AoE Grinding / AoE leveling / Party AoE

Post by oversmoelf

About this topic
This post will attempt to discover various ways of using the AoE weapons of the mage and consists of the following guides so far:

AoE Frost mage leveling /grinding
Party AoE grinding
Talent setup

AoE Frost mage leveling /grinding

Introduction
Here is my suggestion to aoe leveling, yes leveling your toon with aoe.

I think this forum could use more information surrounding the illustrious aoe grinding and even aoe leveling (wtf is that? level with high risk of long death walks?). I found my self doubting that it would ever pay off to risk your life and face 5-20 mobs at the time compared to the steady - and then again, I couldnt be more wrong.

The usual comments about blizz is that its a mana consuming low dps spell.

I have been looking everywhere for aoe grinding tips, and this forum was where I started looking, so I thought I'd make a little post about a possible way to make Blizzard shine and enlighten your game play. I hope that you will forgive me for this waste of space if its not relevant for you.

The sheer power and damage is sometimes enough to clear many mobs, but imho nothing makes aoe kills more beautiful than the predictability and flawless cc provided by a skilled aoe frostie, just watch the video I linked below. Dont know who the guy is, but the content is superior cc and steady blizz in a relaxed systematic way.

Main skills

Your main weapons for gathering monsters/herding/pull will be:

Frost Nova
Mana Shield
Ice Barrier
Blink
Ice Block

Your main skills for dps will be:

Blizzard
Cone of cold
Arcane Explosion

Talents

Since this post is based on leveling with AoE Ill only discuss some important talents and not the entire build.
One thing is worth mentioning though: if you take frostbite which has a chance to freeze a target hit by chill effects you will ruin the predictability of everything you are doing. You will also die alot more when trying to aoe grind. If you really like the frostbite talent - dont aoe, just make a normal frost mage :-)

"A must have" -talents

2/2 Improved Frost Nova
3/3 Permafrost
3/3 Improved Blizzard
1/1 Cold snap

Using Blizzard with the improved blizzard (3/3) and permafrost(3/3) will allow you to aoe grind safer and more comfortable.

"Nice to have" -talents

Ice Barrier
Frost channeling
Improved Cone of Cold
Elemental Precision
Ice Floes

Stay in frost spec all way to at least 40, because at 40 you get mount, allowing you to herd much more mobs than before, but only if you dont get dazed or fall off the horse - this is where the Ice barrier talent comes in, for goodness sake and ftw, get it! It will shield you longer than mana shield only, letting you herd every mob in one try (with skill).

How to play
The main challenge is to find the right mobs, they must be melee (as a general rule) with few or no chances to interrupt you while channeling blizzard. Stuff like fear, stun, speed increase and immobilizing effects will complicate matters and require extra skill.

The rest is pretty simple in writing, but very hard to accomplish:

Herd the mobs into one big group and frost nova them, so they all freeze.
Then blink or move to max range of your blizzard spell.
The Permafrost talent with improved blizzard will buy you the time to cast 2 blizzards before the mobs come within range of Cone of Cold (CoC).
Use CoC when they they are close.
From there, just frost nova again (after CoC) and either AE (with shatter talent for good results) or blink/sidestep and blizz again.

AOE grinding mobs equal to your level is rarely a good idea, since you will be fighting a marginal battle everytime (which makes grinding exciting/frustating - either you barely survive or they barely survive), therefore you should choose mobs with slighty lower level than you. Why allways this situation? Because the herding skill and your hp determines how many mobs you can pull. The amount of mana you have determines, how many mistakes you can make before getting crushed by blood thirsty melee monsters.

Sometimes ice block comes very handy when herding mobs, they will gather and hit the ice block, couple that with a new mana shield (if you have enough mana), frost nova and blink to 2 x blizzard distance and there you go: blizzard in front of mobs, new blizz in front of mobs, Cone of cold, frostnova then (1), (2) or (3):

If you still have health enough and prefferably for this variant specced the shatter talent, you can try Arcane Explosion to death, works very well with humans and other mobs that flee when low on health. Remember they will be chilled, so they dont run far, just stop hitting you.
If mobs still have 30%+ you can try blink again with 1-2xblizz if you have the mana or have pots for it.
If things get outta hand and you get an add, you can sidestep while the herd is frozen, and sheep the add, then blink and blizz the herd to death, not the sheep. Sheep again and use evocation for mana, cold snap or iceblock for cool down wait or bandage and take care of the last guy. If you get more than one add, as a general rule blink away and abort.

Gear

Focus on getting stamina/Intellect over intellect/spirit gear. if you want to finish the mobs the fast (but shaky way) get some stat+crit gear like illusionary rod and get the shatter talent for AE bursts and CoC.
Spell damage on gear is also a good choice that benefits both blizz and other skills.
Getting crit gear to remove low health monsters from the game seems like a slighty better alternative.

Nice to know

High cool down time spells
Try not to use spells with high CDs just to get you started aoeing again. Using cold snap for readying Ice block etc to aoe again will make the situation much more dangerous. Keep your aces on your hand until the right moment. Because there comes a point in time, where both you and the monsters are low in health and if you choose to go for the kill instead of abort its an all-in situation and you will need those high CD spells and talents.

The fear factor
Your worst enemy when aoe grinding is fear, you have to get used to the fact that even tho you could have been a traditional single target pyro or frost-clothie its perfectly normal for you to get in the middle of 5-20 mobs, recieve a lot of damage sometimes, make a big ice cube out of them all and blink away to set off blizz.

Predictability
Your best friend is predictability, cc has to be perfect. Dont allow roamers to interfere your sequence. 1-2 interrupts of Blizzard and the margins will be on the monsters' side. Clear roamers before you start or find a way to herd them. If you are a badass, herd them across the other mobs ( maybe with a wand. )

As a general rule, don't herd with chill effects unless you can chill everyone.

--- continues below ---

Post by oversmoelf

Nice to know continued

Dont waste ur money
You dont need uber gear, buy some "of the eagle" in AH and you will be fine, stack with crit for fast and stylish AE (or "damn, they dropped me when they had 1% hp left") finish.

Also don't bother too much about fancy enchants and expensive gear, its your skills, cast sequence and talents that will make you aoe grind succesfully, not your equip. Very few clothie toons survives simultaneous hits from 10+ monster 1-2 levels lower for long, no matter how they are geared. Some good items can be nice when you get your mount, because you will be able to herd much more
Get used to watching a 10% full hp bar
Expect to be low on health after each herd/pull, expect to be low on mana after every aoe sequence. Don't plan to get lucky, plan everything.
The winning preparation
Bring potions to aid you and help bringing the last damage to the table.
Waiting for respawns
Time spent aoeing means a lot of "downtime" because of the wait for respawns. Either make sure you can grind other stuff while waiting for respawn or get a nice profession to entertain you in the breaks.
Profession suggestion
Alchemy+herbalism is a nice choice that will let you make potions for the next battle, just bring some vials from a vendor and you will get a considerable advantage almost for free, compared to those that dont have potions.
In between PvP and some items
If you stop at level 39 for PoM fireball or something ^^ , you could spend a little time gearing up, because pvp stuff like stamina+intellect gear is essentially very symbiotic with your overall gear/item plan.

Instance gear around level 40:
Enjoy a trip to Razorfen downs with a group and say a prayer before you roll on Robe of the lich (Robe of the lvl 39 AoE mage ^^). Explaining to people that you need it ;-) will also help.

Also do Scarlet Monastery Library for the nice Illusionary Rod. (Rod of the lvl 34 AoE mage)

External links

I found a good movie, its repetitive but very instructive:

An aoe grind movie

The spec of guy in the movie is very good for aoe grind/leveling.

The End
Aoe grinding is the poker of WoW.- big reward, high risk and adrenaline, stay cool and you win.

Happy aoeing people!

Post by 6893

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Post by oversmoelf

Thanks for the feed back :-) Ill try and make it more organized, im glad you posted. Any thought on other kinds of AoE leveling?

Post by oversmoelf

Btw. as many other AoE grinding guide authors have stated, spending points in frostbite, WILL hurt to overall predictability.

You will get some more options in a tactical sense, but it should probably be combined with even more stamina on gear.

Its not recommended, definately not.

Post by oversmoelf

PARTY AOE GRINDING/LEVELING

Getting a healer in party to help you maintain the edge is more often than not a bad idea when aoe grinding or leveling, because usually and especially on lower levels the aoe target area has 1-4 crowds that can be aoe'ed with some risk. If there are other people from your party xp rates will drop significantly and you will loose the training of skills than you need to fight with even lower margins of error.

Besides what you'd really want is more mana, because OOM is usually the reason something go wrong.

Healing is also aoe aggro on mobs, so if the healer heals you while you pull there is a real chance that the healer will aggro the monsters.

However... :-))) ... I will try to cover some fun you can do with this setup.

If its a good friend that you normally play with I suggest the following plan of action instead:

Use a class that is able to pull like you, for example priest with shield up.
Decide a meeting place somewhere in the middle on several groups and let him pull all monsters from one or more of the other groups
Then you both pull monsters and run to the meeting point and follow the same path away from the monsters to assemble them (the plan is to make a giant ice-cube :-) ).
With skills and training you will be able to run following an X or Y pattern (you cross paths with the other shepherd), to improve the monster density.
Frost nova, blink away and do your thing.
Be ready to snap ( allways have Cold snap available when attempting this).
This is a very fun but also very hard strategy, I found blinking to be almost mandatory since you really(!) need distance here.
The other player just needs to get the hell outta dodge and you will be fine, you shouldnt recieve any healing until the mobs are close to you (after 2 x blizz), in this way you will have more aggro and the mobs should not divide upon a healing crit or several heals.
If you find that the monsters run towards the other player Chill or freeze them and blink/run to the priest and start new blizzard sequence. Allways pots and mana gems ready and also cold snap.
You can use Ice Block to synchronize the herds with the other player. Ice block buys 10 or less seconds of time for the other player to gather his herd and run to your location.
This little stunt gets much harder if the mobs are spread out on larger distance.

If you do this for leveling, items or anything else but fun, you are probably better off soloing. But in the spirit of grinding amusement this is one of best things in game.

There are 3 phases of this sport on every aoe project.

Phase 1:

Everyone pulls mobs and cross paths with the mage.

Phase 2:

Mage does his thing while the others no-aggro heal and get ready to take care of roamers.
If Mage had to snap be prepared to aggro-heal on second nova sequence.

Phase 3:

Laugh like a mad man if this was your first time doing this.
Laugh like a mad man if this was not your first time.
Collect loot or begin the long walk :-)

Tips

Try shorter distances first, if you start at lvl 33-35 go to the A/H farms in Arathi and have the other guy pull the neighbour monsters.
Wiping is definately very likely.
When you pull, you can take aggro from the other players with aoe like Arcane Explosion or Cone of cold, but here the Cone of Cold must almost allways be followed by ice block.
Remember to stay in the middle of where the two groups of monsters came from, using this kind of positioning will minimize the risk of monsters evading and running back.
If the monsters do run back, be prepared to abort, sheep or nova them, because they will most likely re-aggro if you are still nearby. If the other player has skills he will pull the last mob away from you.
All this aoe'ing with coordination of 2 or even more players with the mage as primary dps, is pretty fun but very complicated! Using voice communication and some solid planning is strongly advised.

Thats it! - good luck

Usually we pull static mobs with one or two roamers, this allows for a lot of repetitive training and maybe some day you can safely aoe co-op :)

Enjoy!

Post by oversmoelf

Made a few changes today, I hope you guys like them.

Post by 6893

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Post by oversmoelf

Hehe all right, well I hope some will find the use for it.

Post by oversmoelf

Dooooh, all the formatting on the first 2 posts was lost apparently....

:/

Edit: I fixed them again, X your fingers.

Post by oversmoelf

Another way to improve single target grinding while keeping the AoE spec is to use to use a few talent points in winters chill.

It is also symbiotic with the AoE grinding idea, since you want your Cone of Cold to do as much damage as possible.

However, as allways, get the skills that benefit your AoE directly first, after that you can worry about taking down single mobs faster.

Post by 6893

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Post by oversmoelf

Yay :D

Thank you.

/partyallnight

Post by 1212_

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Post by oversmoelf

Thank you my friend.

I have a plan to add a guide on where to find the monsters.

I also plan to add some end game specs for aoe grinding (for mats etc. ) :-)

Post by 88178

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Post by oversmoelf

I leveled my mage to 70 through AoE grinding along with a few quests here and there so I thought I'd link some specs because thats something you missed out.

Level 29 tree:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=oZZMhMIcfxc

Level 39 tree:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=oZZMhMIcfxsik

Level 49 tree:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=oZZMAMIcfxsiqz (I missed out Icy Veins, but you could grab it if you wanted to)

The rest of the points I would suggest putting into arcane, getting into 5/5 Arcane concentration is a nice mana saver.

Great work Belkin, however level 29 does not get 29 talent points :-) For levels your trees are 38, 48 and 58 :-)

For the "29 tree" (level 38) it is interesting that you went for (3/3) piercing ice instead of Cold Snap and Icy Veins. I like your builds very much, can you tell me more about where (what mobs) you leveled on the way?

Actually I might add that those builds are very much by the book. If you plan to AoE grind/level, then take a serious look at those builds. Thank you Bellkin

and thank you for joining in on this topic!

Post by sugarzombie

Post by oversmoelf

as per oversmoelf's request, here's my spec and where i was grinding at level 63 (to earn 120k xp-per-hour, all using rested xp):

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=oZtgMzf0coeoZchMrcf0o

i had to complete some HFP quests to get gear upgrades that had enough mana to do this. with precise timing & distance, you can AoE with only 21 points in frost. more points makes it more mana efficient.

These are the mobs: Bonestripper Vultures

* 3 pulls of 6-8 just south of the temple of telhamat
* southwest across the road is a really good 10+ pull (around 18.51 on coordinates)

Ur da man! very nice indeed. Thank you very much Mr. sugarzombie.

I like that you find "the minimum required talents" that support aoe grinding, this could be very useful for newcomers to AoE as well, knowing that they can actually get all the good skills at level 30 and go kill mobs at the farms in arathi highland.

For 23 i'd personally i'd say this build is also a viable candidate. I would recommend that you get improved Cone of Cold next to blast the monsters good before next blizzard section.

In reality the sequence of nova, blink, blizz, blizz, cone, nova, blizz, blizz.

Will often be replaced by nova, blink, blizz, blizz, cone, nova, arcane explosion - when you cone is upgraded and monsters have the right level. I allways get shatter (an off-talent) to ensure I can do this.

Again thank you very much, sugarzombie.

Post by oversmoelf

Talent setup

If you are a mage leveling between 30 to 50 I can recommended this basic setup

Level 30
Basic setup
At level 30 will give you the most essential talents to use with aoe grinding.
Basically you could start putting points into fire or arcane at this point, but i dont recommend it, because you still improve your aoe dps quite alot when sticking to frost. And any other talents than arcane sublety is 10 talent point or more away from availability, which means 10 or more levels grinding without improving your gameplay - and thats 33% levels wasted from what we try to cover here. Spending talent point towards hybrid now is a mistake and a serious risk in my opinion.

The possibilities for hybrid elemental or arcane that arise from the early 50s will be covered in another section.

Level 40
Mount setup
At level 40 we get the mount, which enables herding of more mobs, which in turn means that more things can go wrong.
Notice I chose winters chill over improved frostbolt, because of the focus on aoe - which may not seem obvious. ( in depth explaination below).

Level 50
Frost 50 setup
Okay, 2 important notes to be made here.
First of all, we get water elemental, which is like one more frost nova. It takes some skill to use it with aoe grind - but this is another discussion.
The second is that now we specced 5/5 winters chill, which means that monsters we aoe grind will allways have 3 winters chill effects stacked before Cone of cold when we use this skill rotation:

gather mobs -> frost nova -> blizz -> blizz -> Cone of Cold

This will become even more interesting as we start putting talents into the rest of the tree.

From skill level 53 and on, there are many opportunities and talent spec that are viable. They will be discussed in another section as "Endgame aoe".

AoE Grinding / AoE leveling / Party AoE

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