There is, in fact, nothing about Batman in this post or patch 3.3.3. Que Disappoint!
Currently I am blasting Motley Crue’s Dr. Feelgood as loud as these here computer speakers can go. Why do I do this? Because I’m excited, that’s why! Buffs, buffs for everyone, a new BG system hip hip hooray!
First up, the new Random Battleground feature. This will work roughly the same as the current dungeon finder system does, in that the first one you do awards you with a dumptruck filled with honor, and each successive win pickup trucks filled with more honor. There are no bonuses for picking specific battlegrounds, UNLESS it is the holiday weekend! Or Call to Arms, as it’s called now, in which case the holiday BG will award the same bonuses as picking a random BG.
BG marks are also being eliminated completely, and everything that used to cost marks will cost honor instead. Thank god, finally. This clunky system fully deserves its death. Oh yeah, and the amount of honor awarded from HKs are being doubled.
Net result is hopefully significantly more people actually playing BGs overall (meaning lower queues for everyone), significantly higher honor gain for anyone playing BGs, which hopefully will lead to better geared people playing in BGs.
Before you say “won’t this just devolve into everyone farming kills?”, bear in mind that every single objective in PvP, from capping a flag to taking a tower, are all based on a set number of HKs. Thus, every single PvP objective is also doubling in the amount of honor they award.
The only downside I can see are mass quits if someone gets a battleground they don’t like popping up. Imagine zoning into Strand and then half your team evaporates on you.
On a side note, what’s up with all the hate for Strand? It is, by far, the easiest and least complicated BG in the game, and incredibly fast to boot. It’s literally impossible for a game to last longer than 24 minutes, including preparation/load times and assuming neither side manages to cap anything.
Anyway, BG change is excellent overall, and I also suspect that by simply having the random BG option, it is going to be impossible to queue for multiple BGs at once. The patch notes don’t outright say it, but this seems like what’s happening. You only get the one BG, and if you don’t like it, tough. So less people randomly quitting midfield to go fight somewhere else.
But enough PvP, on to the important stuff.
Culling of Stratholme
Players may now skip the initial introduction dialog to this dungeon once they have completed it at least once.
YES.
YES!
YYYEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!
BEHOLD, FOR THERE IS A GOD, AND LO, FOR A MERCIFUL LORD IS HE!
Frostbolt: Spell power scaling on this spell has been increased by approximately 5%.
I’m not entirely sure what they mean here, but it sounds like they are simply increasing the coefficient of frostbolt by 5%. Unless my memory fails me, which it often does, frostbolt currently benefits from 81.4% of your spellpower, so what, precisely, does “approcimately” mean here? 85%? 86%?
Either way, flat out buff to frost mages everywhere. A small buff, yes, but enough small buffs piled on top of each other works out to a far greater whole.
I call this whole “FOUR VIABLE SPECS, SUCK IT”.
Arcane Empowerment: This effect is now passive instead of being a proc off of critical strikes. The self damage buff remains unchanged.
In other words, not a proc, just a passive 100 yard aura. Not a buff, not a nerf, just a rather nice change. Nearly every other “buff on proc” effect is getting the same treatment across the board. An interesting shift, but I can’t say I’m particularly mad that 3% of the entire raid’s damage being contingent on my own personal RNG is getting the boot.
Incanter’s Absorption: This talent now only grants additional spell power when damage is absorbed by Mana Shield, Frost Ward, Fire Ward, or Ice Barrier. The limit of 5% of the mage’s health on the spell power buff has been removed.
And so, Incanter’s Absorption dies a swift death. Rest in peace, comrade. I knew you only a brief time, but your power was unmatched, and you served well.
/mourn
In all seriousness, you couldn’t really have expected Blizzard to simply let this ability exist as is, could you? Be honest, IA was overpowered and this is a well deserved nerf.
It might still be worth using with Fire/Frost Ward, but without the added boost from disc priests/val’anyr, this talent seems like it has been gutted completely. Nerfed too far? Yeah, yeah definitely, but it still needed to be nerfed.
Burning Soul: Threat reduction is now 10/20%, up from 5/10%.
Well deserved buff. Fire has been a threat machine for no reason for an extremely long time.
Brain Freeze: This talent now allows your next Fireball or Frostfire Bolt to be instant and cost no mana. There is a small internal cooldown to keep the Frostfire Bolt from immediately triggering Brain Freeze again.
How long we have been asking for this? How long have we said “Fireball doesn’t scale! Just give us a FFB! Put like an ICD or something on it!” How long has it been, my frosty brethren? How long we have stalked the shadows, disguising ourselves as Frostfire mages or arcane mages just so we can walk in public?
No more! NOW IS THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT!
Seriously, literally every major buff thrown at frost recently has come in the winter months. Coincidence? I think not!
Glyph of Fireball: No longer increases critical strike chance of Fireball. Instead, it now reduces the cast time of Fireball by 0.15 seconds.
…!
Wow.
Now that, that I was not expecting.
A buff, flat out, over the old glyph, though how much of a buff will depend on how it interacts with haste, namely where the reduction in cast time is calculated. I’m guessing it will be before haste, in which case we can basically treat it as a 5% haste boost to fireball, or basically trading 5% crit for 5% haste.
Napkin math, I’m showing a slight DPS increase for having a faster fireball. Not huge, roughly a 5% increase I’d say. Keep in mind that this is a flat reduction to cast speed, so all of your haste rating, all the haste you get for being in a raid, all of that is applied after this cast time reduction is factored. Probably.
In any case this seems like it would work out to about a 5% increase to fire mage DPS (it iss called napkin math, but really I’m using a calculator and Notepad. Theorycraft is fun!). Less crit on fireball might result in some losses of Hot Streak procs here and there, but having a multiplying haste effect seems to counteract that loss easily and provide a slight buff too.
Critical QQ 
One can only hope these changes will make it to Live.
“Brain Freeze: This talent now allows your next Fireball or Frostfire Bolt to be instant and cost no mana. There is a small internal cooldown to keep the Frostfire Bolt from immediately triggering Brain Freeze again.”
Holy crap. I love this.
As for the fire changes. Do you think it would be enough of an increase to dps to make Fireball/TtW comparable to arcane? I MUCH prefer fire over arcane, so i’m really hoping it will.
In short, no, it isn’t enough to bridge that cap on its own.
The IA nerf is going to be far more helpful in that regard than any buff to fire Blizzard could introduce at this point.
Personally I’m not that fond of Strand because I’m more prone to random disconnects in there than anywhere else, particularly when my side is on offense, at the moment we land. Also, it’s got such an incredibly high focus on vehicles – which can’t be heale – so I often find myself having to choose between healing people who randomly farm HKs or doing smite dps on enemy vehicles, which feels unsatisfying either way.
Changing certain procs to passive auras strikes me as a way of simply reducing combat log spam. I noticed it a lot with elemental oath at least, that during raids it would often pretty much proc and then fade again, proc, fade, proc, fade non-stop, which was just silly.
Strand.. Hmm.. I don’t know either what it is about it that I just don’t like. There are moments I do enjoy it though, but that’s very VERY group dependant. All I can think of as reason is that this is the battleground that requires more group cohesion than any other BG out there. If you’re there with too many solo minded players, you’re doomed to fail.
Anyway, I love those frost changes. My poor mage has been on the background for a while I shamefully admit, but I have always been a big fan of frost, frostfire, or even regular fire spec. I tried arcane, but hated it. I’m usually the first to say that people should spec as optimal as possible for the raids’ sake, but I also think there’s a limit on how much of the enjoyment that should take away. I just want to see that ball-o-hurt fly through the air and impact. Arcane missiles alone just don’t cut it, and that rotation, just ugh. So, I’m definitely going to try out my mage again with after this. Looking forward.
I recently discovered the joy of Incanter’s Absorption. I’m in a casual raiding guild, which just means that we don’t worry much about optimal raid composition, we take everyone. As such, I rarely have a disc priest along, and I still enjoy having IA. There’s enough frost and fire damage being spewed out that I find it worthwhile with my frost warding, the mana returns are nice too, and it gave me something to put in my 2 unused minor glyph slots. Plus, the other arcane mages in my guild don’t seem to have it, so it makes me feel semi-unique in a carbon-copy world. Not loving the change, but not exactly hating it either.
/dance
Happy Frost Mage is Happy.
Could be happier, but can’t really complain here. I’m still beating arcane mages who gem/stack crit instead of haste anyway, so this will really bring me closer to srsbsns mages in the progression guilds who I need not apply to because of my spec alone.
I see problems with “and the amount of honor awarded from HKs are being doubled.”
This will just further split the BG group into idiots and a couple of people who want to play by objective. Sadly despite Blizzard’s claims, the idiots will come out with more honor and the 2 people frustrated and feeling duped.
Yesterday I was in WSG and the poor Alliance team, I can just imagine my Alliance counterpart yelling obscenities and smashing their head on the keyboard.
Red flag (for the Horde!) just ran past Alliance, actually not even past, through.
2 Alliance diligently aiming for the prime parking spot under Horde graveyard.
2 people guarding their graveyard, presumably ensuring rezzers know which way to the battlefield.
These problem won’t get worse with the new BG “improvements”.
I will start padding my keyboard now.
Sadly, you cannot patch stupid out of the game.
The upside is that all objective honor rewards are based off HK values. So in theory, all those objectives have also doubled in value.
Not that that will change stupid, but at least the people following objectives will not be shafted any more than normal.
So any idea where this actually puts frost in terms of napkin % away from arcane in pve? Coefficent changes are normally the schnitzel right? Interestingly a decent buff to frost pvp also…maybe it’s not just my imagination that we’re lagging behind a bit…
I would really like to see a genuine leveller for frost in pve, something like how sniper training works for hunters, a damage buff if you stand still so as not to impact pvp. You could add it to frost channeling maybe and add an cool animation of ice climbing the mages legs the longer he stands still…
They really need to release some more maps. I mean, cmon…6 in 5 years?? There should be at least double that amount. In fact, it might be kind of cool to mix it up some and do different modes in different maps. Like capture-the-flag in Arathi Basin, or capture the node in WSG. Could even do something like have random flag respawn points in WSG and offer double or even triple honor for fighting near it, or extra honor for returning it or capping it. Anyway, they need to up the incentives for getting the objectives done on the idividual level…not just letting anyone in any corner of the map reap the rewards.
More maps mean a more diffuse spread of players. Which means longer queue times.
And really, there’s only so much you can do in the way of straightforward, balanced, symmetrical (i.e. simple and fair) PvP objectives. If you ask me, the current array of maps does just fine to keep things interesting.
SotA is an abomination … No other map has the same focus and reliance on vehicles; IoC is big enough that you can do other things if you want to, and WG allows you to contribute meaningfully by killing towers or taking factories. SotA just has a couple vehicles with every player on the damn map clustered around ’em.
The whole atmosphere is kinda … anemic. What’s that Titan shiny thingy again? Why do we want it? Why is there a timer? And the whole “race to the finish” schtick makes forward progress the only important thing—dying has very little consequence. It’s not possible to overextend or be outflanked. Tactically, it’s a rather bland map. Somehow, this doesn’t help the idiots.
In sum, it feels like an AV zerg … except slower and stupider.
I would be immensely happy with more maps, not necessarily more BGs, just different maps of the same ones.
I get that it doesn’t fit in lore to have, say, a hellfire peninsula themed WSG map, but really, we’re playing CTF already! How far of a stretch is it to just put a different skin on things?
[…] Just in time some good news for us frosties coming in patch 3.3.3 […]
The problem I have with strand is that everytime I go in there it’s up against a premade group, all from the same server and probably all on vent. I don’t have a problem with premades, I mean whatever works, but being on the other end is just a beat down, I just love getting camped at a graveyard.
I to /mourn the changes to IA. It was a talent which made being an Arcane mage significantly more exciting. I agree that a nerf was probably due, but I think that this really reduces the talent to one which so situationally useful that it is barely worth the talent points.
What would make it more viable is if “out-of-mana” shield was improved. At the moment it just costs too much mana to be worth the spellpower gain in my opinion, and finding another 3 points for Arcane Shielding is also going to start eating into important dps talents.
The game is febulas, though it has got some bugs..