Patch 3.1 Proposed Mage Changes.

Eyonix has been posting up changes that are currently destined for patch 3.1, and Mages got there turn on Thursday.Here they are:

MAGE

Improved Water Elemental – this talent has been removed and replaced with a new talent that grants Replenishment (similar to Shadow priests).

We are also working on a way to give frost mages Ice Lance “Shatter combos” in PvE.

We are also working on more survivability for Fire spec in PvP.

We are also working on making Spirit a more useful and interesting stat for all mages.

First Impression? Bah. Compared to the other classes it looks like we haven’t even been given any time.

The addition of a full scale Replenishment to frost mages is a nice touch, I always thought it odd that the Improved Water Elemental talent had a very weak clone of Replenishment.

The other three “points” are a joke really. Not even a suggestion of how they might implement the three goals they stated, which is kind of lame. I think the goals themselves are nice, but throw us a bone Blizz! At least let us have a glimpse of how you think you can accomplish them.

The Ice Lance shatter combo in PvE would go a long way to making frost interesting to play in raids, perhaps they could do this by changing the way Ice Lance interacts with Fingers of Frost. Perhaps make Ice Lance a guaranteed crit when FoF is up and make it not invoke the GCD. Of course this may be OP in PvP, perhaps make it also invoke a 3 second cooldown on Ice Lance to stop it being used twice in rapid fire mode for massive burst.

More survivability for fire mages in PvP is a nice change for those who raid fire and enjoy casual PvP, I’m interested in how they could do this, perhaps a change to Molten Shields.

Making Spirit more useful and interesting. A+ if you pull this off. Mana regen isn’t particularly exciting and it would be nice to make spirit a more offensive stat for us. Perhaps changing Student of the Mind to transfer a percentage of our spirit to a damage stat, this may involve placing SotM higher in the tree to facilitate other specs getting it more easily, it seems that most raiding specs other than FFB dip into Arcane as far as TTW so this could be a viable option.

Anyway I’m no class designer but that’s my 2 pence. For those who want to read the list straight from the horses mouth the link is here.

I’m back and patch 3.0.8 hit!

Great start to a new blog eh? I’ve been really busy with college, but it’s calmed down a little now. More important than my life is the much awaited patch 3.0.8, unfortuantly the EU realms are still down so I can’t play and get in there and enjoy the new power of Arcane. Yes I have converted from the curch of Fire. I should have a more meaty post up later today, in the mean time Euripedes has a great “Gear Guidelines” post, if you’re not sure on what stats you should be grabbing go take a look, as always he delivers great info.

Ghostcrawler announces Mage changes for the next Patch

Some nice changes here for us, these changes are entirely buffs save for a minor nerf for the Improved Blizzard talent. Ghostcrawler stated that these changes are mainly designed to bring Arcane back up to be a viable DPS spec, alongside Fire, Frost and Frostfire.  Below are the announced changes and my take on them:

Change number one: Evocation’s cooldown reduced to four minuets

Obviously a buff, this will help Mages that are still suffering mana issues, although I feel this is a bit of a cop-out, with Blizzard still ignoring the lack of use for Spirit we suffer from. (Check out Euripedes’ posts on ideas to make Spirit useful, parts 1,2 and 3)

Change number two: Arcane Flows now further reduces Evocation’s cooldown by another minuet and a half:

Again a buff to Arcane Mages, but I again feel that this is just Blizzard avoiding the problem of Spirit.

Change number three: Arcane Blast overhauled to spice up Arcane rotations:

This is a very intresting change. Now, instead of increasing the damage and mana of AB when you cast it, it increase the damage of your next Arcane spell by 15% (stacking 3 times) and increases AB’s cost. Arcane Blast itself does not consume the effect. This should make raiding as Arcane much more interesting,  bringing Arcane Blast back as a mana dump spell, but removing the focus upon it that was present in TBC. Now you can rotate it in between Barrages to create a flat 15% damage increase or maybe when Missile Barrage procs, would it be worth stacking AB 3 times then using Arcane Missiles? I’m Elitist Jerks will figure that out soon.

Change number four: Torment the Weak now works with AB and all slowing affects:

This looks to be a big buff for PvP as now almost any class can allow you to do more damage on a target. Perhaps with the changes to Evocation, keeping Slow up on a raid boss to take advantage of this talent will now be more viable?

Change number five: Elemental Precision renamed to Precision, works with all spells:

I imagine that this was changed to fix the FFB bug, where FFB would get 6% hit from this talent. Still, as you wanted to cap your fire spells anyway I don’t see this as a nerf. If anything it’s a buff, helping non-arcane Mages’ Sheeps from missing. It also potentially allows Arcane Mages to achieve 6% hit from talents, if they are willing to put 8 points in Frost. It does however mean that it is unlikely that it will be moved back to the first tier of the frost tree, to make it less attractive for Arcane Mages to do that.

Change number six:Improved Blizzard reduced to give 20/40/50% snare (from 30/50/65%):

A nerf but not a huge one, this will only really affect AoE grinders but even then, it’s not a huge blow. With Permafrost and Chilled to the Bone it’s total snare is reduced by 15%. I’m not sure what affect this will have on PvP Mages, but I don’t think it’s a big nerf. (Of course I may be wrong on that, not being a big PvPer.)

Overall I think this patch is pretty good for us. Still no changes to the pants on head retarded AI for Mirror Image but ahh well. Here’s a link to the post for those that want the news straight from the horse’s mouth:

WorldofWarcraft.com Forums

The Ethics of the Tuskar

The Tuskar, a friendly race who seem to have drawn the ire of several groups recently.

 As I’m sure most adventurers have, I’ve been happily helping them to defend their homes and their people, but when I arrived at their settlement in Dragonblight I paused. For those who don’t know, one of the daily quests linked to the Tuskar requires you to raid a nearby Wolvar settlement and to kidnap twelve of their cubs. This is under the guise that the Tuskar want to raise them in a way that makes sure that they will not be a danger to the Tuskar.

On the surface this seems like a noble cause, but is it? To get the cubs you have to murder their mother in front of them, and then bundle them into your pack. I know that having that done to me would not make me less likely to be violent.

In the end I did the quest anyway, but I felt bad about it every time. I have to applaud Blizzard for creating something that in my mind creates a real moral dilemma. I feel it’s representative of the more gritty and darkstyle that WotLK has about it.

Welcome to Molten Fury

Hello, I am known in the World of Warcraft as Aerona, the slightly unstable Frostfire Mage. I’ve been a lurker in the Warcraft community for quite some time, and now I feel that I should at least try to give something back to it. So, without futher ado, welcome to Molten Fury, a blog by a PvE Mage, for PvE Mages.