Understanding Systems: the Mage Class in WoW Jeff Flatten

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Understanding Systems: the Mage Class in WoW Jeff Flatten The following is a very general description of the Mage class as it appears in World of Warcraft, primarily the role Mages play in raids.

1 Understanding Systems: the Mage Class in WoW Jeff Flatten The following is a very general description of the Mage class as it appears in World of Warcraft, primarily the role Mages play in raids. While this article is examining Mages, most, if not all of it can be applied to other classes as well. We will go over the very basics of theory behind the class, and then compare this practical use of theory to real life examples. Before reviewing the role of Mages within a raid, it is useful to understand the general setup of the whole raid. The focus in raiding is on boss encounters. Boss Encounters are fights within the instance which require the entire raid to fight against one or more extremely powerful enemies. In order to do this, the raid is usually set up in the following way (though it has many variations): One character (known as the tank) will make the Boss attack them. When he is doing this, he is said to be tanking the boss. The purpose of having a tank is to only have a single target is taking damage from the boss. This is beneficial because very few people in the raid would survive long if the boss was concentrating on killing them. By having a tank, you can select the person who is most able to take the damage dealt by the boss, and have the boss concentrate on them. The second sort of role in a raid is the healer. It is a healer's primary job to keep everyone in the raid alive. First and foremost, they should keep the tank alive. If the tank dies, then the boss will proceed to concentrate on killing someone else, and most likely, that person will not be able to last more than a few seconds before the boss kills them (and so the boss goes on to kill someone else, until the entire raid is dead). The last sort of role in a raid is the damage dealer. Known colloquially as DPS classes, these classes are designed to actually do the majority of the damage to the boss. Included in this group are the casters, which we will review now.

2 The Mage class is caster class (short for spellcaster). Casters in WoW are classes which are designed to deal magical damage through the use of spells. In raiding, this generally comes down to Warlocks and Mages, and sometimes Priests, Druids, Shamans, and Paladins. So a Mage's function in the raid is to deal damage to the boss. Thus, to be a good Mage is to do a lot of damage. The theory behind the Mage class is primarily designed to maximize the amount of damage the Mage can do to a boss. Generally, doing more damage is referred to as having higher DPS. DPS stands for Damage Per Second. There are many, many factors which contribute to the amount of damage you are able to do. This is very similar to many real life situations, where you want to maximize one thing (most obviously, something like profit), and there are many factors which you have to consider when trying to do so. In the case of the profit that is made by selling an item, you have to consider things like how much money it costs to actually make the item, how much you are selling it for, and many other things. When trying to maximize DPS, we come up with a list much like that for profit, just with different variables to consider. The following things contribute to the maximizing of DPS for a Mage. Note that this is by no means a complete list, and does not necessarily have to be organized in this way. The purpose here is to understand that a large number of factors are contributing to a single thing, and the act of understanding and manipulating this system is relevant in the real world. So without further delay, here is a short list of key factors. Gear Talent Build Skill Each of these factors is generalized, and actually represents a virtually limitless list of factors. We will go into what some of these mean, and what factors contribute to each of them.

3 Gear Gear is one of the most obvious factors to this system. Gear allows you to increase different aspects of your character. Effectively, having good gear gives you more to work with when considering skill or talents. Going back to the profit analogy, gear would be something like the amount of resources at your disposal. This screenshot shows the character information pane, which gives you information on what gear you have currently equipped. Each piece of gear contributes to your stats, which are your resources for dealing damage. The pane showing Legwraps of the Aldor is displaying information for one piece of gear. Understanding and organizing the benefits provided by different pieces of gear is key to optimizing damage.

Talent Build Talents in World of Warcraft are a complicated concept. Effectively, talents are a way to specialize your class by adding new abilities, or changing existing ones.

4 Talent Build Talents in World of Warcraft are a complicated concept. Effectively, talents are a way to specialize your class by adding new abilities, or changing existing ones. The way the Talent system works is you are given talent points depending on your level (61 points at level 70). These points may be spent on making improvements to your class. There are virtually limitless ways to spend all 61 of these talents, and the choice of where to spend them deeply affects the player's ability to do damage. Again going back to the profit analogy, your talent build would be something equivalent to the way in which you organize your resources to sell your product (an example would be specializing your product by selling in certain areas). A screenshot showing the Mage Talent Tree. The talent tree is the set of skills and improvements where talent points may be spent. Again, understanding the talents available to you, and how they interact with the other factors of your DPS is key to maximizing your damage.

5 Skill Skill is easily the most subjective and the most complex factor to consider when maximizing DPS. In fact, it could be argued that your choice of Gear and your Talent Build are a product of your skill. Skill also includes knowing where to stand during fights, which spells to use where, and knowing how to function with the rest of the raid as a whole. In the profit analogy, you could compare this to the productivity of a company, given that they have the resources. The aftermath of a challenging fight. In this fight, experience was key. One small mistake, or a person not knowing what to do could have caused the entire raid to die in literally seconds. The fight was also highly dependent on DPS classes performing well, as if the fight did not end in 3 minutes, the attempt to kill the boss would fail.

6 Conclusion In summary, the goal of a Mage in a raid situation is to maximize the amount of damage they do to a boss. The amount of damage the Mage does is dependent on many different factors. While there are clearly no Mages, dragons, or magical pieces of gear in real life, the system formed within this part of the game is exactly the same as many real life systems: you have an end goal which you want to achieve, and this goal is based on many different factors. The example of profit is only the tip of the iceberg. Even a game of gold follows this model. When you go to swing, you measure the distance, wind speed, and other factors, and based on your experience of how the system works, you know how to manipulate it to get your desired result. In reality, this abstraction works on any system. It is natural for us to try and understand how things work, and from this, we derive how to get them to do what we want. In the case of the Mage class, we are simply exercising our ability to understand and manipulate systems in order to maximize our DPS.

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