Look Everyone! Shinano’s Here!

Don’t you love it when you zone into Quel’danas and the NPCs all shout that stuff?  Yes, my Druid finally hit Exalted with the Shattered Sun Offensive, and oh my, new toys galore!  I wanted Shinano to get Exalted after Calli specifically for the Redeemer’s Alchemist Stone.  I hadn’t actually paid a lot of attention to the Necklaces, but once you ding that final reputation level you just want to see what the Quartermaster can offer you, and I was more than pleasantly surprised.

So I got three of them.  Druids, don’t you just love their itemisation?  Ok, let’s see what you get.

New Mage Talents in Wrath

Anyone seen the new mage talents that were just put onto the Public Test Realm?  If not, and you’re interested, I encourage you to wander over to MMO Champion and check them out.  There have been some big changes.

To summarise:

Improved Fireblast moved to Tier 1
Incineration 3/3 moved to Tier 1 and also increases crit chance of Arcane Barrage and Cone of cold by 6%.
Burning Determination 2/2 – New Tier 2 Talent. When interrupted or silenced you have a 100% chance to become immune to both effects for 10 secs.
World In Flames moved to Tier 2, 3 ranks. Now increases the crit chance of your Dragon’s Breath, Flamestrike, Arcane Explosion, Blast Wave, Living Bomb AND BLIZZARD by 6%. Blizzard can crit? Eep!
Improved Scorch 5/5 changed. Now increases damage of Fire, Arcane and Frost by 10% at 5 stacks. Nerfed down from 15% at 5 stacks but now affects Frost and Arcane too.
Fiery Payback seems to have changed. It now reduces all Fire and physical damage taken by 20% when below 35% health (meh, big deal) AND reduces the cast time of your Pyroblast by 3.5 secs.
Firestarter. New Tier 9 Talent. Blastwave and Dragon’s Breath have a 45% chance of making your next Flamestrike instant cast. lasts 10 secs.
Burnout 5/5 now not completely crap! All Fire spells have +25% crit damage bonus, but now cost an extra 5% of the spell’s base mana cost when they crit.

Now all they have to do is remove the AoE damage cap and give Fire some sort of threat reduction and it may actually be useful for raiding. It’s pretty clear now they want Fire to be the AoE tree. I can see it being the lolspec of choice for defending in Alterac Valley or city assaults in Lake Wintergrasp.  You are going to put out some absolutely SICK burst dps with deep Fire, but you try using it in a raid and you’re going to pull aggro and get squished in no time at all.  Fire seems to be shaping up to be the pvp spec in WotLK.

But have you seen the new changes to Arcane?  Sweet baby Jesus, WOW!  I mean, Arcane was already starting to look like the raiding spec of choice, and they just buffed it to be even better.  There’s a ton of good stuff in there, but this one new entry alone makes it a must to have a mage in your raid.  Ready for this, I hope you’re sitting down.

Focus Magic Rank 7
1000 Mana 30 yd range
Instant cast
Focus your energy on the target, increasing all magic damage taken by that target by 150. Lasts 1 min or until 50 charges are expended

Wow.  Just….  wow.  And there’s more.  The Frost tree has also taken a slight tweak:

Winter’s Grasp replaced with Fingers of Frost. 10% chance that your next Frost spell treats the target as if it were frozen.
Improved Water Elemental 3/3 now heals all members of your raid or party for 3% of their health every 5 secs for the 1 min of it’s duration.

Ok, so the nerf to Winters’ Graps was long expected, but the talent that replaced it is good.  My major bummer, however, about all of the Mage talents was always that there was zero raid synergy in them. BM hunters buffed their group’s dps, Survival Hunters debuffed the boss, and we all know about the massive raid synergy between Shadow priests and Warlocks.  A mage was just some more dps that needed a lot of group support to get the most out of them.  Count the number of mages in any raid that ever downed Kil’Jaeden and you’ll have change from two, the reason being that we require too much support from other classes to justify taking more than one or two of us.  Well the way these new talent changes are shaping up, I’m very happy to say that such things are long gone.  And that is very, very, very good news for Mages everywhere.

Hello world!

Welcome to Pew Pew Lazers!  I play, amongst other things, a Mage in World of Warcraft.  Her name is Calli and she’s a Fire Mage.   I play on the Hellscream EU server in the guild Sempher Fi.

It’s been said in the past that I have a problem with alts.  (For anyone scratching their heads at this point, an alt is an “alternative” character)  This is probably true, I have one of every class, and with the exception of my little baby shaman, they’re all level 70, and she’s catching up soon.  I guess I should probably introduce everyone, right?

Okay…

Calli is my main.  She’s a Level 70 Fire Mage, specced for raiding.  We’re currently in Sunwell Plateau with Brutallus down but by no means on farm status yet.  She’s a 375 Tailor/Enchantress, and she cooks a mean Hot Spicy Talbuk!

Shinano is possibly my favourite character even if I don’t raid 25 mans with her.  The reason she’s my favourite is because she’s a Druid, and Druids are just awesome.

Shinano switches spec from Feral to Resto as the need arises.  She’s cleared Karazhan and Zul’Aman as both tank and healer.

The Mighty Jingles is my Warlock.  When he takes over the universe you will ALL be put to work in the Salt Mines.  Hawt sexy Night Elves will be put to work peeling grapes for him.  Jingles is Destruction specced and currently pulling aggro all over the place in Karazhan.  Jingles is a 375 Jewelcrafter/Shadoweave Tailor.

Fingers is my Rogue, he’s wearing a mixture of Karazahn and crafted Tier 5 epic gear.  He doesn’t get out much, bless him, but I intend to get him to Exalted with the Shattered Sun Offensive soon (after Jingles, Calli is already there)  Fingers is a 375 Skinner/Elemental Leatherworker.

Aluriel is my Holy Priest.  Much the same as Shinano, she’s farming Karazahn and Zul’Aman and ninjaing all the dps cloth no-one else wants.  Aluriel is a 375 Mooncloth Tailor/Enchantress.

Henriksen is my Dwarven Hunter, and Thundercat is his pet.  Henriksen was the first toon I levelled to 60, and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.  yes, I was one of THOSE “Huntards”.  He’s much better now, thanks, and is Beastmaster specced and farming Karazahn.  Henriksen is a 375 Miner/Master Axesmith.

Gorn is my Warrior tank, although he doesn’t get out much anymore.  He’s also farming Karazahn but is currently Arms specced and will soon be carving his way through the Quel’danas dailies.  Gotta love that Human reputation bonus racial.

Galadan is my Holy Paladin.  When he’s not fixing his makeup he’s healing in Karazahn and regular 5 man instances.  Altogether now for the Paladin song…  “I’m sooo pretty, oh so pretty…”

And finally, Askara is my spacegoat lady Shaman.  She’s my baby toon, dinged 70 last and already pimped out in Kara and Heroic loot.