okay. Fear is not Crowd Control. You fear when we're in an instance, your healing backside gets no help from me.)

Warlocks can banish demons and elementals. Once again, instance, anyone? Let's see a warlock banish the waves of mobs in Black Morass. Doesn't work. For Fear, see above.

Hunters can trap all sorts of things, it's true. And they're even somewhat reliable. But you get one trap as a hunter. One. That's it. What happens when you miss a pull or (heavens) the tank pulls too many? I hope you can kite.

(Another aside. Kiting is not Crowd Control. This is why I'm not a priest. You will not get heals from me if you do this. I hope you like the taste of health potions.)

Druids? Ha! A few forms of CC, but, and this is the big caveat, you must be outdoors to use them. Let's see you root those rampaging blood elves in The Eye.

But a mage? As a frosty kind of mage, I get a single polymorph (1.5 second cast, no cooldown, one target at a time, but I can switch whenever I need to) that can last nearly a minute and four, count 'em, four frost novas, two of which are ranged. They can last for up to 8 seconds each. With my large radius frost nova, I can root a good number of mobs at once. And did I mention that every frost spell (including Ice Armor) can root an enemy to the ground for a few seconds as well? That's nearly 30 seconds of continuous frozen enemies. Yeah, let's see a warlock do that.

So that's where I'm at. 20/0/41 frost. Casters get silenced, I get more mana regen, and I make things stick. Now all I have to do is learn to play... again.