Right now, if you go to the wikipedia page for WoW developer Tom Chilton, you have the following rather amusing picture accompanying the article:

*Edit - Obviously, this has been removed. It is preserved here for giggles*

The article currently states the following:

Although Chilton was on the developer panels at BlizzCon 2005 in October 2005, it is clear he has no sense of game balance, and shows blatant favoritism towards warlocks and rogues. It is no surprise that with this love comes a deep loathing for the mage class. His hatred for mages knows no bounds. Unsurprisingly, due to the fact that he was scarred by a mage as a child, every time he hears the word mage, he compulsively clutches to his precious nerf bat for dear life.

Obviously, somebody is a little bit bitter about something, and doesn’t know too much about World of Warcraft. Or any MMO, for that matter.

Let’s take a step back, and look at this from an objective angle for a bit.

Here we have WoW, probably the most successful computer game ever. Over 10 million people play this game. The developers of WoW (which includes Tom Chilton, fyi) must be doing something right.

The fact is this. WoW is an incredibly slick MMO with more polish and content in an expansion than most other MMO’s ever have. WoW has one of the best raid environments in any game, some of the most finely tuned and balanced PvP in any non shooter/RTS game, and tops it all off with an incredibly low amount of grinding.

I know some of you out there rolled your eyes at this, especially that last one. I know how that feels; I had to hit exalted with the Scryers too.

To be perfectly blunt: if you think the PvP in WoW is horribly imbalanced, and that it requires ridiculous amounts of grinding, you really don’t know much at all.

Go try the PvP in Everquest. Give it a shot in Guild Wars. Age of Conan. Give City of Heroes/Villains a try.

(Yes, I am fully aware that the PvP in EQ is intentionally gimped, as the developers have outright stated they don’t tune anything towards that aspect of the game. EQ is a purist PvE MMO.)

For those of you who haven’t tried out these games, the PvP in them is… stupid. Imagine a rock/paper/scissors type of thing. Some say WoW is like that, but they’re exaggerating. In WoW, some classes have obvious advantages over others, that’s just the way things work.

As a mage, I have a major advantage over Warriors, but I can still be killed by them.

As a mage, warlocks have a major advantage over me, but I can still kill them.

In these other MMOs, this type of difference is much starker, to the point where there are classes that you will never, ever be able to kill unless they just happen to be AFK. Some, like City of Heroes, have a class that can easily defeat absolutely anything (nerf Brawlers).

The fact is this. Any MMO where they feature different classes that have different abilities isn’t balanced nearly as well as WoW is.

Let’s look at Fury, and MMO I played hardcore for about a month and a half.

Fury is a purist PvP MMO. The closest you can get to PvE in this game is one battleground where you compete against other players to kill bots. These bots all emulate the player classes.

The PvP in this game works incredibly well. It is, by far, the most balanced PvP I have ever experienced in an MMO.

And the reason why it works is because every class is almost exactly the same as every other class. Every class functions by creating and using up charges, so everyone effectively has unlimited resources with which to use abilities.

Every class has roughly the exact same abilities. Obviously, all the abilities look different and do different things, but in all practicality they do they exact same function.

For example. Every melee class has the ability to instantly close with an adversary. Some of them rush straight at them (i.e. a warrior’s charge), and some drag the enemy to themselves. All the ranged classes have very similar abilities to escape melee, all the healers have HoT’s, direct heals, AoE heals…

It works because everything is uniform.

WoW is not uniform, and I would utterly loathe it if it was.

I like WoW with asymmetrical classes. I like Starcraft for the exact same reason. Sure, there were some imbalances, some things that were overpowered and some that were underpowered. The beauty of it is that the developers of this game worked long and hard, tweaking this, adjusting that, to arrive at a game that can only be described as “finely tuned”.

The same thing is being done with WoW. All these little changes here and there, a slight adjustment to this ability, a tiny mechanic change here… in general, most changes are incredibly small. Occasionally there are “big” changes. Big is a relative word.

A big change in WoW would be adding diminishing returns to Fear. A big change in WoW is increasing the coefficient of fireball by 5%.

Compare this to Star Wars Galaxies. A big change here would be removing Fear from the game. A big change here would be increasing the coefficient of fireball by 120%.

We World of Warcraft players have it good. We have an excellent MMO in our hands.

Sure, it has it’s problems, as do all MMO’s. They just happen to be much smaller than in other MMO’s. I personally have only one major gripe with WoW. Which is great since all other MMO’s I’ve played I usually have at least seven.

Do we really need to be this bitter and pissed off over the best MMO in the world?

We do. And this is a good thing.

The fact that people can become so passionate, one way or the other, about a freakin’ GAME is quite a feat.

It’s not often a game comes along where people can play for 10 minutes a week, or 10 hours a day, and still experience the same game fully.

How many games can produce a forum community so bitter and vile it makes 4chan seem friendly, and yet still inspire such a massive and (generall) friendly blogosphere? How many games are so incredibly simple, a four year old can succeed and have fun, and yet complicated enough for calculus professors to spend hours deriving formulas on how one spell works?

What I’m getting to here in this long arse post…

The newest Batman movie is awesome. Go see it. Bring your whole family, even if you have to hogtie them to do so.

So. Invisibility. Let’s get this out of the way.

More often than not, misinformation about Invisibility is quoted pretty much everywhere, including by yours truly.

*Warning: The following post contains math, although not a lot of it*

Threat Reduction

Invisibility reduces threat by 10% every second for five seconds. This does NOT mean that over the course of five seconds, threat is reduced by 50%. Rather, this 10% threat reduction takes place every second, separate from the other reduction.

In other words, relative to the initial threat you had, the first tick reduces that threat by 10%, the second by 19%, the third by 27.1%, the fourth by 34.4%, and the final tick by 41%.

In a practical sense, let’s say you have 10,000 threat when you pop Invisibility.

The first tick will reduce your threat by 1000, leaving you with 9000 threat.

The second tick will reduce your threat by 900, leaving you with 8100 threat.

The third tick reduces your threat by 810, leaving you with 7290 threat.

Tick #4 reduces threat by 729, leaving you with 6561 threat.

The fifth and final tick will reduce your threat by 656. Leaving you with 5905 threat total.

So it isn’t half your threat; it’s just over 40%.

Full Fade

If you allow Invisibility to run it’s course all the way to you becoming completely invisible, it will drop you from combat, thus completely clearing you from the threat list. In other words, a 100% threat wipe. This threat wipe is caused not by the fact that you are invisible, but by the fact that you have removed yourself from combat.

One notable exception.

Against raid bosses (I’m talking the big guys like Gruul’s and Archimonde, not things like Heroic dungeon bosses) you can only leave combat three ways: killing the boss, being killed, or zoning out of the instance/reaching the boss’ “tether”.

Invisibility does NOT drop you from combat in this type of situation, and thus you are NOT dropped completely from the threat list. You merely get the 41% reduction and cease to contribute to your own threat.

Hope this clears things up.

I promised I wouldn’t blog about the expansion for some time. I promised. I’m sure so many of you are fed up with all this damn Wrath news.

I am here to break this promise.

Glyph of the Penguin

Empowers a Minor Glyph to cause your Polymorph: Sheep spell to turn the target into a baby penguin.

Image from PlanetJune.

• Arcane Focus (Arcane) is now 3 ranks and increases chance to hit and reduces mana cost of Arcane spells by 1/2/3%.

This tastes of nerf. I suppose we’ll have to see where gear itemization goes regarding hit. I have a bad feeling that losing 7% hit, forcing an arcane mage to make that up with gear/gems, in exchange for 3% cheaper spells, will only end in sadness.

• Counterspell now costs 9% of base mana.

Nerf. A very serious one at that. As it stands now, Counterspell costs 100 mana. Let’s take an average level 70 mage, with 9k mana. 9% of 9000 is 810 mana. Look me in the face and say that isn’t a nerf, and I will hit you in the face with a sack of fish. POINTY FISH.

• Frost Armor, Ice Armor, Mage Armor and Molten Armor are no longer Magic effects and cannot be dispelled.

Pretty massive buff. It’s already in the game, so… nothing to see here?

• Invisibility now makes the caster invisible after 3 seconds, reduced from 5 seconds.

As long as it still reduces my threat by 50% when used, then it’s a buff. If it reduces threat by 30%, massive nerf to raids, but still a buff, however small, for PvP.

• Magic Attunement (Arcane) now also increases the range of your Arcane spells by 3/6 yards.

Arcane Mages have begged, whined and cried for this off and on for years. Yay! Now the hunters are the only ones who can complain about range talents!

• Polymorph now costs 12% of base mana.

*Bends over* “Please, sir, may I have some more?” NERF NERF NERF RIDICULOUSLY HUGE NERF. OHGAWDIT’SEVERYWHERE. At least everyone else is getting the same treatment.

• Portal spells now cost 18% of base mana.

Who cares?

• Prismatic Cloak (Arcane) now also reduces the fade time of Invisibility by 1/2 seconds.

Tiny buff to PvP peoples. If it effects the threat reduction in raids, I might cry.

• Slow Fall now costs 6% of base mana.

So long as it no longer takes a reagent. It still will, won’t it. THEN WHY?

• Teleport spells now cost 9% of base mana.

Again, who cares?

There. I talked about Rash of the Itch King. If you’ll excuse me, I need to go back to blogging about The Burning Itchy Thing.

*Some adult language follows*

My apologies, dearest readers, but I am currently dealing with some IRL shit.

This “shit” as it were, has hit the proverbial fan, and it is now everywhere.

Please be patient, as it is currently unclear just how far this shit has spread.

This little idea has grown exponentially. Slowly but surely, a hefty number of bloggers have weighed in on the issue: “What would you do if the WoW servers were shutting down for good?”

First off, I’d just like to point out that the level of attachment many of us have towards this game is obscene. Personally, I have logged thousands of hours into my various WoW toons, and the ending of WoW would be one helluva bittersweet moment.

Like hell I’m leaving it behind without pictures.

• Go to Winterspring, kill about 20 yetis, preferably all in the exact same spot. Then snap a screenshot of me dancing over the corpses.
• Go to Southshore, and kill as many NPC’s as I can until my mana runs out. Then snap a screenshot of me dancing over the corpses.
• Go to the Barrens, to that damn Raptor nest valley thingy where they all spawn 3 at a time, and kill every last one of them. Then snap a screenshot of me dancing over the corpses.
• Go to Thunder Bluff, and leap off/rez, leap/rez, leap/rez, until I have a mighty collection of skeletons on the ground. Perhaps convince others to do the same. Then snap a screenshot of me dancing over the skeletons.
• To Tanaris! Kill a bunch of pirates, then snap a screenshot of me dancing over the corpses. Preferably while wearing the Ninja shapeshift.
• Kill every last female parent love making Murloc in the entire bloody world. Take many, many screenshots of many, many corpses. Failing that, the end boss Murloc thingy in Wailing Caverns will suffice.
• Zone into Stratholme. Kill some stuff. Dancing. Screenshots.
• Kill some Nagas in Zangarmarsh. You better believe there will be dancing.

You know? Maybe I should use fraps and do one of those “Where the Hell is Matt?” things.

Except in WoW.

Involving a troll.

And corpses.

Lots and lots of corpses.

Or… not. I’d like to take some stuff in places like Orgrimmar and Ironforge. In the first, the only place I could find a corpse would be if I went to war with Cenarion Circle and killed Gamon, and the former would involve my corpse…

All of a sudden, this idea seems really, really good.

Well, crap. There goes my free time.

For the good people over at M&M Meat Shops, I swear that this was a huge coincidence. I’M NON PROFIT, YOU CAN’T SUE ME!

*Ahem*

So let’s cover the remaining facet of magely crowd control, our frost spells. Downranking will be heavily abused here.

Frost Nova

Everyone’s favorite AoE root. It deals a tiny amount of damage, and roots everything close by to you to the ground for 8 seconds, barring any DR. This is one of your strongest weapons in any PvP situation, being one of the four effects that allows you to pull of a Shatter combo (the other three being the Frostbite proc, the water elementals ranged nova, and a hunter’s freezing trap).

Use Rank 1 Frost Nova. There is nothing to be gained from higher ranks of this spell. The higher ranks do slightly more damage for much more mana. Don’t even bother training the higher ranks, it’s just a waste of gold.

The use of Frost Nova is two-fold: to get away from melee style characters and for use in destroying other ranged classes.

When used on a melee class, the idea is to hit them with Frost Nova, walk away from them (use a swagger, trust me), then whirl around and drop a Shatter combo on their face. Melee classes, as a general rule, will tear you to pieces if you let them. This is exactly what Frost Nova prevents.

Note: Never ever ever ever ever Frost Nova somebody and then Blink away from them, unless they stun you (i.e. Hammer of Justice). Spending two cooldowns for the exact same purpose is, at best, wasteful, and at worse, idiotic.

Frost Nova is so good, that if you PvP with any other class, this will be the number one spell that you will miss. I can guarantee it.

Against most ranged classes, frost nova is used as a setup for Shatter, or a way to trap them where a teammate can freely attack them. It is especially deadly against hunters, as they only have one reliable class ability to help them escape, and they need to put 41 points into Beast Master to get it. Not to mention the fact that they rely on range to be effective, and when they can’t move… they’re probably not at range.

Frost Nova is least effective against druids, who can simply shapeshift out of the effect. Still, that forces them to use a GCD and spend mana to shift.

Frostbolt

Here is another mage spell that is ruthlessly effective at Rank 1. With Improved Frostbolt (you did take Improved Frostbolt, right?) Rank 1 of this spell has a measly 1 second cast time, assuming you have zero spell haste. It provides a ridiculously cheap and fast snare, something that you will definitely need to use often.

It can help slow ranged classes, giving the melee members of your team an easier time. It can be spammed… err, used against rogues in order to kite them. Modern rogues, these shadowstep nightmares, are incredibly hard to kite. You may find some use against warriors, but generally, warriors are a very easy kill and you usually don’t need to expend much effort to kill them.

It’s also a great spell to use on druids, as most of them are allergic to being snared by ANYTHING, and will almost always shapeshift to get rid of this debuff.

Oh yes, and it also stacks Winter’s Chill and has a chance to proc Frostbite.

With all this in mind, it is most effective against melee oriented classes. Snares have always been the bane of melee types, and Rank 1 Frostbolt is probably the worst of them. Almost free in it’s mana cost, absurdly fast cast time, same amount of snare as the full rank spell… I’m sure you can see why this is an awesome ability.

Cone of Cold

Yes, that’s right. Rank 1 Cone of Cold. It acts like Rank 1 Frostbolt, except it is instant cast, and it’s snare is 10% more powerful.

Note: the base slowing effect of frostbolt is 40%; the base slowing effect of Cone of Cold is 50%

Using Rank 1 Cone of Cold does cost 210 mana (base mana cost), and does use up the cooldown for Cone of Cold. Nevertheless, it is a very effective weapon in kiting, when you simply do not have time to stop moving to get off a frostbolt, but still need the snare. Once again, most effective against melee classes.

Bear in mind that in quite a few cases, it would be best to use full rank Cone of Cold, as you would require the damage it provides, in addition to the snare. You want to use Rank 1 Cone of Cold when the target you’re hitting it with is not the target your team is aiming to down first.

This is especially true if the target you need the snare to go on is scheduled to be polymorphed in the very near future. In this case, if you plan on sheeping whatever you’re kiting, using the full rank spell would almost be a total waste of mana.

Ice Armor

There is much debate over what armor type to use in arenas, whether to use Ice Armor or Molten Armor. As a rule of thumb, use Ice Armor if the majority of the other teams damage will come from melee attackers, Molten Armor in all other situations.

Ice Armor provides a boost to your armor values, and every time you are struck by a melee attack, the attacker has a (rather high) chance to slow their own movement speed by 30%, and have time between their attacks increased by 25%.

In other words, absolutely perfect for use against melee attackers.

Any and all ranks of Frost Armor and Ice Armor carry the same slowing percents, higher ranks merely increased the value of the armor boost. There is almost no tangible difference between using the highest rank of Ice Armor and using Rank 1 Frost Armor. The armor boost itself, at max rank, will reduce physical damage taken by approximately 4%, depending on how much armor the rest of your gear has.

Low armor gear will give a higher damage reduction, high armor gear will give a lower damage reduction. This is due to the fact that the more armor you have, the less each further point of armor decreases the damage you take. Just ask a tank, I’m sure they can explain it better than I.

Start each arena battle with Molten Armor ready to go. The 5% critical strike reduction is worth far, far too much in a PvP environment to give up, and the bonus 3% critical strike rating is tasty too.

Note: It may be worth starting 2v2 arenas with Ice Armor active, as quite a few teams in this bracket utilize a melee class.

If the opposing team is heavy on the melee and they come gunning for you, switch over to Rank 1 Frost Armor (the cheapest, mana wise) for some self regulating kiting. Otherwise, keep Molten Armor running.

Again, if you have any suggestions / additional strategies, leave a comment. The more complete these things are, the better.

All images from Stock.Xchng, except for the frostbolt symbol, which is from battle.net.

A while back, ReNoobed over at… well, ReNoobed, asked me to do up an article on Spirit and how it effects mana regen for mages.

This seemed like the perfect idea for a blog post, other than the mind boggling terror that came with “How the HELL am I supposed to figure this damn thing out!”

Enter a Healy druid with far too much math.

This Mana Regeneration Calculator that Phaelia over at Resto4Life has saved me from certain suicide.

The ability to simply punch in values, push a button, and !BAM! results, has been invaluable.

So.

From the bottom of my somewhat shallow and callous heart, thank you.

And I am an addict.

*Pause for effect*

I first tried it at 17, but… it just didn’t feel right to me, then. It hurt, I got nowhere, and all the little gnomes laughed at me.

I… tried it again at 29, succumbing to peer pressure. And… it was fun. I had fun. I wasn’t the best, but I was far from the worst. I wasn’t addicted, but it was fun, and I spent a lot of time doing it.

By 39… I was addicted. I would log in, and immediately queue up. And then I’d play. For hours. I had no real choice in the matter, to be honest.

And it’s continued. Thousands upon thousands of kills later, I’m still here. I may be 70 now, but I haven’t even slowed. Nay, I have, in fact, sped up.

I… I… *awkward pause*

I realized I had a problem, just now, in a brief bout of Warsong.

When I pumped my fists into the air shouting “YEAH!” after baiting a discipline priest into casting a heal, then destroying him.

When I lured a BM hunter into a trap, forced him to pop Bestial Wrath, and then watched him get slaughtered by most of my team.

When a Paladin had my flag, and was running away, and I was the only one close enough to kill him… I did so. And when I saw an alliance hunter running for the flag… I blinked. Right next to the flag. And returned it. And I typed in /cackle, both in game and in real life.

When I ran away from a fellow mage, and he chased me… expecting a free kill. I was, after all at half health / half mana, and he was at full. I lured him to the little hut where the restoration buff is. Right next to the graveyard.

Right where three Horde just respawned.

And I giggled as I watched a rogue rend his poor body limb from limb.

This… can’t be natural.

Me, shouting at my computer monitor, “YOU GOT RAPED, SON”

Me, cackling maniacally when I lead some poor, hapless fool to his rather bloody death.

Me, exulting in the chaos I am wreaking on people I have never met.

Me, reveling in the smell of freezer burned flesh as it shatters to pieces.

Me, watching humans, gnomes, elves, dwarves, and even a few of those blue space goat people, as they die. And loving every second of it.

*Choked tears*

I… I am addicted to PvP. I just… I just can’t sto-stop KILLING these people…

*Breaks down into rampant sobbing*

IS IT SO WRONG TO WANT TO KILL?

IS IT SO WRONG TO SEE A LIFE, AND WHOLLY DESIRE TO SNUFF IT OUT?

*sniffle*

Uhm… hooo….

*sniffle*

Thank you, for your time…

REVEREND SHMIRNOFF: Thank you for sharing that, Euripedes. The first step towards recovery is admitting you have an addiction. Thank you for coming today, and remember, feel free to help yourselves to some cookies at the back.

Stop coming to me and complaining about Warlocks.

You want to know what I think?

Warlocks are not overpowered.

Ok.

There. I said it.

I play a mage and I think warlocks are NOT overpowered.

STOP complaining about it. STOP whining about it. Or, if you absolutely MUST cry about how warlocks stomp your face, go to the WoW forums and do it. At least nobody will listen to you there.

Ok, so you say they out damage you in raids. Wanna know why? Curse of Shadows. Increases shadow damage taken from all sources by 10%. Put a Shadow Priest in the raid. Hey look, another debuff that increases shadow damage taken from all sources by 10%.

So that’s 20% extra damage that you, as a mage, get no part of.

And that’s fine! I agree with that! No problem! This is what we call “class synergy”. It’s when a class does something that benefits another class in some way. I’m sure you’re familiar with this concept.

So what’s the ‘lock doing that makes his damage so impressive? You know what he’s doing? He’s casting shadowbolt over and over again. Just continuously spamming that one ability. And you know what happens when Shadowbolt critically strikes? It increases shadow damage taken by another 20%, until 4 non-periodic shadow damage sources (meaning, another shadowbolt) are applied.

So that warlock is casting shadow bolts and having it’s damage increased by 40%. Of that 40%, you don’t get to see anything. Nada. Unless the warlock is nice enough to put up Curse of Elements for you, in which case you are only 30% behind, damage wise.

Ok, that’s fine. It’s ok, really. It’s ok! They are two classes using shadow abilities, it only makes sense that they have certain buffs that are raid wide. Survival Hunters increase the damage of all physical damage guys; hell, so do the Prot Warriors with Sunder.

These aren’t exactly new ideas here, people.

This thing the warlocks are doing, though, to get where they currently are damage wise, is broken.

It is. It really is. Completely, utterly broken.

The warlocks need to spec PRECISELY 0/21/40, in order to maximize shadowbolt DPS. They spec into the Destruction tree, a tree which looks like it’s all about fire. But they don’t give a damn about fire, they’re only here for the shadow bolt enhancers. That’s it.

Then they go to the Demonology tree, 21 points deep, for one thing: the ability to never use their pet in a raid.

Yeah.

A class with a pet, that in order to do the jaw dropping DPS they do, is required to never use their pet.

Say what you like, but that ain’t right. I cannot see how it could be in Blizzard’s vision that the warlock, a class supposedly built around pets, similar to hunters, would perform best in a raid environment devoid of a pet.

And, of course, the warlock themselves need to stack hit, crit and spell damage extremely high to get to the point where the damage actually starts becoming jaw dropping.

All this aside, though, this… broken way to spec has turned the raiding warlock into a silly amalgamation of poorly placed talents that just so happens to produce massive numbers.

This is broken. I’m sure the developers at Blizzard are very well aware of this fact.

So to those of you who keep asking me about the warlock problem, and those three assholes who have mailed me outright HATE…

Here’s my reply.

Warlocks, as a whole, are NOT overpowered. I know that. They know that. It’s this one spec that is overpowered, and it is broken. We all know that.

And to the guy who told me to reroll a warlock if I wanted to be useful in a raid…

Just screw you.

You could talk about PvP, and the whole SL/SL thing if you want. Go read this (thanks Meg! My thoughts exactly) and draw your own conclusions.

If you’re fighting a SL/SL warlock, remember that they are specced precisely to be able to PvP effectively. You and me both know that if you fought a warlock who was not specced SL/SL, they would be destroyed. Annihilated. Even if they were SL/SL, but didn’t have the Felhunter out for some reason, they would become a very dead Warlock, very quickly.

Choosing the correct tools for the job? Yeah, that’s overpowered.

SL/SL is fine. It just happens to be very hard for mages to fight.

So?

Warriors have a tough time fighting mages. How is this any different?

It’s just… GAH! It’s like some of you mages don’t even recognize the fact that there are specific abilities and strategies that are used because they are good for PvP, and you need to, you know, counter them.

Ok. This is angering me far too much.

*Deep breath*

I’m going to go play my hunter. See you tomorrow.