I’m obviously doing something wrong. I’m a level 64 frost mage, and i’m ready to give up on WoW. I play it only occasionally now and it generally bores me. Most of the quests at my level are group or raid. I play alone. I end up getting killed even in level 40 type instances against elite. Will it get fun again? My only option seems to be grinding away through the next few levels. Is it just a flaw in my character choice? Is the game just not designed to allow a mage to solo at higher levels?
P.S: The first person who says “You must just suck” gets cockpunched. 
If you can chill it, you can kill it.
Mage is a bad instance class. Roll a hunter or druid if you want to do that. Mages do a lot better against world elites and other players. Go gank someone.
You’re not really supposed to be able to solo instances. By the time you can, they’re generally far too low level to hold anything of interest (barring certain classes who can AOE-farm for disenchant fodder and the like). Try your hand at same-level quests and enemies in the outside world, and you should fare much better.
ETA: At your level, you should have pretty good luck finding solo quests (or solo-able at any rate; a lot of “group” quests are) in Terrokar and Nagrand. Best of luck!
Mages really suck as solo characters in instances. They use up mana like its going out of style, and have little ability to self heal/mitigate damage, meaning you really have to kite stuff, but kiting is tough in a dungeon.
My brother and I both soloed Onyxia at level 80, and I think he managed to solo a level 72 dungeon as well(he has a lot more purples than I did).
Being able to solo that content depends on 2 things really… being able to take little damage, and being able to heal to a certain degree. Mages sadly lack both, making them very poor. Paladins and hunters, on the other hand, both have self healing(well, pet healing for the hunter), and very good damage absorption. My brothers pally managed to solo a level 70 instance at level 80(with a bunch of purples), and we can both down Onyxia np.
You are trying to do something virtually impossible. Don’t use it as your acid test.
At 64, you’d be better served doing the quests in one of the Outland zones. They give great experience and some pretty good rewards and will take you all the way to level 70. At 70, move on to the outdoor zones from the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.
It’s been several months since I played but my tactic for soloing as a frost mage was to make sure Ice Barrier (hotkey this) and Frost Armor were up at all times. Open up your attack with a frost bolt to slow the creature’s walking speed. Hit it with another as soon as you can and a third if you can manage it before it makes it to you. Then, use your insta-cast fire spell. (Fire blast?) and follow that up with a Frost Nova to root the guy in place.
Then, strafe away. You move faster strafing than you do simply backing up. Try to get to the edge of your casting range and start blasting it again with frost bolts. Repeat as necessary.
I’ve seen people do that with Mages, but it’s difficult. Mages have a very low fudge factor, so you may just need a lot of practice.
BTW people, don’t underestimate grinding. Lots of people may have good resons for soloing instances, even pre-level cap. Maybe they want certain drops or goodies to sell or craft with.
Alternative you, could just quit WoW. That’s what I did when I realized that, as a solo game, it’s not really very good. If you play with other people, that’s great, but as a game to play by yourself, you can do better.
It may have changed, I quit before either expansion, but I found my guild getting on my nerves begging me to group with them, taking away from my soloing. WoW was a great soloing game.
Dunno. I could only handle so many “Go here, and bring me 8 doodads for a new widget!” quests before I realized “This is really stupid. I’m doing the same thing over and over again so I can get a new ability to let me do it over and over again more.” It fundamentally doesn’t matter if you’re level 70 or level 10 except that your list of toys is a little longer. You’re still fundamentally doing the same thing in a world with no emotional investment. It’s not as if you hit a certain level and the game magically changes and becomes new and fun again, you just get the occasional sparkly new toy that will amuse you for somewhere between ten minutes and two hours and then it’s back to the grind hoping the next sparkly toy will amuse you.
I guess if you’re into PvP that’s another matter, but again, that’s interacting with other people. WoW is fundamentally too shallow to hold my attention solo. YMMV though. I wouldn’t even have mentioned this if the OP hadn’t sounded kinda dissatisfied.
Are you aware of the Great Talent Point Refunds?
Lately, everyone has had their talent points refunded. Hit Ctrl-N and see if you need to reassign any. Won’t cure all your ills, but it may have a positive effect if you fix your talent trees.
yeah my talent tree looks pretty good. I started the game and played up till about lvl50 as a fire mage. Then I paid my trainer to refund my points and switched to a Frost. With the free refund they just did, I was considering going Arcane. Any experiences solo’ing an Arcane Mage?
I quested from 70 to 80 as arcane; it shouldn’t be too different at level 64. Slow allowed me to solo a fair number of group quests, but after a point (late Dragonblight) many elites are immune. Of course, you’re not really supposed to be able to solo elites, so don’t feel bad if you can’t. Downtime as arcane wasn’t bad, but I had a fair bit of spirit on my gear and regen mechanics have been altered several times since I was leveling.
There should be more than enough quests for you to solo in Outland. I believe that you can start questing in Northrend at 68. Don’t worry about dungeon or raid quests before then.
What instances are you getting killed in? Are you dying to trash or bosses?
Remember that the encounters in instances are balanced around a plate wearing class taking all the damage while receiving healing. You’re wearing cloth and are pretty much limited to getting healing from a potion or evocate, if you have the glyph and the time to channel it mid-fight. A lot of the higher level WoW-Classic instances have very difficult trash pulls that can even wipe a group of 80s if not done right.
As a mage, for the soloing trash pulls you’ll need to limit the hits you take. Sheep-freeze-nuke-ice barrier-nuke-evocate-freeze-nuke-drink-repeat. For bosses, you’ll probably just have to wait until you have enough firepower to get them before they get you.
Only some classes can solo instances well. First, the hybrid classes:Paladins–plate armor and healing
Shamans–mail armor and healing
Druids–bear form and healingThey can take the hits and heal themselves.
Next, Hunters can do it too. Their pet will tank and can be healed, and if things go bad, feign death works as a reset button.
Last, Death Knights have enough armor and self-healing that they should be able to handle most encounters.
Others classes can’t easily clear instances, although a good player can probably do most. Rogues can easily stealth around and take out a few choice bosses. Cloth classes (Mage, Warlock, Priest) are simply too squishy when it comes to taking hits. Even much lower level bosses will cut you down. Warriors have great mitigation, but will have trouble with getting worn down eventually.
The video is probably still on youtube of a pair of level 60 frost mages duoing level 60 instances back in the BWL days. I watched their entire run of Scholomance - it was pretty impressive. Sure, their gear was fantastic, but they played it fabulously. No invisibility, no water elemental, no mirror images, and a great number of bosses who were immune to slows and hit Really Really Hard ™. They just used terrain, timing and teamwork to not get hit much, if ever.
At level 70, I saw more than a few videos frosties soloing Stratholme, going for the Baron’s horse. Alliance have some sort of obsession with the skeletal horse…maybe had, now that there’s so many DKs running around.
An instance more than 20 levels below you? Doable. Maybe not as trivially easy as it is for a tank class, but definitely not impossible. The bosses can present difficulties, but when you’ve got polymorph, quick-recharging Frost Nova and a large arsenal of potent chilling spells…you can generally whittle down any group you want without giving them a chance to do anything at all about it.
And all those “group” quests? For a frost mage? If you can slow it, you can kill it. Just because they say 3 people are recommended, doesn’t mean you need them. My fire mage soloed every group quest in Outland, only making exceptions for Durn and the Shadowmoon Valley killers (Ruul, etc)
As a level 64 mage, you should be able to easily solo a level 40 instance. That doesn’t mean you suck if you can’t, of course–it probably just means that you’re not going about it in the correct way. Level 40…so are you talking about one of the Scarlet Monastery wings (Cathedral, maybe) or Uldaman?
SM Cathedral should be no problem for you. Most of the pulls, if you’re careful, should be no more than 3 mobs. Pull with Polymorph (putting the poly target as your focus so you can re-apply as needed) and then use your frost nova judiciously. AoE is your friend here–improved Blizzard does a lot more damage than it used to, and it can root as well. Once those mobs are dead, then deal with the poly. Also, use your Ice Barrier and your elemental.
Uldaman might be a little nastier–lots of non-linear pulls and it’s easy to grab too many mobs at once. It’s still doable, but you have to be really careful. Depending on your level of gear, the bosses shouldn’t be a big problem–even the last one is mostly a pushover.
If you wouldn’t mind, could you post your Armory? My main is an Ulduar-raiding mage–I or someone else who’s mage-savvy might be able to offer you some tips for gearing or speccing.
I’ve never played this game, but just from the name alone its clear that Death Knight is the way to go.
I’ll post it when I get home. Thats another problem. I buy my gear at AH and am buying what appears to have the highest armor for my level, but when I was in Stormwind the other day, i was talking to a few people and was told my gear is suited for a lvl 40 mage. I was told the best place to get gear for my level is in instances. :smack: