Birthdays are Probably Necessary

It’s my birthday today, so I highly doubt there will be any proper blog post today or tomorrow.

As with any birthday, I’m setting some time aside to get drunk have some fun with friends family.

I’ll see y’all monday if I’m not still hung over having fun!

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It’s Raping My Nose!

Much has been made of these newfanged “morality” style quests. Rohan, for instance, railed long and hard against them, and more recently, little “death by fire” gnomey has had some… issues with the whole deal.

My question is this: where and how, precisely, does the whole idea of “morals” translate to the game?

The real me would probably think twice (or three or four times) before killing another person, would never intentionally torture someone, and most certainly wouldn’t mindlessly slaughter hundreds of annoying things (as much as the real me would like to).

The in game me, the Euripedes, the terrifying mage inside me, wouldn’t hesitate to do any of those things.

Sentence a tribe of Furbolg to death? Sure thing!

Extinguish the leaders of the Scarlet Monastery? Done and done!

Slaughter dozens of alliance children? FOR THE HORDE!

Kill fifty elves on a whim? It’ll be fun!

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Why is This on Fire?

I’m probably not the first one to observe this, but has anyone noticed that Ret Pallies are the primary source of Mage QQ? I’m serious!

The largest group of people yelling that mages need nerfs? Ret Paladins. All those threads that start with “mages are overpowered” or “arcane is OP”? Nearly all of them started by a Ret Paladin or a Ret Paladin’s alt.

Occasionally, a warlock or a warrior, or even a hunter, will show up and cry, but most of them are Ret Paladins.

What gives?

Is there some sort of weird logic where Ret Pallies think that they’re forum avatar will confuse people? It does look very similar to a mage’s avatar, and an untrained eye could easily miss the distinction. Even the symbol doesn’t really help. A glowing stick with a knobby bit on the end or a glowing stick with a somewhat larger knobby bit on the end.

If you’re ever in doubt, the Ret Paladins will be the ones screaming for the mage class to be nerfed. Occasionally, you’ll see a mage calling for nerfs; don’t be alarmed, this is merely a Ret Paladin in a clever disguise.

Why the hate? Why the spewing of bile?

What did we mages ever do to you?

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I’m Like a Prophet or Something

Can I call it, or what?

So yeah, in case you haven’t noticed, the nerf bat has swung and arcane was smacked upside the head.

First, as I foretold, the ability to clip Arcane Missiles to sneak in an ABarr (so both benefit from the stacked ABlast buff) has been removed.

Arcane Missiles consumes the charges immediately, rather than at the end of the spell.

Alas, Arcane Shatter. I barely knew thee.

This means, of course, that if an arcane mage gets struck by something while they’re channeling AM, and they don’t have Arcane Stability, they just lost the whole stack for basically nothing. ‘Course, you’ll still lose the whole stack if you get countered or silenced, but that can’t really be prevented.

Losing damage to random AoE crap is, however. Arcane Stability is worth the points. And if there’s a Holy Paladin sporting Concentration Aura that you can count on (even better if they’re specced for it), you can afford to go with four or even three points into Arcane Stability.

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Irregardless is Not a Word

A long, long time ago, the rogue class had this concept called “combo points”. And druids, too, I guess, though who cares about druids?

Since then, the whole “combo point” thing has spread to every corner of the WoW game. You can even ride around on dragons that are obsessed with combo points.

At it’s most basic tenet, a combo point system is where you cast something, which stacks something, so you can cast something else. The higher the second something stacks, the more powerful the final something becomes.

Sometimes, the first something stacks easily without any required input from the user, as in Enhancement Shamans. All they need to do is wait for it to build up, and the only decision is what the final something is.

Sometimes, the first something stacks rather easily, but requires input from the user, as in Rogues. They build up combo points using a small amount of abilities, and then choose what the third something is based on spec and current needs.

Sometimes, the first something stacks at cost; the higher it stacks, the more it costs to continue adding to the stack. Arcane mages are exemplary of this.

It’s an extremely basic mechanic system, representing real time decision making at the next step up from a simple “Yes/No” option.

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Frosted Butts! HAHAHA No

Goals:

• To increase the DPS of the frost tree in a raiding environment
• Avoid rendering frost overpowered in PvP
• Give frost a proper mana dump, and preferably any mechanic that forces the mage to think and plan, no matter how simple it is
• Incorporate both Deep Freeze and Ice Lance into the raiding environment

And do it all within the frost tree itself. Making changes in the early arcane or fire tree can be part of the solution, but shouldn’t be the solution.

The point is to buff frost mages, and that should be done in the frost tree.

But hey, gotta start somewhere, let’s look at the other trees.

First, the arcane tree is the obvious off-spec tree of choice. It always has been, I suspect it always will be, and I see zero reason why that should change.

Hunters, regardless of spec, spend points in the Marksman tree. Every priest spends points in the Discipline tree. So it really isn’t a stretch at all to simply shun the early fire tree and use arcane instead.

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Frosted Flakes

In true mage fashion, mere days after being handed a massive pile of steaming buff, I’m back here complaining up a storm.

QQ, as some might say.

Yes. Yes it is.

QQ moar, some might say.

To them, I say: Very well.

So Frostfire Bolt was fun. Unreasonably huge crits, easy to play, and took the other specs DPS and rap… royally thrashed them. Fireball was a little behind, but basically the same. Frost sucked, and so did arcane.

Arcane gets buffed so much it spewed sticky juices all over the wall. Fireball gets better, too, as TTW becomes a far more powerful talent. Who cares about Fireball, though? Have you seen the new spell animation? Blech.

Anyway, point is… where’s the love for frost? So far, this poor neglected tree has been depressingly low in it’s damage potential.

Sure, it’s devastating in Heroics and solo play, but toss it into a raid with proper boss fights, and the poor thing falls apart.

My opinion is that the problem is two fold.

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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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Gear Guidelines

Basic Stats

Spellpower is typically your strongest stat, superior to everything else, with hit a close second (until you are hitcapped). If you have higher values of spellpower and aren’t hit capped, hit is your strongest stat.

The relative worth of crit and haste depend on spec and the strength of the other two main DPS stats.

*Note*

Don’t take this to mean “ignore hit rating”. Just don’t go overboard trying to get hit capped, don’t socket everything with hit, and above all, don’t let your other stats (especially spellpower) suffer just to get some hit.

You do still want to get hit capped, you just don’t want to make sacrifices to get there.

For Frostfire based specs.

Spellpower is superior to hit until roughly the 1600-1700 spellpower range. At that point, they are about even, and higher values of spellpower (1700+) result in hit being the superior stat.

Haste and crit are nearly even, though relative to the other. If you have twice as much crit rating as haste rating, then haste is more valuable. If your haste rating is twice your crit rating, then crit is more valuable.

Spellpower is generally better than, point for point, haste and crit. Both of them are roughly at 2/3 strength compared to spellpower at lower values (1200, 1400).

They become even at a very high level of stats (2600+ spellpower, with both haste and crit sporting numbers over 500). Don’t expect haste/crit to outshine spellpower until you have more than 3000 spellpower.

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