Spell Downranking and Mana Cost Inflation

It seems there’s another beta build on the test servers and there’s a fairly massive change been slipped in. WoW Insider just reported that downranked spells now cost much more mana than maximum rank, sometimes more than 100 mana more than the highest rank.  How is this going to affect you?  Over to our panel of experts.  Calli, you first.

*yawn*  Oh sorry, you wanted a comment? Well I guess that on fights like Morogrim Tidewalker in Serpentshrine Cavern, Mages are going to have use max rank Frost Nova to root the murlocs in place and keep them away from the healers, assuming your raid uses that strategy and doesn’t have a tankadin or a Water Elemental to do it from a safe distance.  The increased damage is fairly trivial, so threat shouldn’t be an issue.  Can’t see anything to get excited about, personally.

Ow! Put the stick away!  Ok, ok..  pvp implications…  Well the days of spamming Rank 1 Arcane Explosion to flush Rogues and Kitties out of hiding are well and truly over.  Yes, the Rogues are rolling their faces all over their keyboards in utter glee at this one.  Rank 1 Frostbolt will probably still be used to get that initial snare off quickly but it’s probably going to be a lot more situational now, and the days of spamming Rank 1 Frostbolt to get that Winter’s Chill debuff up are probably long gone too.  Rank 1 Frost Nova in pvp is also dead and buried.  Speaking personally, I’m a raiding Fire Mage who’s already paid the pvp penance to get the trinket, so I have no need to either use downranked anything or pvp at all anymore.

Now on the other hand if I was a Frost Mage who did Arenas or Battlegrounds…  ouch.  Shinano, over to you.

Spell Pushback Protection on Beta?

WoW Insider just reported something that’s good news for casters everywhere, but incredibly good news for Frost Mages. Full details at the link, but a brief summary here. Spell pushback mechanics have been changed on the beta servers. When you’re casting and take damage, the first two hits add 0.5 seconds to your cast time, further hits have no effect. Channeled spells have a similar change – the first two hits take 25% off the channel duration, further hits have no effect.

Why so good for Frost mages? Well since the only spell pushback protection they have is when either using two pieces of Tier 4 or when under the effects of Icy Veins (or if you’re really desperate, two pieces of Battlecast gear), it can take our Frosty brethren an age to get even a single Frostbolt off when that Big Red Kitty’s chewing on their faces or the Raid Boss is putting out environmental damage. Just imagine a fight like Curator in Karazahan with the aoe pulse those Arcane Flares push out. I’d been Frost since level 40 and loved it, still do. But back when Kara was progression content, I was as much use an ashtray on a motorbike at Curator, I just couldn’t get a spellcast off. Curator was our big stumbling block at the time, he pretty much marks the boundary between “easy” lower Karazhan and “hard” upper Karazhan. If this mechanic had been Live at the time, I probably still wouldn’t have been doing stellar dps, but I’d have been able to remain competitive. As it was I was forced to respec Fire (and respec from Frozen Shadoweave to Spellfire tailor, sheesh that cost me a fortune!) in order for the raid to progress past him.

This is awesomely good news for Frost mages for raiding, because as far as I was concerned, while the new Frost talents in the Wrath beta were all very nice, they still didn’t do anything to help Frosties with the biggest barrier to raid progression – spell pushback.