Mirror Image has been confirmed to be the new level 80 Mage spell for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. After Blizzard removed Shatter Shield as our level 80 spell, we were without a new spell for quite some time. Mirror Image is the new spell, and it is pretty good.

The images work very similar to the [Tiny Voodoo Mask] trinket. If you use Mirror Image in a middle of combat, they will automatically fight whoever you are fighting. If you use MI while out of combat, they will just follow you around until you initiate combat, or an enemy starts attacking you.

9/10/2008

You CAN summon Water Elemental at the same time as the Mirror Images, and having the Water Elemental out actually returns enough mana to the Images so that they will not run out of mana and start melee combat.

If you cast Focus Magic AFTER Water Elemental and Images are up, they all will receive the 150 Spell Power bonus.

The Spells that the Images cast are: Frostbolt, Fireblast, and Polymorph: Chicken. Polymorph: Chicken worked like the Shaman’s Hex, and does not break on damage.

The damage for the Images were… overpowered. Frostbolts were hitting for ~1000, crits for ~1500. Fireblast was hitting for ~2000, crits for ~4000. Yea, ouch.

You also get a Mirror Image buff which randomly switches your Mage with one of the Images. Sounds cool because it can switch you before your enemy’s cast lands. But at the same time it messes you up because when you switch, it also interrupts your current cast. You CAN click off the buff to prevent getting switch around.

9/12/2008

Mirror Images’ damage has been toned down quite a bit. Frostbolts hitting for ~500, crits for ~800. Fireblast hitting for ~600, critting for ~1200. Pretty sure everyone was expecting this one, they were doing way too much random damage. Not sure why Fireblast is doing more damage than the Frostbolts though.

You CANNOT click off the Mirror Image buff to prevent getting switched around anymore. The switching still interrupts your casting.

9/30/2008

Mirror Images’ damage has been dropped even more, but now, their damage scales with yours. Also the placement swaping has been taken away.

[Quote from Lhivera on Beta Forums]

Nice find. I believe these Frostbolts are 2.5 second casts, right? In that case, I think what you’ll find is that each Mirror Image is gaining 1.5 / 3.5 / 3 = 0.142857 ~= 14.29% of your spell power.

Prediction with 540 Spell Power:
- Mirror Image gains 1.5 / 3.5 / 3 * 540 = 77 spell power
- Frostbolt damage increases by 2.5 / 3.5 * 77 = 55
- Your result: increase = 55

Prediction with 946 Spell Power:
- Mirror Image gains 1.5 / 3.5 / 3 * 946 = 135 spell power
- Frostbolt damage increases by 2.5 / 3.5 * 135 = 96
- Your result: increase = 97

Prediction with 1508 Spell Power:
- Mirror Image gains 1.5 / 3.5 / 3 * 1508 = 215 spell power
- Frostbolt damage increases by 2.5 / 3.5 * 215 = 154
- Your result: increase = 154

So basically, each Mirror Image gains 1/3 the normal bonus of an instant-cast spell, but it then gets to use that bonus on every spell it casts; its Frostbolts get a 2.5-sec coefficient with no snare penalty. We could double-check this if you could provide a damage range on Fire Blast (since it should get less benefit from the spell power).