Mischief, Magic, and Rocket Science

Mischief: Water Elementals No Longer Nameable :(

noreply@blogger.com (Gypsy) — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 23:00:00 +0000

So besides the stealth nerf to mages in patch 4.0.3, we also had another change come into being for a "known bug" that made a lot of Frost Mages pretty excited after patch 4.0.1. Yesterday I log into my mage and go about doing my dailies and killing elementals to run the special invasion bosses, and I notice my water elemental's name is gone and has reverted to "Water Elemental" again. Immediately, I looked up the command for the rename and I get an error that tells me I cannot rename my pet. I'm distraught.

So immediately I scour the patch notes for any comment and see nothing. I try right clicking. I ask my mage friends, who are just as stunned and disappointed as I am. I even went so far as to put in a ticket and petition to a GM to find out what was going on. Due to a high volume of petitions, I didn't get my answer till today and I was told that the ability to name your water elemental in 4.0.1 was a "known bug" and was fixed in the patch this Tuesday.

I can tell you I'm more disappointed than angry. Naming your water elemental gives you a little spark of uniqueness in a world where that is rare. The number of Frost Mages that popped up after the changes was astounding and I'd like to think that each one put forth a good bit of effort and thought to name their pet, since you were unable to change it once it was done. I won't say that I thought for hours about the name I chose, but it was special and unique to me and my water elemental had a little bit more personality because of it.

I think what bothers me the most is why Blizzard went out of their way to fix this, when there are a number of other bugs that need addressing. I'm not complaining that we got a little nerf (all our spec bonuses are down from the 25% they were before to 10% for fire and 15% for Frost and Arcane). After the patch hit, we needed it frankly. Mages shot up into the realm of ridiculous DPS, taking over the charts and leaving a lot of other classes in the dust. But this just seems so unnecessary. Does it really take up that much data room for a water elemental to have a unique name assigned to it? It seems to me that any other pet class with a permapet has a pet with a name instead of a generic identifier. Though warlocks and Unholy DKs don't get to pick the name directly, there's still a little unique flavor there. And if it's such a bad thing to have to juggle, why do hunters get to name 20 unique pets?

Sure when our water elementals were not permapets, it made sense not to let us name them. I get that. It was a temporary summoned creature. But now we get one from level 1 all the way up to cap. So why not just let us name it? Those of us who RP get a chance to tell a story with the name, something that's indicative to the elemental's personality. We bond with it after 85 levels, so why wouldn't it have a unique moniker?

Rather than whining, bitching, and yelling, I'm asking, Blizzard. Please give us our Water Elemental names back. To my readers, consider this an open letter to Blizzard, a petition for a little twist of individuality in a sometimes dull world. If you agree with what I've written here, please follow up with a comment and a /signed. Feel free to put your character name and server if you like. Even if this gets us nowhere, we can at least say we tried.

Gypsy's Super Helpful and Completely 100% Guarenteed Guide to Finding the Right Spec for YOU!

noreply@blogger.com (Gypsy) — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 01:25:00 +0000

The most common question I have asked me as a blogger is actually a number of questions that fit a single template:

"Gypsy, with all your excessive intelligence and spectacular good looks, it is clear to me that you're an expert in *BLANK*. Please share your thoughts and wisdom with me: I like to *BLANK* and *BLANK* and sometimes *BLANK* when the feeling hits me. Which spec should I play?"

Those of you who did not ask this question, rest assured: on MMRS, there are no stupid questions, only stupid warlocks. As for those of you who asked this very question, well generic person who may or may not read my blog, this post is for YOU! Congratulations. In 5 easy steps, we can get you playing a spec that you love, that works for you, and that will make people want to play with you.

Step One: Learn your Class

I know what you're thinking. Why would we not know our class? Well, young grasshopper, take a trip through the Random Dungeon Finder at any level, run a couple dungeons of any type and I can assure you that you will find at least 1-2 people in your endeavor who have no idea how to play their class. To be honest, mages kind of have it easy. We don't have to figure out how to keep other people alive; we're DPS all the way. Classes like Paladins and Druids have to figure out how to do 3 different roles and classes like Shaman and DKs have to figure out how to do 2. Hybrids do have it harder in some cases, so we'll break this down into a question:

"What is your role?"

Are you a tank, healer, physical DPS or caster DPS? Physical DPS could further be broken down into hunters and melee if you like. For each role, there are ground rules. Caster DPS, hunters, and healers stand at range in most cases. The rocket science behind this is that there's a magical range at which aggro is drastically decreased, so standing at range = less threat = happy healer = less death. Melee DPS and Tanks obviously have to stand close to the target cause they can't swing their weapons that far. Yes, this also exposes them to higher threat levels, but that's probably why most of them wear plate or have some pretty big threat reduction.

Besides range, there's the obvious point of each role. Tanks take damage and keep the bad guys from pwning the rest of the group. Healers keep everyone alive. DPS kills stuff. Sometimes these roles aren't as concrete, like when a healer is struggling a DPS who has the ability to heal can toss out a heal to help or when a healer gets bored, maybe they'll put some DPS on something, or sometimes DPS end up tanking like on Prince Keleseth in ICC for a shadow priest or warlock. Beyond that, everyone pretty much stays in an assigned role and doesn't deviate.

An important part of knowing your class is knowing your buttons. And by buttons I mean your cooldowns, escape tricks, and fun little abilities that benefit your role or the group/raid as a whole. Some of these are essential to staying out of fire. Others are important to prevent a wipe. Others just make you do your job a little faster or harder, essentially better. Figure out what those are and the ideal time to use them.

To be honest the best way to learn a class is to play it from 1 to 80 (or 85 come cataclysm) but there's some things you won't learn just questing or just doing dungeons or just PVPing. It's really a mixture of these that makes you aware of all the skills you have available to you and where you belong in the scheme of things.

Step Two: Research the Specs Available to Your Class

We'll use mages as an example here because that's what I blog the most about. Every class has 3 available specs. Each one has a specific role assigned to it, sometimes two in the case of feral druids. For mages, all 3 are DPS, so you get a choice of DPS or DPS... or DPS. And we're always caster DPS, despite how much fun it may be to stab someone with your Quel'Delar or crack them over the head with your Abracadaver. Anywho, Mages get a choice of Fire, Frost, and Arcane. If I were to research the aspects of each spec, here's what I'd look for:

Talents and where to spend them for whatever your primary playstyle will be (Soloing, Groups, Raids, PVP).
Glyphs
Rotation
Stat Priorities (This includes Gems, Enchants, and Reforging)
Nuances like when to blow your cooldowns and tricks you can use on multiple targets

Knowing these things is a big step to getting a good spec down, but by no means does it make you an expert. It's the proper execution of these things that makes for a good mage (or whatever). It's successful creativity and expansion beyond these things that makes for a great mage (or whatever). But this isn't a guide to making you a Great Whatever. That's a blog post for another day.

Step 3: Choose Your Spec and Test It

When I say test it, I don't mean in one single medium or situation. When I get a new spec, I first like to try it on a training dummy so I can get a hang of the rotation without any distractions like fire to stand in or things to dodge or threat that gets pulled. The problem with training dummies is that they don't always give you an accurate read of your DPS. When you're playing with a dummy, you're standing still, DPSing with no downtime. There's no raid mechanics to make your DPS higher or lower. There are also things about the dummy that are going to throw off about your DPS. For example, frost mage DPS is actually slightly lower than it should be on a dummy because they are susceptible to stuns, so the big hit of Deep Freeze isn't a bit hit. It's a stun with no damage. Because of this, if you have the Deep Freeze glyph, your frostbolt is also going to hit harder than it actually would on a boss, since bosses don't retain the Deep Freeze debuff. (This glyph is changing to be more useful and more appropriate to a prime glyph in the Cataclysm Beta.)

After you've fiddled around with the dummies for a little bit, go out and solo. Play with a few mobs you know you can kill and compare the timeframe it took you before and after. Try some that were more difficult for you before. Put yourself in some situations where you have to move and fight and maybe use some of those special buttons.

After you've done all this without endangering the life bars of your fellow players, take it into a heroic, either with friends or a PUG. Don't just run one, run several. The nice thing about the variety of heroics we have at 80 is that it's never the same instance twice: the pacing is different, the boss gimicks are different, and the levels of difficulty are different. Once you've messed around enough in an instance, you can try a raid, but if I were you I'd make it a raid with friends or a raid like VOA that's short and sweet. Never ever ever take a new spec you're not completely comfortable with into a progression raid where you're expected to perform your best.

Step 4: Choose a Second Spec and Test it

You're basically going to do all the stuff you did in step 3, but in a different spec. For some classes, this may require a whole different set of gear, but if it's generally the same thing, you can share it. Keep in mind that testing healing and tanking is very different from testing DPS. You can't use a dummy to check healing where rotations are completely useless. And dummies don't have threat, so while you can check your tanking rotation, it won't be as accurate as doing it on something that actually does damage back to you. But even with tanks and healers, the don't raid till your comfortable with your spec rule stands.

Step 5: Pick What You LIKE to Play and Tweak It

I can almost guarantee you that playing a spec you enjoy is going to give you better results than playing something you don't like at all. In some cases this may change (ie Old Frost Mages) and you may have to pick your second favorite thing to do. In the cases of raiding guilds, you may not have a choice because in those kinds of guilds they're allowed to tell you what to play. But if you don't like it, then don't be in that guild or try a different class that can fill the role that they need. A good guild will be patient with a player who hasn't found their niche yet and will understand that in the end they'll get better performance out of a happy player than someone who's miserable.

The tweaking part of this step is not always easy, but no two players play alike, so following a guide to the letter is not always your best bet for maximum performance. Beyond that, we all play on different machines with different connections in a variety of different real life situations, so that's going to affect your performance too. You really do have to pick what works for you. Do you have any motivation to play something that you hate?

My best advice for someone who is being pressured into something different is to try it first, especially if changes have been made or you're character has changed. I used to hate fire with a passion and had no desire to do anything with it. Now that the specs have changed so much since pre 4.0.1, I actually enjoy Fire again and have put Arcane on the back burner so that I can play with it or Frost as my heart so desires. Because I made that decision for myself, I'm a happier player and it's important to remember that WoW is a game, so all other things aside, it should be fun.

Mischief: A CRITical Comeback

noreply@blogger.com (Gypsy) — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 23:29:00 +0000

So the big warning with the onset of patch 4.0.1 was that our mana was going to be a big problem; and as I'm certain most of you have discovered (in any caster class), that is not so yet. The only class I've seen with active mana issues is Arcane mages, and that's just their niche. Even then, it can be overcome by effective use of cooldowns and a creative rotation. But all the theorycrafting sites or buzzing about how crit (critical strike rating) is going to become even more important in Cataclysm because of the mana problems that will likely manifest themselves when you hit 85 and start doing 5-man heroic dungeons and raiding. Apparently Blizzard intends to turn the tables on us and make your crit rating less valuable to the actual percentage of spells that will critically hit. On top of that, the general theory among the think tanks is that rather than haste being more useful since more spells per time period = more dps, crit is moving up instead because more big hits in a time period = more dps and less mana used. With the talent Master of Elements, those crits will help restore your mana as well, giving your casting time more longevity. (Although rumor has it, MoE isn't as effective either come Cata.) Most of these number geniuses are calling for Crit as the tertiary stat after Int (Spellpower) and Mastery after hit-cap is achieved.

Cold Crits in Frost

While previously haste was a higher valued stat for us than crit, as the mage stands right now, I'd still stick with a good balance of haste and crit. There are no magic numbers or caps for either of these stats right now, but the general agreement with a spec like Frost is that 33% or more crit is ideal to get those bit hits on frozen targets. With the Frostburn mastery, they're going to be even bigger hits since it multiplies the base damage of your spell with a percentage from your mastery rating. Even then, none of our procs in frost are based off a crit rating, but rather an application of a chill effect, mostly by Frostbolt. This is still applied to boss mobs, allowing for Deep Freeze and Brain Freeze to proc, even though the actual slow may not be effective. So while you can throw out as critting frostbolts as you like and they'll be helpful to your DPS, the big hitters in our arsenal are connected to frozen targets (to which some things are immune) and procs of Fingers of Frost. FoF has a 30% chance to proc off any chill and BF has a 15% chance. Granted you can get around this a little by rolling your other spells that freeze, like talented Cone of Cold, Frost Nova, and your Water Elemental's Freeze, but two of those spells require you to be at closer range to use effectively, which means more threat issues or a lot of moving, and the other requires a targetted AOE spell that can be very clumsy. Please not that by no means am I NOT telling you to roll through those spells if you're finding yourself short on procs, but limiting yourself to Freeze (and finding a way to make it less awkward) is a good way to have a much smoother rotation. My big point here is that with more haste and more frostbolts, you're likely to get more chill applications anyway, giving you more of those procs frost mages love so much. Until the talent tree changes to say that chill is dependant on crit, I'm not going to go so far as to say forget the Haste and start stacking crit like a holy paladin.

Critical Burn

Fire is a different story. With talents like Ignite, you'll find yourself wanting more crit in order to apply more DOTs, which are the basis of Fire's mastery, Flashburn. They're also responsible for your Hot Streak procs and big Pyroblast hits. Beyond that Critical Mass is responsible for a spell crit vulnerability available to everyone in your group or raid to take advantage of (if the stupid warlock doesn't steal your spotlight.) So at first glance, crit is pretty important to Fire. But I don't think I'd discount haste so quickly. Fireball and Frostfire Bolt are both long cast spells and according to the math nerds (ie theory crafters), the chance of an un-Improved Hot Streak proccing are inversely proportional with your crit chance. Wait what? What the heck was Blizzard thinking? Were they trying to give the little guys a heads up on the pyroblast use or something? The difference of course lies in the Improved Hot Streak option. If you find yourself with a high crit chance, it's imperative that you take this talent as it's an assured proc that continues to scale with high crit. That said, haste is still nothing to laugh at. Sure you'll burn through mana a little faster, but take a page from the Arcane book and use your cooldowns to bring it back up to where it should be.

AB Numbers Look Bigger with Crit

The clever title eluded me, ok? Sheesh. Arcane has always been a horse of a different color for mages. It's a non-elemental school that's got a unique mastery talent and an alternating but more defined rotation. The big deal here is your mana is already limited and casting through it faster is not always an ideal way to do things, especially if you're not hitting that hard when you do so. Now of course we have to take into account that AB has it's own damage increasing debuff, but there is a limit of 4 charges on it. Not a single talent in the Arcane tree is based off critical strike chance, although two of them increase your crit as procs. (So you could argue that Focus magic relies on crit, but not your own; that of another person. And the way it's made, pretty much any caster class will give you 100% up time as it is right now.) This is why the previous arcane school of thought was that crit didn't scale with arcane for crap and it should be disregarded as a stat for fire mages. However, that's not entirely true anymore. If you have a higher crit chance, you're going to hit bigger more often, making it very valuable as it has no effect on the mana cost of a spell what-so-ever. If you're just stacking haste, you're going to find yourself at a severe disadvantage here, as you'll run out of mana before you can really use your cooldowns again if you don't manage that regen phase perfectly. I like crit over haste for Arcane, but I wouldn't go so far as to say ignore the haste, either. Haste applies to every single spell you cast, while crit still stands as a chance and is not assured.

Magic and Rocket Science: Back to the Elements

noreply@blogger.com (Gypsy) — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 23:47:00 +0000

For a very long time I've had a love affair with Frost, despite it's short comings. I stayed true to it until I hit Northrend with the mage and watched the Frostfire build die and Arcane rise in it's place. The difference in damage was so drastic, there wasn't any way to argue. I hated the simplistic rotation, but I learned the little ways to make it interesting and squeeze that last bit of damage out. I researched and questioned and played with Training Dummies until I knew it backwards and forwards, waiting for the day when Frost was on top again.

I say to you mage friends and fanatics, that that day has come.

It's not to say that Arcane can't hold it's own any more; it certainly can. So what's my problem with Arcane? Well for one, it bores the heck out of me. There's a general agreement now that Arcane has two phases, the one button phase and the 2 button phase. Ok, that's kind of derogatory for someone who argued that Arcane was never just 2 buttons before. To be fair it isn't now. You spam AB till you run out of mana sure, with all your cooldowns tossed in there, but there's a lot of other things to toss in too, depending on if you picked up the talents. Then you have to force yourself to hold back with alternating AB and Missile Barrage till your cooldowns and evocation are back up, then it's back to blasting. Your damage peaks can be huge if you do it right, but it's difficult to maintain and the AOE for Arcane has always been stunted.

Playing with Fire

So despite my dislike of fire, I dropped Arcane as my second spec and picked up a fire spec I'd been messing with, tweeking it a little bit. I did some research, got a bunch of glyphs and planted myself down in front of the training dummy in Silvermoon. (On a side note, it's important to take into consideration which dummy you're using to test your DPS. Some boss dummies have a level 80 dummy next to them so that you can see splash damage and some don't. Silvermoon's dummies are far enough apart, that you get true single target damage when testing on the boss dummy.)

I read up on rotations in a couple different places and most recommended a Fireball primary nuke with constant Living Bomb up time, using Pyroblast for Hot Streak procs, and Fireblast with Impact procs. I went through this a number of times, trying different timing with Combustion and Mirror Images. I have to tell you, the DPS I was getting was not holding a flame to Frost or Arcane. I was about 2k lower than my frost spec and working my tail off to watch all those DOTs and keep max up time. I was not impressed, but I had tried it and that made me feel a little better about my choice to stick with Frost as primary and Arcane as a second.

And then a guildie suggested that I try Frostfire Bolt instead. I will admit I was kind of dumbfounded that I hadn't thought of this myself. FFB used to be THE nuke for a short lived elementalist spec when Wrath raiding first began. It quickly fell out of favor when Arcane usurped Frost and Fire and even when they made their comebacks, you only saw an inkling of it with Brain Freeze procs in frost. It's used again in the Frost Rotation that I'll get into a little later, but there was no mention of it at all in all my fire research for my little experiment. Even looking at the unglyphed spell, it seems rather lackluster. You get less damage than what you get for Fireball, at the same cast time and mana cost. (It's important to note here that Blizzard took away the DOT portions of BOTH of these spells in their primary form.) So if you're looking at the flat numbers, why bother? Look at the glyphs for them both: Glyph of Fireball / Glyph of Frostfire Bolt. If you've learned anything as a mage, then you must have learned that a flat damage increase is almost always better than a crit bonus. Frostfire's glyph has that AND it adds back your DOT portion. On top of that the DOT stacks 3 times. Fireball's 5% crit glyph is all well and good if you're determined to use that spell instead, but that's 5% crit CHANCE and that doesn't add up to a whole lot when it comes down to consistency, plus the only DOT you'll get out of Fireball is from a talent that also works with Frostfire Bolt, so with the second spell, you're getting twice the punch for the same price.

So I changed out my glyphs and hit up the targeting dummies again. With a complete exchange of Frostfire bolt for Fireball, I saw an easy 1.5k DPS increase, putting Fire just below Frost for my DPS and both of them right around Arcane. Can I tell you how happy I was? I was really happy. One of my biggest complaints with the mage specs that more often than not lately, one spec was way ahead of the others and a clear choice. I like these new murky waters with 3 viable choices and forgiveness for playing a little different. You can honestly play what you like now, instead of what everyone else tells you is best and still do decent damage.

In short, here's how Fire adds up for me:

Spec : 2/31/3 - You can sub in Improved Flamestrike for Improved Scorch if you like. I just like having the free spell for when my mana's low and I'm having to move.
Single Target Priority System : 1) Keep Living Bomb active on your target, avoiding clipping the explosion on the end if you can, but clipping a little damage is better than leaving time where the debuff isn't on your target. 2) Pyroblast with Hot Streak Procs. 3) Fireblast with Impact Procs (This is technically optional if you didn't take the Impact talent or don't have anything to splash damage onto.) 4) Frostfire Bolt is your primary nuke. 5) Scorch if you're low on mana or moving (This requires the talents Firestarter and Improved Scorch.) With this system you want to use Combustion when you have the most DOTs active and I like to use Mirrors right afterwards for a little extra umph.
AOE Priority System : 1) Keep Living Bomb on as many targets as possible. 2) Dragon's Breath and Blast Wave, doesn't matter which first, but use them on cooldown. 3) Flamestrike in the middle of the fray to your heart's content. 4) If you get a Hot Streak or Impact Proc, use it! They both have built in splash damage.
Glyphs : Prime - Living Bomb, Pyroblast and Mage Armor; Major - Frostfire, Mirror Image, and Molten Armor (You can sub in Dragon's Breath or Blast Wave for Mirror Image if you like, but I honestly think it's the better choice); Minor - Whatever floats your boat.

My Love Affair with Frost

If you've known me for a while, you know I love Frost a great deal. Back in Vanilla WoW, all the dungeons seemed to be fire damage based, so Frost was the natural choice. On top of that, it has always been an excellent choice for PVP and soloing because of the survivability, it's great for kiting, and we got a pet, even if it was temporary till recently. I think it's safe to say every mage has their favorite spec and Frost is mine. I'm so thrilled it's back up to par with the others, I'm loyaly devoted to proving it's worth. Still people sneer at Frost because Arcane and Fire have potential. But anyone who's been it's long time fan can tell you that it is a lot of fun and very versatile.

And now the greatest news of all: You can name your water elemental!

I kid you not. There's a command in game that lets you give your wet buddy a clever moniker to impress all your friends and enemies. That's right, warlocks. Attached you may be to your stupid demon names, but we get to CHOOSE what we want to call our side-kicks. The command is /run PetRename("NAMEHERE"). PROCEED WITH CAUTION however: whatever you decide to replace NAMEHERE with is permanent as of the current game build. Perhaps later they'll put in a scroll for us to use like they did for hunters to rename, but there's no way to do it now. In order to protect the innocent, I won't be revealing my name.

Allow me to deviate a moment from topic and give Blizzard some love. As my readers know, I was not pleased with the initial descriptions of the spells and changes to mages for Cataclysm and I am not afraid to admit I'm still a little disappointed that they gave us a copied spell from Shaman so everyone would stop whining that shaman are required to raid. However, with the majority of the changes implemented, I applaud what Blizzard has done so far: They made mages versatile but similar enough between the specs that they all feel like the same class. Each of the specs has a proc spell, they're all kiting accessible, you can change between them at your leisure and still pick your favorite way of doing things. Bravo Blizzard. My faith in the future of the mage class is restored.

Back to Frost. Since Blizzard has thrown static rotations out the window (Hurray!), frost mages work off a priority system. The DPS is comparable to that of the other two specs and in some situations even better. Besides that, mana is not nearly as much of a problem as it is for the other two, so you can toss Mage Armor off your bar for now. Make a note that when you're playing with Frost on a dummy, the DPS is going to look a lot lower than it is? Why? Because our big nuke, Deep Freeze, does not give accurate damage on a dummy to that of a boss. Those dummies are susceptible to stuns so the big burst from the spell doesn't hit. In raids, fully buffed, I get 45-50k hits on bosses in my ICC gear. If that's not going to boost your DPS, I don't know what is. Here's Frost at a glance:

Spec : 3/2/31 in Frost Master of Elements isn't an essential talent, but right now Frostfire Orb isn't a good talent since you don't have the spell yet. Those two points are flexible.
Single Target Priority System : 1) Deep Freeze when the cooldown is up and you have a Frozen Target to hit or a Fingers of Frost proc. 2) Frostfire Bolt for Brain Freeze procs, even if you have a Fingers of Frost proc or a frozen target - the extra damage is applied to Frostfire Bolt now! 3) Ice Lance for frozen targets or FOF procs. 4) Frostbolt is still your primary nuke in Frost. 5) Ice Lance and Cone of Cold for movement, depending on your range from target. Like we always did before, it's best to use your Icy Veins and Mirror Images in the very start of the fight so you don't lose a global from using the mirrors and to get that really nice burst right at the start along with the threat spread from Mirrors. Now if you find you're not getting FOF procs, often, how do you get Frozen targets? Easy, use your Water Elemental's Freeze right at the start for that initial Deep Freeze blast and another proc to boot. You should be using this spell on cooldown during your proc downtime as it gives you 2 free procs. Make sure you move it to a keybind for easy access as it's still a dropped AOE spell like it was before. Make sure you have your Water Elemental active and he's spamming his Water bolt for extra damage. Also, DON'T FORGET COLD SNAP. It resets the cooldown of ALL your frost spells, Icy Veins and Deep Freeze included. If there's a damage aura, it's always a good idea to have Ice Barrier up too.
AOE Priority System : Blizzard. You can toss in a Frost Nova, Freeze, or Cone of Cold if you feel like it or need to put some distance between yourself and the bad guys, but you'll do the most damage from just spamming Blizzard.
Glyphs : Prime - Deep Freeze, Ice Lance, Cone of Cold; Major - Frostbolt, Molten Armor, and Frost Nova or Ice Barrier; Minor - Mage's Choice.

Mischief: ARGH 4.01 Mage Inaccuracies, Additional Information, and Edits!

noreply@blogger.com (Gypsy) — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 00:25:00 +0000

So, the patch released Tuesday, as everyone expected and mages have already rejoiced and been nerfed because Blizzard tweeked us a teeny bit too high in DPS. The day the patch hit, my guild was running randoms to try out their new specs and we came across an arcane mage doing 14k sustained DPS in Violet Hold, without running cooldowns constantly. That was a bit insane since hunters are now struggling to reach the 5 and 6k mark with their nerfs, though I'm still sure they'll get a buff, like the whiny ret paladins and DKs.

However, upon opening up my talent trees and playing with specs, glyphs and reforging, I've found some of the information given pre-patch was not accurate. So here's where I correct all that.

We'll start with reforging since that's my latest post. I love reforging. It's so fun to get rid of useless stuff on my gear and make it something cool. The good news is that I was wrong about spirit - if you pick up a piece with spirit on it, you can reforge it to something more useful, like hit or haste or mastery. However, that doesn't mean you should be scooping up healer gear with spirit right and left. That's a good way to put yourself on the shit-list. If you do have some gear with spirit already, then you can take 40% of it off and put it somewhere nicer. The problem I'm finding is that with hit being capped at good'ole 17% with no talents to reduce, there's not much to reforge. You can take some crit off your gear, but I wouldn't recommend removing it all in place of mastery. Right now mastery isn't as significant as it will be in cataclysm, and I wouldn't be very surprised if it was broken. I actually reforged all my crit into hit and mastery to test how good it was and had a drop in DPS because I wasn't ever getting the big numbers. Now this will likely be different in a raid setting where you have a number of buffs to help you out and they're significantly more widespread than before, so you don't need as many classes to get what you want. My recommendation would be to play around with your numbers a bit, so long as you have the cash.

Now glyphs are a tougher subject. Some of the glyphs labeled as prime, major, or minor didn't end up as those for release:

Glyph of Molten Armor, Arcane Missles, Arcane Barrage and Fireball are major, not Prime. This leaves Arcane mages with one good choice, Arcane Blast. Pretty much every spec will be using Mage Armor, except Frost, who could take Cone of Cold instead (along with deep freeze and Ice Lance).
Glyph of Arcane Power resets GLOBAL cooldown, not cooldown completely, making it not as exciting of a choice as it was before. I'd go so far as to say take Missiles, Barrage, and Molten Armor in Arcane before taking Arcane Power.
Glyph of Mirror Image is a major glyph not a minor. This tells me that it's not just a cosmetic change and that hopefully your damage buffs in Arcane/Fire will apply, making this a good glyph.
Glyph of Armors doesn't exist yet in the game. No scribe can make it, so save yourself the time looking for it and put something else in it's place.

Keep in mind that gems have changed as well, but things are basically the same.

Your meta in ANY spec should still be a Chaotic Skyflare Diamond.
Instead of the Purified Dreadstones we were using pre patch to fill our 2 blue gem requirement, you want Veiled Dreadstones. Since hit is blue, this helps fill the larger requirement you have to get to 17% without talents so you don't have to reforge something that may be more useful or get more hit from gear. Remember that spirit is now not your friend. Get rid of it asap. We don't even get mana regen benefits from it, and certainly not the crit we were pulling off it before.
As Spell Power has now been wiped off the face of Azeroth (except on weapons, in enchants, and with gem slot bonuses), your new #1 thing to gem is pure Intellect which comes from Brilliant Cardinal Rubies. All of your Runed Cardinal Rubies were changed over for you in the patch. You can also use Reckless Ametrines (Blizzard switched them over for you too!) in yellow slots for slot bonuses in gear, but Brilliant Cardinal Rubies are still the preferred method of gemming.

I know a lot of people were scared of mana regen when the patch was eminent, but I can honestly say it's not that bad at this point. You have the choice to use a glyphed Mage Armor if you find yourself running behind, but I'd still say that Molten Armor is your preferred Armor. The only instance where I'd really throw in Mage armor is if you were running out of cooldowns to regenerate your mana in a long fight.

Now since the patch has hit, I've focused on two of the 3 specs. Fire is my next endeavor, but I have to say, I really love Frost and Arcane is so powerful, it's going to be hard to spec out of it. The thing to remember with frost is that since it's based off procs now, there's a priority system, rather than an actual rotation. You get a free perma-elemental (Blizzard needs to let us name them!) and since the glyph went byebye, we get to keep Freeze. On top of that, there's a talent that gives you Fingers of Frost procs when you use said spell. Fingers of Frost is one of the two procs you should be watching for when you're casting. I usually start a boss fight off by dropping my mirrors, blowing Icy Veins, and having my elemental freeze the target, giving me two procs to start out with. Immediately after you want to hit your Deep Freeze for some nice burst and then your Ice Lance to use the second stack of the proc. When you have no procs up, you're going to be spamming Frostbolt, but keep an eye on the cooldown of your elemental's Freeze and your own Frost Nova and Cone of Cold. (Note that Cone of Cold and Frost Nova will only give you one stack of FoF, but are still useful.) When you have procs up, your priority is thus: Deep Freeze whenever off cooldown and available through procs, Frostfire Bolt when Brain Freeze is up, including if you have a proc of FoF since it gains the benefits, and Ice Lance last for FoF procs. Otherwise, just keep throwing frostbolts at them and keep an eye out for procs.

In Arcane, you're basically down to one button, which is incredibly depressing. The (de)buff from Arcane Blast no longer benefits any spells other than AB itself, so you'll find yourself spamming a single button from now on, save for the occasional missile proc and maybe an Arcane Barrage when you're moving. The big new thing about Arcane is that you have to keep an eye on your mana to maximize your DPS. Besides that there's a bunch of little fun ways to get some extra spell power, requiring a little more utility from the mage. The talent Invocation comes to mind, requiring you to interrupt someone's spell cast to get an extra boost of damage. Set yourself up a /stopcast /cast Counterspell macro for efficient and quick use of Counterspell. Also, belfs like myself get extra benefit from interrupting with Arcane Torrent, and on top of that it gives us a little mana back. Incanter's Absorption is also more interesting with the combined power of Mage Wards covering all 3 trees of damage for mages. It's a little more limited than it was before it was nerfed, but overall, I feel it's an improvement from post-nerf. I never ever use mana shield for IA, because if you're getting hit with Mana Shield up, you're losing mana and losing DPS. This is a personal preference and other mages may feel differently. The last little tidbit for extra power is Improved Mana Gem. I highly recommend taking this talent and working it into your cooldowns. I have it set up so that for boss fights, I stop by dropping Mirrors and blowing Arcane Power, cast a couple ABs then add the extra damage from a mana gem use to my already increased damage. There are a number of talents in the arcane tree that are situational, but fun; my favorite is Improved Blink. (Blinkzooooooooooom!) Aside from the fun stuff, how do you keep your mana up? I use a combination of all the cooldowns I have: Mana Gem, Evocation, Arcane Torrent, and Mana Potions. If you have a druid friend who's not suffering low mana, maybe he'll toss you an innervate. If he/she has the glyph, they get some mana back too. So I suppose the big questions lies where you throw in your arcane missiles. This is a tricky question, indeed. I've found myself using it in heroics to finish off the last bit of a mob. On boss fights, I use it right before I have to pop Evocation since with t10 2 set it gives you a nice haste boost. It's free and costs you no mana, so use it before switching targets or right after you end up on a new target for a little more DPS. It's also useful right after movement that made your AB stacks drop.

At some point in the future I'll pick up Fire and try and give you guys some good solid info on that. Right now the top two specs are Fire and Arcane, as they have been for a while, but Frost really isn't that far behind. The thing I really love about Frost is that it's fun and you can survive through almost anything. I think that's going to become a heck of a lot more important come Cataclysm, and keep in mind anything could change at this point. Happy Maging!

Magic: Reforging and 4.01

noreply@blogger.com (Gypsy) — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 23:43:00 +0000

So it's official. Tomorrow is the day that the big patch of change hits the server and everyone is going to be freaking out with all the new things to try. For you mages, I've done my best to cover the specs and glyphs as I see them. Yet, we get a new toy to play with to tweek our gear beyond enchanting and gemming. This is going to make it interesting for gear choices. There are a few things to note:

Only secondary stats can be changed, meaning no switchin up the base attributes like intellect or stamina.
You can only switch one thing, and it can't be changed to something that the item does not already have, so if you have hit on the piece you're changing, you can't put more hit from another stat.
There's a fixed amount decreased from the initial stat and added to the new stat you're applying, based on a flat 40%.
The item you're stat changing has to be ilvl 200 or above.

As a mage, if you have a piece of gear with spirit on it, then you're out of luck - you can't change spirit to anything useful and with the change to Molten Armor, Spirit is utterly useless for us. Crit will be based of Int and flat crit rating now. So where do we put our stats?

With the changes to talents and the removal of ALL our hit talents, you're going to find yourself in need of help there most likely, especially if you're arcane or frost. You'll find yourself with the choice of gemming hit (which is now blue btw), or reforging hit from other stats (my first choice would be crit in most cases). Depending on the amount you're reforging, you should take a look at the amount you'd be getting from the gem or from the reforge and compare it to what you'll need, especially in the case of hit. I'll even go so far to say that being a tiny bit under hit cap isn't so bad, especially if you regularly run with a boomkin or a shadow priest (or a draenei). Keep in mind that you'll also be able to forge in the valuable Mastery stat once this patch goes in, which will give you a number of other bonuses based on your spec. Until Cataclysm and the new professions hit, this is apparently the only way to acquire the stat, since none of the gear will likely come with it pre-forging. (From the look of the beta info that's out, Fractured will be the name for Mastery gems instead of armor pen, which is going away, and they will be red.)

So if you don't need hit, what do your change your stats to? Well, intellect is replacing spellpower, but it's more than likely your gear is going to have that on it anyway, so that's not going to be an option. Most spell casters have a haste soft cap to reach for, but it's more ambiguous with mages - it's very unlikely you'll reduce your arcane blast all the way down to a second, so fairly often haste is a stat of slightly less or equal value to spell power (Int in the case of cata) and is a good choice if your piece does not already have any. Crit doesn't scale as well with arcane as it does with fire and frost, but it's still better than being over hit cap and isn't a bad addition to the pool. If your gear already has all these stats, you can just as easily add some mastery for those yummy bonuses we discussed.

For the shaman, I suspect all our gear is going to have a slap of spirit on it, and we'll probably rarely see another piece with hit, with the exception of elemental tier gear for the set bonuses. On one hand, this is great because that's only one set of gear we'll need when we change specs! On the other hand, elemental and restoration don't always stack the same things. While haste is an excellent stat for both specs, the soft cap is different between them and elemental CAN still benefit from being over cap. However, with elemental, you still want spellpower, now intellect, over haste. This deals more with gemming than reforging or enchanting, but it's certainly something to pay attention to if you're sharing gear. With all the Mp5 changing to Spirit when the stats change over, I suspect elemental shaman will find themselves drowning in hit, so that'll be the go-to stat for reforging if you have it anywhere on your gear as a secondary stat. Please not that spirit cannot be reforged. You're stuck with it. Like mages, intellect and haste are the top two stats once cap is reached and crit comes in behind.

By no means am I saying to take mastery last after all the other stats; in fact, due to the bonuses, it'll probably be the first thing you put on your gear once the patch drops since there's no other source. Since all the bonuses are increased by a percentage, there will likely be a mastery cap, though it'll be pretty high I imagine.

When you get a chance to reforge, play with the stats a little. It costs the amount you could sell the item for to change it, each time. However, if you screw up and decide you don't like what you did even after it's done, you can restore the item to it's original unforged stats for free.

Magic: Mage Glyphs in 4.0

noreply@blogger.com (Gypsy) — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 22:30:00 +0000

With 4.0 around the corner, a number of changes are going to hit us in the behind, causing us to reconsider how we play the game. With the new glyph system included in the changes, mages have a number of new things to consider to get our stuff back in order and get used to the changes before cataclysm. With the new system, once you buy a glyph you have it available forever and can switch back and forth between them freely. Sure this is going to put a big dent in the pocket of the inscriptionists, but to be honest, how often did you flip glyphs around as a mage anyway? Windsoar has posted a lovely compilation of all the new glyphs come 4.0 on her blog. If you use the nice little table of contents she has on the top, you can skip down and peruse the mage glyphs.

Arcane

Looking at the different glyphs available , there seem to be some obvious choices in my mind as which to take for each spec. Some are a little more obscure than others, but here are my thoughts on Arcane:

Prime Glyphs: There are 5 viable prime glyphs for this spec, 2 of which I would consider the most effective for a flat dps increase and 3 that are more or less a personal choice. The two I would say are best choices are Glyph of Arcane Blast and Glyph of Arcane Missiles. With the changes to Arcane Blast's damage increase only applying to the spell itself and not others in the tree, your rotation will change slightly to include more Blast spamming than the 4 stacks and missile proc we were doing before. I imagine it won't change that much as spamming Arcane Blast is a good way to run out of mana fast, so you'll want those missiles in there periodically to slow your mana drain. This is where the second glyph comes in, increasing the crit chance of those missiles. This goes hand in hand with the talents Master of Elements and Piercing Ice, not to mention Focus Magic. Glyph of Arcane Barrage is a rather lack luster damage increase to a rarely used spell. Should it come into play more in the rotation, it might be useful, but I don't suspect it will. Glyph of Mage Armor and Glyph of Molten Armor are the last two glyphs that would benefit this spec. The only real reason to take the Mage Armor regen increase is if you're burning through mana quicker than you can use your cooldowns to regain it. Glyph of Molten armor is going to give you a better flat DPS increase.
Major Glyphs: The only real essential glyph I can see in this list is Glyph of Arcane Power. This glyph is a huge help for cooldown management. Currently when an arcane mage starts a boss fight or is looking for burst in PVP, they use Mirror Image, Arcane Power, and Icy Veins all at the same time. With the talent changes coming in 4.0, Icy Veins will be a purely frost talent and will be removed from our cooldown buttons leaving only Mirror Image and Arcane Power. I suspect our cooldown management will change so that instead of blowing everything at once, we'll start using Mirror Image through it's duration and then hitting Arcane Power and using it again, similar to how Marksman hunters use their readiness ability to maximize their Quick Shots. Following the first use of these cooldowns, I suspect we'll either work off the 2 min cooldown of Arcane Power or repeat the process after the 3 min cooldown of Mirror Image is up. The reduced cooldown to Blink and Mana Shield are nice perks, but not quite as useful for PVE. Now we find ourselves with two more slots for major glyphs and a few available choices for the spec, all of them seem rather a personal choice to me. Glyph of Blink basically gives you a larger movement range and isn't a DPS increase at all, making it fairly useless. Glyph of Evocation turns your big mana regen mechanic into a heal as well, which is frankly more useful in soloing and PVP than in a raiding or group environment as ideally, the tank is the one taking the damage and not the mage. Glyph of Frost Nova gives you a bit more damage on a spell that's not a regular part of our rotation and would be used only in emergency situations. Glyph of Ice Block might be useful in emergency situations as well, just in case you happen to pull aggro or your CC breaks. Should that be the case, it might be a good choice in conjunction with Glyph of Frost Nova. Glyph of Invisibility gives you a flat movement speed increase while invisible, making it moderately useful for aggro dump situations when you're standing in fire. Glyph of Mana Shield decreases the cooldown on a spell I find myself rarely using in PVE group/raid situations, so might be better for soloing or PVP, unless you find yourself using it a lot for Incanter's Absorption. Glyph of Polymorph is going to be useful in dungeons where we'll actually have to CC again for a change... now when that stupid rogue poisons your sheep because he's tab targeting and not paying attention, you can re-sheep and not worry about it. Lastly we have Glyph of Slow, which increases the range of Slow so that it's equal to that of our Arcane Blast, meaning if we're going to apply it to something to kite, we don't have to move in any further. With Nether Vortex, this may or may not be necessary, but that remains to be seen.
Minor Glyphs: As before, the minor glyphs are only there for small changes that don't really do anything for your damage. This remains the same after the change. They're all based on personal preference. Glyph of Arcane Brilliance and Glyph of Conjuring decrease mana costs in generally out of combat situations. Glyph of Armors saves you having to recast your armors that often, though I prefer to leave mine on the same timer as Focus Magic so I can keep an eye on it's up time as well. Glyph of Mirror Image may actually prove rather useful in PVE if the damage bonuses from your particular tree apply to those mirrors. Otherwise it'll just make you harder to be found in PVP. Glyph of Slow Fall removes the reagent requirement for the spell and Glyph of the Monkey and Penguin affect the appearance of your Polymorph.

Frost

Prime Glyphs: There are 4 obvious choices for these glyphs that increase the damage of major part of the new frost rotation which consists of Frostbolt spam, Fingers of Frost procs with Deep Freeze and Ice Lance, and Brain Freeze procs with Frostfire Bolt. Any of the following choices is a good one as far as I'm concerned and you can pick any of the 3: Glyph of Deep Freeze, Glyph of Frost Bolt, Glyph of Frostfire, and Glyph of Ice Lance. Glyph of Cone of Cold might be considered as well, but due to it's very small range, I don't see it being that useful. Glyph of Mage Armor and Molten Armor are also available, but not optimal choices.
Major Glyphs: Glyph of Frost Nova is the big glyph you want here. Frost Nova is going to be a big part of the rotation to maximize Deep Freeze procs along with your Perma-elemental's Freeze and Fingers of Frost. While the range makes it less desirable to use, it's still a part of maximizing your dps in most situations. Glyph of Ice Block might also be useful for aggro dumps. Glyph of Ice Barrier might also be useful if there's a damage aura present, but also in PVP. Glyph of Icy Veins also has limited usefulness. The remaining glyphs that apply to frost (Glyph of Blink, Evocation, Invisibility, and Polymorph) are all situation and limited in their usefulness. I would consider them only if none of the others proved useful.
Minor Glyphs: See Arcane.

Fire

Prime Glyphs: The big glyphs to take in this tree are Glyph of Fireball, Pyroblast, and Living Bomb. All three of these are going to be regularly used in your rotation and the flat damage increase is a big plus. The two armor glyphs previously mentioned could be used as well, but I doubt they'd be quite as useful.
Major Glyphs: Unlike Frost and Arcane, there's no real obvious must-have glyph here, except perhaps Glyph of Dragon's Breath for AOE situations. Glyph of Blast Wave is more or less for PVP or kiting purposes, but certainly not essential. The rest of the glyphs are again situational.
Minor Glyphs: See Arcane again.

I'm looking forward to 4.0 hitting the live servers. I took some time to test it on the PTR in all three specs and I have to say I'm intrigued about the changes. I'm also very pleased that Blizzard has tried to make all 3 specs viable for mages in all situations, though I know we'll see some obvious forerunners on the DPS front. See you in 4.0!

Do You Know... What It Feels Like... For a Girl... In This Virtual World...

noreply@blogger.com (Gypsy) — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 15:28:00 +0000

Ok, so I thought up the title in the shower when I was washing my hair... and belting Madonna. Sue me if you don't like it. Otherwise, sing along with me, ladies.

There have been a number of good Female Gamer 101 posts from other bloggers in the past and a lot of the blogs I read myself are written by other real life girls. While we're a minority still in the gaming community, in WoW, we're holding our own and closing the gap. According to THIS reliable source, 1 in 5 gamers subscribed to WoW are female. 20% isn't a bad number when you consider how many people are subscribed in total to the World of Warcraft and how the percentage must stand in other games. I think one of the big things WoW has going for it in this aspect is how it appeals to a number of different types of people across a broad band of cultures and financial levels. Probably why the devs sit on gold thrones in the Blizzard office building.

With Cataclysm coming out, I expect we'll see an influx of new people interested in the content, especially with furry cute worgen and short wily goblins coming in as the new races. With the grind to 85 having been made more accessible, I suspect more people who aren't power gamers will trickle in along with those who like the end game like myself. A good portion of them will probably be female.

While I know a mix of genders read my blog, as a member of the female persuasion, I feel the need to inform the males on a bit of etiquette related to dealing with the fairer sex in the game. And in all my experience with MMOs dating back to EQ when it was ugly and blocky, I feel that I can summarize the concept in a single rule:

FEMALE GAMERS DO NOT WANT TO BE TREATED DIFFERENTLY.

Take a second and read that over again.

Now let it sink in a little bit.

If you're asking yourself, "Why would Gypsy say this?" then I will be happy to explain.

If another man asks me to get off the game and go back to the kitchen, I will use my amazing telekenetic astral projection Jedi powers to reach through the internet and strangle them. Now, take into consideration that the guild my raiding main is in is a lot different than the guild my other characters are in. Two completely different guilds and I can tell you I've had a person in both make a chauvinist comment to me at one point or another. Generally, I just brush it off. The guys in my raiding guild are particularly bad about this as they have the "phrat boy gamer" mentality: it's ok to be drunk or high and calling things fail is hilarious. I admit I've done my fair share of joining in to the teasing and I know they don't mean anything serious by it. Sometimes I find it a little amusing. I try to take the power away from them and make fun of myself first before they can start into it and that usually puts a damper on their humor. Some days it's a bit much though, and I have to stop and tell myself if they didn't respect me as a gamer, I wouldn't be in their guild. There are only 2 other active females in the guild and the pair of them seemed to have risen above it as well; but it is a bit unsettling when one of your non-raiding guildies gets on Vent during a raid and starts making those comments to you when you're trying to concentrate. I know that if I lose it with them while they're doing it, I'll lose a little bit of that respect with them, and that's probably not ok, but that's how it is. So I endure with a chip on my shoulder and things are ok again.

In my other guild, there's actually a large majority of female players and due to the type of guild it is, there are strict rules about conduct in guild chat as well as between guild members. I know that if someone flat out said something completely sexist to me, be it in guild chat or whispers, I could get them in a hell of a lot of trouble, and thankfully no one's crossed that line. But it's the little things. I did some sporadic raids with a group in that guild for a while till I broke down in tears right before a Hallion pull I was off tanking and had to leave the group. It wasn't WoW related at all that made me lose it. It was completely real life stuff and sometimes it hits you right when you're about to stick your axe in the side of a dragon. While the few other females (and one guy in particular) in the group were supportive and told me it was ok over vent, the boys were a bit stunned, I think. Granted, there's only so much you can do to comfort someone over the internet when you had no idea stuff was going on with them and they're blubbering into their mic, I honestly believe I lost some face with them. I haven't been invited back to raid with that bunch since; though that may be related to some personality clashes with a few of the people involved.

The problem in this situation is that I think they suspect it may happen again. I honestly do my best to keep it pro when I'm raiding, but everyone has their breaking point. I've witnessed guys losing it in a raid and although their reaction is usually angry yelling instead of tears, they get invited back. So I have to ask myself, was part of it because I'm a girl? If I'd had something different between my legs, and yelled instead of crying, would it have been treated differently in the aftermath?

Because of the difference in the way I'm treated when a male gamer finds out I'm female (Asshole whispers: Hey r u hawt? pics plz) I walk around with a big chip on my shoulder and the stubborn ambition to prove that I'm just as good as any guy at any role in this game, if not better. And to be honest, the gender doesn't decide your skill in the game at all: I've seen some TERRIBLE male gamers of all ages and discriminations. I've also seen some VERY TALENTED female gamers leaving the boys behind on the DPS charts.

On a last note completely unrelated to WoW, October is National Breast Cancer Awareness month. This disease has affected a number of people in my family and is a cause very close to my heart. Ladies, take a little time this month to remind yourself how to do a proper breast exam, no matter your age. If you're at the age when Mammograms are required, sit down and try and remember when your last one was; if you're due for another, get on the phone and schedule it. Remind your family, friends, and co-workers to do the same. The key to beating this is prevention and early detection.

And remember, boys, that men can get this too. If you have a strong family history, ask your doctor what you need to do to stay ahead of it and remind your wives, girlfriends, mothers, and sisters to get themselves checked out annually.

Mischief: The BOA Debate

noreply@blogger.com (Gypsy) — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 19:49:00 +0000

I'm a regular reader at Fel Concentration and love Poneria as she is my unofficial official arch nemesis warlock person. (GO MAGES!) And apparently she's in the middle of a debate about BOAs with another blogger about the merits and flaws of the items in game. I thought I'd offer my own humble opinion. (Yes, mages can be humble.)

When BOAs first came out, I was excited. I had my first 80 and plans for another. I still think they're a great idea, although not necessary. Some things to note about me: I have 4 80s. All of them are raid geared to a point that they can perform decently in ICC, 2 also with off specs that perform in ICC. I LOVE end game. I love raiding and purpz and min maxing and high dps and Pew pew. I hate questing in old world and playing Horde makes that worse. The Barrens is the bane of my existence. The last character I leveled to 80 was leveled almost entirely in the RDF system, with quests related to dungeons up until 70 where I did a daily for my badges and did streamlined quests in the first couple zones of NR. I have exactly 0 characters with lore master. 2 have explorer because of the holiday crap. My main raiding character can't help with summons outside ICC because she hasn't done the quests.

So I guess what I'm saying is that I did the journey from one to 80 4 times, and the same from one to 60 several other times. It doesn't hold the thrill for me any more. So BOAs are my best friend. I get to 80 and I replace those suckers as fast as I can in dungeons and quests. Do I think BOAs keep you from learning to play your character properly? No. I think people can level to 80 with BOAs and without BOAs and not learn how to play their character properly. Please note that my "properly" is that the player understands the mechanics behind the abilities they are given and can perform their role in a way that does not affect the roles of another player. IE a hunter using distracting shot because it's extra DPS, despite pulling aggro off the tank is not a good player. Or a Resto shaman putting earth shield on themselves so they can concentrate on healing the others, despite taking little to no damage. Or a mage putting 71 points in the fire tree. Or a DK tank trying to tank in Blood Presence because "lol it dus mor damage and I heal myslf so u dont have 2". Make no mistake, I have seen all of these people. Most of them at level 80. Using a BOA will not save you from having to read the tooltip. I'm not saying you have to minmax your gear from level 1 on to be a good player, but yes, I do require some basic understanding of your class and role.

So what about ruining your experience? Just how many times do you have to experience Scarlet Monestary to make that quota? In the BOAs I used on my shaman and leveling her on the RDF, I must have killed the bosses in the wings of SM at least 30 times. That's more than enough Scarlet Crusade for my tastes.

So besides that, a lot of the gear dropped in old world and BC dungeons and quests is like "WTF why is there agility on my cloth?!" Sure you can make the best out of it, and you likely will with only a few current available slots for BOA gear. I haven't gotten myself a ring yet (stupidfishing), but my collection includes the PVE staff, healy hammer, and 2-handed axe, the PVP 1-handed sword, mail caster shoulders and chest, cloth shoulders and chest, and plate shoulders and chest. I will quite possibly be purchasing leather melee and caster gear, as well as a weapon appropriate for a druid. I also have both trinkets. The nice thing about the RDF system is that the reward bags you get once a dungeon give you a piece of loot that's hopefully appropriate for your class. They also have made the gear with viable combos so there's no agility on your cloth. Blizzard even went so far as to update some of the gear in old world so it wasn't quite so stupid. Still, it's one less slot you have to worry about, and even then sometimes you might find something better, so you unequip it for now and put it back in later so you don't have to struggle to find something to fit that slot when the piece you have their is 10 levels behind.

They save you money too, if you think about it. Often the good stuff that's crafted or BOE is up on the AH for ridiculous prices. Twink ecomonies still exist. So you can filter that money instead into trade skills.

Speaking of trade skills, sure they get behind. I didn't get my skinning and leatherworking for my shaman up to Northrend levels until after she was 80. It interrupted my fluidity with trade skills, but getting to 80 faster meant more time later to catch up when I was doing other things. Plus I have some great friends that pitched in to help. And I also hate leather working and am fairly sure the Devil had his hand in it. I can remember when I was leveling before BOAs and I still got ahead of my trade skills unless I made a conscious effort to stop and gather and combine. But at least I have cash to use on them this time around!

I wouldn't mind if they made BOAs a little easier to handle. I read somewhere a while back that you could mail BOAs across factions, which is fabulous, but I'm not sure I believe it and I haven't had the guts to test it yet.

I'm not going to be a snot and say that if you don't use BOAs you're a terrible player, because we were all there once. It's a personal choice. You don't have to like it, and it's not about being better than people who don't use or have the option. It's about getting to 80 faster so you can do other things.

Rocket Science: 4.0 Builds for Mages

noreply@blogger.com (Gypsy) — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 09:12:00 +0000

With Cataclysm looming on the horizon Blizzard is preparing by putting out a major content patch before the actual release. They're still shooting for November 2nd by the looks of it, and with the 4.0 patch on the PTR, we'll be seeing the new talent changes soon. A number of websites including Wowhead and MMO Champion have the talent trees available on their databases so you can play around with builds as you like, which I've been doing, considering my high nerd levels. I have to say I have high hopes for all three specs come release, and I'm especially thrilled to see that Frost is making a bit of a comeback. All the initial info was a bit scary for mages as we didn't know how the heck we were going to get mana back since they're turning spirit off for us. But as Christian Belt advises in his WoW.com post, don't panic. Things are going to be ok. *patpat*

Frosty Goodness

Seeing as Frost is my favorite spec by far and I have the highest hope for it, let's start there. By choosing this spec for your first 31 points, you get a FREE PERMA ELEMENTAL making us a pet class once again. (Suck it warlocks!) The nice thing about this is that you don't have to glyph and you don't have to lose Freeze and a second Frost Nova that not only stops things in it's tracks, but also sets off your Deep Freeze. Deep Freeze is still part of your main rotation as it was pre-patch, along with Brain Freeze procs and Frostbolt spam. Let's look at the talents for frost in the build I've been playing with:

Early Frost - Thumbs up for this talent. It has a 15 second cooldown, so it's not always a reduced cast time, but that's more of your main damage spell you're casting in any given time, which is always good. More spells = more damage.
Piercing Ice - More crit = more damage = good. No brainer.
Shatter - Same as Piercing Ice. More crit = good. The only difference is that this is dependent on something being frozen, which is what the entire frost rotation is based around.
Ice Floes - Another thumbs up talent, definitely a must. With the damage opportunities from Cone of Cold and Frost Nova being more often, as well as the faster cooldown for Icy Veins, it's definitely a DPS increase.
Improved Cone of Cold - Freeze = good. Another great talent.
Piercing Chill - More chill effects = more possible Fingers of Frost procs, so more damage.
Permafrost - Not gonna put points into this one. Why? Because if we're looking at this from a raiding or grouping point of view, a slower target isn't all that much more useful. This is more or less a PVP talent, especially with the healing aspect.
Ice Shards - Again, chill effects = good. While this build gives you a new fun AOE to play with, Blizzard and Flame Orb can be used at the same time since Flame Orb isn't channeled. A little extra room to use Ice Lance is good too, as it's your go-to spell when Deep Freeze is on cooldown.
Icy Veins - Take it. Haste = good.
Fingers of Frost - This talent is the base of your entire Frost build. It's necessary to make the whole rotation work. Take it.
Improved Freeze - Absolutely a DPS increase. With Freeze back in the Water Elemental's arsenal, 2 extra Fingers of Frost charges is huge, especially if you can manage to figure this into your rotation.
Enduring Winter - Perhaps not the most necessary of talents, but it gives the raid replenishment and decreases the mana you burn through, so it's a good talent overall. You don't necessarily need all 3 points here.
Cold Snap - Take this one. It resets all your frost cooldowns, including Icy Veins, Deep Freeze, and Frost Nova, allowing you to do more burst damage more often.
Brain Freeze - This is a great talent. You get a 15% chance to get a free instant Frostfire bolt which applies a DOT to the target and with this talent also gets the benefit of Fingers of Frost.
Shattered Barrier - This one I'm not sure about. Does it apply when drops or just if it's destroyed by a hostile? If we're not talking PVP and this doesn't apply when the shield just fades, then it's a generally useless talent. Your shield should be taking damage unless it's raid wide damage. Even then, are you going to be in range of the boss or whatever you're fighting when it does die? 10 yards is pretty close...
Ice Barrier - While it's not a DPS increase necessarily, it's necessary for Deep Freeze, so you have to take it.
Reactive Barrier - While it would be nice to have a shield trigger when your health gets low, I"m going to have to say this is a PVP talent and not necessary.
Frostfire Orb - So when I heard about our new spells for Cata, I wasn't thrilled, but I am very pleased with this talent. It turns a mostly fire AOE spell into something that's very viable for a frost mage to throw out before they Blizzard. The chill effect is a DPS increase, and the slow is an added bonus.
Deep Freeze - A major part of our rotation, there's a reason this is our 31 point talent. Take it.

The way Blizzard designed the new talent trees, you really can't go past the second tier of the other two trees, so I'm not going to go any further than the first for each tree. The talents that benefit all specs are really the only ones you want to take, as the ones that are more tree specific are not going to do you much good in the wrong tree. I found these to be the most helpful talents:

Master of Elements - Since our mana regen is no longer based off spirit, we need all the help we can get. Crit is a big deal with the Frost build, so this should be a pretty beneficial talent.
Netherwind Presence - Haste = good and this affects all trees.
Arcane Concentration - Again with the mana issues. This gives you a free spell. I don't know that 3 points are necessary, but it's a good idea to put some points in here, especially if you're having mana issues.

Same Ole Arcane

The changes to Arcane aren't quite as world shattering as they seemed with the previews. The rotation is basically the same and it's just as bursty as before, except slightly moreso with the mastery talent. Mana regen is more important in this spec because of the mastery bonus, so we'll have to be more careful with that aspect in order to maximize our damage. Our big special spell is Arcane Barrage which is a bit underwhelming, but it should be still interesting to play. The problem I've found with Arcane is that there's less beneficial talents to put your points into and you'll find yourself putting some points into something that's not entirely useful in order to get your 31 points. Here's the build I threw together and the talents to go with it:

Arcane Concentration - Mana preservation means more increased DPS for longer, so this is a good one.
Improved Counterspell - Clearly a PVP talent with little usefulness in PVE. Not necessary.
Netherwind Presence - Haste = good.
Torment the Weak - With the variety of different slows or snares that are a part of a normal rotation for a number of classes, this talent has an almost 100% up time and is a good choice for your points.
Invocation - While this is probably a PVP spell, it MIGHT be useful occasionally in PVE if you happen to use your counterspell to interrupt something. Not a necessary talent by any means, but if you can figure out how to use it, a nice DPS increase.
Improved Arcane Missiles - More missiles means more damage to the big DPS proc in our rotation. This is a major talent.
Improved Blink - Since we use Blink to get out of fire or other bad AOE, this isn't a terrible talent, but not a necessary one either.
Arcane Flows - This decreases the cooldown on some very important spells to our rotation. A definite must take.
Presence of Mind - Instant cast = good. You can use this for when you're moving or when you want to get a spell off quick. A good talent.
Missile Barrage - Faster Missiles = good.
Prismatic Cloak - This isn't exactly a spectacular talent. It's probably for PVP with the decreased damage and the faster Invis. Not a necessity.
Improved Polymorph - Another PVP talent. Doesn't really have any application in PVE other than when some idiot breaks your polymorph too soon.
Arcane Tactics - Flat Damage Buff. Take it.
Incanter's Absorption - *sigh* Me and this talent go way back. While it's not as cool as it used to be, this talent isn't complete trash. Although I wouldn't use it with Mana Shield since lower mana = lower dps, it may actually be useful with the new Mage Ward. Not a necessary talent, but one that is better than the PVP options.
Improved Arcane Explosion - A little segue here... I had a mage tell me the other day that he used AE for AOE exclusively because it did more damage. Sure it does more damage, but it puts you in melee range increasing your aggro and costs more mana than Blizzard does. Plus we get Flame Orb now! Why the heck would you use this spell?
Arcane Potency - A good talent. Uses two of your previous talents to boost your damage.
Slow - With the changes to Arcane a while ago, I fell in love with this spell. It's not only awesome for PVP, but also has PVE applications with Torment the Weak. On top of that it's required for our 31 point ability. Take it.
Nether Vortex - Free Slow is good! Perhaps not necessary, but it doesn't cost you anything to get a free snare + slow on the target you're already DPSing. Thumbs up.
Focus Magic - With this talent now so high up in the Arcane tree, only Arcane mages will have it now. Arcane mages... and warlocks. Stupid warlocks. Stealing our spell. Still a good one to have, although you'll see less mage daisy chaining.
Improved Mana Gem - A short scaling DPS boost that's very sexy and very useful linked to a mana regen. Take this one!
Arcane Power - Part of our burst cooldowns and definitely a good one to take. More damage is always a good thing, plus they lowered the mana cost!

As with the last spec I discussed, there's a limited amount of points to spend in the other trees, so here's where I put them and why:

Master of Elements - Mana return is always a good thing, especially with the new Arcane.
Piercing Ice - Increase to ALL spells crit percentage. More crit coupled with Master of Elements means more mana return as well as more damage.
Burning Soul - This isn't necessary, but is the most useful talent to put our points into given the lack of usefulness for Arcane mages in the other trees. Less interruption means more DPS in the long run.
Fire Power - While you won't find yourself using Fire spells that often, the application of Flame Orb as an AOE while channeling your Blizzard isn't a bad idea. More damage is more damage.

Burning Your Way to the Top With Fire

While Fire has never been my favorite spec, I suspect that it'll be very popular come Cata, if not sooner. It's up there with Arcane right now in raw DPS when done correctly. I haven't really messed around with it much, but I suspect I will soon enough. Pyroblast isn't a new spell and is their big present for picking that spec on top of a flat DPS increase for all fire effects. The thing about fire is that it's very reactive with no true rotation, and it's becoming even more so in Cata from the look of it. Here's the build I picked and the reasons why to follow as always:

Master of Elements - Crit for mana = good. Again.
Burning Soul - While not necessary, good if there's a lot of raid damage, since you're less likely to be interrupted. Not a bad place to put extra points.
Improved Fire Blast - While Fire Blast isn't necessarily a part of the rotation now, it's instant cast and good to use while moving. Not a terrible talent.
Ignite - A DOT applied with crits. Good talent. Crit is a big deal with fire so take this one!
Fire Power - Flat damage increase on all fire spells plus an exploding Flame orb? Yes please!
Blazing Speed - Usually when something has a movement speed increase, it's a PVP talent. Not necessary, but probably fun!
Impact - An interesting talent. I could see including Fire Blast in the rotation with this talent for AOE purposes. The stun is also nice for PVP. Not necessary, but not a bad talent either.
Cauterize - This talent makes me sure that Blizzard employs a very different type of designer in the mage department. While you may survive a little longer with this talent than you might have already, you better hope you have friends among the healers. PVP talent most likely. Not gonna waste points here. (I KNOW what you're thinking. "Gypsy, but this will keep us alive longer for more dps!" Well if you'd get out of the FIRE in the first place, it wouldn't be a problem would it?)
Blast Wave - Fire gets all the fun AOE spells. This one has a slow attached to it instead of the knock back it used to have, thus pissing off a few less tanks and healers in it's use. Sure why not.
Hot Streak - Free Pyroblast? Oh, hell yes. Take this one.
Improved Scorch - If I'm reading this correctly that means that Scorch is ALWAYS FREE. Meaning no mana cost for a damage spell that puts on a nice debuff? Free is ALWAYS good. Take it.
Molten Shields - So Mage Ward may be cool come Cata, which is fine, but this talent seems pretty "meh" to me. Might be good for PVP if you have Blazing Speed, but otherwise I'd not waste a point here.
Combustion - KABLOOIE! (Ok, I'm a little slap happy from staying up to write this post and that sounded like a cool word to put in a fire mage post. Sue me.) An instant cast fire spell instead of a buffing cooldown like it was before. It does, however, combine all your dots into one big one so that if you time it well, you could get a good amount more DPS from this one. Might be fun to play around with. I'ma take this one.
Improved Hot Streak - A no-brainer really. This one gives you a guaranteed Hot Streak Proc after 2 crits. Once you get your crit rating high enough, you'll be seeing a lot of free pyroblasts and I pity the fool on the other end of your spells.
Firestarter - Assuming you aren't tanking (mages don't usually do that), this is fabulous for PVE. Cast a spell while you're running out of fire!
Improved Flamestrike - So Flamestrike is one of your base AOE spells and 2 points here gives you an instant cast Flamestrike. Plus if you Blastwave, you get a free flamestrike. In my opinion not a necessary talent, but not a bad one either. You can put extra points here.
Dragon's Breath - ANOTHER AOE spell for Fire. Very cool graphic to go with it. Fun for PVP with the disorient, plus it's necessary for our 31 point talent. Definitely going to take it.
Molten Fury - Execute for mages! Hurray! Take this one too.
Pyromaniac - Haste is good but this one has a catch, there has to be 3 targets with your DOTs on them. Not necessary, but a nice on for AOE situations or anything with splash damage.
Critical Mass - This is the talent that makes Fire Mages popular in raids. That crit debuff is nice and while Blizzard's done a nice job of spreading out the buffs among the different classes for Cata, this debuff is applied as part of your rotation. It also increases your AOE damage with Flame Orb and Living Bomb. Definitely a Thumbs Up talent.
Living Bomb - The Fire Mage's 31 point Talent and a regular part of their AOE and single target rotation. Definitely going to take this, but I have to wonder how the DOT part of this spell is affected by Combustion in its new form. Will it still explode at the end or just be a DOT?

As with Frost and Arcane, there are few talents in other trees that are actually good for this spec. The ones I've found to be useful are as follows:

Arcane Concentration - Free spells are good. No mana is bad.
Netherwind Presence - Yay Haste!
Piercing Ice - Crit is also good!

Please make note that I am not actively in the beta or on the PTR testing this stuff out and this is all based on my own opinion. I encourage you to try these talents out for yourself and find the spec that you like best, even if you disagree with me on some things. Just promise me you won't stand in fire? Please?

A Mage's Guide to Icecrown Citadel, Part Four - The Frostwing Halls

noreply@blogger.com (Gypsy) — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 01:16:00 +0000

Last time we covered the Crimson Halls in all it's sparkly vampire glory and although later than I promised, I'm pushing forward to the Frosty area of the citadel's upper spire. Inside THERE BE DRAGONS! Two of them to be precise, and oddly, only one of them is frosty. Which makes you wonder why they didn't call it the Dragonwing Halls. But anyway...

The Frostwing Halls

Now, since I've covered the Valks flying around the upper spire several times in the past, I'm not going to touch on them again. Instead, we'll skip right to the trash pulls that lead up to a little event that gives you a free badge for killing a mini boss. Oddly enough, this boss is no harder than Stinky and Precious and you don't get badges for them... makes you wonder why that could be... But I digress. Once you hit the Upper Spire portal, you're taking a right into the big circle to head to the Frostwing. Waiting at the foot of the stairs leading into the hallway to Valithria are a bunch of good guys facing a bunch of bad guys. The good guys are namely Crok Scourgebane and his Captain buddies. The bad guys come in the form of Ymirjar Battlemaidens, Huntresses, and Warlords all standing in a nice AOEable little bunch. Between the groups of these guys there's also 2 smaller groups consisting of one Deathbringer and one Frostbinder each. The Frostbinders land on the ground and are in the reach of melee. The Deathbringers fly up in the air and pew pew at people from there. They can't really be tanked in the true sense, so usually, the raid leaders will have the ranged focus on the deathbringers while the melee beat up on the Frostbinder. The Frostbinder also summons a group of undead adds that can be easily AOE-ed down.

Once you start fighting the trash here, you start an event in which Sister Svalna, a Val'kyr mini boss, starts launching spears at the Captain NPCs fighting with you down the hall. She does this every couple minutes and kills one of them. It is possible to get through the event with less dying, but I've never seen less than 2 dead. Once you have killed all the trash before her, Crok calls for you to kill her before she calls in reinforcements. She quickly informs him that you have brought her reinforcements and rezzes the crusaders she killed. They'll rush up the stairs behind you and need to be tanked. Svalna herself can be tanked by Crok without any real danger to him dying. You can either have your dps kill her first or the Crusaders. It doesn't make a difference. While she's fighting Crok and your raid, she tosses out spears that impale one of your raid members, stunning them on the ground. They need to be pulled out and can be tossed back at her to do a moderate amount of damage. Once Svalna and her friends are dead, you get a free frost emblem. From the small room where you fight her, you have no choice but to turn right and in front of you lies...

VALITHRIA DREAMWALKER!

This is by far one of my favorite and the most unique encounters in Icecrown Citadel. Valithria is a healing check instead of a DPS check or a gimmick fight. While the healers take the main role in this fight, the DPS is nearly as important. When you first enter the room, you find Valithria the Emerald Dragon lying nearly dead on the floor or the room surrounded by Risen Archmages. If you take a look at the room she's in, you'll notice that there are 2 doors on each side of her, for a total of 4 archways where mobs can spawn and join the event. In 10 man, only the front two doorways are used, but in 25, all 4 are active. Once you kill the Archmages surrounding Valithria, the event begins and five different types of mobs will randomly spawn in the active archways. The archmages do an AOE frostbolt volley that needs to be interrupted or it slows everyone in the raid, the healers who are trying to fly around and get dream bubbles included. They also drop a Mana Void on the ground that's sparkly and white. It burns the mana on anyone with 6 yards of it then explodes, shooting them up in the air. Get away from it if you see it. The volleys can also be interrupted with Counterspell, however mages aren't the most effective at controlling this ability as counterspell has a longer cooldown than some other interrupt mechanics. Best to leave this to the DKs, warriors, rogues, and shaman, but keep your counterspell available in case they need a hand.

The next set of adds to worry about are the Blazing Skeletons. These guys run out in the middle of the room and start doing a channeled AOE spell called Lay Waste that affects everyone in the raid and Valithria doing a lot of damage. They have a moderate amount of health, but do a massive amount of damage in a situation where there's only one raid healer to keep everyone up. These are usually priority one for raids, requiring almost everyone to switch to them when they're up so they die quickly.

Next come the Suppressers. These guys look like geists and run immediately to Valithria, casting suppression on her to decrease the healing she receives. They all usually clump up around her on one side or the other making it easy to AOE them down with their low health.

Blistering Zombies come out one at a time and need to be kited around the room away from the raid. When they approach low health, they cast Acid Burst which causes them to explode doing AOE damage to anyone in their vicinity. It's a lot of damage. While more often than not a hunter is chosen to kite these guys, it can also be done by a mage or a DK. If you as a mage are chosen, make sure to keep the zombie slowed and pull him around the back of the room near the door you came in where there should be a clear path. These guys do respond to healing aggro, so be careful to stay on the top of their aggro table so it doesn't break off and kill your healer.

Gluttonous Abominations are the last type of add that may spawn. For this encounter you only need one tank in 10 man and this is his focus. He'll hold aggro on this guy off to the side while the DPS works him down. They have an AOE frontal cone ability called Gut Spray, so stay away from their front. When they die, Rot Worms spawn from their corpses. These little guys need to be picked up by the tank as they pack a punch with their melee damage. Once he has solid aggro, AOE them dead.

Each raid does this encounter differently, but in my experience, the raid leader will assign priorities or a kill order for the raid members. Pay attention to your assignment and if what you were assigned to kill is dead, use your best judgment to pick a new target and help kill it. Being idle is a good way to lose this encounter. Once the healers have restored Valithria's health to full, she hops to her feet, kills any remaining adds and drops a chest of purpz for your enjoyment.

Viable 10 Man Loot: Sister Svalna's Aether Staff, Lich Wrappings, Leggings of the Refracted Mind

Viable 25 Man Loot: Frostbinder's Shredded Cape, Nightmare Ender, Robe of the Waking Nightmare

After the loot's been handed out and Valithria flies off (or gives you the last weekly quest, to be covered at the end of this article), proceed to the opposite side of the room where an elevator (aka death trap to those without Slow Fall) will take you on to the next mini-event for the Frost Wing. Once you enter the next large room, a bunch of spiders spawn. AOE the suckers down. Once they're dead, some more Ymirjar spawn. The big warrior guys do a targeted whirlwind with their sword similar to what the guys in Pit of Saron do. Those guys die and you get another wave of spiders before the gate at the other side opens and everyone flees out into the room where you fight the next boss.

Waiting on you are two groups of trash that consist of a Frostwarden Handler and a bunch of Frostwing Whelps. For the most part, these are just packs to AOE down, but be sure your tank has aggro so you don't get eaten alive by the baby dragons. After these two packs, two dragons from the Frostbrood sit on the edge of the platform waiting on you. You can engage them one at a time and it doesn't matter which you pick first. Most raids pick Rimefang to play with first. (Name sound familiar? You played with him in Pit of Saron.) The tank engages him and you pewpew at his side for a little while, then he flies up in the air and coughs up ice furballs, leaving icy patches on the ground that do damage and slow your movement speed. They can be avoided as there's a little blue graphic on the ground where they land before they hit the spot. Don't stand there. A couple of icy furballs later and Rimefang lands again. You can toss nukes at him while he's in the air, but be aware of where you're standing and your tank's aggro. If you're on top of his list when he lands, he will eat you. (Mage taste good. Mmmmm.)

The other guy waiting on you is not an old friend, but a new one named Spinestalker! Dragon rules apply to this guy (frontal cleave, tail swipe) so watch your positioning. And like Old School Onyxia, he does an AOE fear called Bellowing Roar that will send you running around like a crazed chicken. After the fear breaks, be sure to be out of the way of his head and tail and go back to pewpewing. Tremor Totem, Fear Ward, and Iceblock do break this fear, but it doesn't really last long enough to make it that scary. However, be aware that once the second dragon dies, be it Rimefang or Spinestalker, Sindragosa will land and start her encounter. You CAN skirt around this by having your entire raid run back into the room before almost all the way to the elevator and she'll reset. BUT if a single person stays too close to the room where you fight her, she walks through the gate and eats you and anyone in the instance will be ported back to her and die. Once she's reset your tank just has to run down to the center of the room, aggro her, and you'll be fighting...

SINDRAGOSA!

This is easily one of the toughest fights in ICC as it's not a DPS race or a healing race, but a survival test. The enrage timer is tight if your DPS isn't up to par and there is a LOT of raid damage for your healers to deal with on top of keeping the tanks alive. For the sake of brevity, I'll only cover the parts of this fight that apply to mages (as per usual.) Once Sindragosa lands and the tank has her positioned (generally parallel with the bottom of the stairs with the raid on the stairs), you open up and start blowing her dragon-butt up. Dragon rules apply here, meaning she has a nice frontal breath cone and cleave and a tail swipe, so everyone needs to be on her side and for the sake of the healers, on the same side. For the whole first part of her first phase, Sindragosa is on the ground, breathing on the tanks. While she's on the ground the first mechanic you need to worry about is Unchained Magic, a debuff she randomly casts on one healer and one dps caster. If you are the only dps caster in the raid, you'll always have this on you when she casts it. For every spell you cast, you get a stack of Instability, which in turn does damage to you. The higher you let this debuff stack, the more damage you'll do to yourself. It's best to not let it stack above 4 or 5, so just stop your dps till the Instability falls off and pay attention until Unchained Magic wears off as well.

At the halfway point of her time on the ground, Sindragosa uses Icy Grip to pull the entire raid into her belly, then follows it five seconds later with Blistering Cold doing a lot of squishy killing frost damage to anyone within a range of 25 yards. This is an EXCELLENT time to make use of Blink and get your magical behind out the way. That only leaves you having to run 5 yards. Note that if you get hit and you have the Unchained Magic debuff stacked up high on yourself when she pulls you, it hurts even more and you'll be a robed smear on the pavement. It's also important to run back to the same place you were standing before so the healers can get to you if you do take damage. Generally people want you to run back up the stairs.

After a short period of the fight on the ground again, Sindragosa will fly up in the air and away from the platform. It's a good idea to load her up with DOTs before she gets too far away to keep ticking down her health while she's out of range. Once she's up in the air she'll cast Frost Beacon, choosing two raid members to hit seven seconds later with Ice Tombs. Anyone within 10 yards of these two players will also get hit with a tomb and you do NOT want that. The two people with the beacon should position themselves at the bottom of the stairs, one on either side. Once the tombs have taken hold, Sindragosa casts four Frost Bombs, marked by whitish-blue circles on the floor that need to be LOSed or you'll take a ton of damage. Use the two ice blocks to do this. After she finishes her last frost bomb, the ice blocks need to be broken or the players inside them will die via Asphyxiation. While their health isn't THAT huge, it's not a bad idea to work them down while she's doing her Frost Bombs, just pay attention to how low they get so you don't accidentally break a block too soon.

Sindragosa goes back and forth between her ground and air phases until she hits 35% and her true Phase 2 where she is permanently grounded. She continues to use the ground phase mechanics, but throws a few more things into the mix to make things just that much more fun. Every 5 seconds she casts the Mystic Buffet debuff on the entire raid. It continues to stack unless you break line of sight with her neck, just behind her head. In order to do this, she continues to Ice Tomb one raider at a time. That person has to run away from the raid to an assigned spot to be tombed so that LOS can be broken and the debuff will drop. If you let this debuff stack too high, you'll get eaten either by the constant damage aura or by her Blistering Cold when she pulls you in and blasts your face off. It's important to note that the tanks have to do a tank switch here to drop Mystic Buffet so that they don't get their faces blasted off with her frost breath. Keep an eye on your aggro during these switches as the off tank is not likely to have nearly as much aggro as the main tank will. In all honesty, the most important thing in this fight is to pay attention to the damage you're taking, especially as a mage. We're notoriously squishy and can die faster than a ninja can loot a corpse and hearth.

Once you cut your way through the rest of her health and she dies, Sindragosa is kind enough to leave you some shiny purple items for your enjoyment.

Viable 10 Man Loot: Bleak Coldarra Carver, Robes of Azure Downfall

Viable 25 Man Loot: Vanquisher's Mark of Sanctification, Sundial of Eternal Dusk, Phylactery of the Nameless Lich, Memory of Malygos

This concludes the last boss in the last wing of Icecrown Citadel before you face the Lich King himself, which I will cover shortly. But first, the last weekly quest!

Weekly Quest Number Five: Even Dragons Have Souls...

So the last quest is picked up from Valithria in her High Elven form after you save her from the corruption of the Scourge and she gives you loot. She gives you an item called a Pulsing Life Crystal and tells you to use it on a weakened Sindragosa to help save her immortal soul. Every person who takes the quest gets a crystal and can use it. The goal is to use it in phase three and stack a debuff called Life Infusion on her to 30 stacks in 10 man and 75 in 25 man so that it changes to the debuff Soul Preservation. The channel doesn't have to be maintained after the debuff reaches the appropriate amount of stacks, so you can rotate through who is channeling, but someone must be channeling at all times or the stacks will fall off. Not everyone has to channel to get credit, but everyone has to pick up the item off her body called the Crystalline Essence of Sindragosa and take it all the way back to Dragonblight and the Wyrmrest Temple to turn it in for their Sack of Frosty Goodness and some rep.

A Mage's Guide to Icecrown Citadel, Part Three- The Blood Quarter

noreply@blogger.com (Gypsy) — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 04:38:00 +0000

With the 30% buff in place, we're all seeing a lot more Kingslayer titles, heroic kills, and some nifty loot running around Dalaran on all servers. Seeing as I'm behind on these little tidbits, I'm going to knock out Blood Quarter today and then hit up Frost Wing tomorrow. (Last time we covered Plagueworks.) There are two fights in this area, the trio of Princes and their Queen, Lana'thel. These are two pretty healer intensive fights with some interesting mechanics to be aware of.

The Crimson Hall (Cause it's full of red blood... get it?)

To get to the Plagueworks from the upper spire portal, you take a left. Blood wing is straight across the bridge, past the duo of val'kyr. They're easy targets, just have your tank pull them one at a time and throw out some AOE for the Severed Essences they copy from the players in the raid. Keep in mind that copies of priests and paladins will heal the val'kyr and the other essences as well as themselves. They should be first priority, although with the buff they're not as scary as they used to be. Once these two winged ladies are down, head across the bridge to the far side of the room where you'll encounter the first sets of blood trash. In these trash pulls, you have a number of gimicks to worry about depending on which Darkfallen you're fighting. They come in groups and your tanks need to be ready to pick them up as a mistanked mob can cause a wipe. The Advisors (which look like liches) do an ability called Lich Slap that knocks the target back. They also have a bubble like ability that protects one of the other npcs from either physical or magic damage. The Archmages polymorph you into a spider, which can be cleansed. The Blood Knights use Blood Mirror and Vampiric Aura to redirect damage and heal themselves. Commanders like to charge and knock back. Lieutenants like to throw out a curse that leaves a DOT on you when you're healed. Nobles enjoy using a banish on your raid members. And lastly, Tacticians sap your tanks and raid members, leaving them stunned for several seconds. These guys come in a number of combinations in 4 groups before you hit the Princes, one in the hallway outside their chamber, and the last 3 inside the chamber near the door. The last set is actually a patrol that walks back and forth between the other two, so be aware when pulling.

With these guys out of the way, you find yourself in the chamber with Blood Queen Lana'thel hovering over three dead vampire dudes (that don't sparkle.) As you approach she empowers an orb behind them that gives them life again. For this pull you can either charge in on Lana'thel and fight or pull back to the door and let them stand up before pulling...

THE BLOOD PRINCE COUNCIL!

For this encounter, you have 3 boss level NPCs to kill that all share one health pool, presumably because of Lana'thel's little orb trick. Only one of them is empowered at a time and that is the only one you can do damage to to affect the total health pool. The others that aren't empowered show at 1 or no health to indicate that they aren't the right target for you to be hitting at the moment. The standard way to do this fight is with 2 tanks in 10 man, possibly 3 in 25. If you just have 2, the first tank picks up Valanar and Taldaram (Lightning and Fire) and the other tank handles Keleseth (shadow). There are a number of other objects in the room to be aware of while fighting these guys. There are Kinetic orbs that drop from the ceiling. If they hit the ground, they explode doing damage and a knock back to players in their area. The way to keep them from dropping to the floor is by causing them damage, which sends them back up to the ceiling. They have a limited duration and can easily be managed by one pet class or two ranged as there are often 2 up at a time (possibly more in 25 man). If you're picked to do this job as a mage, I'd make sure Ice Lance is on your bar and ready. As an instant cast direct damage, it's perfect for this job. Move around the room so it's in your range and use that spell to knock the orb back up to the ceiling and safely away from the floor before resuming dps on the bosses. Keep in mind that DOTs do not work to keep the orbs up and neither do wands. Using long cast spells to do this job is unwise as you may find yourself far from the orb with little time to get it back up. Arcane Barrage is also acceptable, but it has a longer cooldown than Ice Lance does. If you happen to be in frost and the only ranged in a 10 man raid, you CAN do this by yourself. Set your water elemental to attack one of the orbs while you handle the other. You may not do any damage to the bosses, but your raid will be happy not to be asploded.

The second kind of orb in the environment you want to be aware of are the Dark Nuclei that spawn for the Keleseth tank to pick up. These things have very little health and follow threat rules so it's important that you don't hit them with any spells, AOE included. The shadow tank needs to keep 4 of them on himself when Keleseth starts doing his big bad shadowbolt when he's empowered by the orb. That's pretty much all you need to know about Keleseth. Be careful not to pull aggro when he's active, and don't steal the tanks orbs. If you happen to get one on you, let the tank know so he can pull it off.

The last little items to be aware of in the environment are the Shock Vortexes that Valanar summons while he's not empowered. They look like white tornadoes rising up from the floor and are targetted on a player, but once they become active, they affect everyone around them, knocking them back and causing damage. Don't stand next to one if you see one. Get far far away. Now on to the other two Princes and their mechanics.

Prince Valanar is always the first of the council active when you start the fight and thus always your first target. When he's empowered, he does an ability called Empowered Shock Vortex that does an area of effect around EVERYONE in the raid causing damage to the player and anyone in their vicinity and knocking back anyone close to them. The trick here is to be 12 yards from anyone else when he casts it, then you won't get hit or hit anyone. Generally, you spread out once the fight starts so that no one's standing on top of each other and the only people that have to worry about this are the melee and the shadow tank who's running around grabbing orbs. However, you may find yourself needing to move for another member of your group; keep in mind that healers and tanks should be given priority spots during this fight -- don't expect them to move for you. Use Blink if you have to to get out of the way.

Should the orb switch it's buff to Taldaram, you'll find yourself in a different situation. Taldaram summons a Empowered Flame Orb that follows a player as they kite it away from the raid. This orb has a certain number of stacks on it that need to be pulled off by other players being near it to prevent a big boom on the targeted player once it reaches him or her. Most raids have their melee follow the orb and the ranged and healers move into it's path to pull off some of the stacks. Should you be the targeted person, run away on a path that takes you through a lot of other players, but gives you enough distance to get a good ways away before taking the hit. It's also important to note that Taldaram has an ability called Glittering Sparks (sparkly vampire!) that acts as a cone effect in front of him, doing a DOT to the players in his path and also slowing their movement speed. You shouldn't be hit with this unless you're directly behind the tank keeping aggro on him. Don't be there.

The orb switches around between the 3 princes until their dead. You'll find they don't have a whole lot of health, but there's so much to pay attention to in the encounter that it's a nice present from Blizzard. Once their down, loot up!

Viable 10 Man Loot: Cerise Coiled Ring, Wand of the Ruby Claret, Pale Corpse Boots, Bloodsoul Raiment

Viable 25 Man Loot: Shadow Silk Spindle, Valanar's Other Signet Ring, Sanguine Silk Robes, San'layn Ritualist Gloves

After divvying up your spoils, head to either of the stairs on the side of the room and up and around to the top floor of this wing where you'll be face to face with

BLOOD QUEEN LANA'THEL!

Pew pew pew pew... pew... Ok, back to business. If you've done the Quel'Delar quest line then you're familiar with this former Blood Elf turned bad. She's working for the big bad guy now, and biting people along the way. She conveniently hanging out in a circular room with a big circle drawn on the floor for this raid encounter's setup. The tank will usually take her on the stairs where she's standing facing away from the raid. Note that the stairs behind you will turn into fire and doom if you remain on them once she's aggroed. Don't stand there. Instead, go into the circular room and pick a spot on the clock where no one else is standing so you're a little bit spread out, but can still hit the boss from your position. The big gimick in this fight is to DPS Lana'thel down before the enrage timer. Why is this hard, you ask? Because she has a lot of health and there's a lot of other minor distractions to keep you busy. The way to do it is to arrange your bite order in such a way that your best dps are bit longest. Players who are bitten by BQL and other raid members are given the buff Essence of the Blood Queen which gives you increased dps and heals you when you land attacks or spells. After 75 seconds of pure DPS bliss, you need to bite another person, otherwise Lana'thel will mind control you and use you to kill your own raiding buddies. Once it comes time to bite your bar will wipe, save for a single ability to bite another player. That player gets the buff and you're restored to your massive dps, allowing you to continue to blow her the heck up. Keep in mind that every 75 seconds you have to bite someone new. Hopefully your raid leader will have discussed a system of bites or a bite order with you previous to the start of the encounter, unless he or she is just quick enough to call them out as they come. It's important that the main tank is NEVER bitten as the buff also reduces threat caused by the players who are bitten and you generally want your tank to generate threat. Healers are ok to bite if needed, but it's not nice to make them run around looking for other people to bite, so make them your last set if you have to bite them at all.

The other little tidbits to pay attention to involve debuffs Lana'thel drops on the raid members at random throughout the fight and an air phase. The first debuff is Pact of the Darkfallen. In 10 man, these red squiggly lines link 2 players together, causing them damage while they're far apart. It links 3 in 25. The way to get rid of it is for all the players with the link to be close together so it drops. Usually this is done in the center of the large circle so it's easy to know where to go and in close range of the healers. The other debuff to be concerned with is Swarming Shadows. Remember way back when you were raiding in TOC and you hit Jarraxus and he put the green fire on you and you had to run? This is like that, only purple. Run around the outside of the room to avoid leaving fire for other raiders to get hit by.

A little ways into the encounter, Lana'thel will leave the tank platform and run into the middle of the room, flying up into the air and using Incite Terror to fear all the players in the room. This fear can be broken like any other with tremor totem or trinkets or Will of the Forsaken. After a moment of watching you run around like crazed aunts, Lana'thel uses Bloodbolt Whirl which causes extra damage to you if you're within 6 yards of anyone else in the raid, so spread out.

Other abilities I haven't mentioned that Lana'thel uses are Shroud of Sorrow, a constant raid damage debuff, Delirious Slash and Blood Mirror, which the tanks have to worry about but you don't, and Twilight Bloodbolt, which Lana'thel tosses at players occasionally and is the reason you stay spread out for the whole fight. Once you've bitten a couple of your friends and done some crazy pewpew DPS, BQL dies and gives you pretty sparkly purple things!

Viable 10 Man Loot: Lana'thel's Bloody Nail (Ew), Cowl of Malefic Repose

Viable 25 Man Loot: Vanquisher's Mark of Sanctification, Blood Queen's Crimson Choker, Dying Light

Since you've read about both the bosses in this wing, I'll cover the Weekly Quest for it as well.

Weekly Quest Number Four: Rescue Me... Before She Eats Me for Breakfast!

This quest becomes available to you as soon as you hit up Upper Spire. An NPC will join the fray once the portal is active and run across the bridge, waiting for you before the trash. Blood Quickening is the name of the quest. You basically have 20 minutes from the moment you start your first blood wing trash to kill the Princes and begin a successful BQL kill. Minchar is hanging upside down by shackles above her little room on the 2nd floor and as long as you start her encounter before the 20 minute timer is up and she dies, you're good. This gives you a little room for wipes, although hopefully you won't have any. Once you beat her, you turn in the quest, get your frosty sack containing badges, money, and possibly a gem or an item, and some rep.

Nostalgia and a New Point of View

noreply@blogger.com (Gypsy) — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 05:02:00 +0000

I saw a post today by Windsoar today about how different generations of players see WoW and it made me think. I've played World of Warcraft since open beta, raided in two of the 3 releases (Vanilla and Wrath), and leveled almost every class to at least 40 or so. I have 4 raid-geared 80s on my server, covering all the different roles and seeing things from a number of different perspectives. Yet, what I don't see any more is how the new players see things.

It never ceases to amaze me that new people are picking up this game every day and leveling to 80, wide-eyed and ready to see end game content. It's easy to look past their ignorance and expect them to know what they're doing, without considering that they may have leveled their character in a way that works for them, but isn't necessarily the best way to play a class. More often than not, a player is labeled "Bad" or a "Newb" if they can't keep up with the dps, healing, or threat appropriate for their gear level. With raiding groups reduced to 10 players instead of the old world 40, it's a lot easier to point a finger at who's not picking up the slack and doing their job.

But back when we were new players, weren't we also just so ignorant? Ok, so you may be one of the few WoW Savants who just walked into the game knowing exactly what to do, but I doubt that there are that many. I remember going to Molten Core with my 60 gnome mage and thinking she was THE SHIT being able to frost-kite a bunch of undead around Plaguelands, then being very humbled when the meters didn't add up. In my stubborness, I didn't go out and look for help to improve, I stuck to what I liked and pushed through the agony, probably going about my DPS the hard way. It took a long break from WoW and someone I respected telling me I was doing it wrong for me to start in on looking for information on how to play a class and maximize my dps. I still don't go so far as other people with their theory crafting and their spreadsheets, but I try and keep my info up to date so I can compete with my peers and not look like a total moron in raids.

In any case, it's certainly humbling to look back at those players who I may have dismissed as newbs and not want to help them improve. Surprisingly a lot of them are willing and as I've said before, that's one of the big reasons I blog at all -- to help the ignorant find that little bit of info that may give them a new outlook on what they're trying to master.

Since we're on the topic of nostalgia, I read a while ago that Zul'Gurrub will be disappearing from existence as a raid come Cataclysm. This is honestly a little sad as I remember ZG as the first troll raid at 60 with a lot of gimicky bosses and some cool mounts. Seems like there's been a mad rush in my guild to go back and run through it for the achievement and also a try at the mounts. Let's not forget, mages, that the only place to get Polymorph: Turtle is from one of the optional bosses in ZG. My mage already has it, but I've been trying to help a friend get it before the raid goes poof, and I suspect, the tome with it. There's also a fishing achievement from the same boss -- you just have to pop over to Nat Pagel in the middle of nowhere and get some lures, after doing a quest that STARTS in ZG. >.< Pain in the butt. If you find yourself in this situation, farming this book, buy yourself a lot of lures. ZG is enough out of the way without having to go all the way to Duskwallow each run.

On another note, I was always a big fan of the Netherwind Set. A friend of mine and I were discussing the old gear we loved from old world and this set came to mind for my mage, Ten Storms for my shaman. I've made it my personal mission to try to fill out these sets with as many pieces as I can before Azeroth cracks open and Deathwing kills all the old dungeons. Who knows if that stuff will stick around come Cata.

Lastly, let's not forget achievements. While the Outland content may not be touched, nor that in Northrend, you might want to try and catch up on Classic Dungeonmaster before Cata, although I hear it will likely still be around in Cata. Once you hit 80, you can pretty easily solo through all the dungeons and take a small group through the raids to finish up. And in the meantime, you'll get to see some of the old content you may have missed back when WoW was still new.

Not Dead Yet!

noreply@blogger.com (Gypsy) — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 06:11:00 +0000

Been a LONG time hasn't it?

I'm happy to say that I'm not done blogging, playing WoW, Maging, or Ranting about holiday events yet. When we last left off, I was in a miserable rut with a lot of questions and not a whole lot of solutions. Luckily, I've worked my way out to a better place and I can honestly say I've missed writing and am ready to do so again. What took so long? Well, I had to find a new niche for myself and expand my WoW experience. A long time ago, I started leveling a shaman with the intention of running her in my guild's big raid as elemental. Seeing as we'd lost our main resto shaman, I was asked to heal, which I was happy to do as I'd learned my way around restoration while leveling in dungeons. Come to find out, I love healing. It's a nice change from standing back and slinging pure arcane energy at enemies (RAWR).

Long story short, I continued to work my shaman through our 25 man while my 10 man character remained the mage. After the 10 man team I was in fell apart due to burn out and attendance issues, I was without. I PUG-ed two, sometimes 3 characters through ICC 10 man to keep gearing up. The thing about PUG raids is you never really know what you're gonna get (like that box of chocolates.) Some of them would be great, others miserable. I'd say I got a fair mix in with the guild runs I'd help with on teams that were not my own. But I missed that team feeling, where people weren't just in it for the loot and for themselves, but for the advancement of the team as a whole. With a bunch of strangers, what other mentality can you adopt, but to get what you can before you hit a road block and the raid ends?

About a month and a half back, I got a message from a guildie of a friend who happened to need a healing shaman for a run through ICC with some heroic opportunities. I was hesitant to tell him I'd done 2 heroic encounters before that day, even though I'd seen content up to the LK, despite not having the kill yet. 6 or so weeks later and I'm sitting with a gear score over 6k and 11/12 heroic kills in 10 man ICC, a Kingslayer title, and a badass team that's close to getting some Bloodbathed Frostbrood Vanquishers.

So with my new team and new situation, my WoW mojo is back and along with it, my blogging mojo. Since I'm doing a lot of shaman raiding now, I'm expanding my blog to cover resto and elemental shaman info on top of the magery. I'm back, baby, and ready to blog!

Angry Post Incoming! Raiding Bullshit

noreply@blogger.com (Gypsy) — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 20:05:00 +0000

The lull before a new expansion brings burnout, harder and faster than most people have ever experienced it. The combination of that and summer often leave holes in your guild's plans to progress. Despite whatever buff Blizzard decides to give us so that everyone has a chance at the Lich King, some people still can't make the stretch. I have two well geared characters and a third that's not far from it. I'm willing and able to fill any role in a raid to a degree, though I clearly have my preferences. I've seen all the content up to and including the Lich King in 10 man and all the way to Sindragosa in 25. I've even got a few heroic kills under my belt. So why don't I have a Kingslayer title?

I assure you it is not because of lack of effort on my part. I've done my best to fill in the gaps where my team and guild needed it. Even if I have alt ADD, I'll still play what the team needs, even if it's not what I want to play. Sometimes I'll ask to play what I like instead, and if I get shot down, I'll suck it up and do what's needed. I have lost my temper a number of times to friends and colleagues about the underhanded bullshit, but I'd like to think I've remained pretty professional on the outward front. I didn't learn to play my classes just from fucking around with buttons. I researched, I spent hours reading blogs and guides, smacking training dummies, picking the brains of my betters. When I did something wrong, I owned up to it and I learned from it. I'd like to think I was rewarded the gear that I have because I did well, not because it was handed to me. Those who have helped me have been helped in return. But where has all this left me?

Miserable. Despising the very thing that is supposed to get my mind off more important real life issues. Finding reasons to stay on the good days, and hating myself for it on the bad ones. Let's discuss some of the issues, shall we?

Being a raid leader is no small task. I've done it before and I almost talked myself into doing it again. However, by some act of God, it didn't happen and I'm better off for it. But that does not mean the people doing it are well suited. Being a raid leader takes a certain amount of effort and pain. There's required organization, sincerity, motivation, leadership, and drive. You have to be willing to help out your members, not because you like them or they're your friends, but because you're part of a team. When you blatantly ignore the requests of one person because this person's your buddy, then you're fucking yourself over. When you don't call bullshit because you don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, you're fucking yourself over. When you're not willing to bend the rules for the good of your team, you're fucking yourself over. Don't be surprised when things fall apart.

I also understand that people get bored or frustrated with their class and need the new to keep themselves from going nuts. That's perfectly fine. Everyone deserves to have a chance to change. But that doesn't mean you should leave your geared character off to the side and trade it in for an under-geared POS and expect things to be given to you and not to be held responsible for the failings just because "it's fun to try something new lolz." Especially when you were only mediocre at what you did before and you're not even mediocre at what you do now. But since no one's calling you out and you're feelin like getting some mad purpz, you don't feel the need to stop. What's life like as a spoiled princess anyway? What happens when your tower walls start to crumble and everyone gets tired of your bullshit?

People tell me to take a break. I took a break and it didn't help. Then quit your guild or your raid they say. Change is too scary for 9 or 25 other people to contemplate. What happens when there are those few that you don't want to leave behind? I did it before and ended up coming back just for those select few, and I don't regret that. Where do you draw the line between pointless addiction and a game? If I admit I'm doing this to myself, does that make me a masachist? At what point did Hope become so Hopeless?

May the Fourth Be With You!

noreply@blogger.com (Gypsy) — Tue, 04 May 2010 23:22:00 +0000

I'm a Star Wars fan. Yes, I realize this is a WoW blog, but it's my blog and I'll blog what I want to.

So Happy Star Wars Day. :D

I'm pretty psyched about TOR. I like where the story line is going. The screen shots look pretty. Some of the scales models are a bit off (lightsabers look huge) but it's not even to beta yet, so who knows. I played Galaxies through beta and up till their first big crappy combat patch. Too bad it went to crap after that.

It's occurred to me that I may not have the time or money to play two MMOs when TOR drops. I guess right now it all depends on how Cataclysm and TOR turn out -- I'm hoping to beta both of them to get an idea. It may even turn out I alternate between them if I like them both. Right now, Cata isn't really thrilling me to be honest. The previews so far have been kind of blah. Later this week I'll post my thoughts on the raid changes.

For now, I'm gonna lay back on my couch in the dark and watch some Star Wars.

Kite Your Tail Off - Leveling a Mage

noreply@blogger.com (Gypsy) — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 18:00:00 +0000

There was a recent article on Wow.com about the difficulty of leveling a mage. While it was focused on what class you can't play, I noticed quite a few people saying that mages were out of reach for them. So I take a moment to offer some friendly advice to the Mage Noob on how to get to level cap.

The first thing you have to realize about mages is that we're squishy. It's a fact of life that if you're solo-leveling a mage, you will die a lot, so don't get butthurt about it and give up. Mages take resilience and a lot of kiting to solo level up to 80. While plate classes can take on elite mobs at equal level or finish group quests by themselves, mages cannot because 2 hits from something like that and you're dead. This does change at level cap with good gear, however. I found myself soloing through a number of group quests in Icecrown the other day. Kiting really is the key to solo-leveling a mage.

There are two types of kiting - single mob and AOE. When you're kiting a single mob, you basically just have to stay ahead of it while keeping it snared and then blasting the crap out of it at a distance. This is possible to do as an Arcane mage at higher levels, once you get Slow. Once you have enough distance from the mob, you can just turn around and start doing your arcane rotation. The key spells to use in a single mob kite while in Arcane are Slow, Frost Nova if the mob gets too close, and Blink to put some distance between you and the mob. There is not magic distance to keep between you and the mob; you just kind of have to find your own comfortable distance. They key is getting back to max range before starting to blast away on the mob again and not letting the mob get within melee range to hit you back. It doesn't hurt to have a Mana Shield up for a little damage, but it's not wise to let the mob beat through it for too long as you'll just wear down your mana pool.

Should you choose to level in Frost, which I recommend, you have a few more tools at your discretion. Frostbolt is going to be your primary damage spell in this spec as a number of the talents in the tree build up it's damage and improve the slow. The nice thing about kiting in Frost is that you don't need a number of spells to maintain the slow and do damage; it's all wrapped up in a nice frostbolty package for you. You've still got Frost Nova and Blink to use in emergencies, and instead of Mana Shield, you have Ice Barrier to absorb extra damage. I recommend keeping this shield up all the time. It has a nice long duration and absorbs damage without draining your mana pool. It also keeps you from suffering pushback while casting should you pick up an extra mob or find yourself being hit by a ranged weapon or spell.

The second kind of kiting is a good way for quick XP and what mages are generally doing when you see purple flashes of Arcane Explosion popping up in the middle of a group of mobs. When I leveled in Vanilla WoW on my priest, I had a mage friend that I used to AOE kite with. He was in Arcane spec when we did this and I'd toss a shield on him to take advantage of the old Incanter's Absorption with a renew so I didn't pull aggro while he blasted away. We used to go through insane packs of mobs like this and the experience and loot was great... until everyone figured out our secret areas and started to do the same themselves.

Now if you're leveling on your own and you don't have a pocket healer, AOE kiting in Arcane isn't recommended. Without something to absorb the extra damage you're taking, you're more likely to die in a swarm of mobs cutting you down while you try to AE them down. Arcane Explosion is not our best AOE spell. So if you're going to try this, I'd recommend doing it in Frost.

Frost gives you the option of slows with Blizzard as well as increased damage with all frost spells, not to mention Ice Barrier and Water Elemental. I kite equal level packs of 7 or 8 mobs in a Frost kite spec at level 80 without taking much damage. If the mobs are close packed enough, all you really have to do is lay into them with Blizzard. I like to keep a Blizzard's range between myself and the mobs, tossing out a Frost Nova when they get just outside melee range to give myself a bit more time till I have to move. If your Ice Barrier is up you can use an AE at close range, but you'll get better damage and more time by just using Blizzard. As for your Water Elemental, taking the glyph isn't going to make him all that useful in this case. Without the Glyph you have a second Frost Nova in Freeze. However if you do have the glyphed version, the extra damage won't hurt either.

If you're going after elite mobs, I'd suggest only taking them one at a time and saving your cooldowns to get big damage in a short amount of time. Some of them are immune to movement impairing effects so you may find yourself having to move more often. It's still possible to kite them with liberal use of Blink, but much more difficult.

If you master kiting, you'll find yourself much better off for leveling and at 80 you'll be able to take quests on you could do on some other classes. Don't forget that it's still a good idea to do dungeons as a lot of good gear comes from the quests involved with them. Once you get up into higher levels you can easily run lower level dungeons for cloth or rep or for your lowbie friends. Once you hit raids you can offer yourself up to the kiting gods on encounters that require it. You may also find yourself enjoying PVP more with this skill in your belt.

A Mage's Guide to Icecrown Citadel, Part Two - The Plagueworks

noreply@blogger.com (Gypsy) — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 03:43:00 +0000

Another buff has dropped in ICC and Lower Spire is getting trivial for a lot of guilds and even some PUGs. So it's time to move on to the next set of bosses that Arthas decided to throw into our way before we can stick a sword through his chest. (In case you missed part one, I've linked it HERE for you :) )

The Plagueworks

After you cross the threshold behind DBS, you enter the Upper Spire of Icecrown Citadel. As you advance forward, there are several gas traps that you have to move through and not stand in before you get to the open area in the middle. A rogue can disarm them as they move through, otherwise you're left to walk through or blink past them. The nice thing about this spot is there's a teleporter once you get through the traps and you never have to do them again... in that raid lockout. As you stand in the doorway, looking out on the actual spire you see two Val'kyr flying around the center. They can be single pulled and will steal your soul and duplicate you as a severed essence. If the val'kyr happens to use this on your healer, then the healer essence will heal the Val'kyr and itself unless you KILL IT. So you should KILL IT. Once they sever enough essences, it's more worthwhile to start AOEing.

After you've blasted both of those to oblivion, you head to the left and the plague wing of ICC. At the doorway, a pair of Blighted Abominations are waiting on you. These guys do a Scourge Hook ability that picks a random person and pulls them over to the Abom's melee range. They also have a frontal cleave and an AOE Plague Cloud. Nothing special with these guys, just blast from range and move out of melee if you get hooked in. The next pack has a pair of Pustulating Horrors and Plague Scientists. The horrors have to be focus fired down because if they reach a certain percentage, they star casting Blight Bomb which does pretty nasty AOE damage to everyone when he explodes. There's also a pack of geists running around inside that you can just AOE down.

Once you're inside the stairway room, you can go up either side to the landing at the top. Here there's bunch more NPCs running around, including a Decaying Colossus who's standing there drooling waiting for you to get his attention. This guy does an AOE knockback affect that hits everyone, so back yourself up against a wall, making sure your healers have LOS on you. After he's dead your tanks will pull the NPCs in the front of the hallway very carefully so that you can take a swing at the mini-bosses Precious and Stinky. These guys do a decimate effect similar to that of Gluth in Naxx. They also summon zombies that have to be AOEed down. Most important thing here is again not to LOS your healers as you'll be taking a massive amount of raid damage. Stinky also has an AOE damage aura. Some guilds choose to set him up so that the dog is around a corner and the healers and ranged are LOSed from his damage aura while the tanks and melee stand in front of him so they can all be AOE healed. There's random drop loot from these guys and Precious drops the highly sought after Precious's Ribbon, a green quality pink sleeveless shirt that gives you a flavor buff, but doesn't actually have any effect of value. There's a few more pulls to clear the hallways and a pair of traps that summon geist packs from the stairway room. It's a good idea for a tank to be left behind while the hallways are being cleared so that they can pick up the packs should someone hit a trap. Otherwise you're on to the two abomination twins. We'll start with...

ROTFACE!

Rotface is the gimmick abom of the twins. This fight takes a lot of coordination, kiting, and movement. The main tank holds the boss in the middle of the room the entire time. Your main position is behind the boss within his hitbox. Most raids group up all their DPS and healers in either two or three groups depending on if it's 10 man or 25. The reason for this groupage is because Rotface will occasionally turn towards the raid and let loose Slime Spray, a frontal cone ability with a very narrow range, but a depth that goes all the way to the wall. It's easy to side step out of this and if the DPS and healers stay in groups, it limits where he'll turn and shoot, as he picks a random target for the ability. The only reason you need to be hit by this is for the weekly quest in this wing. More on this later. For the meantime, consider it an ability to avoid. During the fight, various areas of the room will also be flooded with ooze, which slows running speed and does damage. If you find yourself standing in something green, move out of it. Blink is your friend.

The third little trick that Rotface has up his sleeve is Mutated Infection. This is where the second (and occasionally third) tank(s) comes into play. This ability applies a DOT to a random person in the raid that is not the main tank. It does significant damage and also applies a healing debuff so it needs to be cleansed, HOWEVER, once it's cleansed a small ooze appears with an AOE damage aura and the ability to spray puddles of goo at it's target. Plus the little buggers hit pretty hard. In order to deal with this the off tank (or tanks) is running around the outside of the room kiting oozes. It helps for the off tank to have a slow and DKs seem well suited to this job, though any tank could probably do it. Should you be hit with Mutated Infection, get your ass out of the middle of the raid and run in the opposite direction the kiter is moving so that you meet him on the outside. If you are the first one with an ooze (or the first one after an ooze explosion), then you may have to run with the kiter till another person gets to the outside ring. The reason behind this is that little oozes cannot be taunted off a player. They have a one person aggro table. The big oozes, however, can be taunted and this is what the kiter is responsible for carting around the room. Oozes of both types can be snared, so Frost Nova, Slow, and Ice Armor are your friends in this situation, but use them wisely and away from the main raid. Once the oozes have merged and you have a big ooze, said ooze gets stacks of a buff called Unstable Ooze. It can gain up to 5 stacks before casting Unstable Ooze Explosion and raining down icky green hurt on a random member of the raid and anyone near them. Generally this will happen in the middle of the room as the majority of the raid should be there in their little groups behind Rotface. The tank will be taking a lot of damage here, so it's your job not to take damage. If you move to the outside of the room, you can DPS from there until the explosion has cleared and then quickly make your way back to your designated spot.

For a while, there was a bug where Mirror Image would mess up the aggro of a little ooze and possibly stay in the middle of the raid, but that was hotfixed. It's best to blow your cooldowns here with bloodlust, which is generally in the beginning of the raid. As Rotface takes more and more damage, the time between his abilities decreases and your raid has to move faster in their little dance of insanity to keep from wiping. The most difficult part of this fight is really the coordination. Once you get it down, it's not that bad. Once Rotface is dead the brave master looter puts on his gloves and reaches into the corpse for loot...

Viable 10 Man Loot: Ether-Soaked Bracers, Gloves of Broken Fingers

Viable 25 Man Loot: Dislodged Foreign Object, Corpse-Impaling Spike, Death Surgeon's Sleeves

That trinket is one of the best available for mages, especially if you don't already have a Reign of the Dead/Unliving. After you're finished looting and heading to the far side of the hallway, you may run into some trash or another trap with geists. But it's not a long trip or a lot to clear before you face...

FESTERGUT!

Rotface's ugly twin brother is the DPS check for ICC. I've heard it said that the standard is something like 6k DPS per person in this fight. Don't quote me on that, but you do need to whip out your best DPS on this guy so you can avoid his berserk timer because he will SMASH you. On top of the need for DPS here, you also have to be able to do a little dance for this guy too. Blizzard loves their movement intensive fights in ICC, don't they!

So when you start the fight, Professor Farnsworth... I mean Putricide... will flood the room with orange gas that does AOE damage to every one. There's no avoiding this damage and the healers have to heal through it. Positioning is wierd for this fight as there has to be a certain number of people at range otherwise Festergut will start tossing his Vile Gas into the melee and screw everybody up. The person hit with this spell will be disoriented, walking around a small space and vomiting everywhere, with the potential to spread the debuff (and vomit) to other players within 8 yards. Taking into account that you'll be moving around while you spew, you want to give yourself a 10 yard buffer from anyone else in the raid. Melee are lucky and don't have to deal with this and if you have enough ranged DPS, healers can stand in melee and not have to worry about it either.

While you're pewpewing your heart out at Festergut, he's inhaling the gas on the floor which decreases the raid damage, but increases his attack speed and damage and helps him build up to his big nuke. There's enough gas in the room for him to get three stacks of inhale before he farts and nukes everyone and in order to avoid the big one shot, Blizzard gives you the Gas Spore mechanic. Festergut tosses out 2 spores in 10 man (3 in 25 man) on a random player. After a few seconds these spores explode putting a DOT on players within 8 yards. When the DOT falls off, you get an Inoculated debuff that decreases the shadow damage done. If you're lucky, Festergut will toss one spore into the melee pit and the other out in ranged. When that happens you have 12 seconds to get your ass underneath the spore in range so you can get the DOT and the debuff. If you should have the spore, move to the designated spot for your raid; keep in mind some raids don't have designated spots and all the ranged may bunch up on you and also if all the spores are at range, you may be asked to move into melee so the tank and melee DPS (and healers in most cases) are covered by the debuff as well. The nice thing about mages is that we can actually Ice Block through one Pungent Blight and not have to worry about one round of spores. If you choose to do this, timing is key. Pungent Blight does have a cast time and no real damage duration, so if you're watching Festergut's cast bar, then you get a free ride.

A few things to keep in mind on this fight: DPS is key as there's no surviving the enrage after 5 mins. Tanks are also responsible for a tank swap because of a debuff that will make them explode and kill everyone if they don't switch before 10 stacks. Remember to give healers priority positioning on this as taking a healer out of commission for this fight means less heals for you and lots of sad panda. After you've successfully stopped Blizzard's Big Fart Joke, you get to loot!

Viable 10 Man Loot: Abracadaver, Kilt of Untreated Wounds, Bloodstained Surgeon's Shoulderguards

Viable 25 Man Loot: Plague Scientist's Boots, Plaguebringer's Stained Pants, Lingering Illness

Now that you've taken out both Aboms and cleared out Putricide's creations, he's opened his door to you and invited you to come in and have a go! So turning back into the hall and going up the newly opened middle hallway you find yourself trapped in a small room just before Putricide's lab where a swarm of bugs tries to eat you. There's an AOE damage aura in here and some bugs that fly in and act all annoying, but it's nothing that's not easily healed through and you can just AOE the bugs down. Then the doors open and you walk into a room where awaiting you is...

PROFESSOR PUTRICIDE!

This fight is a pain in the ass. I'm not going to lie. But it's also pretty fun and challenging. I have to commend Blizzard for making their wing bosses refreshing instead of ripping off mechanics from old instances. I've also had the privilege of being the off tank for this fight and doing the Abom part of the fight. Kudos to Blizzard for mixing it up.

When you walk into Putricide's Laboratory, you can see that the room is divided into two sides, with his alchemy table at the far end of the room where he himself is standing. Before he's aggroed you can move about the room freely giving him a little bit of room so you don't accidentally pull. On the right side of the room facing the table you see a green tank of ooze. On the left side, there is an orange tank of gas. Depending on the strategy your raid has adopted, you'll spend most of your time on one side of the room or another.

This fight has three phases. When the main tank aggros Professor, the off tank will run up and drink a potion that turns him into an abomination. The off tanks big job during this fight is to eat ooze pools and slow the slimes that come from the tanks. Throughout the entire fight, Putricide will slow down green slime pools on the floor that do damage over time. Don't stand in them. The slimes are called Unstable Experiments and they alternate sides. You have a few minutes of straight DPS time before Putricide summons the first slime. It always starts on the green side. In one strategy, the raid stays on the green side the entire time. In the second strategy I'm familiar with, the raid switches sides to the opposite side of the current slime. My guild does both strategies. The most important thing is to switch your DPS to whichever slime is down no matter which strategy you use. You have to kill them so they don't blow up the raid and you can start beating Professor down again. The green oozes freeze a player to their spot and do AOE damage to all targets close if they reach the player. As a mage, you can blink away from the spot and extend the distance between you and the green slime if it chooses you. This gives you a bit more room to kill it in. The freeze it uses does NOT stop you from casting, so you should continue DPSing as you can. With the orange ooze, you get a slow debuff put on you. You have to kite this ooze, so let the other DPS handle it and keep it from reaching you. The damage the orange does if it reaches it's target is raid wide and a lot more damage. You can blink away with this one too to give yourself more room. Hopefully the off tank will have slowed the ooze that's up giving you a bit more time to kill them. Ideally, they go down fast because your DPS is good and you can put more damage on Putricide before the next slime comes up. It's also imperative not to have a slime up when Professor casts Tear Gas at 80%, stunning the entire raid and enters phase two.

Phase two is basically like phase one, save for a few extra things to dodge. Putricide goes up to his table and drinks a potion during Tear Gas, then sprouts an extra pair of arms that throw two new obstacles in the room. As a ranged DPS, you should really only have to worry about Malleable Goo which manifests as a bouncing green ooze that explodes and does an AOE haste debuff as well as significant damage to all that land in it's explosion range. The other thing he throws down is Choking Gas. This looks like an alchemy flask of green gas and is mostly thrown down at melee range. However, if Putricide is being moved across the room, it's not a bad idea to keep an eye out for orange stuff. Losing that much hit is a major decrease in DPS and some bad juju. Throughout this phase, avoid the two new abilities, kill slimes, and DPS Putricide when you can. Again you don't want a slime up during Tear Gas, which happens again at 35%.

Once Tear Gas stuns everyone again, Putricide runs up to his table and starts chugging potions. He gets bigger and angrier. His damage and attack speed increases by 50% and while he no longer summons slimes or tosses out goo or gas. He still throws down the ooze pools and since your off tank has been ejected from the abom, he can't get rid of them for you anymore. At this point, the tank will probably move Putricide to the outside of the room to avoid the ooze pools. It's usually a good idea to stay ahead of the slime, but be careful about getting in the kiting path as you may end up a target for the ooze pools and cut off your tanks. During this phase, Professor does a stacking debuff on the tanks that does raid damage so there's a tank switch to prevent it from getting to high too fast and making it harder on the healers.

Phase Three is usually bloodlust time so you should probably save your second set of cooldowns for this part as fast DPS is key to getting him down before he wipes the raid. There's not much difference between the 10 and 25 man fight other than the slimes come faster and there's more people to dodge. Once he's dead, he leaves presents behind! Hurray!

Viable 10 Man Loot: Pendant of Split Veins, Shoulders of Ruinous Senility, Cauterized Cord

Viable 25 Man Loot: Vanquisher's Mark of Sanctification, Rigormortis

Backing up a moment, we've not covered the raid weekly available for Plague wings.

Weekly Quest Number Three: Gas and Goo

This quest becomes available right after you enter the Upper Spire from an NPC human female named Alchemist Adrianna. It's called Residue Rendezvous. The nice thing about this quest is that only one person in your raid needs the debuffs in order for the entire raid to get credit. In order to get the debuffs, a player must be hit by Slime Spray on Rotface for Green Residue and Gaseous Blight for the Orange Residue. If you die or use an invulnerability spell (ie Iceblock, Divine Shield) it wipes the debuff. The duration on both of them is 30 mins. So you basically have one shot at getting this done after you kill the first abom. I'd recommend going after Rotface first as he's the bigger pain in the ass of the two. After doing this you get free badges, money, rep, and a shot at a random drop purple.

Dedicated to My Sarcastic and Snarky Friends

noreply@blogger.com (Gypsy) — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 00:07:00 +0000

<3 Gypsy

A Day Late and A Few Gold Short - Cataclysm and Mages

noreply@blogger.com (Gypsy) — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 20:47:00 +0000

I realize I'm posting this about 2 weeks after everyone else. I gave myself some time to look into the changes and try to wrap my head around them before I said anything. Even after some time, deliberation, and reading other people's takes, I'm still not thrilled. I'm entirely underwhelmed on the mage front. There's really no part of the announced Cata changes that makes me want to cheer. But, let's start from the beginning anyway.

"Flame Orb (available at level 81): Inspired by Prince Taldaram's abilities in Ahn'kahet and Icecrown Citadel, this spell allows the mage to cast a flaming orb that travels in front in a straight line, sending beams that cause fire damage to passing targets. Once it's cast, the mage is free to begin casting other spells as the Flame Orb travels. While the spell will be useful to any spec, Fire mages will have talents that improve it, possibly causing the Flame Orb to explode when it reaches its destination."

From what I've seen in Old Kingdom and ICC Blood wing, these are two pretty different spells. So I'm kind of wondering where the heck they're going with this. In OK, Taldaram tosses out a Flame Orb that splits into several orbs and shoots anyone in range with lasers emanating from both orbs. The described spell is nothing like that. It's the ICC Blood wing one. In ICC, he tosses out one big Orb that targets a single person and splits off little lasers to each person that gets in it's path, diminishing the total power of the big orb when it hits its target. I've never been a fan of fire, but this might be an interesting spell. It really depends on how much power Blizzard puts into the big orb. There was a later blue post that said it was a casted but not channeled spell, which is good because that would completely make it useless.

"Time Warp (level 83): Grants a passive Haste effect much like Bloodlust or Heroism to party or raid members. It also temporarily increases the mage's own movement speed. Time Warp will be exclusive with Bloodlust and Heroism, meaning you can't benefit from both if you've got the Exhaustion debuff, though the movement-speed increase will still work even when under the effects of Exhaustion."

Everyone is so excited about this change, but I'm not. I know people were whining and complaining about only one class having Bloodlust, but don't people know they can do content without it? Sure it's a useful tool, but there are teams out there without it that finish content just fine.

I know what you're thinking. They're trying to make things more fair for raiders so no one gets special treatment to come along. And now that's more reasons to bring a mage! Well that's all well and good, but here are the potential problems I see. The movement speed thing is nice, but tying it to the Haste spell also ties you to timing. Anybody that raids regularly knows you don't just blow bloodlust when you feel like it. There are specific times when it's used in encounters. That being said, if you need to move out of fire, don't go reaching for Time Warp if you're not already Sated. I suppose this really depends on the cooldown they give us on the spell. If it's shorter than BL/H then it may end up being more useful, but it's still restricted by that timing.

As for the spell itself... my biggest problem with this is that Blizzard didn't even put any thought into giving us a new cool spell. They gave us recycled material in the first two "new spells." UNDER. WHELMED.

"Wall of Fog (level 85): Creates a line of frost in front of the mage, 30 yards from end to end. Enemies who cross the line are snared and take damage. The mana cost will be designed to make Wall of Fog efficient against groups, not individuals. This spell is intended to give mages a way to help control the battlefield, whether the mage is damaging incoming enemies (Blizzard can be channeled on top of Wall of Fog) or protecting a flag in a Battleground. 10-second duration. 30-second cooldown."

This looks like it might be a nice spell for PVP, but it's completely useless in PVE unless you're afraid of adds in a dungeon. That's a hell of a lot of aggro to absorb from a pack though. I was hoping for something a little more frosty for a Frost Tree spell. I know they said they were changing the focus back to BGs in Cata instead of arena, but I have fleeting interest in them at best... so again, not excited.

That's it for the new Spells. Now on to the next part: mechanic changes.

"Arcane Missiles is being redesigned to become a proc-based spell. Whenever the mage does damage with any spell, there is a chance for Arcane Missiles to become available, similar to how the warrior's Overpower works. The damage and mana cost of this spell will be reworked to make it very desirable to use when available. This change should make gameplay more dynamic for the mage, particularly at low levels."

Last I checked, AM was pretty much already a proc-based spell if you're playing Arcane with any efficiency. You only really pop AM once you have missile barrage proc, otherwise you're punching Arcane Blast over and over again to build your stacks. There have been those annoying moments for me when I can't get an MB proc to save my life and I'll go ahead and hit missiles. So I guess my question to Blizzard is are they going to handle the proc the same way they did missile barrage? WoW.com's mage columnist brought up a good point in that the spell will be more available to Frost/Fire mages, but unless they also switch some of the talents around, they'll still probably get better damage out of another spell. Depending on how much haste you have, it still takes time to cast missile barrage.

"We are planning to remove spells that don't have a clear purpose. Amplify Magic, Dampen Magic, Fire Ward, and Frost Ward are being removed from the game, and we may remove more."

Why, yes, Blizzard. Those spells are useless. JUST LIKE INCANTER'S ABSORPTION. You're taking away two potential uses for that useless talent and nerfing it even more. For the record, I specced out of it when the patch dropped so I wasn't using it anyway. I generally can't risk the loss of mana from mana shield to get the buff. Rolling Arcane Blast usually takes enough of that as is. I could really care less to see any of these spells go. So it's fine that they're cleaning that out of my spell book.

"The ability to conjure food and water will not become available until higher levels (likely around level 40), as we're making changes to ensure mages generally won't run out of mana at lower levels. Once mages learn how to conjure food and water, the conjured item will restore both health and mana."

This kinda sucks for lowbie mages. I remember leveling and pushing through my mana pool like a hyper kid with a rocket pack and constantly sitting to drink in dungeons while other classes could keep going and got annoyed with waiting on me. Granted, I don't have to deal with that as I have a max level mage, but still, its kind of depressing for anyone who thought they might be interested in the class come Cata. I am glad they're combining them to mana and health food though. Summoning a bajillion stacks of both at low levels took up a lot of valuable bag space.

"Scorch will provide a damage bonus to the mage's fire spells. Our goal is for Scorch to be part of the mage's rotation and a useful damage-dealing ability, even if someone else is supplying the group with the spell Critical Strike debuff. Scorch will provide the mage with more specific benefits, which can also be improved through talents."

So basically Scorch is going to be Improved Scorch? And they're going to change the talents dealing with this? Sounds great if you're a fire mage and you're bored with your rotation.

"Arcane Focus will now return mana for each spell that fails to hit your target, including Arcane Missiles that fail to launch. We want Arcane mages to have several talents that play off of how much mana the character has and give the player enough tools to manage mana."

So I want to know who went and got all the Mage Programmers drunk the night before this stuff was due and then thought it'd be a great idea to add this in? Are they trying to alleviate our need for hit and encourage us not to hit cap? Is this their grand idea on how to fix our mana regen? To be honest with you, I don't have an issue with mana regen unless I die and my evocate isn't up when I get battle rezzed. The short cooldown on Evocate in a standard Arcane Spec does not make it difficult to use it as much as you need it. The part that makes me the most nervous is where they say "ncluding Arcane Missiles that fail to launch." Are they adding something in to nerf missiles? If they are that leaves Arcane mages with ONE reliable spell in their rotation. Who cares if you get some mana back if you don't do any damage?

"The talent Playing with Fire will reduce the cooldown of Blast Wave when hit by a melee attack, instead of its current effect."

So a cooldown reduction instead of damage and no extra damage taken. Again, a fire thing. So not sure how I feel about it.

"Pyromaniac will grant Haste when three or more targets are getting damaged by the effects of your damage-over-time (DoT) fire spells."

Are we eliminating the old Pyromaniac? Assuming so, that's decreased crit and mana regen. Hast is good, but that limits this to an AOE only talent. Blargh.

"The Burnout talent will allow mages to cast spells using health when they run out of mana."

An interesting mechanic and a good way to piss your healers off. I have to tell you that one of my pet peeves as a healer is when a warlock eats him or herself for mana and then doesn't bother to fill his health pool back up again, expecting me to use my mana pool to fill it instead. It's just not courteous. Hopefully this will just be a back up plan for when Evocation is on cooldown. Not a reason to have no mana pool at all and just keep casting through and hoping your healer keeps you up. Mages are notoriously squishy. This makes fire mages even squishier.

On to Mastery:

"Arcane
Spell damage
Spell Haste
Mana Adept: Arcane will deal damage based how much mana the mage has. For example, Arcane mages will do much more damage at 100% mana than at 50% mana. If they begin to get low on mana, they will likely want to use an ability or mechanic to bring their mana up to increase their damage."

The drunk mage programmers are at it again. So basically what they're saying is to get the full potential out of your character's damage, you need to keep your mana pool filled the majority of the time. Wait... I forgot. Doesn't casting decrease your mana pool? So should I stop casting? Is this just a push for us to use Evocate and Mana gems more? I suppose the big question on this one is how it will scale. Are we going to be doing 50% damage at 50% mana? This also pulls into focus our aggro: if we have a damage bonus at 100% mana, then we're going to be VERY bursty and so will our aggro. We might have to actually start waiting for 5 sunders again on boss fights. This would make more sense to me in reverse - lower mana = more damage. That'd be a reason for mages to balance their mana pool and damage output. It'd also encourage us to bust through our pool faster and keep casting rather than to stop and refill the pool more often.

"Fire
Spell damage
Spell Crit
Ignite: All direct-damage fire spells will add a damage-over-time (DoT) component when cast. The flavor will be similar to how Fireball works; however, the DoT component will be much stronger."

So fire mages are warlocks now? Congratulations. Makes sense since they took focus magic and made it a warlock/mage conspiracy.

"Frost
Spell damage
Spell Crit damage
Deathfrost: Casting Frostbolt places a buff on the mage that increases the damage for all frost, fire, and arcane spells. The only damage spell that won't be affected by this buff is Frostbolt."

Last I checked, a Frost PVE rotation pretty much contains two spells: Frostbolt and Deep Freeze. Are they trying to throw in other frost spells as well? It doesn't seem like this would make Frost any more viable for raiding than it already is, and this makes me sad.

I know this is just a preliminary preview. I realize things can change between now and Cata and I hope they do. I'm really hoping Blizzard has some other tricks up their sleeve to whip out and surprise us in a good way because right now, the mage is not looking so good for Cataclysm.

Portal Roulette

noreply@blogger.com (Gypsy) — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 18:10:00 +0000

My guild runs a number of little raids during the week, as well as an ICC 25 and a number of 10 man teams. At the end of the raid, it's a mage's job to throw up a portal to Dalaran or Orgrimmar if your raid so chooses so that people can resume their standing around the bank (or auction house) in a quick, efficient fashion. Some days I'm the only mage. On these days I like to play a little game called Portal Roulette.

I'm sure you've done it before when you were bored. You stand in the same spot, facing the same direction and cast every portal you have in that one spot so that you get this big bright blob of light that leads to possibly 7 different places. When you mouse over said portal blob, you get a rotating tooltip of all the different portals and as long as you positioned yourself correctly, it's very difficult to pick a specific portal. You CAN, but it's all about timing and dexterity with mouse clicks.

Now as you've probably guessed, this pisses some raiders off. The uppity ones. Who don't like to have fun. And are jerks. They can always hit their hearth stone and waste the cooldown. I always offer to pick people up from wherever they're dropped and give them an actual ride back to Dalaran. It's kind of fun to see where people end up. Most people hit the portal blob and announce what they got with a laugh, then proceed to hit their stone. Whoever got Dalaran wins... as for what they win? A free portal to Dalaran!

It's little things like this that make magery fun. The little details keep the big stupid stuff like MAGE CATACLYSM CHANGE BULLSHIT from getting in the way of playing a mage. But more on that later.

Of Vanity Pets and Sparkle Ponies

noreply@blogger.com (Gypsy) — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 06:01:00 +0000

I like pets. I especially like the cool pets that do something when you summon them, like the ones that interact with other pets. Blizzard has given us pets that are more challenging to get and some you have to pay money for as well. I don't fancy myself a pet collector, but I have a good number of them on several of my characters. They're a small aspect of WoW that's just a cool novelty item and sometimes a little entertaining. I like how Lil' KT kills critters. I love that the skunk chases around the black cat. The windrider cub/gryphon hatchling fly with you on your flying mount which is very cool. Some are rare and just for show, like various dragonlings.

The other day when Blizzard released the Lil' XT and Celestial Steed digital items on their store, I immediately went and bought them both. And by immediately I mean waited an hour in queue to pay money for something in a game. A lot of people have bitched that this is stupid, but I like my sparkle pony. It's pretty and fun to fly around with (even if they made the model a bit fat around the middle and got the run animation all wrong.) Sure it doesn't make me unique, but I'm a horse person and this is just about the only horse I can have on a Horde character that's not a skeleton. Plus it's a flying mount which is also cool. On of my guildies defended it by also pointing out that it's available to all your characters as soon as they hit 20 and it changes riding skill as you do, so you don't ever have to buy another mount again if you don't want to.

Of course the day it was available people were "bragging" in Dalaran with it over the well by the Horde bank and all over the landing platform. I'm sure this just pissed other people off and made them jealous. But it's my money right? If I get small pleasure out of something that's entirely digital then by gam, I'm gonna get it. WoW is already difficult enough to keep interesting; if this is what keeps me playing and happy, then so be it. Another guildie brought up a good point: Blizzard made a ton of money selling these things. And if that keeps my subscription cost from rising, then that's A-OK with me.

More Holiday Crap

noreply@blogger.com (Gypsy) — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 03:07:00 +0000

So yesterday was Easter and I spent the majority of the day in a blissful state of a full belly and moderate drunkenness. It was good. Today I get bored so I say to myself "I'll log in and see what's shaking on WoW!" I get on with the intention of playing my shaman and doing something fun and interesting when I see a Tauren female standing in front of me in a pink dress and bunny ears. It takes me a moment to realize what this could mean, and then it hits me like a brick wall. Noblegarden started yesterday.

I knew it was coming, as there's a blogger event going on and it's on the calender and it's Easter. I knocked it out last year on my hunter and she has a couple pretty RP dresses from it. Mages can also get the Polymorph Bunny exclusively from this holiday so I'm going to have to suck it up and do it on Istolla. And when I commit to part of a holiday, I just go ahead and do it all, sad as that is. So another holiday is ahead of me.

I hate holiday dailies with a passion. With Love is in the Air, they did it to make the holiday more accessible to people for the title, but it wasn't impossible last year was it? And as much as I like holiday bosses, I'm glad not to have to farm vanity items this time around. But still, the egg collecting wears on you fast. Especially if you're on at peak times and everyone else is collecting there too. It breeds animosity for your fellow player. Fighting over stupid eggs for a stupid holiday so you can get another title you won't wear and tick off another set of achievements for a meta that gives you a dumb looking dragon mount that's slightly faster.

The first go around, the holidays are novel. But they get old fast. I took my mage down to Falconwing and started collecting, but logged out shortly after. Holiday crap makes the burnout worse, not better. It's just another set of tasks to do before you're bored again and when you have to fight others to finish that task, it's just not worth it. It's like busywork your teacher used to give you in school when you had a sub, something to keep you quiet and occupied, but not necessarily something vital to your experience.

Despite my dislike for the holiday crap, I'll probably log in late tonight when everyone else is asleep and knock it out, just so I can get my Bunnymorph and my stupid meta. Maybe that makes me a hypocrite. Maybe it just means I'm trying to salvage something that's dying off slowly.

When WoW Starts to Hurt....

noreply@blogger.com (Gypsy) — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 23:44:00 +0000

So I know you guys are like "Where the F@*$ have you been Gypsy?" And I'm totally like "Gaiz. Gaiz. Chill. I'm not dead. Just burnt out."

I knew it was coming. Don't we all go through this occasionally? I have taken plenty breaks to get away from WoW since 5+ years ago when I started in beta. I missed some raid content in Old World and BC because of it. And I expect I'll probably have a little slow gap in between ICC and Cataclysm. Sometimes logging into an alt can fill those dull moments in the game, sometimes it's dailies, or achievements, or RPing. Right now, nothing seems to hold much interest for me, besides raiding, which is of course limited. I'm not a permanent member of a 10 man team, so I fill in when I'm needed, but that hasn't been as often as I'd like lately. I've been alternating between my shaman and my mage back and forth when I do get to go, but the funny thing is that when you have no permanent spot and 2+ characters that are raid ready, there's no consistency in the reward. Some weeks, I'm taking the DK tank to ICC to fill in for another tank. Right now she's going on mostly progression nights, so she doesn't get the benefit of the farm night; neither do the other two really, but they're more liable to get a spot more often since both of them have DPS specs and there's more DPS to be replaced than healers or tanks.

So I find myself being spread thin. Which is sad. It also takes away some of my blogging mojo; I usually write about something I'm fired up about or I feel needs to be clarified. When the game is just blah for me, so is writing. Right now my blogger page has about 5 topics that are half done and there's another couple on paper in my notebook (I actually write out a lot of my stuff on paper before I type it.) So this is why I've been absent. So as I log into my reader this morning I say to myself "Why not write about what's keeping you from writing?"

And so here's my burnout post.

What's the best thing to do when WoW starts to hurt? Take a break. Or even just limit your time. My dear friend keeps telling me this and although I'm listening, I haven't found anything else to fill the time yet, so I'm drawn back occasionally, especially if there's a raid spot open. As we speak, my shaman is sitting on the steps of North Bank in Dalaran, staring at the crowd because my PUG daily failed. I know what you're thinking; I'm not following my own advice. And that's not true. I haven't logged in in days it seems and the last time I did, it wasn't for more than an hour.

The problem with taking a break is then you feel like you have too much time on your hands and that of course leaves you open to do all those things you said you'd do but didn't because of WoW. And I'm doing some of them. But I miss the social aspect. I miss my WoW buddies and our antics in dungeons.

You can always find something new to interest you in the game if you find you can't stay away. At this point, nothing new holds interest. I know some people are picking up cross-faction alts, but I'm saving that for Cata and my fuzzydr00d. A lot of people are getting a good look at the world as it is now and will never be again after the expansion hits. I've been looking at this world for 5+ years and pretty much know all of it in and out. Another 80 won't do anything for me at this point, and when things are dull in the game, so is your RP.

I'm sad there's nothing left to feel excited about. Our raids are getting closer and closer to the Lich King and that doesn't make me any more happy about WoW, mostly because I'm not seeing all the content, just filling in where needed. I'm kind of at a loss right now. So in the meantime, I'll log in when I'm needed and log out when it starts pissing me off and hope that something worth getting excited about comes along soon.

Mischief: Obeying the Muse

noreply@blogger.com (Gypsy) — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 03:24:00 +0000

6 months is a long time in blog years. That's like... gosh... must be something like a century! Windsoar at Jaded Alt has just met that milestone and to celebrate, she's sticking her muse in other people's blogs! And by that I mean, she's offered to give us all fun topics in which to post on ours. I signed up and here's the topic she gave to me, out of the kindness of her heart and the musey-ness of her... heart:

"/cast Muse
Those wonderful warlocks are quite vocal about their advantages over mages which can be summed up as “Warlocks RULE Mages DROOL!”
As the newest mage (that I’m aware of) in the blog-o-sphere, I’d like you to weigh in, and tell us of the wonders of the mage."

First of all, I think it's important to point out that mages do NOT drool. It is in fact the warlocks that drool after they whine about our Mage Conspiracy, ability to summon vast amounts of tasty strudel, and our pwn-age via pewpew lazorz. It must suck to have to rely on a demon (yuck) of all pets to do your dirty work for you. I mean how can you not feel DIRTY after using all that fel magic?

But in all seriousness, warlocks aren't all that bad. They just aren't as good as mages.

So at the behest of Windsoar the Muse, I give you:

Gypsy's Top Ten Reasons Why Mages Are Great!

(Mages' Abilities in Bed List Coming Soon!)

10. Versatility - While we're not a hybrid class and there's a clear DPS raiding spec, the other two are fun in their own way and were buffed by Blizzard in the patch that dropped yesterday (that I refuse to blog about, tyvm.) You can blow things up with Fire, pewpew with Arcane, or freeze and shatter things with Frost. Each spec has it's own little quirks that make it fun and all three of them can put out decent DPS, if not the top of the meter.

9. Ease of Transportation - Let's face it. Portals are cool, especially if you're lazy like me. Having the option of teleporting everywhere leaves you the option of throwing your hearth in another spot you use frequently too. I have mine set at the Argent Tournament, which was useful for TOC and if I was still bothering to do the Tournament dailies, which I am incredibly tired of (Damn you, elusive gruntling pony!) Even if people take advantage of your portals at the end of a raid or instance, I know they actually appreciate it, despite not saying so like the jerks that they are.

8. Summony Stuff! - So warlocks get cookies. Whoop-de-do. WE get pretty sparkly gems and strudel. And portals. And we don't have to suck out people's souls to get it either. Soul cookies taste bitter, anyway, and strudel is nice and sweet.

7. A Pet! - We get a pet too, and ours isn't full of evil and doesn't kill puppies and kittens like warlock pets. Ours is made of magic and water, making it clean and special. It also has a nice Freeze spell for AOE crowd control, unless you have the perma-elemental. I'm kind of hoping Blizzard lets us name them at some point. I have a lexicon of very appropriate names for a water elemental...

6. Invisibility - Now you see me! Now you don't! What warlock can do that trick hmm?

5. Buffs - Not just Arcane Intellect/Brilliance, but also Focus Magic and if you're Arcane there's Arcane Empowerment which is now a static aura. There's also the lesser mentioned and mostly crappy Amplify/Dampen Magic and if you're frost with a Water Elemental, there's Replenishment.

4. Blink - A fun spell and a useful spell at the same time! You can escape stuns with it, get away from rogues, get out of fire, sneak up on an unsuspecting warlock... So long as you don't hit a change in the terrain BAM! You've got 20 yards between where you were and where you are now. Warlocks envy this spell and Blizzard tried to appease them with their Demonic Teleportation but it's limited to a certain space, so they still cry. Blizzard had to give them a pony to shut them up.

3. Polymorph - The original CC for humanoids and one of my favorite spells. Not only does it come in a number of flavors including Black Cat (my fav!), Pig, Turtle, Penguin, Bunny, and the original Sheep. Wowhead.com also lists Polymorph: Turkey so who knows if that won't be coming out at some point too!

2. Mirror Image - Now you see me... NOW YOU SEE FOUR OF ME! Ok, so it's not hard to tell which one is really me, cause I'm the one doing all the pewpew purple lazors, but this spell gives us extra damage with three minions plus spreads our our threat so we can totally blow all our cooldowns at once and get some awesome burst out of it. It can be altered to make 4 mirrors with Glyph of Mirror Image and tier 10 4 piece bonus for mages gives us a huge damage buff during the mirror up time (even if they die!).

1. We've got our own city - That's right. Dalaran belongs to the mages. And don't you other people forget it. Wipe your feet at the landing, folks, so you don't track that Northrend permafrost around. Don't litter or we'll turn you into a pig.

That's 10 reasons why mages are awesome. So if you warlocks don't want to reroll a mage at this point, I don't know what's wrong with you. You should probably see a doctor. As I feel I have fulfilled my duty to the Muse, I end with a "HAPPY ANNIVERSARY WINDSOAR AND JADED ALT!"