New Mage Glyphs in Patch 3.1

Good morning, Azeroth! How was your-oh. New glyphs, huh? And all that was posted after I went to bed?

Way to immediately invalidate my post you jerks!

Well, then, let’s dive right in.

• Glyph of Ice Lance – Your Ice Lance now causes 4 times damage against frozen targets higher level than you instead of triple damage.

Wow. I mean, really. This is the best you guys can come up with?

I mean yeah, huzzah, buffs to frost mages in raids. As Krizzly has already pointed out with a great deal of math, this glyph results in a massive boost to Ice Lance damage.

But is it enough?

Currently, a raiding frost mage will run with Glyph of Frostbolt, Water Elemental, and Molten Armor.

Glyph of Frostbolt: irreplacable. It provides a massive damage boost to the raiding cryomancer’s primary spell.

Glyph of Water Elemental reduces the cooldown of WE by half a minute, also a major DPS boost in the long run.

Glyph of Molten Armor provides a 2% spell crit boost across the board. Again, a major DPS boost in the long run.

So… which one do you give up to throw in Glyph of Ice Lance?

As long as it isn’t Glyph of Frostbolt, it doesn’t matter. Basically, if Ice Lance is used once per Fingers of Frost, the net change to DPS is zero.

But… the fact that this glyph is only valid for raiding mages (and, I suppose, twink level 68 and 78 mages) means that Blizzard is basically in the clear  to create all sorts of awesome raiding mechanics revolving around this new Ice Lance.

If the mechanics are left as is… meh.

• Glyph of Ice Armor – Your Ice Armor and Frost Armor spells grant an additional 50% armor and resistance.

OH MY GOD STOP THE PRESS ICE ARMOR GOT BUFFED. HOOOOOOOOOOLY CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAP GUUUUUUUUUUUYS.

• Glyph of Deep Freeze – Increases the range of Deep Freeze by 10 yards.

Pointless, really. The point of Deep Freeze is to deal a bunch of damage very quickly. Giving it enough range so that it’s out of range of every single other frost spell is utterly pointless.

Though… it is technically a stun effect. And a stun effect with a 46 yard range isn’t exactly a meaningless power. It is at a range where the frost mage itself would barely get any use out of it, he can still use a FoF charge to halt a fleeing druid or interrupt a spell cast when Counterspell is on cooldown.

If the frost mage has a partner or something that can take advantage of it to deal damage, so much the better.

Of course, a frost mage can already do all of that, it’s just now he can do it from further away. If he can find a PvP glyph to get rid of.

• Glyph of Living Bomb – The periodic damage from your Living Bomb can now be critical strikes.

Living Bomb accounts for a lot of damage for fire mages, even more than Arcane Barrage does for arcane mages. This is a pretty huge damage buff for fire mages… as long as all the bugs are worked out.

How, then, would the new LB interact with Combustion? Burnout? And more importantly, Hot Streak?

If it consumes Combustion charges, LB could very well snipe all three charges before the mage even gets a chance to use it on anything good. It could very well interact strangely with Burnout (imagine being charged for 5% of LB’s cost every single time the DoT part crits).

I would assume that Burnout would simply be removed from the equation for LB ticks, and kept for the explosion at the end.

Hot Streak is much more concerning. Would LB’s critical ticks count towards Hot Streak? If yes, then YAY more Pyros! If yes, then what about when the ticks don’t crit? If yes, what happens to the fire mages that didn’t bother getting Glyph of Living Bomb? Are they going to get totally screwed out of HS procs?

The easy solution, of course, is to simply have LB ticks have no effect at all on Burnout and Hot Streak. I have a feeling Blizzard is going to try anyway.

• Glyph of Arcane Barrage – Reduces the mana cost of Arcane Barrage by 20%.

This confuses me. No raiding arcane mage would take this if it’s a major glyph; the other three already in use are vastly, vastly superior. Combine that with the fact that ABarr constitutes such a small part of arcane’s damage, and it just isn’t worth the Glyph Slot.

Might see some use for PvP mages, or maybe even leveling arcane mages. In both situations, it’s possible for this glyph to greatly expand the mage’s mana pool.

And if it’s a minor glyph… why not just reduce the base mana cost of ABarr by 20% and be done with it?

• Glyph of Mirror Image – Your Mirror Images gain the Winter’s Chill talent, granting their Frostbolt spell a 100% chance to apply the Winter’s Chill effect, which increases the chance spells will critically hit the target by 1% for 15 sec.

A fantastic minor glyph, providing a way for the mage to build the crit debuff very quickly and without much effort.

If a major glyph… might find some niche use for PvP mages. Probably not.

Consider this confirmation that all the spell crit debuffs are now only 5%. We already knew that Warlocks were getting a 5% version, and now here’s the confirmation for mages.

• Glyph of Ice Barrier – Increases the amount of damage absorbed by your Ice Barrier by 30%.

Finally something awesome. Of course, raider mages won’t be interested in this, but everyone else is.

30% is a big number. Whether this increases the base damage of Ice Barrier or it’s modified damage, I don’t know, the character copy queue is still full and has been for days, damn all of you.

At 80, Ice Barrier absorbs a base of 3300 damage with a spellpower coefficient of 80.53%. With 1500 spellpower, this means Ice Barrier will absorb 4507 damage.

3300 + (1500*0.8053) = 4507.95

If this glyph applies to the base absorption of Ice Barrier, then we have:

(3300*1.3) + (1500*0.8053) = 5407

An extra 900 damage absorbed per Ice Barrier. If this glyph applies to the final absorption value of Ice Barrier, then we have:

(3300 + (1500*0.8053))*1.3 = 5860

An extra 1300 damage absorbed per Ice Barrier.

Either way, it’s a major boost to frost mage survivability, and a very strong contender for a PvP glyph slot.