So besides the stealth nerf to mages in patch 4.0.3, we also had another change come into being for a "known bug" that made a lot of Frost Mages pretty excited after patch 4.0.1. Yesterday I log into my mage and go about doing my dailies and killing elementals to run the special invasion bosses, and I notice my water elemental's name is gone and has reverted to "Water Elemental" again. Immediately, I looked up the command for the rename and I get an error that tells me I cannot rename my pet. I'm distraught.
So immediately I scour the patch notes for any comment and see nothing. I try right clicking. I ask my mage friends, who are just as stunned and disappointed as I am. I even went so far as to put in a ticket and petition to a GM to find out what was going on. Due to a high volume of petitions, I didn't get my answer till today and I was told that the ability to name your water elemental in 4.0.1 was a "known bug" and was fixed in the patch this Tuesday.
I can tell you I'm more disappointed than angry. Naming your water elemental gives you a little spark of uniqueness in a world where that is rare. The number of Frost Mages that popped up after the changes was astounding and I'd like to think that each one put forth a good bit of effort and thought to name their pet, since you were unable to change it once it was done. I won't say that I thought for hours about the name I chose, but it was special and unique to me and my water elemental had a little bit more personality because of it.
I think what bothers me the most is why Blizzard went out of their way to fix this, when there are a number of other bugs that need addressing. I'm not complaining that we got a little nerf (all our spec bonuses are down from the 25% they were before to 10% for fire and 15% for Frost and Arcane). After the patch hit, we needed it frankly. Mages shot up into the realm of ridiculous DPS, taking over the charts and leaving a lot of other classes in the dust. But this just seems so unnecessary. Does it really take up that much data room for a water elemental to have a unique name assigned to it? It seems to me that any other pet class with a permapet has a pet with a name instead of a generic identifier. Though warlocks and Unholy DKs don't get to pick the name directly, there's still a little unique flavor there. And if it's such a bad thing to have to juggle, why do hunters get to name 20 unique pets?
Sure when our water elementals were not permapets, it made sense not to let us name them. I get that. It was a temporary summoned creature. But now we get one from level 1 all the way up to cap. So why not just let us name it? Those of us who RP get a chance to tell a story with the name, something that's indicative to the elemental's personality. We bond with it after 85 levels, so why wouldn't it have a unique moniker?
Rather than whining, bitching, and yelling, I'm asking, Blizzard. Please give us our Water Elemental names back. To my readers, consider this an open letter to Blizzard, a petition for a little twist of individuality in a sometimes dull world. If you agree with what I've written here, please follow up with a comment and a /signed. Feel free to put your character name and server if you like. Even if this gets us nowhere, we can at least say we tried.
Showing posts with label Mischief. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mischief. Show all posts
The most common question I have asked me as a blogger is actually a number of questions that fit a single template:
"Gypsy, with all your excessive intelligence and spectacular good looks, it is clear to me that you're an expert in *BLANK*Those of you who did not ask this question, rest assured: on MMRS, there are no stupid questions, only stupid warlocks. As for those of you who asked this very question, well generic person who may or may not read my blog, this post is for YOU! Congratulations. In 5 easy steps, we can get you playing a spec that you love, that works for you, and that will make people want to play with you.. Please share your thoughts and wisdom with me: I like to *BLANK* and *BLANK* and sometimes *BLANK* when the feeling hits me. Which spec should I play?"
Step One: Learn your Class
I know what you're thinking. Why would we not know our class? Well, young grasshopper, take a trip through the Random Dungeon Finder at any level, run a couple dungeons of any type and I can assure you that you will find at least 1-2 people in your endeavor who have no idea how to play their class. To be honest, mages kind of have it easy. We don't have to figure out how to keep other people alive; we're DPS all the way. Classes like Paladins and Druids have to figure out how to do 3 different roles and classes like Shaman and DKs have to figure out how to do 2. Hybrids do have it harder in some cases, so we'll break this down into a question:
"What is your role?"
Are you a tank, healer, physical DPS or caster DPS? Physical DPS could further be broken down into hunters and melee if you like. For each role, there are ground rules. Caster DPS, hunters, and healers stand at range in most cases. The rocket science behind this is that there's a magical range at which aggro is drastically decreased, so standing at range = less threat = happy healer = less death. Melee DPS and Tanks obviously have to stand close to the target cause they can't swing their weapons that far. Yes, this also exposes them to higher threat levels, but that's probably why most of them wear plate or have some pretty big threat reduction.
Besides range, there's the obvious point of each role. Tanks take damage and keep the bad guys from pwning the rest of the group. Healers keep everyone alive. DPS kills stuff. Sometimes these roles aren't as concrete, like when a healer is struggling a DPS who has the ability to heal can toss out a heal to help or when a healer gets bored, maybe they'll put some DPS on something, or sometimes DPS end up tanking like on Prince Keleseth in ICC for a shadow priest or warlock. Beyond that, everyone pretty much stays in an assigned role and doesn't deviate.
An important part of knowing your class is knowing your buttons. And by buttons I mean your cooldowns, escape tricks, and fun little abilities that benefit your role or the group/raid as a whole. Some of these are essential to staying out of fire. Others are important to prevent a wipe. Others just make you do your job a little faster or harder, essentially better. Figure out what those are and the ideal time to use them.
To be honest the best way to learn a class is to play it from 1 to 80 (or 85 come cataclysm) but there's some things you won't learn just questing or just doing dungeons or just PVPing. It's really a mixture of these that makes you aware of all the skills you have available to you and where you belong in the scheme of things.
Step Two: Research the Specs Available to Your Class
We'll use mages as an example here because that's what I blog the most about. Every class has 3 available specs. Each one has a specific role assigned to it, sometimes two in the case of feral druids. For mages, all 3 are DPS, so you get a choice of DPS or DPS... or DPS. And we're always caster DPS, despite how much fun it may be to stab someone with your Quel'Delar or crack them over the head with your Abracadaver. Anywho, Mages get a choice of Fire, Frost, and Arcane. If I were to research the aspects of each spec, here's what I'd look for:
- Talents and where to spend them for whatever your primary playstyle will be (Soloing, Groups, Raids, PVP).
- Glyphs
- Rotation
- Stat Priorities (This includes Gems, Enchants, and Reforging)
- Nuances like when to blow your cooldowns and tricks you can use on multiple targets
Step 3: Choose Your Spec and Test It
When I say test it, I don't mean in one single medium or situation. When I get a new spec, I first like to try it on a training dummy so I can get a hang of the rotation without any distractions like fire to stand in or things to dodge or threat that gets pulled. The problem with training dummies is that they don't always give you an accurate read of your DPS. When you're playing with a dummy, you're standing still, DPSing with no downtime. There's no raid mechanics to make your DPS higher or lower. There are also things about the dummy that are going to throw off about your DPS. For example, frost mage DPS is actually slightly lower than it should be on a dummy because they are susceptible to stuns, so the big hit of Deep Freeze isn't a bit hit. It's a stun with no damage. Because of this, if you have the Deep Freeze glyph, your frostbolt is also going to hit harder than it actually would on a boss, since bosses don't retain the Deep Freeze debuff. (This glyph is changing to be more useful and more appropriate to a prime glyph in the Cataclysm Beta.)
After you've fiddled around with the dummies for a little bit, go out and solo. Play with a few mobs you know you can kill and compare the timeframe it took you before and after. Try some that were more difficult for you before. Put yourself in some situations where you have to move and fight and maybe use some of those special buttons.
After you've done all this without endangering the life bars of your fellow players, take it into a heroic, either with friends or a PUG. Don't just run one, run several. The nice thing about the variety of heroics we have at 80 is that it's never the same instance twice: the pacing is different, the boss gimicks are different, and the levels of difficulty are different. Once you've messed around enough in an instance, you can try a raid, but if I were you I'd make it a raid with friends or a raid like VOA that's short and sweet. Never ever ever take a new spec you're not completely comfortable with into a progression raid where you're expected to perform your best.
Step 4: Choose a Second Spec and Test it
You're basically going to do all the stuff you did in step 3, but in a different spec. For some classes, this may require a whole different set of gear, but if it's generally the same thing, you can share it. Keep in mind that testing healing and tanking is very different from testing DPS. You can't use a dummy to check healing where rotations are completely useless. And dummies don't have threat, so while you can check your tanking rotation, it won't be as accurate as doing it on something that actually does damage back to you. But even with tanks and healers, the don't raid till your comfortable with your spec rule stands.
Step 5: Pick What You LIKE to Play and Tweak It
I can almost guarantee you that playing a spec you enjoy is going to give you better results than playing something you don't like at all. In some cases this may change (ie Old Frost Mages) and you may have to pick your second favorite thing to do. In the cases of raiding guilds, you may not have a choice because in those kinds of guilds they're allowed to tell you what to play. But if you don't like it, then don't be in that guild or try a different class that can fill the role that they need. A good guild will be patient with a player who hasn't found their niche yet and will understand that in the end they'll get better performance out of a happy player than someone who's miserable.
The tweaking part of this step is not always easy, but no two players play alike, so following a guide to the letter is not always your best bet for maximum performance. Beyond that, we all play on different machines with different connections in a variety of different real life situations, so that's going to affect your performance too. You really do have to pick what works for you. Do you have any motivation to play something that you hate?
My best advice for someone who is being pressured into something different is to try it first, especially if changes have been made or you're character has changed. I used to hate fire with a passion and had no desire to do anything with it. Now that the specs have changed so much since pre 4.0.1, I actually enjoy Fire again and have put Arcane on the back burner so that I can play with it or Frost as my heart so desires. Because I made that decision for myself, I'm a happier player and it's important to remember that WoW is a game, so all other things aside, it should be fun.
So the big warning with the onset of patch 4.0.1 was that our mana was going to be a big problem; and as I'm certain most of you have discovered (in any caster class), that is not so yet. The only class I've seen with active mana issues is Arcane mages, and that's just their niche. Even then, it can be overcome by effective use of cooldowns and a creative rotation. But all the theorycrafting sites or buzzing about how crit (critical strike rating) is going to become even more important in Cataclysm because of the mana problems that will likely manifest themselves when you hit 85 and start doing 5-man heroic dungeons and raiding. Apparently Blizzard intends to turn the tables on us and make your crit rating less valuable to the actual percentage of spells that will critically hit. On top of that, the general theory among the think tanks is that rather than haste being more useful since more spells per time period = more dps, crit is moving up instead because more big hits in a time period = more dps and less mana used. With the talent Master of Elements, those crits will help restore your mana as well, giving your casting time more longevity. (Although rumor has it, MoE isn't as effective either come Cata.) Most of these number geniuses are calling for Crit as the tertiary stat after Int (Spellpower) and Mastery after hit-cap is achieved.
Cold Crits in Frost
While previously haste was a higher valued stat for us than crit, as the mage stands right now, I'd still stick with a good balance of haste and crit. There are no magic numbers or caps for either of these stats right now, but the general agreement with a spec like Frost is that 33% or more crit is ideal to get those bit hits on frozen targets. With the Frostburn mastery, they're going to be even bigger hits since it multiplies the base damage of your spell with a percentage from your mastery rating. Even then, none of our procs in frost are based off a crit rating, but rather an application of a chill effect, mostly by Frostbolt. This is still applied to boss mobs, allowing for Deep Freeze and Brain Freeze to proc, even though the actual slow may not be effective. So while you can throw out as critting frostbolts as you like and they'll be helpful to your DPS, the big hitters in our arsenal are connected to frozen targets (to which some things are immune) and procs of Fingers of Frost. FoF has a 30% chance to proc off any chill and BF has a 15% chance. Granted you can get around this a little by rolling your other spells that freeze, like talented Cone of Cold, Frost Nova, and your Water Elemental's Freeze, but two of those spells require you to be at closer range to use effectively, which means more threat issues or a lot of moving, and the other requires a targetted AOE spell that can be very clumsy. Please not that by no means am I NOT telling you to roll through those spells if you're finding yourself short on procs, but limiting yourself to Freeze (and finding a way to make it less awkward) is a good way to have a much smoother rotation. My big point here is that with more haste and more frostbolts, you're likely to get more chill applications anyway, giving you more of those procs frost mages love so much. Until the talent tree changes to say that chill is dependant on crit, I'm not going to go so far as to say forget the Haste and start stacking crit like a holy paladin.
Critical Burn
Fire is a different story. With talents like Ignite, you'll find yourself wanting more crit in order to apply more DOTs, which are the basis of Fire's mastery, Flashburn. They're also responsible for your Hot Streak procs and big Pyroblast hits. Beyond that Critical Mass is responsible for a spell crit vulnerability available to everyone in your group or raid to take advantage of (if the stupid warlock doesn't steal your spotlight.) So at first glance, crit is pretty important to Fire. But I don't think I'd discount haste so quickly. Fireball and Frostfire Bolt are both long cast spells and according to the math nerds (ie theory crafters), the chance of an un-Improved Hot Streak proccing are inversely proportional with your crit chance. Wait what? What the heck was Blizzard thinking? Were they trying to give the little guys a heads up on the pyroblast use or something? The difference of course lies in the Improved Hot Streak option. If you find yourself with a high crit chance, it's imperative that you take this talent as it's an assured proc that continues to scale with high crit. That said, haste is still nothing to laugh at. Sure you'll burn through mana a little faster, but take a page from the Arcane book and use your cooldowns to bring it back up to where it should be.
AB Numbers Look Bigger with Crit
The clever title eluded me, ok? Sheesh. Arcane has always been a horse of a different color for mages. It's a non-elemental school that's got a unique mastery talent and an alternating but more defined rotation. The big deal here is your mana is already limited and casting through it faster is not always an ideal way to do things, especially if you're not hitting that hard when you do so. Now of course we have to take into account that AB has it's own damage increasing debuff, but there is a limit of 4 charges on it. Not a single talent in the Arcane tree is based off critical strike chance, although two of them increase your crit as procs. (So you could argue that Focus magic relies on crit, but not your own; that of another person. And the way it's made, pretty much any caster class will give you 100% up time as it is right now.) This is why the previous arcane school of thought was that crit didn't scale with arcane for crap and it should be disregarded as a stat for fire mages. However, that's not entirely true anymore. If you have a higher crit chance, you're going to hit bigger more often, making it very valuable as it has no effect on the mana cost of a spell what-so-ever. If you're just stacking haste, you're going to find yourself at a severe disadvantage here, as you'll run out of mana before you can really use your cooldowns again if you don't manage that regen phase perfectly. I like crit over haste for Arcane, but I wouldn't go so far as to say ignore the haste, either. Haste applies to every single spell you cast, while crit still stands as a chance and is not assured.
So, the patch released Tuesday, as everyone expected and mages have already rejoiced and been nerfed because Blizzard tweeked us a teeny bit too high in DPS. The day the patch hit, my guild was running randoms to try out their new specs and we came across an arcane mage doing 14k sustained DPS in Violet Hold, without running cooldowns constantly. That was a bit insane since hunters are now struggling to reach the 5 and 6k mark with their nerfs, though I'm still sure they'll get a buff, like the whiny ret paladins and DKs.
However, upon opening up my talent trees and playing with specs, glyphs and reforging, I've found some of the information given pre-patch was not accurate. So here's where I correct all that.
We'll start with reforging since that's my latest post. I love reforging. It's so fun to get rid of useless stuff on my gear and make it something cool. The good news is that I was wrong about spirit - if you pick up a piece with spirit on it, you can reforge it to something more useful, like hit or haste or mastery. However, that doesn't mean you should be scooping up healer gear with spirit right and left. That's a good way to put yourself on the shit-list. If you do have some gear with spirit already, then you can take 40% of it off and put it somewhere nicer. The problem I'm finding is that with hit being capped at good'ole 17% with no talents to reduce, there's not much to reforge. You can take some crit off your gear, but I wouldn't recommend removing it all in place of mastery. Right now mastery isn't as significant as it will be in cataclysm, and I wouldn't be very surprised if it was broken. I actually reforged all my crit into hit and mastery to test how good it was and had a drop in DPS because I wasn't ever getting the big numbers. Now this will likely be different in a raid setting where you have a number of buffs to help you out and they're significantly more widespread than before, so you don't need as many classes to get what you want. My recommendation would be to play around with your numbers a bit, so long as you have the cash.
Now glyphs are a tougher subject. Some of the glyphs labeled as prime, major, or minor didn't end up as those for release:
Now since the patch has hit, I've focused on two of the 3 specs. Fire is my next endeavor, but I have to say, I really love Frost and Arcane is so powerful, it's going to be hard to spec out of it. The thing to remember with frost is that since it's based off procs now, there's a priority system, rather than an actual rotation. You get a free perma-elemental (Blizzard needs to let us name them!) and since the glyph went byebye, we get to keep Freeze. On top of that, there's a talent that gives you Fingers of Frost procs when you use said spell. Fingers of Frost is one of the two procs you should be watching for when you're casting. I usually start a boss fight off by dropping my mirrors, blowing Icy Veins, and having my elemental freeze the target, giving me two procs to start out with. Immediately after you want to hit your Deep Freeze for some nice burst and then your Ice Lance to use the second stack of the proc. When you have no procs up, you're going to be spamming Frostbolt, but keep an eye on the cooldown of your elemental's Freeze and your own Frost Nova and Cone of Cold. (Note that Cone of Cold and Frost Nova will only give you one stack of FoF, but are still useful.) When you have procs up, your priority is thus: Deep Freeze whenever off cooldown and available through procs, Frostfire Bolt when Brain Freeze is up, including if you have a proc of FoF since it gains the benefits, and Ice Lance last for FoF procs. Otherwise, just keep throwing frostbolts at them and keep an eye out for procs.
In Arcane, you're basically down to one button, which is incredibly depressing. The (de)buff from Arcane Blast no longer benefits any spells other than AB itself, so you'll find yourself spamming a single button from now on, save for the occasional missile proc and maybe an Arcane Barrage when you're moving. The big new thing about Arcane is that you have to keep an eye on your mana to maximize your DPS. Besides that there's a bunch of little fun ways to get some extra spell power, requiring a little more utility from the mage. The talent Invocation comes to mind, requiring you to interrupt someone's spell cast to get an extra boost of damage. Set yourself up a /stopcast /cast Counterspell macro for efficient and quick use of Counterspell. Also, belfs like myself get extra benefit from interrupting with Arcane Torrent, and on top of that it gives us a little mana back. Incanter's Absorption is also more interesting with the combined power of Mage Wards covering all 3 trees of damage for mages. It's a little more limited than it was before it was nerfed, but overall, I feel it's an improvement from post-nerf. I never ever use mana shield for IA, because if you're getting hit with Mana Shield up, you're losing mana and losing DPS. This is a personal preference and other mages may feel differently. The last little tidbit for extra power is Improved Mana Gem. I highly recommend taking this talent and working it into your cooldowns. I have it set up so that for boss fights, I stop by dropping Mirrors and blowing Arcane Power, cast a couple ABs then add the extra damage from a mana gem use to my already increased damage. There are a number of talents in the arcane tree that are situational, but fun; my favorite is Improved Blink. (Blinkzooooooooooom!) Aside from the fun stuff, how do you keep your mana up? I use a combination of all the cooldowns I have: Mana Gem, Evocation, Arcane Torrent, and Mana Potions. If you have a druid friend who's not suffering low mana, maybe he'll toss you an innervate. If he/she has the glyph, they get some mana back too. So I suppose the big questions lies where you throw in your arcane missiles. This is a tricky question, indeed. I've found myself using it in heroics to finish off the last bit of a mob. On boss fights, I use it right before I have to pop Evocation since with t10 2 set it gives you a nice haste boost. It's free and costs you no mana, so use it before switching targets or right after you end up on a new target for a little more DPS. It's also useful right after movement that made your AB stacks drop.
At some point in the future I'll pick up Fire and try and give you guys some good solid info on that. Right now the top two specs are Fire and Arcane, as they have been for a while, but Frost really isn't that far behind. The thing I really love about Frost is that it's fun and you can survive through almost anything. I think that's going to become a heck of a lot more important come Cataclysm, and keep in mind anything could change at this point. Happy Maging!
However, upon opening up my talent trees and playing with specs, glyphs and reforging, I've found some of the information given pre-patch was not accurate. So here's where I correct all that.
We'll start with reforging since that's my latest post. I love reforging. It's so fun to get rid of useless stuff on my gear and make it something cool. The good news is that I was wrong about spirit - if you pick up a piece with spirit on it, you can reforge it to something more useful, like hit or haste or mastery. However, that doesn't mean you should be scooping up healer gear with spirit right and left. That's a good way to put yourself on the shit-list. If you do have some gear with spirit already, then you can take 40% of it off and put it somewhere nicer. The problem I'm finding is that with hit being capped at good'ole 17% with no talents to reduce, there's not much to reforge. You can take some crit off your gear, but I wouldn't recommend removing it all in place of mastery. Right now mastery isn't as significant as it will be in cataclysm, and I wouldn't be very surprised if it was broken. I actually reforged all my crit into hit and mastery to test how good it was and had a drop in DPS because I wasn't ever getting the big numbers. Now this will likely be different in a raid setting where you have a number of buffs to help you out and they're significantly more widespread than before, so you don't need as many classes to get what you want. My recommendation would be to play around with your numbers a bit, so long as you have the cash.
Now glyphs are a tougher subject. Some of the glyphs labeled as prime, major, or minor didn't end up as those for release:
- Glyph of Molten Armor, Arcane Missles, Arcane Barrage and Fireball are major, not Prime. This leaves Arcane mages with one good choice, Arcane Blast. Pretty much every spec will be using Mage Armor, except Frost, who could take Cone of Cold instead (along with deep freeze and Ice Lance).
- Glyph of Arcane Power resets GLOBAL cooldown, not cooldown completely, making it not as exciting of a choice as it was before. I'd go so far as to say take Missiles, Barrage, and Molten Armor in Arcane before taking Arcane Power.
- Glyph of Mirror Image is a major glyph not a minor. This tells me that it's not just a cosmetic change and that hopefully your damage buffs in Arcane/Fire will apply, making this a good glyph.
- Glyph of Armors doesn't exist yet in the game. No scribe can make it, so save yourself the time looking for it and put something else in it's place.
- Your meta in ANY spec should still be a Chaotic Skyflare Diamond.
- Instead of the Purified Dreadstones we were using pre patch to fill our 2 blue gem requirement, you want Veiled Dreadstones. Since hit is blue, this helps fill the larger requirement you have to get to 17% without talents so you don't have to reforge something that may be more useful or get more hit from gear. Remember that spirit is now not your friend. Get rid of it asap. We don't even get mana regen benefits from it, and certainly not the crit we were pulling off it before.
- As Spell Power has now been wiped off the face of Azeroth (except on weapons, in enchants, and with gem slot bonuses), your new #1 thing to gem is pure Intellect which comes from Brilliant Cardinal Rubies. All of your Runed Cardinal Rubies were changed over for you in the patch. You can also use Reckless Ametrines (Blizzard switched them over for you too!) in yellow slots for slot bonuses in gear, but Brilliant Cardinal Rubies are still the preferred method of gemming.
Now since the patch has hit, I've focused on two of the 3 specs. Fire is my next endeavor, but I have to say, I really love Frost and Arcane is so powerful, it's going to be hard to spec out of it. The thing to remember with frost is that since it's based off procs now, there's a priority system, rather than an actual rotation. You get a free perma-elemental (Blizzard needs to let us name them!) and since the glyph went byebye, we get to keep Freeze. On top of that, there's a talent that gives you Fingers of Frost procs when you use said spell. Fingers of Frost is one of the two procs you should be watching for when you're casting. I usually start a boss fight off by dropping my mirrors, blowing Icy Veins, and having my elemental freeze the target, giving me two procs to start out with. Immediately after you want to hit your Deep Freeze for some nice burst and then your Ice Lance to use the second stack of the proc. When you have no procs up, you're going to be spamming Frostbolt, but keep an eye on the cooldown of your elemental's Freeze and your own Frost Nova and Cone of Cold. (Note that Cone of Cold and Frost Nova will only give you one stack of FoF, but are still useful.) When you have procs up, your priority is thus: Deep Freeze whenever off cooldown and available through procs, Frostfire Bolt when Brain Freeze is up, including if you have a proc of FoF since it gains the benefits, and Ice Lance last for FoF procs. Otherwise, just keep throwing frostbolts at them and keep an eye out for procs.
In Arcane, you're basically down to one button, which is incredibly depressing. The (de)buff from Arcane Blast no longer benefits any spells other than AB itself, so you'll find yourself spamming a single button from now on, save for the occasional missile proc and maybe an Arcane Barrage when you're moving. The big new thing about Arcane is that you have to keep an eye on your mana to maximize your DPS. Besides that there's a bunch of little fun ways to get some extra spell power, requiring a little more utility from the mage. The talent Invocation comes to mind, requiring you to interrupt someone's spell cast to get an extra boost of damage. Set yourself up a /stopcast /cast Counterspell macro for efficient and quick use of Counterspell. Also, belfs like myself get extra benefit from interrupting with Arcane Torrent, and on top of that it gives us a little mana back. Incanter's Absorption is also more interesting with the combined power of Mage Wards covering all 3 trees of damage for mages. It's a little more limited than it was before it was nerfed, but overall, I feel it's an improvement from post-nerf. I never ever use mana shield for IA, because if you're getting hit with Mana Shield up, you're losing mana and losing DPS. This is a personal preference and other mages may feel differently. The last little tidbit for extra power is Improved Mana Gem. I highly recommend taking this talent and working it into your cooldowns. I have it set up so that for boss fights, I stop by dropping Mirrors and blowing Arcane Power, cast a couple ABs then add the extra damage from a mana gem use to my already increased damage. There are a number of talents in the arcane tree that are situational, but fun; my favorite is Improved Blink. (Blinkzooooooooooom!) Aside from the fun stuff, how do you keep your mana up? I use a combination of all the cooldowns I have: Mana Gem, Evocation, Arcane Torrent, and Mana Potions. If you have a druid friend who's not suffering low mana, maybe he'll toss you an innervate. If he/she has the glyph, they get some mana back too. So I suppose the big questions lies where you throw in your arcane missiles. This is a tricky question, indeed. I've found myself using it in heroics to finish off the last bit of a mob. On boss fights, I use it right before I have to pop Evocation since with t10 2 set it gives you a nice haste boost. It's free and costs you no mana, so use it before switching targets or right after you end up on a new target for a little more DPS. It's also useful right after movement that made your AB stacks drop.
At some point in the future I'll pick up Fire and try and give you guys some good solid info on that. Right now the top two specs are Fire and Arcane, as they have been for a while, but Frost really isn't that far behind. The thing I really love about Frost is that it's fun and you can survive through almost anything. I think that's going to become a heck of a lot more important come Cataclysm, and keep in mind anything could change at this point. Happy Maging!
I'm a regular reader at Fel Concentration and love Poneria as she is my unofficial official arch nemesis warlock person. (GO MAGES!) And apparently she's in the middle of a debate about BOAs with another blogger about the merits and flaws of the items in game. I thought I'd offer my own humble opinion. (Yes, mages can be humble.)
When BOAs first came out, I was excited. I had my first 80 and plans for another. I still think they're a great idea, although not necessary. Some things to note about me: I have 4 80s. All of them are raid geared to a point that they can perform decently in ICC, 2 also with off specs that perform in ICC. I LOVE end game. I love raiding and purpz and min maxing and high dps and Pew pew. I hate questing in old world and playing Horde makes that worse. The Barrens is the bane of my existence. The last character I leveled to 80 was leveled almost entirely in the RDF system, with quests related to dungeons up until 70 where I did a daily for my badges and did streamlined quests in the first couple zones of NR. I have exactly 0 characters with lore master. 2 have explorer because of the holiday crap. My main raiding character can't help with summons outside ICC because she hasn't done the quests.
So I guess what I'm saying is that I did the journey from one to 80 4 times, and the same from one to 60 several other times. It doesn't hold the thrill for me any more. So BOAs are my best friend. I get to 80 and I replace those suckers as fast as I can in dungeons and quests. Do I think BOAs keep you from learning to play your character properly? No. I think people can level to 80 with BOAs and without BOAs and not learn how to play their character properly. Please note that my "properly" is that the player understands the mechanics behind the abilities they are given and can perform their role in a way that does not affect the roles of another player. IE a hunter using distracting shot because it's extra DPS, despite pulling aggro off the tank is not a good player. Or a Resto shaman putting earth shield on themselves so they can concentrate on healing the others, despite taking little to no damage. Or a mage putting 71 points in the fire tree. Or a DK tank trying to tank in Blood Presence because "lol it dus mor damage and I heal myslf so u dont have 2". Make no mistake, I have seen all of these people. Most of them at level 80. Using a BOA will not save you from having to read the tooltip. I'm not saying you have to minmax your gear from level 1 on to be a good player, but yes, I do require some basic understanding of your class and role.
So what about ruining your experience? Just how many times do you have to experience Scarlet Monestary to make that quota? In the BOAs I used on my shaman and leveling her on the RDF, I must have killed the bosses in the wings of SM at least 30 times. That's more than enough Scarlet Crusade for my tastes.
So besides that, a lot of the gear dropped in old world and BC dungeons and quests is like "WTF why is there agility on my cloth?!" Sure you can make the best out of it, and you likely will with only a few current available slots for BOA gear. I haven't gotten myself a ring yet (stupidfishing), but my collection includes the PVE staff, healy hammer, and 2-handed axe, the PVP 1-handed sword, mail caster shoulders and chest, cloth shoulders and chest, and plate shoulders and chest. I will quite possibly be purchasing leather melee and caster gear, as well as a weapon appropriate for a druid. I also have both trinkets. The nice thing about the RDF system is that the reward bags you get once a dungeon give you a piece of loot that's hopefully appropriate for your class. They also have made the gear with viable combos so there's no agility on your cloth. Blizzard even went so far as to update some of the gear in old world so it wasn't quite so stupid. Still, it's one less slot you have to worry about, and even then sometimes you might find something better, so you unequip it for now and put it back in later so you don't have to struggle to find something to fit that slot when the piece you have their is 10 levels behind.
They save you money too, if you think about it. Often the good stuff that's crafted or BOE is up on the AH for ridiculous prices. Twink ecomonies still exist. So you can filter that money instead into trade skills.
Speaking of trade skills, sure they get behind. I didn't get my skinning and leatherworking for my shaman up to Northrend levels until after she was 80. It interrupted my fluidity with trade skills, but getting to 80 faster meant more time later to catch up when I was doing other things. Plus I have some great friends that pitched in to help. And I also hate leather working and am fairly sure the Devil had his hand in it. I can remember when I was leveling before BOAs and I still got ahead of my trade skills unless I made a conscious effort to stop and gather and combine. But at least I have cash to use on them this time around!
I wouldn't mind if they made BOAs a little easier to handle. I read somewhere a while back that you could mail BOAs across factions, which is fabulous, but I'm not sure I believe it and I haven't had the guts to test it yet.
I'm not going to be a snot and say that if you don't use BOAs you're a terrible player, because we were all there once. It's a personal choice. You don't have to like it, and it's not about being better than people who don't use or have the option. It's about getting to 80 faster so you can do other things.
When BOAs first came out, I was excited. I had my first 80 and plans for another. I still think they're a great idea, although not necessary. Some things to note about me: I have 4 80s. All of them are raid geared to a point that they can perform decently in ICC, 2 also with off specs that perform in ICC. I LOVE end game. I love raiding and purpz and min maxing and high dps and Pew pew. I hate questing in old world and playing Horde makes that worse. The Barrens is the bane of my existence. The last character I leveled to 80 was leveled almost entirely in the RDF system, with quests related to dungeons up until 70 where I did a daily for my badges and did streamlined quests in the first couple zones of NR. I have exactly 0 characters with lore master. 2 have explorer because of the holiday crap. My main raiding character can't help with summons outside ICC because she hasn't done the quests.
So I guess what I'm saying is that I did the journey from one to 80 4 times, and the same from one to 60 several other times. It doesn't hold the thrill for me any more. So BOAs are my best friend. I get to 80 and I replace those suckers as fast as I can in dungeons and quests. Do I think BOAs keep you from learning to play your character properly? No. I think people can level to 80 with BOAs and without BOAs and not learn how to play their character properly. Please note that my "properly" is that the player understands the mechanics behind the abilities they are given and can perform their role in a way that does not affect the roles of another player. IE a hunter using distracting shot because it's extra DPS, despite pulling aggro off the tank is not a good player. Or a Resto shaman putting earth shield on themselves so they can concentrate on healing the others, despite taking little to no damage. Or a mage putting 71 points in the fire tree. Or a DK tank trying to tank in Blood Presence because "lol it dus mor damage and I heal myslf so u dont have 2". Make no mistake, I have seen all of these people. Most of them at level 80. Using a BOA will not save you from having to read the tooltip. I'm not saying you have to minmax your gear from level 1 on to be a good player, but yes, I do require some basic understanding of your class and role.
So what about ruining your experience? Just how many times do you have to experience Scarlet Monestary to make that quota? In the BOAs I used on my shaman and leveling her on the RDF, I must have killed the bosses in the wings of SM at least 30 times. That's more than enough Scarlet Crusade for my tastes.
So besides that, a lot of the gear dropped in old world and BC dungeons and quests is like "WTF why is there agility on my cloth?!" Sure you can make the best out of it, and you likely will with only a few current available slots for BOA gear. I haven't gotten myself a ring yet (stupidfishing), but my collection includes the PVE staff, healy hammer, and 2-handed axe, the PVP 1-handed sword, mail caster shoulders and chest, cloth shoulders and chest, and plate shoulders and chest. I will quite possibly be purchasing leather melee and caster gear, as well as a weapon appropriate for a druid. I also have both trinkets. The nice thing about the RDF system is that the reward bags you get once a dungeon give you a piece of loot that's hopefully appropriate for your class. They also have made the gear with viable combos so there's no agility on your cloth. Blizzard even went so far as to update some of the gear in old world so it wasn't quite so stupid. Still, it's one less slot you have to worry about, and even then sometimes you might find something better, so you unequip it for now and put it back in later so you don't have to struggle to find something to fit that slot when the piece you have their is 10 levels behind.
They save you money too, if you think about it. Often the good stuff that's crafted or BOE is up on the AH for ridiculous prices. Twink ecomonies still exist. So you can filter that money instead into trade skills.
Speaking of trade skills, sure they get behind. I didn't get my skinning and leatherworking for my shaman up to Northrend levels until after she was 80. It interrupted my fluidity with trade skills, but getting to 80 faster meant more time later to catch up when I was doing other things. Plus I have some great friends that pitched in to help. And I also hate leather working and am fairly sure the Devil had his hand in it. I can remember when I was leveling before BOAs and I still got ahead of my trade skills unless I made a conscious effort to stop and gather and combine. But at least I have cash to use on them this time around!
I wouldn't mind if they made BOAs a little easier to handle. I read somewhere a while back that you could mail BOAs across factions, which is fabulous, but I'm not sure I believe it and I haven't had the guts to test it yet.
I'm not going to be a snot and say that if you don't use BOAs you're a terrible player, because we were all there once. It's a personal choice. You don't have to like it, and it's not about being better than people who don't use or have the option. It's about getting to 80 faster so you can do other things.
My guild runs a number of little raids during the week, as well as an ICC 25 and a number of 10 man teams. At the end of the raid, it's a mage's job to throw up a portal to Dalaran or Orgrimmar if your raid so chooses so that people can resume their standing around the bank (or auction house) in a quick, efficient fashion. Some days I'm the only mage. On these days I like to play a little game called Portal Roulette.
I'm sure you've done it before when you were bored. You stand in the same spot, facing the same direction and cast every portal you have in that one spot so that you get this big bright blob of light that leads to possibly 7 different places. When you mouse over said portal blob, you get a rotating tooltip of all the different portals and as long as you positioned yourself correctly, it's very difficult to pick a specific portal. You CAN, but it's all about timing and dexterity with mouse clicks.
Now as you've probably guessed, this pisses some raiders off. The uppity ones. Who don't like to have fun. And are jerks. They can always hit their hearth stone and waste the cooldown. I always offer to pick people up from wherever they're dropped and give them an actual ride back to Dalaran. It's kind of fun to see where people end up. Most people hit the portal blob and announce what they got with a laugh, then proceed to hit their stone. Whoever got Dalaran wins... as for what they win? A free portal to Dalaran!
It's little things like this that make magery fun. The little details keep the big stupid stuff like MAGE CATACLYSM CHANGE BULLSHIT from getting in the way of playing a mage. But more on that later.
I'm sure you've done it before when you were bored. You stand in the same spot, facing the same direction and cast every portal you have in that one spot so that you get this big bright blob of light that leads to possibly 7 different places. When you mouse over said portal blob, you get a rotating tooltip of all the different portals and as long as you positioned yourself correctly, it's very difficult to pick a specific portal. You CAN, but it's all about timing and dexterity with mouse clicks.
Now as you've probably guessed, this pisses some raiders off. The uppity ones. Who don't like to have fun. And are jerks. They can always hit their hearth stone and waste the cooldown. I always offer to pick people up from wherever they're dropped and give them an actual ride back to Dalaran. It's kind of fun to see where people end up. Most people hit the portal blob and announce what they got with a laugh, then proceed to hit their stone. Whoever got Dalaran wins... as for what they win? A free portal to Dalaran!
It's little things like this that make magery fun. The little details keep the big stupid stuff like MAGE CATACLYSM CHANGE BULLSHIT from getting in the way of playing a mage. But more on that later.
6 months is a long time in blog years. That's like... gosh... must be something like a century! Windsoar at Jaded Alt has just met that milestone and to celebrate, she's sticking her muse in other people's blogs! And by that I mean, she's offered to give us all fun topics in which to post on ours. I signed up and here's the topic she gave to me, out of the kindness of her heart and the musey-ness of her... heart:
But in all seriousness, warlocks aren't all that bad. They just aren't as good as mages.
So at the behest of Windsoar the Muse, I give you:
"/cast MuseFirst of all, I think it's important to point out that mages do NOT drool. It is in fact the warlocks that drool after they whine about our Mage Conspiracy, ability to summon vast amounts of tasty strudel, and our pwn-age via pewpew lazorz. It must suck to have to rely on a demon (yuck) of all pets to do your dirty work for you. I mean how can you not feel DIRTY after using all that fel magic?
Those wonderful warlocks are quite vocal about their advantages over mages which can be summed up as “Warlocks RULE Mages DROOL!”
As the newest mage (that I’m aware of) in the blog-o-sphere, I’d like you to weigh in, and tell us of the wonders of the mage."
But in all seriousness, warlocks aren't all that bad. They just aren't as good as mages.
So at the behest of Windsoar the Muse, I give you:
Gypsy's Top Ten Reasons Why Mages Are Great!
(Mages' Abilities in Bed List Coming Soon!)
10. Versatility - While we're not a hybrid class and there's a clear DPS raiding spec, the other two are fun in their own way and were buffed by Blizzard in the patch that dropped yesterday (that I refuse to blog about, tyvm.) You can blow things up with Fire, pewpew with Arcane, or freeze and shatter things with Frost. Each spec has it's own little quirks that make it fun and all three of them can put out decent DPS, if not the top of the meter.
9. Ease of Transportation - Let's face it. Portals are cool, especially if you're lazy like me. Having the option of teleporting everywhere leaves you the option of throwing your hearth in another spot you use frequently too. I have mine set at the Argent Tournament, which was useful for TOC and if I was still bothering to do the Tournament dailies, which I am incredibly tired of (Damn you, elusive gruntling pony!) Even if people take advantage of your portals at the end of a raid or instance, I know they actually appreciate it, despite not saying so like the jerks that they are.
8. Summony Stuff! - So warlocks get cookies. Whoop-de-do. WE get pretty sparkly gems and strudel. And portals. And we don't have to suck out people's souls to get it either. Soul cookies taste bitter, anyway, and strudel is nice and sweet.
7. A Pet! - We get a pet too, and ours isn't full of evil and doesn't kill puppies and kittens like warlock pets. Ours is made of magic and water, making it clean and special. It also has a nice Freeze spell for AOE crowd control, unless you have the perma-elemental. I'm kind of hoping Blizzard lets us name them at some point. I have a lexicon of very appropriate names for a water elemental...
6. Invisibility - Now you see me! Now you don't! What warlock can do that trick hmm?
5. Buffs - Not just Arcane Intellect/Brilliance, but also Focus Magic and if you're Arcane there's Arcane Empowerment which is now a static aura. There's also the lesser mentioned and mostly crappy Amplify/Dampen Magic and if you're frost with a Water Elemental, there's Replenishment.
4. Blink - A fun spell and a useful spell at the same time! You can escape stuns with it, get away from rogues, get out of fire, sneak up on an unsuspecting warlock... So long as you don't hit a change in the terrain BAM! You've got 20 yards between where you were and where you are now. Warlocks envy this spell and Blizzard tried to appease them with their Demonic Teleportation but it's limited to a certain space, so they still cry. Blizzard had to give them a pony to shut them up.
3. Polymorph - The original CC for humanoids and one of my favorite spells. Not only does it come in a number of flavors including Black Cat (my fav!), Pig, Turtle, Penguin, Bunny, and the original Sheep. Wowhead.com also lists Polymorph: Turkey so who knows if that won't be coming out at some point too!
2. Mirror Image - Now you see me... NOW YOU SEE FOUR OF ME! Ok, so it's not hard to tell which one is really me, cause I'm the one doing all the pewpew purple lazors, but this spell gives us extra damage with three minions plus spreads our our threat so we can totally blow all our cooldowns at once and get some awesome burst out of it. It can be altered to make 4 mirrors with Glyph of Mirror Image and tier 10 4 piece bonus for mages gives us a huge damage buff during the mirror up time (even if they die!).
1. We've got our own city - That's right. Dalaran belongs to the mages. And don't you other people forget it. Wipe your feet at the landing, folks, so you don't track that Northrend permafrost around. Don't litter or we'll turn you into a pig.
That's 10 reasons why mages are awesome. So if you warlocks don't want to reroll a mage at this point, I don't know what's wrong with you. You should probably see a doctor. As I feel I have fulfilled my duty to the Muse, I end with a "HAPPY ANNIVERSARY WINDSOAR AND JADED ALT!"
When you were little and things weren't going your way, what did you do? I used to always run to my mother, usually in tears, and claim that "it wasn't fair!" It never took her long to remind me that "Life isn't fair" before giving me a hug and a cookie and sending me on my way. It never really seemed to make me feel any better to hear it, but I thoroughly understand what she meant now. "Life isn't fair" is a catch all phrase that doesn't just apply to kickball and being popular, it applies to must every aspect of your life, including WoW.
There's been a lot of talk around the blogging community about flaming other bloggers and respect. It's gotten me to thinking. I've seen the F-word (fair, not fuck) dropped many a time in these conversations. Everyone tries to be fair outwardly, to each other and to themselves, but it seems to me that it's not possible to do so successfully all the time. No matter how hard you try, you're going to piss someone off, and guess what, someone's gonna do the same thing to you. Sometimes this anger comes out in a flame, sometimes a well-thought retort. The problem is that each blogger is an individual entity and none of us really have anyone to answer to. I suppose this is different for the people at WoW.com, who generally get paid for their information and time, but the rest of us are our own boss, legal obligations and website terms of service aside. In that way, we're sort of responsible for holding each other to standards; it's also the job of our readers to keep us humble.
Now, I don't condone trolling by any degree, but I fully expect for someone to let me know if they find some information in my blog wrong. However, I trust that such people will do so with a well-thought-out argument written in a calm argumentative statement. I know what you're thinking; "Gypsy, you're delusional, honey," and I know it. Look at the shit people wrote in comments in reply to my post that was linked on the meta-blog. There were several people who wrote some nice arguments against the what I was bitching about, but there were far more who decided to call me a whiner and not even give me the reason they thought so. I even got some lovely zings about my spelling.
I thought long and hard after that about whether I wanted to keep up with this or not. I know more flames are likely to follow, even if I never get linked again. I'm a sensitive person most of the time, but in my meditation on my future in blogging, I decided that the worst thing I could possibly do was to quit. Life isn't fair and neither is blogging. So I say to my fellow bloggers: "Write what you want to, but be ready to defend what you write. Expect the negative to come with the positive and deal with it as it comes with a deep breath, a lot of thought, and (if you're old enough) a glass of wine."
As for the game of WoW, I've had any number of experiences in which the phrase "Life isn't Fair" applies. When it comes to raiding, I've generally (with much bitterness and negativity) adopted the motto "Fair Does Not Exist." My guild has a rather unique system in which they choose who gets to join their 25 man raids. We're currently progressing (sometimes) through ICC and while there is a group of core raiders, the attendance is iffy from week to week. Everyone is allowed to sign up for our single day of 25 man raiding so long as you're 80. There is no enforced standard for gear, enchants, gemming, spec, DPS, or preparation. Some days we're reaching for people, even so far as to bring PUGs from outside the guild. Some days we have to sit 3 or 4 people so that we don't go over the allotted 25 members. I have been sat twice before. I understood the first time, and I got royally pissed the second time.
The way the system works is they first ask for volunteers. Depending on how nice people are feeling on a given day, or how unmotivated, that reduces our numbers by one to two people, usually officers. Secondly, the raid leaders get up in the super secret vent channel and talk about what they should do. New guild members are automatically either sat or put in the roll off group. Other classes are often separated into specific types, ie casters, hunters, melee, healers, tanks. "Essential members" or generally special people (often healers, raid leaders, and tanks) are exempt from the terrible experience of using a random number to assure you a spot in the 25 man. I'm not kidding. We /random roll for spots.
You could totally be the top DPS in the whole damned raid and still have to sit out so some newb who doesn't know their rotation or is the 7th hunter in the raid can go. Please note that I am not the top DPS in my raid, nor do I have the best gear. However, I think it's disrespectful to a player that despite the time and effort they put into gearing up, enchanting, gemming, learning what to do, and spending hours on progression beating their head against the wall each week, you may have to give up your spot to someone who is there for the shiny purps. This raid has also made me very bitter towards hunters because we never carry more than 4 and the last time I was sat, there were indeed 4 hunters and only 2 mages.
It's a flawed system. I made this known to the raid leaders. I was pissed. I vented to a number of people in whispers and wished the guild insincere luck in raid chat before leaving and going to Target to get a copy of Mass Effect 2 so I could blow up aliens and pretend that they were some of my raid colleagues. In hindsight, I know that this was not directed at me and that it could have happened to any one in the raid. I still know it's a flawed system, but the raid leaders seem to have faith in it and think it's as fair as they can make it. So while I still think it's fucked up that there was a parade of hunters and certain people were exempt from rolling, I've mostly moved on and accepted the event as a "WoW is Not Fair" moment.
There's been a number of other incidents to match as I disagree with our loot distribution system as well as the ethics of other raid members in taking loot. I got called out today by one of the guild loudmouths for taking a 25 man cloak with spirit on it for my resto/ele shaman, so I know it's not just me that feels it. It stressed me out for a little bit and I felt KIND OF bad, until I talked it through with some of my peeps and looked on EJ's BIS information for resto shaman, where said cloak is listed above every other 25 man ICC hard mode drop besides Valithria whom we have not yet attempted successfully. I justified it to myself and while I still feel a little guilty, I've already gemmed and enchanted it so there's no going back now. I'm certain I'll get flack from certain people for scooping up gear on my shammy since I have basically no one to roll against, but I've been on the other side. I've been a mage sharing cloth loot with every other caster class. When people complain, I kind of want to sit them down, give them a hug and a cookie, and remind them that "WoW is not fair."
So let's say you're a raid/guild leader and you're dealing with this. Let's also say that cookies are short and internet hugs are just not potent enough to do the job of a Mom-hug. How do you deal with this "fair" business? (Most of these also apply to a number of other situations, including blogging :) )
There's been a lot of talk around the blogging community about flaming other bloggers and respect. It's gotten me to thinking. I've seen the F-word (fair, not fuck) dropped many a time in these conversations. Everyone tries to be fair outwardly, to each other and to themselves, but it seems to me that it's not possible to do so successfully all the time. No matter how hard you try, you're going to piss someone off, and guess what, someone's gonna do the same thing to you. Sometimes this anger comes out in a flame, sometimes a well-thought retort. The problem is that each blogger is an individual entity and none of us really have anyone to answer to. I suppose this is different for the people at WoW.com, who generally get paid for their information and time, but the rest of us are our own boss, legal obligations and website terms of service aside. In that way, we're sort of responsible for holding each other to standards; it's also the job of our readers to keep us humble.
Now, I don't condone trolling by any degree, but I fully expect for someone to let me know if they find some information in my blog wrong. However, I trust that such people will do so with a well-thought-out argument written in a calm argumentative statement. I know what you're thinking; "Gypsy, you're delusional, honey," and I know it. Look at the shit people wrote in comments in reply to my post that was linked on the meta-blog. There were several people who wrote some nice arguments against the what I was bitching about, but there were far more who decided to call me a whiner and not even give me the reason they thought so. I even got some lovely zings about my spelling.
I thought long and hard after that about whether I wanted to keep up with this or not. I know more flames are likely to follow, even if I never get linked again. I'm a sensitive person most of the time, but in my meditation on my future in blogging, I decided that the worst thing I could possibly do was to quit. Life isn't fair and neither is blogging. So I say to my fellow bloggers: "Write what you want to, but be ready to defend what you write. Expect the negative to come with the positive and deal with it as it comes with a deep breath, a lot of thought, and (if you're old enough) a glass of wine."
As for the game of WoW, I've had any number of experiences in which the phrase "Life isn't Fair" applies. When it comes to raiding, I've generally (with much bitterness and negativity) adopted the motto "Fair Does Not Exist." My guild has a rather unique system in which they choose who gets to join their 25 man raids. We're currently progressing (sometimes) through ICC and while there is a group of core raiders, the attendance is iffy from week to week. Everyone is allowed to sign up for our single day of 25 man raiding so long as you're 80. There is no enforced standard for gear, enchants, gemming, spec, DPS, or preparation. Some days we're reaching for people, even so far as to bring PUGs from outside the guild. Some days we have to sit 3 or 4 people so that we don't go over the allotted 25 members. I have been sat twice before. I understood the first time, and I got royally pissed the second time.
The way the system works is they first ask for volunteers. Depending on how nice people are feeling on a given day, or how unmotivated, that reduces our numbers by one to two people, usually officers. Secondly, the raid leaders get up in the super secret vent channel and talk about what they should do. New guild members are automatically either sat or put in the roll off group. Other classes are often separated into specific types, ie casters, hunters, melee, healers, tanks. "Essential members" or generally special people (often healers, raid leaders, and tanks) are exempt from the terrible experience of using a random number to assure you a spot in the 25 man. I'm not kidding. We /random roll for spots.
You could totally be the top DPS in the whole damned raid and still have to sit out so some newb who doesn't know their rotation or is the 7th hunter in the raid can go. Please note that I am not the top DPS in my raid, nor do I have the best gear. However, I think it's disrespectful to a player that despite the time and effort they put into gearing up, enchanting, gemming, learning what to do, and spending hours on progression beating their head against the wall each week, you may have to give up your spot to someone who is there for the shiny purps. This raid has also made me very bitter towards hunters because we never carry more than 4 and the last time I was sat, there were indeed 4 hunters and only 2 mages.
It's a flawed system. I made this known to the raid leaders. I was pissed. I vented to a number of people in whispers and wished the guild insincere luck in raid chat before leaving and going to Target to get a copy of Mass Effect 2 so I could blow up aliens and pretend that they were some of my raid colleagues. In hindsight, I know that this was not directed at me and that it could have happened to any one in the raid. I still know it's a flawed system, but the raid leaders seem to have faith in it and think it's as fair as they can make it. So while I still think it's fucked up that there was a parade of hunters and certain people were exempt from rolling, I've mostly moved on and accepted the event as a "WoW is Not Fair" moment.
There's been a number of other incidents to match as I disagree with our loot distribution system as well as the ethics of other raid members in taking loot. I got called out today by one of the guild loudmouths for taking a 25 man cloak with spirit on it for my resto/ele shaman, so I know it's not just me that feels it. It stressed me out for a little bit and I felt KIND OF bad, until I talked it through with some of my peeps and looked on EJ's BIS information for resto shaman, where said cloak is listed above every other 25 man ICC hard mode drop besides Valithria whom we have not yet attempted successfully. I justified it to myself and while I still feel a little guilty, I've already gemmed and enchanted it so there's no going back now. I'm certain I'll get flack from certain people for scooping up gear on my shammy since I have basically no one to roll against, but I've been on the other side. I've been a mage sharing cloth loot with every other caster class. When people complain, I kind of want to sit them down, give them a hug and a cookie, and remind them that "WoW is not fair."
So let's say you're a raid/guild leader and you're dealing with this. Let's also say that cookies are short and internet hugs are just not potent enough to do the job of a Mom-hug. How do you deal with this "fair" business? (Most of these also apply to a number of other situations, including blogging :) )
- Stand by your decision. Hopefully before hand you've thought out how you're going to make it and have a damned good reason for choosing what you did. Everything in WoW has the potential to create drama because WoW is full of players who are human beings and are fallible. If you doubt yourself before making the decision, then speak with the players involved before you make the decision. Let them know your thought process. It'll help them understand better in the end.
- Listen to and acknowledge what others have to say. You don't have to agree, but you do have to listen to it and you do have to consider it. An open mind and a good listener are two major requirements of any good raid leader or guild officer. You may not make people happy immediately, but they'll be more likely to support you later if you at least lend them an ear.
- Be creative with your solutions, but be consistent. I'm all for a new solution to the problem. I love problem solving. But it's also important to treat each situation in similar ways, as different as they may be. If you change it up every time, not only will you confuse people, but they'll never know what to expect. When people don't know what to expect, people get scared. And when people get scared, people get defensive and freak out, leaving you a bigger mess to clean up than what you started with.
- Set down rules and standards from the start. If it's raiding, there needs to be set attendance rules, loot rules, and preparation rules. These will hopefully eliminate the people who aren't willing to put in the effort to do their best along with the privilege of getting the purples. And of course the most important part of rules is to make sure that you ENFORCE THEM in an as unbiased fashion as possible.
- Consider past incidents as well as the present. If someone is consistently getting screwed because of a rule or a system, maybe you should consider a change. If a single person is doing the screwing, maybe you should consider how important they are to the raid/guild.
- Remember that WoW is not fair. It's more than likely that you'll end up with the short straw at some point or another. People are going to abuse the system and you're going to be on the other end of it or the one that has to deal with it. It's going to suck, but that's part of what your job is as a leader.
With patch 3.3.3, mages everywhere are reeling and waving angry pitchforks at the Blizzard programmers.
Ok, so not all mages, but arcane mages specifically.
Yeah, that part. The Incanter's Absorption nerf. So currently, this amazing talent will allow a mage a gain in spell power whenever any sort of shield or ward absorbed damage. There's also a limit on how much it will allow. This was amazing if you had a disc priest in your raid who liked you enough to keep you bubbled or in certain fights like Twin Valks in TOC. I've done 12k damage on that fight alone while having this talent maxed out. Unfortunately, with the nerf, Blizzard is taking a limited damage buff and making it even more limited from the look of it.
Let's look at the changes:
So Blizzard, I say to you "Fix Fire First, Then Nerf." Kthx.
Mages
* Frostbolt: Spell power scaling on this spell has been increased by approximately 5%.
* Talents
o Arcane
+ Arcane Empowerment: This effect is now passive instead of being a proc off of critical strikes. The self damage buff remains unchanged.
+ Incanter's Absorption: This talent now only grants additional spell power when damage is absorbed by Mana Shield, Frost Ward, Fire Ward, or Ice Barrier. The limit of 5% of the mage's health on the spell power buff has been removed.
o Fire
+ Burning Soul: Threat reduction is now 10/20%, up from 5/10%.
o Frost
+ Brain Freeze: This talent now allows your next Fireball or Frostfire Bolt to be instant and cost no mana. There is a small internal cooldown to keep the Frostfire Bolt from immediately triggering Brain Freeze again.
Ok, so not all mages, but arcane mages specifically.
+ Incanter's Absorption: This talent now only grants additional spell power when damage is absorbed by Mana Shield, Frost Ward, Fire Ward, or Ice Barrier. The limit of 5% of the mage's health on the spell power buff has been removed.
Yeah, that part. The Incanter's Absorption nerf. So currently, this amazing talent will allow a mage a gain in spell power whenever any sort of shield or ward absorbed damage. There's also a limit on how much it will allow. This was amazing if you had a disc priest in your raid who liked you enough to keep you bubbled or in certain fights like Twin Valks in TOC. I've done 12k damage on that fight alone while having this talent maxed out. Unfortunately, with the nerf, Blizzard is taking a limited damage buff and making it even more limited from the look of it.
Let's look at the changes:
- The changes in the actual absorb will be limited with the new talent. Instead of any type of absorb from any type of shield, now only the mage's own absorbs will apply. So that means the absorbs from priest/paladin bubbles as well as magic absorbs from the light/dark auras in Twin Valks. The available absorbs for mages are Mana Shield, Frost/Fire Ward, and Ice Barrier. Mana Shield is fine, except it subtracts from your mana when you absorb damage. Frost/Fire Ward are short cast spells, lasting only 30 seconds with a 30 second shared cooldown. They also have limited absorb amounts that end up being less than PWS. Ice Barrier is a great spell, but it requires you to go a ways into the Frost Tree, so while this is still viable for two tree-ed mages who don't go deep in either tree, it's not really viable for a mage deep in either tree -- both talents are on the 7th tier in their prospective tree.
- The second change is the removal of the health limitation. This is great! Accept it's basically a moot point. My mage has 18,463 unbuffed health. Currently the SP buff from my IA can't exceed 5% of that or 923 spellpower. Max rank PWS has an absorb limit of 2230 damage. Assuming you took that all in one hit, you'd get a buff of 334 SP (fully talented IA) for 10 seconds. These little buffs do stack so after three such hits if your priest has the talent to put up the shield again in 4 seconds. So you could keep stacking them up to 3 times in theory before the limit was reached. For the sake of being thorough, with Ice Barrier's absorb up to 3300 you could get 495 spell power with a one minute cooldown, excluding Cold Snap. Mana shield absorbs up to 1330 damage, so 199 spell power. Frost/Fire Ward absorbs 1950 damage, so 292 spell power. With the cooldowns on the available spells with this nerf, it would be difficult to reach the health limit anyway without rolling all the cooldowns one after another. I can certainly see why they put the limit in before since mages were soloing Naxx with it, and I can understand why they're taking it away now since it doesn't matter.
So Blizzard, I say to you "Fix Fire First, Then Nerf." Kthx.
So it's Holiday time in Azeroth again and players on every server are laboring over achievements to try and win themselves a fabulous purple protodrake, by far the shiniest sparkliest flying mount in the game, inspired by Liberache and Elton John's love child. And the need for this mount has brought out the worst in Azeroth, pitting players against each other for spawns and drops to increase their numbers for MORE achievement points. It's kind of sad to see how people are dominating at the expense of others for gear that will only help minimally. Granted, some of it is quite fun (The Heartbreaker cracks me up and must be acquired for my mage) and cute (I love my Toxic Wasteling), but is it worth the trouble in the end?
Perhaps, but if you have multiple characters, it gets a bit old. I currently have my original main, an 80 hunter, who sits around and plays go fish with her pets most of the time. I simply don't enjoy the hunter that much anymore. However, I worked pretty hard at getting her all the metas of most of the other holidays and she's 3 metas away from the Violet Proto: The Love Fool, Elder, and Matron. Luckily Elder I require a single elder in a single dungeon I missed last year because she wasn't 80 yet and couldn't get into the heroic version. But The Love Fool is a long arduous achievement that requires dailies, one of my arch nemeses. Brewmaster was just as painful with it's token trade and dailies, but I managed. This one, I'm not so sure I will, simply because so much work is required. Perhaps if she was still my main, the story would be different, however I have taken up the mantle of the mage, on top of having a tanking DK, and a quickly rising Ele/Resto shaman. The DK I really have no plan to get metas on just because I'm not a melee fan. The Shaman can't achieve them yet because she isn't 80 yet and I don't think I have the time or energy to devote to that before Love is in the Air expires. But the mage has gotten several other metas and is closer than any other.
So I ask myself "what's so great about the purple proto?" and I find myself stumped. It's a faster mount, having the 310% speed upgrade, but it's butt ugly to put it simply and being the vain mage I am, I won't ride it. Even if I get it for the hunter, she's behind in gear and I don't enjoy her so she won't get much play time with it.
So all I can figure is that I really want the nerd points, that magic achievement point number that says "I spend way too much time playing WoW for no return!" I was discussing this very thing with guildies today and it kind of stumped us why the Red Proto that requires arduous amounts of time and SKILL to achieve doesn't have the speed bonus. The hard mode drakes do, but this little guy doesn't. Is it too easy to get? Surely not, as anyone whos attempted Less-Rabi 500 times can attest. Despite Blizzard nerfing a bunch of the achievements required for the Red Proto, it's still not completely attainable unless you get really lucky or have some friends with mad skillz. And it's a heck of a lot better looking than Violet by far.
Despite the logic behind letting these achievements go, I still pursue them with vigor, finding it necessary to finish what I've started and get an item that will rot in my mount list. Besides, the extra mount will help me get closer to the ugly Red Dragonhawk achievement...
Perhaps, but if you have multiple characters, it gets a bit old. I currently have my original main, an 80 hunter, who sits around and plays go fish with her pets most of the time. I simply don't enjoy the hunter that much anymore. However, I worked pretty hard at getting her all the metas of most of the other holidays and she's 3 metas away from the Violet Proto: The Love Fool, Elder, and Matron. Luckily Elder I require a single elder in a single dungeon I missed last year because she wasn't 80 yet and couldn't get into the heroic version. But The Love Fool is a long arduous achievement that requires dailies, one of my arch nemeses. Brewmaster was just as painful with it's token trade and dailies, but I managed. This one, I'm not so sure I will, simply because so much work is required. Perhaps if she was still my main, the story would be different, however I have taken up the mantle of the mage, on top of having a tanking DK, and a quickly rising Ele/Resto shaman. The DK I really have no plan to get metas on just because I'm not a melee fan. The Shaman can't achieve them yet because she isn't 80 yet and I don't think I have the time or energy to devote to that before Love is in the Air expires. But the mage has gotten several other metas and is closer than any other.
So I ask myself "what's so great about the purple proto?" and I find myself stumped. It's a faster mount, having the 310% speed upgrade, but it's butt ugly to put it simply and being the vain mage I am, I won't ride it. Even if I get it for the hunter, she's behind in gear and I don't enjoy her so she won't get much play time with it.
So all I can figure is that I really want the nerd points, that magic achievement point number that says "I spend way too much time playing WoW for no return!" I was discussing this very thing with guildies today and it kind of stumped us why the Red Proto that requires arduous amounts of time and SKILL to achieve doesn't have the speed bonus. The hard mode drakes do, but this little guy doesn't. Is it too easy to get? Surely not, as anyone whos attempted Less-Rabi 500 times can attest. Despite Blizzard nerfing a bunch of the achievements required for the Red Proto, it's still not completely attainable unless you get really lucky or have some friends with mad skillz. And it's a heck of a lot better looking than Violet by far.
Despite the logic behind letting these achievements go, I still pursue them with vigor, finding it necessary to finish what I've started and get an item that will rot in my mount list. Besides, the extra mount will help me get closer to the ugly Red Dragonhawk achievement...
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