Jingles’ Even Bigger Adventure

Well it’s been an interesting week.  I post about how Onyxia was such a great raid and Blizzard announce that they’re bringing the old girl back for patch 3.2.2.   I post about how old Azeroth had some great lore and instances and news breaks (spoiler alert!) that the next expansion would totally revamp Azeroth and bring up to date those old instances and zones we loved so much, as well as allow us to fly in the Old World at last.  Still no sign of the Blood Elf groupies or that 50,000 gold though!  But enough about my amazing powers of clairvoyance, I’ve been back for a week, what have I been up to?

The Mighty jingles, Now Even Mightier Than Before!

It is I! The Mighty Jingles!

Greetings, peasants!  It is I, The Mighty Jingles!  I CANNOT BE DENIED! My evil plan to take over the world has been progressing well.  Several Titans and an Old God have now been removed from the picture and no longer threaten my schemes.  Soon, I will be in a position to have my revenge against all life on Azeroth!  Let’s just go through the list, shall we?  Sitting uncomfortably?  Then we’ll begin!  Get some popcorn, this will take a while.

Phew!  As you can see, it’s hard damn work being an evil genius.  The world doesn’t take over itself, you know?  Infuriatingly, complete global domination was not achieved this weekend as my plans were thwarted at the last minute by this pesky interfering…  uh..  well…  not quite sure what he is to be honest.  He only stuck around for an hour though, scared of me, obviously.

I'll get you next time, my pretty!

But enough idle chatter!  I am always on the lookout for a few useful minions, if you think you have what it takes to be part of a successful team, want to travel the world, meet interesting new people and enslave them, then you could be the kind of minion I need!

I need YOU, to take over the world!

Jingles’ Big Adventure

Once upon a time, there was a handsome young gnome named Jingles.  Jingles was a small gnome with big ambitions.  It was Jingles’ ambition to take over the world, send all the males to work in the Salt Mines and all the women to his harem.  But first, Jingles was going to have to gain enough power to make sure that those few foolish enough to object to his master plan could be squished as an example to the others.  So Jingles became a Warlock.

Amazingly, this in itself wasn’t enough to achieve world domination.  Muttering under his breath about warlock nerfs, Jingles set off to Northrend to seek his fortune.

He met lots of interesting people, and while certain mages might want you to believe that he pooped his pants, Jingles was obviously only acting scared of the Lich, Kel’zan, in order to lull him into a false sense of security.  Yeah, that’s it.

The one thing Jingles noticed about transportation in Northrend…

Is that while the methods and modes are rich and varied..

They’re all uniformly unreliable!

So if you absolutely, definitely have to get around in Northrend, get a Magnificent Flying Carpet.  It’s a very fast Rug!

In Sholozar Basin, Jingles met a very strange gnomish couple.  The husband seemed relatively normal…

But there was something odd about his wife that Jingles couldn’t quite put his finger on…

Clearly, Hemet Nesingwary knows talent when he sees it.  The Mighty Jingles will allow him to have Sundays off from the Salt Mines when he takes over the world.

And these three Dwarves owe him BIG favours!

Accepting the inevitable, Thorim the Stormlord bowed down before his new Master.

But Darkrider Arly played hard to get.  The little minx!  She will be mine, oh yes!

And before very long, The Mighty Jingles reached the pinnacle of his powers (and level 80) and the road to world domination was complete.  If all males could please report to Thorim for your Salt Mine labour allocation, and females report to Darkrider Arly for your nightgown fitting, that would be lovely.  Thanks.

Changes

Well I finally managed to get some toons onto the EU Public Test Realm, and while I realise this is all subject to change, I’m cautiously optimistic.  Allow me to explain.

We’ve been farming Brutallus in Sunwell Plateau for some time now.  I say “farming” him rather than saying he’s “on farm” since he’s anything but an easy fight.  When I came back to the game we’d downed him maybe twice, and I arrived back in the raid wearing Tier 5 gear.  It goes without saying that I was seriously undergeared for Sunwell, the other mages all had their 4 piece Tier 6 bonus, I didn’t even have a single piece and only had one BT-level ring that compared to their gear.  Luckily, it didn’t take long for me to get close to their gear level and within a  month I was sporting 4 pieces of my own Tier 6 with the gaps made up from badge loot and Zul’Aman gear.

But I still struggled to match their dps.  Well to cut a long story short, despite conflicting advice on the Elitist Jerks forums about the relative value of spell haste, I’m convinced that haste is the way to go.  The other mages had massive amounts of haste and lower hit and crit rating than me, and once I re-gemmed for haste I finally managed to get 1950 dps on Brtuallus.  Not as good as some, but enough to justifiy my raid spot.  It’s obviously not as simple as that alone, the group you’re in makes a HUGE difference to a mage, but this post isn’t about me improving dps on one fight, it’s about the new talent changes in the upcoming patch.

On the Test Realms last week, unbuffed, ungrouped and with sub-optimal enchants (+40 dmg rather than Soulfrost) I managed 2050 dps as a Frost Mage on Doctor Boom.  Compare that to a fully raid-buffed Fire Mage with the best group setup and all consumables getting 1950 dps. 

Impressed with the new Frost Talents yet?  I was. 

Arcane on the other hand, just seemed a bit “meh”.  In the same setup the best I could do was 1100dps.  Now I accept that you can’t expect to get the most from a new spec straight after visiting the trainer.  I also accept that it’s entirely possible I was using the wrong rotations or the wrong spell as my “filler” between Arcane Blasts (I was using Frostbolts).  Perhaps I should even have been using Arcane Barrage instead of Blast around my filler spells.  All of this may be true, but even so, 1k dps vs 2k dps seems like it can’t be explained by crappy rotations alone.  If there are any other Arcane Mages out there with a different experience, please feel free to point out what I’m doing wrong because I really, really want to like Arcane.

As for Fire, well I ran into a little problem testing Fire, in that I can’t get onto the PTR lately.  I did have a play around with Fire, but didn’t do any comprehensive testing.  Fire feels ok, but I’d like to do some dps tests to see exactly how it stacks up against Frost.

Meanwhile, The Mighty Jingles had a play around with Affliction.  I was just messing around, not doing any serious testing, but Affliction sure is complicated now!  It seems like you’re fighting your cooldowns rather than the mobs.  There are some nice talents in there, but some can be counterproductive, like your Shadowbolts resetting the timer on your Corruption, for example.  Sounds great on paper, but unless you time your Shadowbolts precisely you can end up resetting too early and losing DoT ticks.  It can actually lower your dps!  There’s just too much cooldown juggling going on there to be comfortable in my opinion.

Aluriel also popped over to the Test Realms and was immediately critted in the face by a wall of confusion.  Don’t get me wrong, the new Priest talents are lovely in my humble opinion, they’re not the issue.  Aluriel’s problem is that she doesn’t know what to wear!  Some of her healing gear seems like it would be better for dps, and some of her dps gear looks like it would be better for healing!  This is what I believe is referred to as “an embarrasment of riches”.  It’s quite a nice problem to have so I’m not complaining.  As far as the dreaded spell downranking nerf is concerned, Priests are better off than most in this department.  With the proper talents we can regain mana from overhealing, we can gain clearcasting at an increased rate and our Shadowfiends benefit immensely from the shared spellpower mechanic.  We can also, in a pinch, use the neglected max rank “Heal” rather than Greater Heal, which in Aluriel’s case, still heals for a reasonable 2k.  I’m pretty happy with the direction Priests are going, all in all.

After hearing good things about Protection Warriors I took the plunge and transferred Gorn over to the PTR too.  All of the rumours are true.  Protection is FUN!  In a mixture of Kara/Tier 4 epics and blue quest and reputation reward tanking gear, Gorn was storming through the Quel’danas dailies like a man possessed.  Shield Slams were critting for 2k,and they were critting regularly, as were Heroic Strikes and Devastates.  I’m not saying he’s anywhere near Calli’s dps, because he clearly isn’t, but grinding as a Protection spec warrior isn’t an exercise in having your teeth pulled anymore.  I’m predicting a happy, fun-filled future for tanks.  Oh, and Shockwave?  I want to marry it and have its babies.

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.