It happens to the best of us.
You roll a mage, expect for ZOMG damage, get exactly that, rock face in raids and PvP, then TBC comes out, and none of it seems to count anymore. People invite you to groups, not for mad killing power, but for mad piggy power. People whisper you every day, not to talk to you, but to simply demand baked goods and water. Then they turn around and charge you three hundred gold so you can learn how to summon a bloody cinnamon roll. No thanks, y’all can go burn to death in a German blimp. Then you find yourself out-DPS’d by warlocks you clearly out gear, and wonder why.
So you visit the official wow forums, ask the community what you’re doing wrong, the community politely let’s you know you’re inferior to warlocks in every way, your gear is terrible even by pre-Kara boomkin standards, and that you should have rolled a shadow priest if you wanted to be helpful to a raid. And then the game developers politely tell you that Mage Armor is getting a BRAND NEW UNIQUE ICON!
It can get very taxing from time to time, leading up to bitchfests of the highest orders. Almost daily on the WoW mage forums, there’s a thread of a mage leaving WoW forever, fed up with the needless frustration and sadness of his class. And these aren’t whinos who’ve been playing since April of last year. We’re talking troll mages with the rank Warlord, gnome mages proudly sporting “Scarab Lord”, people with over 60k lifetime kills, mages who have Illidan on farm. All of them done. Just done. Burnt out. Finished. Or rolling warlocks.
What these people need is a wee bit of cheering up. What these people need to know is that, at best, they are being whiny bitchez. What these people need, above all, is a community of people to carefully point out the flaws in their argument, cleverly avoiding the parts of their argument that is painfully right. (Seriously. Spirit and Spell Penetration. GAWD WHY?)
So. After having a weekend filled with sadness and utter disillusionment, I decided I needed to get my act back together. Nobody likes an emo troll, even the troll in question. Which I guess is the point of being emo… uhh… where was I?
So yes. Cheerful stuff, f’sho.
STEP 1: Read comments to the bitch post, decide I’m being unreasonable, and have faith that Blizzard will fix the problems eventually. Maybe. Hopefully. I mean, they’ve had copious amounts of spirit on mage gear for a long, long time, they gotta get around to fixing it someday. Maybe by World of Warcraft 2?
STEP 2: Listen to some happy music. The Strokes, and this song in particular did it for me quite nicely.
STEP 3: Watch something, preferably a cartoon, that contains a character much more emo than you. For me, the character Zuko in Avatar: The Last Airbender did it rather nicely (“I MUST capture the avatar and restore my honor).
STEP 4: Once you have gotten over yourself and your stupid pity, do something CRAZY AWESOME FUN, that others would construe as absolutely moronic. Kiting a Fel Reaver to Shattrath… as a SHAMAN, for instance.
In my case, I got the PTR client up and running, copied Rippy, and proceeded directly to the Mage trainers, and respecced to this.
Hello, Elementalist! I’ve been wanting to try out this spec for some time, and… well, it’s fun. Incredibly so. Think of it like engineering is relative to the other professions… PRE-TBC. Everybody looks at you funny, and smile and nod whenever you say something.
And the whole “walking bag of tricks” thing is awesome. Cold Snap, 10% chance to stun whenever I’m hit by anything, Blazing Speed, Icy Veins, powerful Shatter combo, Blastwave, all wrapped up into one sexy arse troll. It’s not optimal for anything, to be sure, but I haven’t had this much fun since… well, level 49. My god, I’ve missed this facet of the game.
And Shatter combo as Fireball / Ice Lance is just plain mean. I lurv it.
Next step is to pair up with an enhancement shaman for some sexy 2v2 action.
the avatar is some good cartoonage.
otherwise, it’s interesting to me that i often see mages wanting what warlocks have and warlocks wanting what mages have.
In all honesty, on the mage side of things, it essentially boils down to mages being miffed that warlocks feel like a better designed class.
Mostly, though, it’s because mages like warlock gear better then their own.
It looks far more awesome than mage gear, even at the Tier4 level. And the stats on the gear is just… so much more better! Well, obviously afflikshun doesn’t scale, but that’s beside the point.
I don’t know a single mage who wouldn’t be more than happy to wear warlock gear instead of mage gear.
As long as we got to keep our magey set bonuses, anyways
Interesting spec, kind of like my suggestion last night that I respec Oliv 20 points in each tree (21 in resto for Nature’s Swiftness, imo!) XD
I should kite a fel reaver to Shatt.
And hell, I’ll character copy and arena with joo—that’ll give me a reason to spec Toughness and Improved Ghost Wolf.
Agreed with the Doomster. Feel the utility goodness of the warlock. I know that we don’t have to hand out the food and water, but we better keep the healthstones and soulstones coming, banish this, enslave that, seduce this thingy and oh, btw… can you pull an imp for the stam boost? I love the utility, it just definitely tends to make you feel like your role is not DPS. I think the reality is that it is both. If you can control and DPS, good caster!
oh, and to Euri… I confess. I bought the S3 helm just because I wanted wings. Granted… much improved over what I had before but I mean.. WINGS! That’s cool.
/sniffle
I want wings.
Mage S3 gear makes me look like a wee spaceship. IN A DRESS.
Haha “whinos”. From Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind?
Anyways, I agree with what you say. Everytime I take a peek into the mage forums, all I read is how people are quitting their mage forever and rerolling a lock.
Whatever, just quit and make one then. Leave the mages to the people who still enjoy playing the mage class.
Do I hate the Warlock class? Sure do! Would I rather have their gear? I’ll take extra Spell Dmg, Spell Crit, over Spirt and Spell Penetration anyday! Would I rather play a Warlock? naaaaaaah
I love playing as a mage! We only whine about Warlocks cause they’re the only class that can kill us in PvP by just smashing their face into the keyboard, and rolling their head around.
But hey, I’ve seen Warlocks get wtfpwned by Rogues and Warriors all the time, classes we normally laugh at.
Also, Avatar is and awesome show!
I agree, I often see warlocks topping damage meters and am not happy about it, after all, they are only a pure dps class like mages.
They also never get bugged about summoning, or healthstones, or taking their imp out for groups significantly nerfing their damage.
But really, mages and locks could stand to get along better, and ally against rogues or someone. Rogues and their 22222222232222222223222222222322222222*Vanish*3222222222322222223 Can bite me.