On the matter of CC:

Not only does a Mage supply one of the highest amounts of damage (assuming of course that the person playing one isn’t a complete moron, or pulls agro and spends 40% of the instance/raid dead). They can also supply one of the best buffs in the game, food and water, and one of the most reliable CC’s in the game.

Rank 1 Polymorph

This is rank one. Lets take a second to look at this, yes?

This spell works on Humanoids, Beasts, and Critters. Critters aside, this is arguably the single most effective way of CC’ing Humanoids and Beasts.

30 yard range. This is pretty decent range on a CC. The range allows you to keep your squishy little self well out of harms way and cast.

1.5 second cast. Not the fastest of cast times, but that shouldn’t matter if your keeping an eye on the mob like you should.

And for 150 mana, it’s a pretty cheep spell to use.

Last 20 seconds, with the highest rank lasting 50 seconds. For PvE, the duration of this spell is amazing. For PvP it’s not quite as useful due to diminishing returns, but will still work as an interrupt if you can get the cast off before your opponent. So, you cast Polymorph, your mob becomes a fluffy little sheep (or Pig or even Turtle)

So, how best to use this fantastic spell.

As I don’t PvP much on my mage due to the fact of me having exactly zero resilience, I usually use this spell for PvE. Since that is the case, I tend to use this macro for most of my “pigging”

/cast Polymorph: Pig
/p Sunrath is CC’ing %n, break it and you can tank it!

The first line allows us to cast Polymorph Pig (which not many in my guild have, so it’s handy to have different looking Poly’s), and the second line tells my party that I am Pigging a mob. The "%n" is a function that will place the name of my current target into the line of text.

Another good macro to use while sheeping is this little piece of work.

/targetlasttarget
/cast Polymorph: Pig

This will let you target your last target (presumably the one you are sheeping) and cast polymorph as long as you are facing your target. This works well for re-casting in the middle of a pull, when you know you aren’t going to be ready for the CC’d mob to come to the party.

The final two macros I’m going to post for this spell can be used when you don’t use your focus for the tank. I tend to keep my tank as focus, as it helps my slightly ADD self attacking the right target.

/focus
/cast Polymorph: Pig

This will set your current target to “focus” and then cast Polymorph. This is a very useful way of keeping an eye on your mobs, as it will add a target frame to your UI where you can see his status.

/target focus
/cast Polymorph: Pig

This will let you target your focus, and re-cast polymorph.

One thing to keep in mind when sheeping, is that the mobs, or person, you sheep will receive a buff. Yes a buff. Not a debuff, although it can be removed like one. It is considered a buff because it allows for a very high health regenerate while in the sheep/pig/turtle form. That being said, it’s not usually a good idea to sheep a mob/person when they are close to dead, as only a few seconds under the spell, they will regenerate most of their health.

One last thing, and something that most 70 Mages don’t realize right away, is that you can spellsteal from a mob that is polymorphed, with our breaking the CC. This is very useful when CC’ing in Magister’s Terrace. You can sheep, then steal all the fantastic buffs that those mobs have to offer.