And the Race is On!

A standard question many new players ask is “what class should I play?” followed immediately by “what race should I play?”

Hence some people’s utter disappointment they couldn’t play Undead Druids or Draeni Warlocks.

But it got me thinking here… with LK inevitably coming down the pipes, and all the changes it’s bringing, what is going to happen to our beloved mages, stat wise?

TROOLLZ – Nothing noticeable seems to be changing. Regeneration seems to be the only thing that will get touched. With the importance LK is placing on Spirit, this racial stands to get a substantial boost. Maybe even up to something ridiculously high like 50 hp5. WTB Mini Spirit Bond for trolls only.

Undeadth – Again, nothing noticeable. They don’t really have any modifiers or anything. Presumably Will of the F*&%-you will still work just as well.

Belfs! – Yet another horde race which stands to get absolutely nothing? Gee, thanks. I guess I’ll talk about the friggin ALLIANCE then!

PUNY HUMANZ – 10% increased Spirit seems to be heading for a “Holy crap, thats overpowered” scenario, at least for raiding. There’s already a lot of Spirit being tossed around on the beta, having 10% more of it could easily see human arcane mages running around with infinite mana pools.

PUNY GNOMEZ – 5% increased intellect is already tasty, it’s only going to get better the better gear mages get. And, of course, that bonus to engineering will give the little guys early access to motorcycles. The jerks.

PUNY DREANIE… DRANEE… – Recalling that all Draeni provide that +1% hit aura to their party, this is worth some thinking… Blizzard is changing all buffs to go raid wide, and is amalgamating all hit stats into one “Hit”, that effects all abilities regardless of whether your shooting a fireball or stabbing.

Meaning, that a draeni mage would provide a flat boost of 1% chance to hit to EVERYONE IN THE RAID.

… Woah.

*Thinks really hard*

Did the developers feel bad about shafting alliance for so long, or is this all just a mass coinkidink?

Read Full Post »

Changing of the Guard

By now, I’m sure you’ve heard of the change in LK that will change all the buffs/debuffs so that multiple classes can have them.

Case in point, Fel Intelligence, a buff that increases Intellect and Spirit, just not as much Intellect as AI does, or as much Spirit as DS does. And all these various buffs/debuffs no longer stack. For example, Scorch and Winter’s Chill will no longer stack with each other.

What this change is supposed to do is kill raid stacking, so that people don’t have to go raid with people because of their class/spec, but rather, raid with the people they want to raid with.

In other words, raiding with their friends, without screwing themselves over because nobody rolled a priest.

The good news: casuals rejoice! No more shall you have to scrape to get the right people in order to actually run a successful raid! No more shall you be forced to call a raid because a key person(s) somehow failed to show!

The bad news: say goodbye to class originality and uniqueness! No more will you be able to stack groups favorably, no more will you have to stack groups favorably. Now you won’t need to put in any effort whatsoever to raid successfully!

Read Full Post »

In the Spirit of Things…

So here’s that gear list that was mentioned, after the jump, so those who don’t want to get crit by a massive list don’t have to be.

And no, I did not provide a wowhead link in there. What can I say, I’m a bad blogger.

Read Full Post »

Ex-Spirit-mentation

Well, I can’t post one right now because Warcrafter, the awesome tool I used for the previous post, is currently down.

Internal Server Errors, my sweaty troll arse.

I can try to remember what things are…

Ok, the T4 mage had the staff from… something, full T4 set (meaning that, yes, a successful run of Gruul’s and Bagtheridon is required), the bracers from Attumen… uhh… something from Maiden of Virtue, something from Curator… something from Prince, I think, a quest chain ring… and something else from… somewhere…  I think…

Yeah, ok. This isn’t working. I’ll get a proper list once the damn site works.

All items were enchanted as best they could. The T4 mage used blue gems, the T5 a mix of epic gems and blue gems, the T6 mage had the best of the best epic gems.

—-

Now the question is, how much does this mana regeneration actually help out Arcane?

By it’s very nature, Arcane is an intense spec where mana is concerned.

Assuming that you are spamming Arcane Blast, have it running at it’s full debuff, you are spending 633 every 1.5 seconds; even faster if you have spell haste.

Read Full Post »

What a Spirited Argument!

For the sake of these numbers, I am going to use three “mages”: one in T4 and equivalent gear, one in T5, and the last in T6/Sunwell. For each, their mana regeneration will be calculated as self-buffed, and fully raid buffed.

Self Buffed:

• Arcane Intellect
• Mage Armor
• Spell Damage food (i.e. Crunchy Serpent)
• Flask of Blinding Light
• Superior Wizard oil

Raid Buffed:

• Everything in the previous list
• Improved Mark of the Wild
• Improved Divine Spirit
• Improved Blessing of Wisdom
• Blessing of Kings
• Improved Power Word Fortitude
• Shaman: Wrath of Air Totem, Mana Spring Totem

All mages are specced 40/0/21.

Read Full Post »

Spirit, Here to Stay and Getting Greedy

Spirit is the topic of the day, such as it is…

Long regarded as the stupidest mage stat to ever exist, it has been the source of a great deal of hatred from the mage class. More specifically, it’s inclusion on tiered mage gear made us quiver with rage at the warlocks who got higher everything else on their gear.

Spirit, in case you don’t know, gives you passive mana regeneration, regenerating mana every 2 seconds (called a “tick”), assuming you are outside of the 5 second rule (FSR).

Whenever you cast a spell, that is, expend mana, your mana regeneration from spirit (mana regen while not casting, according to your character sheet’s tooltip) is interrupted. While interrupted, you regenerate your mana according to your (again, according to your character sheet’s tooltip) mana regen while casting.This interruption lasts 5 seconds.

Read Full Post »

Akismet Goes OM NOM NOM

As a new blogger, I always checked my akismet comments. Ya never know if a legitimate reader suddenly found his/her comment eated oop.

But vigilance, like flowers and virility, fades with time, and now, I only check “flagged as spam” comments about once every two or three weeks. It’s not something I look forward to… I usually end up with several hundred of the damn things whenever I bother to check it.

!BUT!

On the off chance some poor person tried to comment on my blog and got all sad seeing their comment… well, not seeing their comment, I am VIGILANT. I will hunt that comment down, and APPROVE IT DAMN IT!

TO HELL WITH ENLARGING MY SEXUAL CAR INSURANCE USING ASIAN NATURAL BANKING FIRMS.

So. To those three people who’s comments got eated, they have been un-eated, and vomited (bile and all!) into their proper place amongst the comments.

Read Full Post »

AV Isn’t Dead Yet!

So last night, I hopped into AV, expecting a standard mindless zerg.

There is, after all, that trinket that costs 40k honour that everyone is trying to get.

I join in a couple minutes late, cursing as I ran out the door… trapped in front of an alliance zerg. Great. Just great.

Check the map… about 10 on defence duty. Not much, but more sizeable than most.

Bahwoo bahwooooo! There goes Iceblood… and Tower Point…

Le sigh. Try to slip past the alliance zerging through Iceblood. I die. Le cry.

Rez at… Iceblood? Really? What happened to the zerg?

Well, wouldja look at that. We recapped Iceblood Tower… and Tower Point! And Snowfall? And now there’s 30 Horde eager to kill everything between them and Vanndar between out pitiful little defence and a bunch of angry Alliance.

See, most alliance right now accept the zerg pattern of AV as fact, and see no alternative to playing it that way.

Read Full Post »

Full Circle, Finally (Technically ‘My PvP is Bigger than Yours Part III)

So why do people continue to play battlegrounds, not enjoy, not participate, yet spend literally hours on them?

Well, as I’ve said before, they do it for currency. Whatever attitude they have, the fact is, they need to and want to be arena viable. That means they have to have the best gear available to them, and since the gear upgrades every single season, they need to do the same.

Which means that these people who only want to do arenas are forced to do hours upon hours of battlegrounds in order to get the honour they need for new boots, bracers, a shiny new belt, and accessories.

This isn’t their fault. I am a very firm believer that people should not have to do things they don’t especially… well, want to do.

Unfortunately, in order to be truly competitive, they don’t have a choice in the matter.

And thusly, we arrive at my one true complaint with World of Warcraft.

If you want raid gear, you go raiding to get this gear. The better gear you have, the better you perform in a raiding environment. A warrior in tier 4 gear won’t perform as well in BT as a warrior in tier 6 gear.

Same holds true for arenas. Sort of.

Read Full Post »

My PvP is Bigger than Yours, Part II

We’ve all met these people. I can say with 100% certainty that we’ve all met a Noob, and that most of us have met a “Pro”… but you probably didn’t notice the “Pro”.

By their very nature, Noobs are loud and obvious. Easy to spot, easy to remember, and we all stop stories about their antics.

“Pro”s, on the other hand, are much harder to spot. Come into an AB a few minutes after it’s started, run past farm/stables and see a stealthed rogue there, seemingly guarding it, and you breathe a sigh of relief. Some other poor guy’s on watchdog duty, you can happily go kill things. And hey, he’s got S3 shoulders to boot, he knows his stuff.

More likely than not, that guy’s off making a sandwich.

“Pro”s standing around at an objective doing nothing is the reason why terms like “afk cap” exist.

It’s all in the attitude.

There are two schools of thought that a “Pro” follows. The first was highlighted last post, the whole “why try?” thing. A large number of people take it to the next level, “battlegrounds aren’t real PvP anyways”.

… huh?

Read Full Post »