frost mages

Bah. Damn their eyes. I found some good ones in Strand of the Ancients today, and 1v1 they always leave me a chilly blob on the ground.

My rogue instincts say that this is not because they are good, but because I am bad. A rogue can beat anything. So: introspection (note: written from the 41/5/25 Mutilate/Prep perspective).

What happens? I was opening Cheap Shot, but it seems they would simply Blink, Frost Nova/Cone of Cold and pew pew until I died. Not fun. Of course, the correct opener on a mage is Garrote for the silence effect. A proper rogue/mage fight starts at the 3 second mark, with the mage the victim of a couple of mutilates, 5 combo points up, Crippling Poison on and 15 sec of DoT remaining. A nice place to start, but then what?

At this point the mage can do a few things. Ice Block clears off the DoT and poison and buys them some time. They can throw down Frost Nova or Cone of Cold to root you, probably in concert with a Blink to get some range on you. Either way they'll get their Elemental out for 45 sec, which gives him another 2 abilities independent of your CC: Freeze and Waterbolt. They'll also be spamming Ice Barrier to limit incoming DPS.

Now I'm not going to get into "if they do this, do this" because I definitely won't remember and I doubt 90% of rogues will. But understanding what's up the mage's copious and effeminate sleeves is half the battle. The rest of their abilities fall into 2 camps: pew pew and a PvP trinket. The roots are their biggest weapons, and after the Ice Block you've got 30 seconds to kill him or you're at a serious cooldown disadvantage. Against the roots, you've got a trinket (or EMFH), CoS and Vanish. He also can't cast if he's incapacitated, and for that you've got CS and KS, plus Blind, Sprint and Deadly Throw to let you close the gap. Plus there's Preparation to make all the goodness come once more.

TBC...