Throwing The Cat Amongst The Pigeons

I was going to make this a post about 10 man content, but news that Blizzard are shipping all the Wrath of the Lich King talent changes with their next patch came out of left field and caught me a little cold.  Since it’s the biggest news in town at the moment, it’d be remiss of me not to comment, so before we go any further, here’s the blue post:

With the release of Wrath of the Lich King approaching, we wanted to provide you with some important information. In preparation for the expansion, we will be issuing a new content patch in the coming weeks. Much like the patch made available shortly before The Burning Crusade’s release, this content patch is designed to bridge current game content with that of the expansion and will contain some exciting changes and additions.

We have outlined some of the larger features scheduled to release with the patch below:

New class spells and talents
Stormwind Harbor
Barbershops in capital cities
Zeppelin towers outside of Orgrimmar and Tirisfal Glades
Two brand-new Arenas featuring challenging new layouts, terrain hazards, and moving obstacles
Guild calendar
Hunter pet skill revamp
New profession: Inscription

As mentioned above, this is not a comprehensive list, just some of the major highlights. We’ll post the full patch notes as soon as they’re available. Regarding Inscription, please note that all Burning Crusade players will be able to select Inscription as one of their two professions and level up to a skill level of 375 with it. Upon the release of Wrath of the Lich King, players who purchase and install the expansion will be able to continue leveling in Inscription and the other professions beyond 375.

So, much as when The Burning Crusade was released, we’re getting a whole bunch of changes released prior to the expansion to smooth the transition.  So far so good.  Or is it?  Rather than refer you to our full panel of experts, we’ll just get Calli and Shinano to cover the things I’ve looked at most closely.  Gorn also had something he wanted to say.

Calli, any comments from the mage perspective?

Less QQ more Pew Pew!

Regular readers of any kind of mage blog or forum will doubtless have heard the litany of complaints about how everything we can do, some other class can do better.  Here are a few of the old examples:

Mages do ranged dps, just not as well or for as long as Warlocks or Hunters.
Mages get a damage immunity/debuff clearing mechanic in Iceblock, except unlike Rogue Cloak of Shadows, when we use it, it crowd controls us.
Mages get a threat clearing ability in Invisibility, except unlike Warlock Soulshatter, Hunter Feign Death or Rogue Vanish, it takes an age to kick in and can be interrupted if a fly lands on your nose.
Mages can get free food and water.  True, but the stuff you get from the vendors doesn’t disappear when you log out, and you don’t have to be in a group to get a vendor to sell you stuff.
Mages do kickass AoE damage.  Three words.  Seed.  Of.  Corruption.
Mages get crowd control with Polymorph.  Sap, Blind, Seduce, Hibernate, Mind Control, Freezing Trap, Banish, Cyclone, Shackle, etc, etc, yadda, yadda, yadda.

The list goes on.  For anyone who’s really interested in reading more, feel free to go take a good long look at My Mage Sucks, Yours Does Too.  No seriously, take a look, if nothing else it IS an amusing blog, in a cynical kinda way.

Ok, all of that stuff is old news, and while I certainly believe it’s true that Mages in Warcraft as it stands right now are far too much glass and nowhere near enough cannon, I still enjoy playing my mage and don’t plan on switching to any other class when the expansion hits.

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.

All Your Living Bombs Are Belong To Us.

There seems to have been another patch sneaked onto the Beta servers without my noticing it, Blizzards are getting sneaky. So what’s changed? Oh nothing much. Living Bomb’s had a small tweak for one thing. Here follows a quick image of a Mage casting Living Bomb on someone:

Oh yes, you heard that right. Casting Living Bomb ON someone. Targetted. Not channelled. Heck, there are reports from pvp beta testers that Fire Mages are owning many faces. Yes, hard to believe, but I jest not. Fire mages are making with the serious face ownage. On a massive scale. I’m laughing so much right now I fell off my desk. Hurray for cordless keyboards!

Okay, okay, before we get too carried away, let’s just look at this in slightly more detail.