Patch Notes I’d Like to See

Arcane

• Arcane Subtlety – now reduces threat generated by all spells and effects by 5/10% and arcane spells and effects by an additional 15/30%. The dispel protection remains the same.
• Arcane Focus – now applies to all spells, instead of just arcane.
• Arcane Stability – reduced to three ranks for the same effect, and now applies to Evocation.
• Torment the Weak and Student of the Mind have swapped places in the arcane tree. Torment the Weak now only grants a 3/6/9% boost to damage (down from 4/8/12%).
• Spell Impact now also applies to frostbolt, arcane barrage and arcane missiles.
• Arcane Stability – now increases spell damage and critical strike chance by 2/4/6, up from 1/2/3%.
• Mind Mastery and Arcane Mind have both been reduced to three talent points for the same effect.

Fire

• Incineration – now also applies to Frostbolt and Ice Lance.
• Burning Determination – now also reduces the duration of stun effects and disorients by 15/30%.
• Improved Scorch – now also increases the damage dealt with Fireball, Frostfire Bolt, and Scorch by 1/2/3%.
• Impact – stun effect has been increased to 3 seconds.
• Molten Shields – in addition to it’s current effect, your Molten Armor now grants 20/40% of your resilience as critical strike rating.
• Playing With Fire – instead of increasing spell damage taken by 1/2/3%, now reduces spell damage taken by 4/7/10% as long as Molten Armor is active.
• Blazing Speed – now immediately finishes the cooldown of your Blink spell when this talent procs.
• Combustion – redesigned. Renamed Burnout. Increases your critical strike chance with fire spells by 50% while costing 20% more mana to cost. This effect lasts 15 seconds.
• Fiery Payback – now also triples the damage of Molten Armor when below 35% health.
• Firestarter – now provides an instant cast effect to Flamestrike or Scorch. If Scorch is used for this proc, it has a 100% critical strike chance.
• Burnout – renamed Combustion, and the additional mana cost effect has been removed.
• Dragon’s Breath – the area of effect of this spell has been increased to match that of a talented cone of cold spell.

Frost

• Winter’s Chill – in addition to it’s current effect, now also increases the damage dealt by Ice Lance by 10% per rank on targets of a higher level than you.
• Brain Freeze – now grants an instant cast, mana free Frostfire Bolt instead of Fireball.

Anyway, those are are my ideas for what should happen to the mage trees to try and solve our little issues.

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On Elitism and Free T8

As you may have heard, Emblems of Heroism and Valor have been phased out in favor of Emblems of Conquest. Everything that used to drop Heroism/Valor badges now drop the latter.

In short, yes, this means that as of 3.2, you can get T8.5 gear by running plenty of Heroics.

Naturally, the elitist are up in arms and furious QQ, the casuals are pleased they can gear up new 80 alts faster, and the intelligent realize that this, in essence, changes nothing.

There’s an attitude I’d like to talk about.

“I’m special.”

Let’s start with the basics. Nearly everyone suffers from this at one point or another, and in a single word, this is called “elitism”.

Some of us suffer from it a lot, some of us just have small, easily squashed inklings of elitism.

Pike over at Aspect of the Hare had a blog post up a while ago that exemplifies what I mean.

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The Mage Q&A: Snark Version

(Holy crap, a post two days in a row? BELIEVE IT!)

Q: Where do mages fit in the current scope of things, and where do you see them from this point going forward?

A: Mages are the iconic caster class, squishy as hell, standing at range and chucking things at their enemies. We see them basically staying exactly the same with no major changes whatsoever. Mages are awesome, and we’re going to keep it that way.

Q: What is it that makes them unique when compared to other classes?

A: More than any other class, mages focus on a single spell to the exclusion of all others. This means mages are the only class that can effectively raid by pressing a single button. Kinda like how Warlocks worked in BC, except without all that pesky “sacrifice the Succubus” stuff.

Community Team: A lot of initial questions and concerns we received from mages around the world were concerning itemization.

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3.2: The Patch that Brought PvP to its Knees

I don’t think there has ever been a patch that has introduced such massive amounts of change for PvP. A new raid? New mounts, leveling crap and new druid art? BAH! This patch is all about PvP!

First off, we PvP afficionados have a new battleground to play around with. While it won’t appeal to those who prefer things like Warsong Gulch, anyone who enjoys Alterac Valley or Wintergrasp will get a hell of a kick out of it.

Actual review of the battleground pending me having actually played it. 3.2 PTR, here I come!

Oh, hey, speaking of Battlegrounds, guess what?

Battleground experience has arrived!

That’s right, battlegrounds award experience now. Anything that rewards honor (except HKs themselves) will award experience, too.

And in case that causes all you twinks out there to go “HHEEURGH”, fret not! All it takes to disable experience gain is to pay a visit to an NPC, pay 10 gold, and bam. You’re character is now incapable of gaining experience.

And I mean all experience. You cash in a quest? No experience. Run a 19 through Wailing Caverns? That guy gains no experience. Of course, this can all be turned back on for another 10 gold.

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Patch 3.1 Cliff’s Notes

If you only read one post related to patch 3.1, read this one. It’s short. I promise.

The chances are extremely low that any major changes will be happening now, only small tweaks here and there, if anything.

Water Elementals now have AoE avoidance, just like warlock/DK/hunter pets. In fact, patch 3.1 is offering AoE avoidance to every pet in the game.

Damage threshold of Fear and all fear effects (and Hex) greatly reduced, meaning that you won’t be chain-feared and blown up to hell and back at the same time. You might be chain-feared, or blown up to hell and back, just not at the same time.

Regeneration from Spirit nerfed, specifically by 40%. However, all flat mana regen talents/mechanics have been buffed to compensate. Realistically, mages won’t notice this change. No need to worry.

Molten Armor now scales with Spirit, and Glyph of Molten Armor adds even more. Molten Armor offers 35% of your Spirit as crit rating, and the glyph beefs that up to a further 55%.

You can expect to be gaining much more crit from Molten Armor than it offers now, as long as you have the spirit to do so. It wouldn’t be a stretch to see Molten Armor offering 10% crit or more for raid-buffed, Ulduar geared mages.

This doesn’t mean Spirit is a desirable stat, this means it isn’t a useless stat. By allowing a spirit to crit conversion, this closes the gap between mages with spirit and those without.

Improved Scorch and friends nerfed to 5% and offered to warlocks as well. This will hit other casters a little harder, as they have no way to make up for the crit loss. Mages can, thanks to our new scaling Molten Armor. Some mages may be able to drop the Imp. Scorch and Winter’s Chill talents altogether.

However, these talents have been buffed with a selfish aspect for the mage. Improved Scorch increases the critical strike chance of Scorch, Fireball, and Frostfire Bolt by 1/2/3%. Winter’s Chill does the same for Frostbolt.

In addition, Glyph of Improved Scorch allows a mage to apply all five stacks of the debuff in a single cast, rather than two.

Frost mages provide Replenishment. The Replenishment buff was spread around a little liberally, and frost mages can now provide their mana-hungry fellows with more than just strudel.

Living Bomb buffed, as it’s final explosion effect has been more than doubled. Used to be 306 base damage, Living Bomb now deals 690 base damage.

Arcane Blast stacks can no longer be dispelled. For anyone this was an issue for, rejoice. For anyone counting on being able to dispel an arcanist’s burst damage, despair.

Mirror Image… changed. There are several changes to Mirror Image.

One, they no longer cast Polymorph. This will solve a great many strange issues in both PvP and PvE. Mirror Images remain hopelessly incompetent, though they can’t be as damaging to your goals as before. Imagine taking a flamethrower away from a hyper-active child, but letting them keep the power tools.

Two, Mirror Image has it’s own glyph now, increasing the number of Mirror Images summoned to four. It is a major glyph, and as such will probably never be used by anyone.

Three, Mirror Image cannot be used while in a vehicle. Sadly.

Speaking of Glyphs, here are the new/edited ones:

*All of these glyphs are majors*

Glyph of Deep Freeze – Increases the range of Deep Freeze by 10 yards. A PvP oriented glyph that is sadly outdone by other, far superior PvP glyphs.

Glyph of Ice Armor – Buffed to increase the armor/resistance offered by ice armor by 50%. Might have some niche use for leveling mages.

Glyph of Ice Barrier – Increases the damage absorbed by Ice Barrier by 30%. Strong PvP oriented glyph.

Glyph of Ice Lance – Changed to allow Ice Lance to deal x4 damage to higher level targets. An interesting idea on Blizzard’s part to beef up frost PvE, but sadly doesn’t do enough. Will require the frost mage to give up DPS elsewhere, as they would need to ditch Glyph of Frostbolt, Molten Armor, or Water Elemental.

Glyph of Living Bomb – Allows Living Bomb ticks to crit. These miniature crits aren’t intended to interact with a great deal of talents and effects, such as Master of Elements and Combustion. It currently procs any “chance on crit” style trinkets. It is unclear whether this behaviour is intended.

Brief Spec Discussion.

Due to the increased length of encounters in Ulduar and their extremely unfriendly nature towards Evocation, Arcane (57/3/11) finds itself in an environment hostile to it’s play style. While, technically speaking, about even with FFB specs (0/53/18), it will rarely be given the opportunity to perform correctly.

Though the gap between frost specs (18/0/53) and fire specs is closer than last expansion, frost continues to lag behind.

Fireball based specs (20/51/0) are on top for damage, though hampered by being more mana intensive than FFB or frost specs. Fireball specs will need to use an Evocate if a fight drags on longer than 5 minutes, and will run into the same problem as arcane.

Frostfire Bolt specs are the strongest for very long fights.

Dual Specs?

I’ll be sticking with arcane for PvE content (57/3/11) for now. I highly doubt I’ll ever go to Ulduar. On the offchance I do end up raiding Ulduar, I’ll be rocking a Frostfire Bolt spec.

For PvP, it’s frost (20/0/51) all the way, baby! I miss me my shatter combos.

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Ignite Nerf? What Ignite Nerf?

Mabd asked about the ignite nerf last post. Which confuses me, because there isn’t one.

Or at least, I’m not aware of one. I’m not aware of a great many things, like my dentist appointment next week or that creepy guy who keeps leaving confetti in my mailbox.

There is this:

Ignite: The damage done by this talent no longer receives modifications from effects that increase or decrease damage done by a percentage.

But this doesn’t seem to actually effect anything. All the usualy percentage effects (such as, say Ferocious Inspiration or Ebon Plaguebringer) haven’t changed at all from live to PTR. External effects (such as Malygos’ sparklies) also have no behavioural difference.

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It’s Sort Of Official!

It’s going to be Spirit -> Crit rating, and it’s going to be via Molten Armor.

• Molten Armor now causes 170 Fire damage when hit for all ranks (Up from 75/130/170) and also increases your critical strike rating by 25% of your spirit.
• Glyph of Molten Armor – Your Molten Armor grants an additional 15% (40% total) of your spirit as critical strike rating.

That’s… neat, I guess? Now both major mage armors use spirit; one uses spirit for mana regen, the other for additional DPS. Mage Armor and Molten Armor are mirroring a Hunter’s primary aspects more and more every day…

But whatever. That’s design philosophy rambling. Let’s talk numbers.

Depending on how much spirit you have, this will work out to either be a nerf or a huge nerf. For simplicity’s sake, all the numbers from here on out are assuming the mage is using Glyph of Molten Armor, and is therefore gaining 40% of spirit as crit rating.

A mage needs 45.9 crit rating to gain an additional 1% critical strike chance. The 5% crit mages currently gain from Molten Armor is equivalent to 229.5 critical strike rating.

Therefore, a mage would need (229.5/.4=573.75) 574 spirit to gain the same amount of critical strike chance.

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Violent Pizza!

This is seriously what I’m reduced to. There is no good news for mages on the horizon, merely the faint hope that there will eventually be good news on the horizon.

So PTR testing has been going on for a while now, and I can discuss some of my concerns with a little more detail.

Well… turns out my concern about the whole Evocation thing in Ulduar was perfectly valid.

Let’s be honest here. Arcane is not, and never has been, a mana efficient tree. It abuses mana like angry twelve year olds abuse caps lock.

Nowadays, Arcane depends very heavily on Evocation, and if you miss a tick or two…

Anyone who’s had Evocation interrupted in a raid knows what I’m talking about. It’s extremely difficult to recover from losing Evocation time, and missing even one tick can be devastating.

Testing in Ulduar seems to be indicating that the age of the arcane mage might very well be coming to an end.

Fights are lasting much longer; lengthy fights have never been arcane’s forte. Though it is much better now than it has been in the past thanks almost entirely to Evocate; an arcane mage can, essentially, DPS permanently in two minute gaps via constant Evocation.

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Hilariously Awful

Sometimes you get trapped in a run that turns out to be horrifyingly bad. You tell your friends, and you all have a good laugh about it later.

Ever get trapped in an instance run that’s so bad, it’s hilarious, even while you’re wiping?

Good friend of mine says “looking for DPS and heals for 10man Naxx!” I respond, of course. I haven’t had a chance to wipe endlessly in Naxx this week, so I went for it.

So here’s our group. Me, the token arcane mage. My two awesome buddies, one a feral druid (Sequelhoof) and the other a healy shaman (Oskmo). Both of them are ridiculously competent, have a bajillion alts, and both have a mage alt that outgears me. /sad

Death Knight tank,unfamiliar with the fights, but a fast learner and very good at picking up adds quickly.

Two healy paladins, both well geared and alert.

Two fury warriors, also both well geared and alert.

A DPS DK, reasonable gear, also unfamiliar with the fights. Nearly completely screwed us on Faerlina, but more on that later.

And then the other mage…

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INVADERS MUST DIE

The new Impact looks like this:

Gives your damaging spells a 4/7/10% chance to cause the next Fire Blast you cast to stun the target for 2 sec.

Random stuns are bad. Anyone who PvP’d at all in the age of Roflherald and Mace spec rogues and warriors knows this.

Blizzard knows it, so they took steps to eliminate totally random stun procs in LK.

There were still a few hold outs here and there. Impact was intact, Blackout was intact, paladins could still use one via a seal.

Those have been largely eliminated. Blackout was simply removed completely, and Shadow Priests received a talent that gives them a hefty boost to DPS instead.

We mages get to keep our stun, it’s just the randomness of it has been reduced somewhat.

To our opponents, it’ll still feel random.

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