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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Look At Me, I’m Special!

So I got interviewed over at Grinding to Valhalla, so you should probably check that out if you haven’t already.

It’s… long. I warn you now, you will be reading for some time.

But hey, if you have any interest in how things work around here (“here” being  a general term for CQQ), I’d read it.

No seriously, I would.

I mean, I wrote it, and it’s about me, of course I would read it!

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Woah, Woah, Woah… Slow Down There

So last post seems to have become a sort of center for massive controversy and a great deal of debate.

However, an alarming number of comments have either misinterpreted the original post (as in the case of Bellwether) or my words have been twisted so as to be completely unrecognizable (as in the case of Garret).

So let’s try this again, shall we? Set the record straight and all that.

Don’t worry if you misunderstood me, it’s not your fault. As a blogger, it’s my job – well, hobby, technically – to communicate effectively and clearly. If my points were taken the wrong way, it’s nobody’s fault but mine.

There are plenty of arguments that can be leveled at the Emblem of Conquest change. Things like “this change will ruin character progression” or “this will encourage players to skip content entirely” are legitimate issues.

The post was not directed at those holding that opinion. The post was not directed at everyone who has an issue with the Emblem change.

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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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Nothing Will Survive

To the tune of I Will Survive, I present this work of literary prose celebrating my inability to purify catchy songs from my mind.

—

First I was afraid, I was petrified

Kept thinking I could never ding with all this crappy gear

But I spent many nights proving how misplaced was my fear

I grew strong

I learned how to carry on

And so I’m back from the Outland

I just walked in to find you here with that sad look upon your face

You should have rerolled a warlock

Or at least maybe a death knight

And leveled back when you had the chance, you see, it’s far too late now

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Isle of Conquest, Initial Thoughts

Or IoC, as it will soon be known.

In short: WANT.

In long: holy jiminy christmas people will complain about anything, won’t they?

The new BG is announced, and all the forums are alight with complaining, filled to the brim with tears, people will who will go to any length to shout how much vehicles suck.

In light of me being smarter than you (it’s true! Check Wikipedia if you don’t believe me!) allow me to address the primary concerns behind your unintelligible hatred of vehicular mechanics.

You could say that IoC is like AV and AB meeting for a SotA party in WG. While an apt description to get the jist of the battleground across, it’s not what it actually is. Too easily does such a description lead to the sentence “Blizzard can’t come up with anything original, so they’re just recycling their old ideas.”

In other words, rather than coming up with a new, original battleground, Blizzard just stole ideas from their previous ones.

I can’t even begin to describe how faulty this thinking is, but I shall try anyway.

Let’s say that Warsong Gulch was the original battleground.

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PvP QQ OH NOES!

Ahhh, complaining. A fantastic past time.

I don’t know why people continue to QQ about ret paladins. Maybe it’s because I play a snare-heavy frost mage in PvP (or pally healer when I’m not doing that), but they just don’t strike me as anything fantastic.

Sure, their damage is high, but if you’re getting hit by one, you screwed up somewhere.

For instance, I was guarding BE in Eye, playing Peggle. While it pains me to admit that, Horde had basically won the thing. We had three bases, was in the process of capping the fourth, there was really nothing of importance for me to do.

So this ret paladin comes out of nowhere, I see a whole bunch of numbers show up on my screen, and before I know it I’ve lost half my health pool.

The ret paladin had, so far, only cast judgment and crusader strike. Oof. I blame my criminal neglect of my PvP gear, as I’m sporting a FABULOUS 350 resilience.

Anyway, once I was aware of the fight, the ret paladin was killed without issue. Ice Barrier handily absorbed Divine Storm, HoJ was met with Blink, Blessing of Freedom was spell stolen, and the poor paladin found himself either rooted or stunned for the entirety of the (very brief) fight.

Note to ret paladins: while wearing Ulduar gear into battlegrounds may help your position on the damage meters, it also means I’m going to kill you in three spells. Consider yourself warned.

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One Spells

Avast ye, there be sailor language ahead!

Neither shamans nor druids are intentionally designed to use one spell as an absolutely primary spell. My beta-era comment about CH was that we didn’t want to give it a cooldown or the like as Circle of Healing had. Don’t over-interpret “core” or “iconic” as “absolutely primary spell.” That’s overstating it. Having a spell you use 90% or more of the time is really lame

This is really excellent to hear. Frankly, spamming a single spell over and over again has never really been fun. It’s why I didn’t reroll a Destruction warlock back in BC… pressing one button over and over again seemed hella boring.

Yes, I am aware of the irony, considering I played a one-button fire mage instead. Ahh, but I have thee there! Fire mages had to rotate Scorch in, as well.

That’s… what, a second spell every 29 seconds?

These days all you young fellers have got all this fancy, flashy Living Bomb and Hot Streak stuff. We got to push a second button every 29 seconds, and we were damn grateful! Yessirree bob, and we had to slog uphill through naga and blood elves the whole way!

Honestly, the trash was waaaay more interesting than the vast majority of the boss fights.

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