Frost Clubbin': Aluminum Bat to the FACE!

I’ve been preaching the awesomeness of frost around here like some sort of gospel. It’s time I change that.

Today, I’m going to complain endlessly about frost. This has nothing to do with my hatred of winter and the fact that it just snowed up here. Nothing at all.

First things first. Fingers of Frost. Blizzard (or Ghostcrawler, if you will) has stated on numerous occasions that the intention was to give frost mages the ability to use “shatter” in a raid environment, in a similar to fashion to how it’s used in PvP.

So far, FoF has failed utterly at this. As it works now, providing charges of shatter, it only succeeds in being a flat increase to DPS, requiring no input whatsoever from the mage. Really, the only active participation is making sure you don’t cast a fireball while FoF is up.

In the early stages of raiding, it used to be viable to use an ice lance for the second charge. The inability for ice lance to further proc FoF was offset by the fact that it was instant. However, ice lance does not scale, and so at about 1700 spell damage, was no longer worth the GCD it spent.

And now, with ice lance not proccing brain freeze, it isn’t even useful for entry level raiding.

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Pillowy Softness

I'm not sure where this whole "dog" thing started.

One of the biggest issues the “pure” DPS classes seem to concern themselves with are classes that are able to perform both DPS and some other role, if geared and specced for it.

The Purist types, i.e. mages and rogues, take the statement “jack of all trades” as a law written in stone, rather than a turn of phrase that describes the class conveniently.

Mages and Boomkins, for instance. The argument goes that because the boomkin is capable of tanking, healing, or even doing melee DPS if he so wished is a perfecttly valid reason for the mage to always perform better in a ranged DPS role.

After all, the mage can only perform the one role, so logically the mage should be better at it than any hybrid could hope to be.

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Chaotic Skyfire Diamond

I want you to try a little something for me.

Take a look at your hat. The thing on your head, whatever it is. Engineering goggles, part of your T5 set, perhaps the Brutal Gladiator helm.

Take a good long look at it.

See that meta-gem socket? Have a peek at that.

What’s in it? What is socketed there?

If you answered anything besides “Chaotic Skyfire Diamond” go stand over there.

CSD is also an acceptable answer.

Ok, now, IF you are standing in the corner, here is a 24 pound frozen catfish. Take this fish, and HIT YOURSELF AS HARD AS YOU CAN IN THE FACE.

Now, go sell that fish, and go buy the meta-gem you’re supposed to be using.

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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.

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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.

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Frostfire, Just This Once

Like every single mage in the world, I initially felt that Blizzard was politely trying to rip off my limbs and sell them to a seedy looking Vietnamese chef with the new expansion.

“Living Bomb” sounded awesome, but turned out be used dishwater, frostfire bolt was kinda cool, but confusing with really no explanation of how it worked, and Deep Freeze was kinda cool.

What? Why don’t you like our cool spells?

No offence, Mr. Blue Text, but Living Bomb is only cool in theory. That spell needs some serious help before I’ll even consider speccing it. And Burnout? What the hell kinda crap is that?

Fine. Be that way. Look, we’ll add a mana burn to Living Bomb, and buff Burnout a bit. How’s that?

Gah, so now Living Bomb and Burnout only mostly suck? Good job guys.

What about Deep Freeze? That’s cool, innit?

Well, maybe, for an instant cast…

OH FINE. FINE. BLAH DE BLAH. Now it deals over a thousand damage too. HAPPY? Them warriors are going to rip your procreative organs off.

That’s fine. They’ve been trying to do that for years. So about them fire talents…? They still suck.

Ok… maybe… we can buff Burnout a bit. How’s this. It effects base mana cost, not your total mana.

NOW you’re speaking sense. That’s awesome. And Living Bomb?

…

LIVING BOMB?!

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Smite versus Fireball

I had originally intended this as a reply to Mera’s comment on raiding fire, but as I delved into the matter, I found that I had far too much information to divulge here.
The comment was thus:
“Actually, for base damage per second, smite is the base spell in the game.”

Hmm… quite a claim you’ve made there, Mera.

In my old troll days, I most likely would have replied with “rofl, nub”, but I am a respektible blooger now, and I should craft something intelligent to reply with.

So off I go to investigate this, comparing fireball to smite, to find out which of these spells is… I dunno, better I guess.

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