Article: Each member of a raid or party has a primary role to manage threat levels and aggro in an instance.  For a mage this means staying at max range from the mob being tanked and hesitating after casting a critical hit.  Frost mages after level 30 have an advantage because they can use Ice Block which, for the duration of the Ice Block, wipes their accumulated threat.  As mentioned above, being a great player does not mean doing the most damage, especially in an instance.  So the mage may have to resort to their wand at times so that the tank can maintain aggro. Critical hits tend to come in groups, so it is inevitable that a mage will grab aggro away from the tank. Should the mage get the attention of the boss or mob being attacked it is important to run or blink toward the main tank instead of running away.  Do not compound your error of grabbing aggro by making the tank chase you and the mob around the instance. A mage will be called upon to "sheep" a mob when there are multiple targets in a group that your party must kill. There will be times when the leader will call for a sheep pull, which requires the mage to start the fight by casting the sheep spell on the indicated target.  After completing this cast, the rest of the mobs in the pull will want to kill you, so it is important that you do nothing further until the tank has gotten the attention of the rest of the mob to keep you safe. When a rogue is part of your party, the mage will be required to wait until the rogue has performed their crowd control (Known as: Sap) before casting their sheep spell, as Sap can only be done out of combat. At other times the tank or a hunter may pull a group, and the mage will need to sheep their target as it is running toward the tank. Whatever the pull turns out to be, remember that your sheep will probably break (revert to it's true form) before the end of the fight.  Your mob will be very angry with you, and will want to kill you as quickly as possible.  At this point your number one priority is re-sheeping your target. If you are in the middle of a cast, hitting the escape key, or space bar will stop your cast. Re-target on your ex-sheep and cast sheep quickly. If you are in a good group, the others in your party will leave your mob alone, but it is not unusual for them to try to save you by attacking it.  It is a good idea to continue re-sheeping until you know that your group is leaving that mob alone. A great technique for re-sheeping is to make a "focus" macro pair.  One macro is to /focus on a target, and the next is /cast polymorph on the focused target.  This will allow you to instantly re-sheep without re-targeting.  You just have to re-designate your focus target before each pull. The Mage has the capability to remove curses from their fellow party members.  In some instances, bosses will do terrible damage with curses and the mage will be required to spend the majority of their time removing these curses in a particular fight.  There are addons and macros that will assist the mage in identifying group members who are cursed.  The World of Warcraft community forums are a good place to begin learning about addons and macros for mages. Finally, a mage will make friends with all mana users if he or she has prepared several stacks of conjured water for the group.  Once the mage has Arcane Brilliance, at least one stack of Arcane Powder is essential for short runs, two or more for long runs like MC or Karazhan.
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Here are some notes that you will need to know about when playing as a mage in a dungeon. Here are some important notes to know about. Back to the original notes: