How to play the Mage Class Effectively in a Party and PvP situation-Frost Point of View.

Ok, anyone ive come across will tell you, i HATE being told how to play my toon. But i was asked to do this write up, so here i am, telling you what i do to be the best frostmage i can.

Party role- Creature control/DPS.  Ok, so you might not make #1 damage, but who gives a shit. If your joining a party just to score high on the Damage meter, GTFO and reroll rogue. seriously. You have polymorph, frost nova and Remove lesser curse for a reason man. Anytime you see mobs making a dash for the healer, cut in front of them, throw a quick frost nova, pray it hits, and watch the tank do what he does best.

Crowd Control-Sheeping-Sheeping humanoids to pull a group does kinda suck, since we wear cloth, but if you have a good tank, you wont take much damage, if any. If you find the mobs getting too close for comfort, Frostnova, back up, throw up Ice Barrier (if you have it) and wait for the hefty dude in plate to come save the day.

Crowd Control-Counterspell-This is an AWESOME pulling technique against caster mobs. With Improved counterspell, not only do they stop what they are casting (if you already grabbed agro) but they can't cast spells again for 4 seconds. Plenty of time for a warrior to run in, drop a taunt, get some agro, then you can start DPSing away. Always, ALWAYS give the tank time to gain agro before you start blasting off instant casts and High damage spells. If not, you'll find yourself looking at the Release button more often then you'll like. Anytime you see a mob beginning to cast healing spells, big damamge spells or some kind of party Crowd control, pop a counterspell. Its got a 30sec cooldown though, so be wary of when you use it, use it wisely, win the fight, split the loot :)

Decurse- Ok, LOTS of mages know how to do this, so I'm not going to bore you here too much. A great mod to help with this is decursive. Get the program, install it to your WoW/Interface/AddOns folder. Once in game, go to your macro making screen and make a new macro that looks like this:

/decursive

Yup, that easy. What it does is targets the nearest party member (or whatever you configure it to decurse first) and casts your decurse move, with one click. It doesn't change your target, and it removes the curse from those it threatens most first. You'll still have to run around to get within casting range however, its not a hack to decurse from anywhere, it's a mod to make it a hell of a lot easier ;)

Now for the fun stuff, DPSing.

Like i said, ALWAYS make sure you preform your other jobs FIRST. Decurse, rebuff, conjure plenty or water for your priests and druids, sheep, counterspell. But after all thats said and done, start spamming your cheapest highest damage spell (Frostbolt FTW.) Every once in a while, when mana isnt a problem, spam arcane missile, when mana is a problem (as it is is most endgame material), wait for clearcast, and make sure you cast AM when this nifty little move procs. Arcane Missile for free, tell me where i sign up. This WILL BE your highest damage spell for the amount of time it takes to channel at its highest rank. BUT, its also got a hefty mana cost, so use it sparingly, unless you need to finish off those last couple % of life on a boss or trash mob during a wipe threat.