*UPDATED FOR 3.1*
Glyphs are made by strange people who have the Inscription profession. They cannot agree on a name, which makes them hard to refer to. People who do alchemy are called alchemists; people who do inscriptions are called Inscribers, or Inscriptionists, or inkers, scribes or cabbage patch kids, depending upon who you ask.
You can use 3 major glyphs and three minor ones. Minor glyphs are typically pointless and stupid, while major glyphs tend to be really powerful or really stupid.
The glyphs will be ranked in the following categories: Raiding (group PvE), Solo, and PvP. They will also be given a ranking according to the following scale:
- Must have
- Solid
- Okay
- Poor
- Skip it
Minor glyphs will not be ranked. Due to their nature of being minor glyphs, it’s largely inconsequential if you use them or not.
That said, Glyph of Slow Fall rocks. I highly encourage you to get it.
Glyph of Alphabetical Order
Glyph of Arcane Barrage – Reduces the cost of Arcane Barrage by 20%.
Raiding: Poor
Solo: Okay
PvP: Okay
A glyph that screams “mediocre”. It is outshone in every aspect of the game by other, better glyphs. PvP mages have better options, soloing mages have better options, raiding mages have better options. Don’t bother.
Glyph of Arcane Blast – Increases the damage from your Arcane Blast buff by 3%.
Raiding: Must have
Solo: Poor
PvP: Okay
A very powerful glyph for arcane mages. A must for any raider, not having it is a significant DPS loss.
Somewhat less powerful for PvP, due to the heavy emphasis on movement. It can be excruciatingly difficult to find the opportunity to actually cast ABlast, but if you do, the extra damage potential can serve you well.
Even less useful for solo efforts, as an extra 3 or 6% damage is mostly irrelevant when fighting most mobs.
Glyph of Arcane Explosion – Reduces the mana cost of Arcane Explosion by 10%.
Raiding: Solid
Solo: Skip it
PvP: Skip it
An excellent glyph to have if you’re going to be using Arcane Explosion a lot in a raiding environment. Both fire and frost AoE spells are superior to Arcane Explosion, so it is highly recommended to use Flamestrike and Blizzard instead of AE.
The glyph is worthless for both solo and PvP content.
Glyph of Arcane Missiles – Increases the critical strike damage bonus of Arcane Missiles by 25%.
Raiding: Must have
Solo: Poor
PvP: Okay
This glyph beefs up the damage output of Arcane Missiles by a significant amound, provided you are sporting a decent crit rate. A must for raiding arcane mages, due to their heavy reliance on AM in their cycles.
Generally a poor investment for solo mages, especially for leveling mages. The extra damage just isn’t needed, and leveling mages often don’t have nearly a high enough crit rate for this glyph to work properly.
Would be a strong glyph for PvP, as it handily negates part of the effect of resilience, but AM itself is a very situational spell in PvP. There are much better PvP glyphs out there.
Glyph of Arcane Power – Increases the duration of Arcane Power by 3 seconds.
Raiding: Okay
Solo: Poor
PvP: Solid
A very strong glyph where you can take advantage of an extra spell or two with significantly higher damage. You won’t regret this one. Unless it gets dispelled…
Very strong from a PvP perspective, where an extra spell or two with more damage can make all the difference between humiliating defeat and delicious victory.
While a decent glyph from a raiding perspective (especially considering AP’s relatively short cooldown), there are better glyphs for raiding arcane mages.
Doesn’t serve much of a purpose in solo content. The only exception would be if you make it a point to fight every single elite mob you come across.
Glyph of Blink – Increases the distance you travel with Blink by 5 yards.
Raiding: Skip it
Solo: Confusing
PvP: Solid
The first thing you’ll notice is how this completely screws up how you travel places. When you move between the AH and the mailbox… you blink. Maybe you blink closer to a vendor. Or a trainer. Guaranteed that the extra five yards will COMPLETELY mess up your judgment of where you’re blinking to
The longer you’ve been playing a mage, the more this will mess you up when you use it. You probably don’t notice it now, but I can guarantee that you use blink a substantial amount when moving from place to place.
This glyph will be the source of a lot of confusion, until you get used to the new distance. And that will take a very, very long time.
Pretty awesome for PvP, considering Blink is used as fast is it comes off cooldown. An extra five yards can make a huge difference.
Glyph of Deep Freeze – Increases the range of your Deep Freeze ability by 10 yards.
Raiding: Skip it
Solo: Skip it
PvP: Poor
A hilariously awful glyph, this gives PvP frost mages the rather strange option of freezing opponents from so far away that they can’t do anything else to them. Deep Freeze is used either as a setup for a shatter combo or a defensive move, which this glyph does nothing to benefit or change in any way.
The only advantage to this is if you needed to interrupt the cast of someone very far away who’s conveniently standing in LOS and you had FoF up.
Glyph of Evocation – Evocation also causes you to regain 60% of your HP over it’s duration.
Raiding: Okay
Solo: Solid
PvP: Must have
This glyph has single handedly saved my life in PvP about every ten minutes. The ability for a class that otherwise is incapable of healing itself to… well, heal itself, is very powerful. I can easily see this being a required glyph for any PvP.
Can be useful for raiding style situations, if your healers are otherwise going to taxed for the fight, or fights like Loatheb where heals only get to go off every 60 seconds. A very situational glyph for raiding, basically.
A solid option for solo play, it can cut down significantly on time you would otherwise spend eating/drinking. Evocate has a 5 minute cooldown now; try to use it every single time it comes off cooldown.
This is a similar effect to the rogue PvP gloves a few months ago. The gloves had a special little effect on them, where Deadly Throw would gain a spell interrupt. A lot of rogues said “meh, I don’t use DT too much”.
But, once they had the gloves and the spell interrupt, they used Deadly Throw as much as they could.
It’s the same effect here. If you get this glyph, you will find yourself using Evocate more often than you ever did before.
Glyph of Fireball – Increases the critical strike chance of fireball by 5%, but removes the DoT effect.
Raiding: Must have
Solo: Solid
PvP: Skip it
Pointless from an end game PvP’er, I mean. If you’re, say, a level 49 twink fire mage, this would be the glyph for you.
Basically, this is a very strong glyph for any situation where a mage would use fireball.
Consider this glyph an absolute must for a raiding fireball mage. Without it, you’re wasting the raid’s time. This would be like a Ret Paladin showing up to raid, having forgot his 2H weapon in the bank.
Glyph of Fire Blast – Increases the critical strike chance of Fireblast by 50% when the target is stunned or incapacitated.
Raiding: Skip it
Solo: Okay
PvP: Solid
I’m dreaming of what a rogue and a mage with this could do. A very strong glyph for any PvP mage, and if you plan on being a fire mage for PvP, a must. Just taking advantage of an Impact proc with this makes it worth the major glyph slot. It’s like your own little baby Shatter.
A strong glyph for solo content, as well, for fire mages. You get impact procs quite a lot in solo play, and using this glyph and fireblast whenever you see on of those procs can result in a lot of damage. The only downside is that fireblast is a very expensive spell, and usually it’s in your best interests to use an Impact proc as time to fire off another (more mana efficient) spell with a cast time.
Glyph of Frostbolt – Increases the damage dealt by Frostbolt by 5%, but removes the slowing effect.
Raiding: Must have
Solo: Skip it
PvP: Skip it
If you plan on raiding as a frost mage, you must have this glyph. No “ifs” or “buts” allowed.
Note that this glyph doesn’t “remove” the snare, it merely sets the snare’s effect to 0%. This means it will still proc things like Fingers of Frost and Brainfreeze.
A terrible thing to get for any solo content or PvP. The snare effect is why frostbolt is so useful for both those areas of the game. Without that snare effect, you’ve intentionally crippled yourself.
Glyph of Frostfire – Increases the initial damage of frostfire bolt by 2% and its critical strike chance by 2%.
Raiding: Must have
Solo: Solid
PvP: Skip it
An excellent glyph for a frostfire mage. It doesn’t have a downside attached to it, this glyph is pure benefit. A must for a raiding frostfire mage, very strong for a solo play frostfire mage.
FFB is largely unusable in PvP, due to it’s lengthy cast time and the fact that interrupting it will lock out both the fire and the frost schools. As such, using a glyph slot for it is wasteful.
Glyph of Frost Nova – Your frost nova targets can take an additional 20% damage before the effect breaks.
Raiding: Skip it
Solo: Solid
PvP: Solid
Frost Nova has been changed to break on a set amount of damage. This damage cap seems to be about 40% of the mob’s total hitpoints. This glyph increases that damage cap to 60%.
What this means, in other words, is that there is a threshold where a mage can cast frostbolt twice, then ice lance, and once over that threshold, only one frostbolt then ice lance.
For instance, take a mob with 10k hitpoints. Root this mob with frost nova, and you can deal 4000 damage to this mob before the nova effect breaks.
Let’s say the first frostbolt crits for 3.5k. The nova effect will not break, meaning you can cast another frostbolt, this time a shatter combo. Or Deep Freeze. Whatever, you get the point.
Say, however, you activate a spell damage trinket. Now, your first frostbolt will crit for 4.3k, thus breaking the nova effect immediately. Essentially, you aren’t able to fit in a second frostbolt anywhere.
Now, take this glyph, and our 10k health mob. This mob can now take 4800 damage before the nova effect breaks. This increases the effective threshold of when nova will break after a single frostbolt. That 4.3k frostbolt crit mentioned before? It won’t break frost nova anymore.
Highly recommended for leveling mages.
Glyph of Ice Armor – Your Ice Armor and Frost Armor spells grant an additional 20% armor and resistance.
Raiding: Skip it
Solo: Skip it
PvP: Skip it
The only possible use for this is for low level PvP mages, who can use the extra armor for twink scenarios. Even then, there are many better glyphs to use. Not recommended for anything.
Glyph of Ice Block – Your Frost Nova cooldown is refreshed every time you use Ice Block
Raiding: Skip it
Solo: Okay
PvP: Solid
One of the strongest uses of Ice Block in solo play is to use it as a way to not die while waiting for frost nova to come off of cooldown. This glyph will do that automatically, so if you need another frost nova RIGHT NOW (such as if one gets resisted), you can use this to near instantly reapply it, rather than having to use Cold Snap.
Of course, you can still use Cold Snap afterwards, resetting Frost Nova again… and Ice Block, which refreshes Frost Nova. Again.
A strong glyph for PvP frost mages. Obviously, Ice Blocking while frost nova is already off cooldown will serve no purpose. But when it is, and you are trying to escape a pain train, you can use this to save your life, then immediately turn the tables on your opponents.
Glyph of Ice Barrier – Increases the damage your Ice Barrier can absorb by 30%.
Raiding: Skip it
Solo: Okay
PvP: Must have
A very powerful PvP glyph, due to the fact that this 30% increase is based off the final damage absorption, not the base absorption.
At 80, Ice Barrier absorbs 3300 damage plus 80.67% of your total spellpower. If you have, say, 1600 spellpower, then Ice Barrier will absorb 4590 damage. (Technically 4590.72 damage.)
With this glyph, that damage absorption will increase to 5967 absorption, or an extra 1377 damage. Definitely not insignificant.
Highly recommended for any PvP frost mage.
Glyph of Ice Lance – Your Ice Lance now causes 4x damage against targets of a higher level than you.
Raiding: Must have
Solo: Solid
PvP: Skip it
A very powerful glyph that gives Ice Lance a place in a raiding environment. Should be a strong contender for a glyph slot for a raiding frost mage.
Utterly useless for PvP, though it does have some merit from a leveling perspective. If you find yourself fighting a lot of creatures of a higher level than you in your late sixties and seventies, than this glyph can give you a significant boost to damage.
Glyph of Icy Veins – Your Icy Veins ability also removes all movement slowing and cast time slowing effects.
Raiding: Skip it
Solo: Poor
PvP: Solid
I won’t go so far to say this is a must have for all PvP, as there will be PvP specs that do not utilize Icy Veins. However, if you do use Icy Veins, strongly consider this. This glyph somewhat changes up how one can use Icy Veins.
More often than not, it’s used either early in a fight to try and get a quick kill (i.e. as in a RMP set up) or during a target swap to quickly sheep something, then pummel something else. With this, it will be tempting (and can be quite effective) to hold into Icy Veins (or at least Cold Snap) until you really need it.
For instance, a rogue is in your face, stabbing crippling poison into your precious organs, and a warlock just smacked you upside the head with Curse of Tongues… this would be a perfect opportunity to hit Icy Veins. Cripping Poison is instantly dispelled, and so is CoT.
Likely useless in all other parts of the game. Really no application worth a major glyph in solo play, and no real use in raids (that we know of).
Glyph of Improved Scorch – The Improved Scorch talent now generates all five applications of the effect each time Scorch is cast.
Raiding: Must have
Solo: Skip it
PvP: Solid
Every mage that is doing (or planning to do) raids and is providing the Improved Scorch debuff needs to have this glyph. No exceptions. Scorch is a detriment to a mage’s DPS; the more often you have to cast it, the more often you sacrifice your full potential on DPS.
There are, of course, exceptions to this. For instance, on a trash mob that will die in 14 seconds, it’s more beneficial to cast two scorches at the very end rather than a single fireball. Due to fireball’s nature (read: has a travel time), quite often fireball will arrive at the target after it has died. Thus, no damage at all takes place, but you still spent mana. Better to cast Scorch twice, and get the damage.
Imp. Scorch is utterly useless from a solo perspective, and so is this glyph.
Despite that, this is an excellent glyph for PvP, as long as you have the Imp. Scorch talent. Three stacks of Imp. Scorch means three debuffs the opponent has clogging up their dispel strategy. Say, cast scorch once at a target, then sheep them. Now, the opposing dispeller has a six debuffs that his dispel can choose from, only one of which he actually wants to dispel.
Glyph of Invisibility – Increases the duration of the invisibility effect by 10 seconds.
Raiding: Skip it
Solo: Poor
PvP: Poor
Honestly, this shouldn’t be a major glyph. It’s situational to the point where it’s only viable when a mage decides to go spelunking somewhere, and decides to skip some of the cave’s content.
Pointless in PvP, as you can’t really do anything while invisible, besides run around. The default length of time Invisibility lasts is already plenty enough to properly reposition oneself, an extra ten seconds serves no purpose.
Maybe if you could eat, or drink, or bandage or something while Invisible, this would be an immensely powerful glyph. Maybe if it provided some benefit to the Invisibility spell that was actually beneficial. Maybe I could go eat pumpkin pie instead of writing about how much this glyph sucks.
But none of that is going to happen anytime soon, is it?
Glyph of Living Bomb – The periodic damage from your Living Bomb ticks can now critically strike.
Raiding: Must have
Solo: Poor
PvP: Poor
Such a small amount of damage that it really provides nothing from a PvP or solo content perspective.
It’s raiding that this glyph is suited for. The crits provided from this Glyph do not actually interact with anything else (except “on crit” trinket procs). They don’t cause Ignite, they don’t cost you extra mana from Burnout, they don’t interact with Combustion, etc.
All it does is increase the damage LB deals. Which is plenty awesome by itself.
Glyph of Mage Armor – Your Mage Armor spell grants an additional 20% mana regeneration while casting.
Raiding: Poor
Solo: Okay
PvP: Skip it
If you don’t use Mage Armor, this glyph is useless. Even if you do, it’s still probably useless.
A mage can only benefit from 100% in-cast mana regeneration. Mage Armor itself already provides 50% of that, and the only trees that actually benefit from having in-cast mana regen already have talents that give them anywhere from 17-50% again anyways.
If you have, say, three points in Pyromaniac, that already gives you 50%. Tacking on Mage Armor brings you to the full 100%, so the extra 20% is giving you absolutely nothing.
Couple that with Molten Armor being by far the superior armor, and this glyph is just a little sad.
A strong leveling glyph nonetheless, due to the amazing efficiency it can bring to the table, especially when you don’t have access to other armors. Again, though, you actually have to have the spirit there in the first place to gain any benefit from it.
Worthless for PvP.
Glyph of Mana Gem – Increases the mana received from using a mana gem by 40%.
Raiding: Solid
Solo: Poor
PvP: Poor
A strong glyph for raiding, especially for heavy mana consumption mages (arcane), largely pointless everywhere else. Most mages won’t remember to use their mana gem with any frequency while leveling, and likely don’t even remember it even exists until they suddenly have 6 mana while fighting a crocodile. Don’t give me that look, you know you forget.
And besides, you don’t get mana gems with charges until extremely late in the game, so it’s used as an emergency mana restore before then anyways.
You only get two slots while leveling; blowing one of them on something like this is a bad investment.
A poor choice for PvP too, considering the glut of superior glyphs for that style of content.
This is important for raiding mages to know. The mana return effect stacks with all other modifiers. The extra 40% from the T7 2 piece? That stacks. Serpent Coil Braid (25%)? That stacks too.
Get all three, and your mana gems will be returning 205% of their base value.
Consider the mana sapphire. At base, it restores 3330 – 3500 mana. Toss in the glyph, the old trinket, the glyph, and you get a mana return of 6826 – 7175 mana. (5994 – 6300 with the set bonus/glyph.)
Glyph of Mirror Image – Your Mirror Image spell now creates a fourth copy.
Raiding: Skip it
Solo: Skip it
PvP : Skip it
Another hilariously bad glyph that would be suitable as a minor glyph. As a major, all it provides is something for you to ignore while you choose better ones.
Glyph of Molten Armor – Your Molten Armor grants an additional 20% cof your spirit as critical strike rating.
Raiding: Must have
Solo: Poor
PvP: Skip it
Once again, if you don’t actually use this armor, this glyph is useless. Anywho.
Another excellent glyph from a raider mage’s standpoint, though far, far better for those with spirit than those without. The more spirit you have, the better this gets.
All this extraneous crit adds up very, very quickly.
Say, for instance, a base critical strike chance of 20%, and you are a fireballin’ fire mage. Critical Mass and Pyromaniac… 29%. The fireball glyph. 34%. Scorch debuff. 39% crit. Tack Molten Armor on top of that, which can provide massive amounts of crit depending on your spirit…
See how fast that went up? This is why Molten Armor is sexy. Fully raid-buffed with some Ulduar gear, I would not be surprised to see mages start seeing 10% or more critical strike chance from Molten Armor with this glyph.
Also, bear in mind that thanks Master of Elements, critical strike chance is a mana regeneration stat.
The extra crit is going to provide very little as a leveling mage, and nothing at all to a PvP mage.
Glyph of Polymorph – Your polymorph spell also removes all damage over time effects on the target.
Raiding: Solid
Solo: Poor
PvP: Solid
The raiding (and sort of the PvP) ranking are assuming that the people around you are making stupid mistakes. Applying DoTs to a target marked for crowd control, or that warrior rushing in and slamming Rend onto that rogue you were just about to penguin.
This glyph is a genious step towards idiot proofing crowd control effects. All they need to add is an ‘Are you sure?’ dialogue box whenever somebody attempts to break a CC effect. (And then add in a script that deletes their pants if it was a stupid thing to do.)
No, I’m not bitter, not in the slightest. What are you talking about?
That said, in PvP, sometimes you can’t avoid having a sheep target have some DoTs on them. Often, a target swap opportunity will present itself when you weren’t planning on it, and this glyph is an easy way to get that swap happening without having to jump through hoops.
And you can put that overzealous warlock in his place.
The only purpose this has in solo play is if something hits you in melee (while you’re using Molten Armor), and the proc crits and applies ignite, and you need to sheep them, and can’t afford to wait 4 seconds.
Remember how Molten Armor isn’t supposed to proc ignites? Well, once that gets patched back in, this glyph will fall to “skip it” for solo play. You have been warned.
Glyph of Remove Curse – Your Remove Curse spell also makes the target immune to all curses for 4 seconds.
Raiding: Skip it
Solo: Skip it
PvP: Must have
For all I know there’s going to be a raid sometime in the future where a raid boss will be mass cursing the raid with “Curse of Spoiled Milk” or something, and this glyph (and four mages) will be AN ABSOLUTE MUST if the raid wants to progress.
Unlikely, but possible.
Pointless for solo content.
PvP, however, this is really useful. The more warlocks you face, the better this becomes. No warlocks, it’s pointless. Prevalent warlocks, friggin’ awesome.
It’s been a strategy for some time for warlocks to harass mages on arena teams. Either directly or indirectly. Either way, it will involve curses, and this glyph is a way to punch them in the groin.
Observant warlocks will, of course, notice when a little “immune” pops up over the head of that healer they just tried to apply CoT to, and likely will only fall for this once. Hopefully, once is enough.
Note: If there are multiple curses on a target, successfully removing one will remove them all.
Also note: You cannot precast this to grant an immunity. Remove Curse requires something to dispel in the first place to be cast at all.
Glyph of Water Elemental – Reduces the cooldown of your Summon Water Elemental spell by 30 seconds.
Raiding – Must have
Solo – Must have
PvP – Must have
If you are a frost mage, get this glyph. Just shut up and do it.
This (assuming a deep frost build) will give Summon Water Elemental a 2 minute cooldown, and the elemental itself lasts for one minute.
50% elemental uptime? Hell yeah.
Excellent reading!
High comedic value
In regard to the ‘idiot proofing of polymoprh’ my mage friend, ‘omg omg where do u get that!?!?’
He has warlock issues
I enjoyed it
I’m waiting for the glyph that allows us to cast polymorph on our own side. Mages could replace all raid healers XD. I still can’t belive that the best healing spell in the game is ours.
@ Aerona: Oh sweet! Now combine that with casting mana ‘shield’ on our foes and that is one OP glyph 🙂
Another nice guide.
The whole pants removal suggested element of the Polymorph glyph would be OP too.
Would be a bit wierd when you Port your Pug back to to Dalaran and your the only one wearing trousers. Imagine the comments of a passer by that saw the group phase in, they would think you are the pimp of a trans-dimensional idiot brothel.
@Cassini: I call that one OP! Although, it would mean that I could kill holy pallys before I fall asleep. Hmmm… Gief!
So, Glyph of Fireball wont hinder Ignite or anything right? Seems like you would lose quite a bit of Raid DPS without the DOT effect too though. Esspecially the DOT value you get from Crits. Is losing that much potential damage worth the extra 5%? I mean there isn’t a huge difference between 44-49% on raid content and that much Crit could possibly drain your mana pool and cause even a careful mage to surpass tank threat or have to stop casting. Instant Pyro FTW!!
Just thinking out loud as I read this =) still looks sexy though.
@UnderBridge: Fireballs’ DOT is refreshed every time another fireball lands. Thus it’ll only ever tick once (if that, I can’t remeber the tick time) per fireball. On top of that it’s very low damage anyways so a crit makes up for many fireballs worth of lost DOT.
Glyph of Fireball does not effect Ignite, only the little dinky DoT on fireball itself.
And yes, it is extremely low damage anyways, and would have easily been made up for had the glyph only provided a 1% increase to critical strike chance.
The hope is, with raiding, that you have at least one member of the raid providing Replenishment.
All raids and encounters are balanced around having a minimum of one replenishment source.
Still, running OOM is still a very real threat.
Again, if you’re stressing your mana pool too much, scale back on Living Bomb and the free Pyros. Both of those are, technically, mana dump abilities (similar to how Arcane Blast used to work).
At the moment my current planned raiding build is a 19/52/0, dipping into arcane for Arcane Meditation, Focus Magic and Spell Impact, and picking up Arcane Concentrarion and Magic Absorbtion (to try and reduce raid AoE damage.), and then the standard fire talents for single target DPS. I used a similar build pre wrath after 3.0.2 and found it eliminated almost all mana issues. I’m not sure how it compares to a fire build with IV or a FFB build but with the increase in spirt on our gear now, and the Mage Armour glyph I think the 19/52/0 build will end up having almost unlimited mana.
Changed Glyph of Arcane Missiles to match what it currently does, and changed it’s rankings accordingly.
Nice information. HORDE FTW
Good to see the updates, though you’ve left raiding frost mages (ya, I know we’re idiots for still trying) with 4 “must have” glyphs.
Frostbolt is, of course, manditory (even though it’s one of the most disgusting glyphs ever. My entire second spec is there solely so I can get rid of that glyph easily for solo’ing).
With the changes to Water Elemental’s talents, the “50% uptime” is unlikely now in a raid. Speccing 3/3 into Enduring Winter is a detriment to raid mana regen because of that damned Replenishment munching frostbolt causes that Blizzard didn’t bother to fix from the PTR. Personally, I see this as further cementing Water Elemental as a needed glyph.
Molten Armor… As it stands right now, with my pre/mid-Naxx gear and not really paying attention to Spirit, the change to this spell and glyph has been a slight improvement when fully raid buffed. Everyone higher will be doing even better. The thing is though, once you start seeing the really great numbers out of this glyph, you’re probably in Ulduar and should be slapped for being frost. And plus, frost mages just don’t scale as well with crit, AND we have that “soft cap” from FoF… I dunno.
As far as I know, Ice Lance glyph turned out to be a dud. I believe that the only time this wound up being a DPS increase (to just spamming frostbolt) was if you could get it off the 3rd “ghost charge” of FoF. Lag and latency tend to stab that in the toe. I tend to get it off fairly consistently, so if you think it’s a “must have”, I may give it a shot. Just need to figure out which other glyph to put on the sidelines for it.
as Arcane Mage PvE glyphs
personally i take mage armor and mana gem for endurance
then i add arcane missiles for damage
after some tests on the dummy i add the percentage bonus to my damage done and this results in AM adding well over 1.5k damage more on 1 full manadrain (19k mana self buffed + mana gem)
making AM a lot better then AB, especially considering the mana cost of AB’s buff (i only cast it twice before breaking it off with barrage or missiles, this might lower DPS by a bit but increases endurance and once you go OOM your DPS will be 0)
i’m working on a good collection for my fire PvP
currently on Icy Veins, Imp Scorch and Evocation
had dropped Evoc and took it back quickly after realising what an immense impact it has in pvp, i’m thinking about dropping Icy Veins for Living Bomb however both the not proccing hot streak and its current price on my server are holding me off
explain to me why Glyph of Mirror Image is not good? its another guy casting frostbolt, how can that be worth mocking?
The 4th mirror only does about 150 dps or so, a major glyph should carry a LOT more weight, for example the glyph of arcane blast ensures over 600 more dps.
By the way frostbolt glyph does remove the slow effect so torment of the weak will not work.
Frostbolt glyph reduces the slow effect to 0% in magnitude (the last time I heard), so torment WILL continue to work because the effect is technically still there.
But in a raid, the target will always be slowed one way or another, so even if I’m wrong, it doesn’t matter.
“explain to me why Glyph of Mirror Image is not good? its another guy casting frostbolt, how can that be worth mocking?”
ROFL i can’t stop laughing..i bet you play alliance on my server rofl
Glyph of Improved Scorch for PvE is an utter waste, we’re assuming here that you actually know how to play as a mage and won’t miss your recast of Scorch (or even have a replacement in the group which casts it for you, be it mage or warlock)
Even so, losing 4 scorches at the start will not balance out the entire fight, so unless you can’t keep the stacks up and don’t have another imp. scorching mage or imp shadowbolt warlock in your raid, drop glyph of imp scorch….
I completely agree, there are 4 (raiding fire mage) glyphs listed as “Must Have” and I don’t see how you’d trade Glyph of Fireball, Glyph of Living Bomb or Glyph of Molten Armor just to aviod 4 scorch casts at the beginning of a many minute boss fight. Sure, it makes it faster when there are multiple mobs, but raiding is about bosses.
Just a note, the official mage forums has this up as a sticky, word for word, with absolutely no credit to you or even so much as a mention of your name: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=17162147647&sid=1
Wat? no must have triplets fur fire? and also, u furgot Glyph of Penguin
How do you know about the Curse of Spoliled Milk!?
for FFB mage must haves are FFB glyph, LB glyph and Molton armor Glyph. if you do not have those three then you are not doing your job and taking up space in a raid.
the talen firestarted is a good idea now that they made LB multi target able. but if you do decide to be a bit more of an aoe mage then i recommand taking the minor glyph of blastwave. your tank will love you for it and 4 instant caste aoe spells is amazing. when you have an aoe situation rush in dotting everyone with Lb then dragon breath, instant flamestrike, blast wave, instead flamestrike by this time your first will go off. most likely you will have crits involved and that will proc pyro for 10 sec all you do is intead cast pyro since everytime your LB goes boom you will likely have another pyro.
the rotation will use up half of your mana if you are in T 8.5 but none the less everyone around you will die.
PS: if you are not confident of your tank i recommand using mirror images before you do this because you WILL pull aggro of the tank
Glyph of Penguin is a minor glyph
didnt include glyph of eternal water.
Makes your water elemental last indefinitrly, but cannot cast freeze anymore
@Tonks
First line of text on your link:
“Useful info. that I found on Euripedes’s blog:”
Maybe change the glyph of mage armor for Solo-leveling purpose to “SOLID”…? we all like leveling frost mage with that glyph and you know it…
The glyph of eternal water is much better than Glyph of water elemental. It makes your elemental permanent which trumps a shorter cooldown any day
wtf? then you get no freez spell on the water element… and then whats the water element good 4?… nothing…
The only term I’ve ever seen for a person with inscription is “scribe.”
Thanks for the writeup, now I have to choose which glyph my baby Mage wants.