Nuke Them From Orbit!

It’s the only way to be sure.

—

I had a dream where I was a Discipline priest, healing my arse off in battlegrounds. Bubbles, Flash Heal, and Penance were hurled about like free candy.

There were even incredibly specific moments, like Mass Dispelling a mage out of Ice Block and keeping a warrior dispelled so he could kill it.

Hell, there was even the damn “Horde wins!” at the end, showing me as #2 on the healing meters. A Shaman beat me. Nerf imaginary Chain Heal.

Queued up again, and OH MAN the same warrior was there. I attached myself to him like some sort of cloth wearing leech. Big ol’ Tauren warrior named “Beefy McLargeHuge.” Apparently you can name yourself whatever you want in imaginary WoW.

Halfway through, my priest was literally just sitting in the guy’s head.

I’ve never played a Discipline priest, or a priest in PvP. What the hell, brain?

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Facelift Gets an Arcane

The new face of arcane.

3.0.8 has been released, and hopefully by now you’ve been able to experience the joy of crashing servers and the pain of watching your friends all go offline while you sit safely in an instance server.

Or something like that, anyways.

I’ve talked about this before, but the patch is here now, so it’s all official “this is how it works” now, until the next patch anyways.

The easiest way to think of it is that Arcane now functions off of a combo point system. I’m sure everyone out there is familiar with what, exactly, the ABlast buff actually does.

In case you don’t, here’s a recap:

Arcane Blast now increases the damage of the next Arcane spell by 15%. However, using Arcane Blast itself does not consume the charge itself. Each time you cast Arcane Blast, the damage of Arcane spells is increased by 15% and the mana cost of Arcane Blast is increased by 200%. This effect stacks up to 3 times and lasts 10 seconds or until any Arcane damage spell except Arcane Blast is cast.

Simple, right?

It’s actually extremely intuitive if you play around with it.

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53/0/18, Redux

Lots of awesome questions in the last post about this topic, so I figured I’d answer them all in a new post rather than an obnoxiously long comment.

If there’s one thing I like to do, it’s to talk endlessly and needlessly about things I like.

First off, this type of build isn’t for everyone. It’s very… different from how most mages play. Think back over your mage career, and try to remember times when you almost never stopped to cast anything, instead relying completely on instants and constantly moving.

If you can’t think of anything, don’t worry. Very few can. The mage class hasn’t really ever been in this position before. Even high end arena frost mages busted out frostbolt every chance they got (which wasn’t often, but still).

Arcane, as it stands now, is all about mobility. Standing still and casting stuff just isn’t in the deal.

Picture yourself as a warlock. Run around constantly throwing out instants and the only thing you stop to cast is Fear Polymorph.

On with the questions!

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53/0/18, or, ‘What the Hell Just Hit Me’

It’s a newish build that I’m sure will catch on in popularity with mages. Maybe. At least, it deserves to catch on in popularity.

By now, even people who are only peripherally aware of WoW have some inkling of what PoM Pyro is. They may not know the mechanics or actual spells involved, but they do know it translates to “uber move”.

Or, if someone says “I got PoM Pyrod”, everyone knows they’re actually saying ” :’( “.

Combining deep arcane with some frost hasn’t really been a viable strategy since the Burning Crusade was released, with one notable exception (40/0/21, anyone?) It certainly hasn’t been a popular combination for the PvP side of things in quite a long time.

Sure, occasionally the brave mage would combine AP + PoM with Shatter and then dual crit frostbolts in some poor fool’s face. The problem with that build is that it could only do that every 3 minutes.

The rest of the time the spec basically functioned like a deep frost build without any deep frost talents. This was because, of course, the arcane tree was horrendously bad at PvP.

Then along comes instant Invisibility, an Evocate that heals, Arcane Barrage, dispel protection, and the idea of a 3 minute mage being discarded in favour of a 2 minute mage.

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Witty Title Here, Preferably Involving a Pun

More thinking about arcane, this time from a PvP standpoint

I rambled about PvE arcane stuff at some point in the past, it was probably last week, though I can’t be sure. I suppose I could, if I went and checked, but what kind of freak reads their own blog? Isn’t that silly? It’s like recording yourself eating, then playing it back whenever you get hungry.

Anyways.

Arcane in PvP, then.

There’s been lots of hooting about how the whole damn tree is overpowered, similar to how monkeys scream obscenities at passersby, only occasionally quieting down to fling feces. Every now and then, a gigantic blue gorilla wanders in, and essentially tells all the screaming monkeys to evolve into something less screamy and poo flingy.

Has it worked?

So far this has resulted in shamans laughing in perverse glee as everyone else gets nerfed. So… sort of?

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