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*.  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?"

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.

• 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

Knowing these things is a big step to getting a good spec down, but by no means does it make you an expert.  It's the proper execution of these things that makes for a good mage (or whatever).  It's successful creativity and expansion beyond these things that makes for a great mage (or whatever).  But this isn't a guide to making you a Great Whatever.  That's a blog post for another day.

For a very long time I've had a love affair with Frost, despite it's short comings.  I stayed true to it until I hit Northrend with the mage and watched the Frostfire build die and Arcane rise in it's place.  The difference in damage was so drastic, there wasn't any way to argue.  I hated the simplistic rotation, but I learned the little ways to make it interesting and squeeze that last bit of damage out.  I researched and questioned and played with Training Dummies until I knew it backwards and forwards, waiting for the day when Frost was on top again.

I say to you mage friends and fanatics, that that day has come.

It's not to say that Arcane can't hold it's own any more; it certainly can.  So what's my problem with Arcane?  Well for one, it bores the heck out of me.  There's a general agreement now that Arcane has two phases, the one button phase and the 2 button phase.  Ok, that's kind of derogatory for someone who argued that Arcane was never just 2 buttons before.  To be fair it isn't now.  You spam AB till you run out of mana sure, with all your cooldowns tossed in there, but there's a lot of other things to toss in too, depending on if you picked up the talents.  Then you have to force yourself to hold back with alternating AB and Missile Barrage till your cooldowns and evocation are back up, then it's back to blasting.  Your damage peaks can be huge if you do it right, but it's difficult to maintain and the AOE for Arcane has always been stunted.


So despite my dislike of fire, I dropped Arcane as my second spec and picked up a fire spec I'd been messing with, tweeking it a little bit.  I did some research, got a bunch of glyphs and planted myself down in front of the training dummy in Silvermoon.  (On a side note, it's important to take into consideration which dummy you're using to test your DPS.  Some boss dummies have a level 80 dummy next to them so that you can see splash damage and some don't.  Silvermoon's dummies are far enough apart, that you get true single target damage when testing on the boss dummy.)

I read up on rotations in a couple different places and most recommended a Fireball primary nuke with constant Living Bomb up time, using Pyroblast for Hot Streak procs, and Fireblast with Impact procs.  I went through this a number of times, trying different timing with Combustion and Mirror Images.  I have to tell you, the DPS I was getting was not holding a flame to Frost or Arcane.  I was about 2k lower than my frost spec and working my tail off to watch all those DOTs and keep max up time.  I was not impressed, but I had tried it and that made me feel a little better about my choice to stick with Frost as primary and Arcane as a second.

And then a guildie suggested that I try Frostfire Bolt instead.  I will admit I was kind of dumbfounded that I hadn't thought of this myself.  FFB used to be THE nuke for a short lived elementalist spec when Wrath raiding first began.  It quickly fell out of favor when Arcane usurped Frost and Fire and even when they made their comebacks, you only saw an inkling of it with Brain Freeze procs in frost.  It's used again in the Frost Rotation that I'll get into a little later, but there was no mention of it at all in all my fire research for my little experiment.  Even looking at the unglyphed spell, it seems rather lackluster.  You get less damage than what you get for Fireball, at the same cast time and mana cost.  (It's important to note here that Blizzard took away the DOT portions of BOTH of these spells in their primary form.)  So if you're looking at the flat numbers, why bother?  Look at the glyphs for them both:  Glyph of Fireball / Glyph of Frostfire Bolt.  If you've learned anything as a mage, then you must have learned that a flat damage increase is almost always better than a crit bonus.  Frostfire's glyph has that AND it adds back your DOT portion.  On top of that the DOT stacks 3 times.  Fireball's 5% crit glyph is all well and good if you're determined to use that spell instead, but that's 5% crit CHANCE and that doesn't add up to a whole lot when it comes down to consistency, plus the only DOT you'll get out of Fireball is from a talent that also works with Frostfire Bolt, so with the second spell, you're getting twice the punch for the same price.

So I changed out my glyphs and hit up the targeting dummies again.  With a complete exchange of Frostfire bolt for Fireball, I saw an easy 1.5k DPS increase, putting Fire just below Frost for my DPS and both of them right around Arcane.  Can I tell you how happy I was?  I was really happy.  One of my biggest complaints with the mage specs that more often than not lately, one spec was way ahead of the others and a clear choice.  I like these new murky waters with 3 viable choices and forgiveness for playing a little different.  You can honestly play what you like now, instead of what everyone else tells you is best and still do decent damage.

In short, here's how Fire adds up for me:

• Spec : 2/31/3 - You can sub in Improved Flamestrike for Improved Scorch if you like.  I just like having the free spell for when my mana's low and I'm having to move.
• Single Target Priority System : 1) Keep Living Bomb active on your target, avoiding clipping the explosion on the end if you can, but clipping a little damage is better than leaving time where the debuff isn't on your target. 2) Pyroblast with Hot Streak Procs.  3) Fireblast with Impact Procs (This is technically optional if you didn't take the Impact talent or don't have anything to splash damage onto.) 4) Frostfire Bolt is your primary nuke. 5) Scorch if you're low on mana or moving (This requires the talents Firestarter and Improved Scorch.)  With this system you want to use Combustion when you have the most DOTs active and I like to use Mirrors right afterwards for a little extra umph.
• AOE Priority System : 1) Keep Living Bomb on as many targets as possible. 2) Dragon's Breath and Blast Wave, doesn't matter which first, but use them on cooldown. 3) Flamestrike in the middle of the fray to your heart's content. 4) If you get a Hot Streak or Impact Proc, use it!  They both have built in splash damage.
• Glyphs : Prime - Living Bomb, Pyroblast and Mage Armor; Major - Frostfire, Mirror Image, and Molten Armor (You can sub in Dragon's Breath or Blast Wave for Mirror Image if you like, but I honestly think it's the better choice); Minor - Whatever floats your boat.

• Spec : 3/2/31 in Frost Master of Elements isn't an essential talent, but right now Frostfire Orb isn't a good talent since you don't have the spell yet.  Those two points are flexible.
• Single Target Priority System : 1) Deep Freeze when the cooldown is up and you have a Frozen Target to hit or a Fingers of Frost proc. 2) Frostfire Bolt for Brain Freeze procs, even if you have a Fingers of Frost proc or a frozen target - the extra damage is applied to Frostfire Bolt now! 3) Ice Lance for frozen targets or FOF procs.  4) Frostbolt is still your primary nuke in Frost. 5) Ice Lance and Cone of Cold for movement, depending on your range from target.  Like we always did before, it's best to use your Icy Veins and Mirror Images in the very start of the fight so you don't lose a global from using the mirrors and to get that really nice burst right at the start along with the threat spread from Mirrors.  Now if you find you're not getting FOF procs, often, how do you get Frozen targets?  Easy, use your Water Elemental's Freeze right at the start for that initial Deep Freeze blast and another proc to boot.  You should be using this spell on cooldown during your proc downtime as it gives you 2 free procs.  Make sure you move it to a keybind for easy access as it's still a dropped AOE spell like it was before.  Make sure you have your Water Elemental active and he's spamming his Water bolt for extra damage.  Also, DON'T FORGET COLD SNAP.  It resets the cooldown of ALL your frost spells, Icy Veins and Deep Freeze included.  If there's a damage aura, it's always a good idea to have Ice Barrier up too.
• AOE Priority System : Blizzard.  You can toss in a Frost Nova, Freeze, or Cone of Cold if you feel like it or need to put some distance between yourself and the bad guys, but you'll do the most damage from just spamming Blizzard.
• Glyphs : Prime - Deep Freeze, Ice Lance, Cone of Cold; Major - Frostbolt, Molten Armor, and Frost Nova or Ice Barrier; Minor - Mage's Choice.

Ok, so I thought up the title in the shower when I was washing my hair... and belting Madonna.  Sue me if you don't like it.  Otherwise, sing along with me, ladies.

There have been a number of good Female Gamer 101 posts from other bloggers in the past and a lot of the blogs I read myself are written by other real life girls.  While we're a minority still in the gaming community, in WoW, we're holding our own and closing the gap.  According to THIS reliable source, 1 in 5 gamers subscribed to WoW are female.  20% isn't a bad number when you consider how many people are subscribed in total to the World of Warcraft and how the percentage must stand in other games.  I think one of the big things WoW has going for it in this aspect is how it appeals to a number of different types of people across a broad band of cultures and financial levels.  Probably why the devs sit on gold thrones in the Blizzard office building.

With Cataclysm coming out, I expect we'll see an influx of new people interested in the content, especially with furry cute worgen and short wily goblins coming in as the new races.  With the grind to 85 having been made more accessible, I suspect more people who aren't power gamers will trickle in along with those who like the end game like myself.  A good portion of them will probably be female.

While I know a mix of genders read my blog, as a member of the female persuasion, I feel the need to inform the males on a bit of etiquette related to dealing with the fairer sex in the game.  And in all my experience with MMOs dating back to EQ when it was ugly and blocky, I feel that I can summarize the concept in a single rule:

With Cataclysm looming on the horizon Blizzard is preparing by putting out a major content patch before the actual release.  They're still shooting for November 2nd by the looks of it, and with the 4.0 patch on the PTR, we'll be seeing the new talent changes soon.  A number of websites including Wowhead and MMO Champion have the talent trees available on their databases so you can play around with builds as you like, which I've been doing, considering my high nerd levels.  I have to say I have high hopes for all three specs come release, and I'm especially thrilled to see that Frost is making a bit of a comeback.  All the initial info was a bit scary for mages as we didn't know how the heck we were going to get mana back since they're turning spirit off for us.  But as Christian Belt advises in his WoW.com post, don't panic.  Things are going to be ok.  *patpat*


Seeing as Frost is my favorite spec by far and I have the highest hope for it, let's start there.  By choosing this spec for your first 31 points, you get a FREE PERMA ELEMENTAL making us a pet class once again.  (Suck it warlocks!)  The nice thing about this is that you don't have to glyph and you don't have to lose Freeze and a second Frost Nova that not only stops things in it's tracks, but also sets off your Deep Freeze.  Deep Freeze is still part of your main rotation as it was pre-patch, along with Brain Freeze procs and Frostbolt spam.  Let's look at the talents for frost in the build I've been playing with:

• Early Frost - Thumbs up for this talent.  It has a 15 second cooldown, so it's not always a reduced cast time, but that's more of your main damage spell you're casting in any given time, which is always good.  More spells = more damage.
• Piercing Ice - More crit = more damage = good.  No brainer.
• Shatter - Same as Piercing Ice.  More crit = good.  The only difference is that this is dependent on something being frozen, which is what the entire frost rotation is based around.
• Ice Floes - Another thumbs up talent, definitely a must.  With the damage opportunities from Cone of Cold and Frost Nova being more often, as well as the faster cooldown for Icy Veins, it's definitely a DPS increase.
• Improved Cone of Cold - Freeze = good.  Another great talent.
• Piercing Chill - More chill effects = more possible Fingers of Frost procs, so more damage.
• Permafrost - Not gonna put points into this one.  Why?  Because if we're looking at this from a raiding or grouping point of view, a slower target isn't all that much more useful.  This is more or less a PVP talent, especially with the healing aspect.
• Ice Shards - Again, chill effects = good.  While this build gives you a new fun AOE to play with, Blizzard and Flame Orb can be used at the same time since Flame Orb isn't channeled.  A little extra room to use Ice Lance is good too, as it's your go-to spell when Deep Freeze is on cooldown.
• Icy Veins - Take it.  Haste = good.
• Fingers of Frost - This talent is the base of your entire Frost build.  It's necessary to make the whole rotation work.  Take it.
• Improved Freeze - Absolutely a DPS increase.  With Freeze back in the Water Elemental's arsenal, 2 extra Fingers of Frost charges is huge, especially if you can manage to figure this into your rotation.
• Enduring Winter - Perhaps not the most necessary of talents, but it gives the raid replenishment and decreases the mana you burn through, so it's a good talent overall.  You don't necessarily need all 3 points here.
• Cold Snap - Take this one.  It resets all your frost cooldowns, including Icy Veins, Deep Freeze, and Frost Nova, allowing you to do more burst damage more often.
• Brain Freeze - This is a great talent.  You get a 15% chance to get a free instant Frostfire bolt which applies a DOT to the target and with this talent also gets the benefit of Fingers of Frost.
• Shattered Barrier - This one I'm not sure about.  Does it apply when drops or just if it's destroyed by a hostile?  If we're not talking PVP and this doesn't apply when the shield just fades, then it's a generally useless talent.  Your shield should be taking damage unless it's raid wide damage.  Even then, are you going to be in range of the boss or whatever you're fighting when it does die?  10 yards is pretty close...
• Ice Barrier - While it's not a DPS increase necessarily, it's necessary for Deep Freeze, so you have to take it.
• Reactive Barrier - While it would be nice to have a shield trigger when your health gets low, I"m going to have to say this is a PVP talent and not necessary.
• Frostfire Orb - So when I heard about our new spells for Cata, I wasn't thrilled, but I am very pleased with this talent.  It turns a mostly fire AOE spell into something that's very viable for a frost mage to throw out before they Blizzard.  The chill effect is a DPS increase, and the slow is an added bonus.
• Deep Freeze - A major part of our rotation, there's a reason this is our 31 point talent.  Take it.

The way Blizzard designed the new talent trees, you really can't go past the second tier of the other two trees, so I'm not going to go any further than the first for each tree.  The talents that benefit all specs are really the only ones you want to take, as the ones that are more tree specific are not going to do you much good in the wrong tree.  I found these to be the most helpful talents:

• Master of Elements - Since our mana regen is no longer based off spirit, we need all the help we can get.  Crit is a big deal with the Frost build, so this should be a pretty beneficial talent.
• Netherwind Presence - Haste = good and this affects all trees.
• Arcane Concentration - Again with the mana issues.  This gives you a free spell.  I don't know that 3 points are necessary, but it's a good idea to put some points in here, especially if you're having mana issues.

• Arcane Concentration - Mana preservation means more increased DPS for longer, so this is a good one.
• Improved Counterspell - Clearly a PVP talent with little usefulness in PVE.  Not necessary.
• Netherwind Presence - Haste = good.
• Torment the Weak - With the variety of different slows or snares that are a part of a normal rotation for a number of classes, this talent has an almost 100% up time and is a good choice for your points.
• Invocation - While this is probably a PVP spell, it MIGHT be useful occasionally in PVE if you happen to use your counterspell to interrupt something.  Not a necessary talent by any means, but if you can figure out how to use it, a nice DPS increase.
• Improved Arcane Missiles - More missiles means more damage to the big DPS proc in our rotation.  This is a major talent.
• Improved Blink - Since we use Blink to get out of fire or other bad AOE, this isn't a terrible talent, but not a necessary one either.
• Arcane Flows - This decreases the cooldown on some very important spells to our rotation.  A definite must take.
• Presence of Mind - Instant cast = good.  You can use this for when you're moving or when you want to get a spell off quick.  A good talent.
• Missile Barrage - Faster Missiles = good.
• Prismatic Cloak - This isn't exactly a spectacular talent.  It's probably for PVP with the decreased damage and the faster Invis.  Not a necessity.
• Improved Polymorph - Another PVP talent.  Doesn't really have any application in PVE other than when some idiot breaks your polymorph too soon.
• Arcane Tactics - Flat Damage Buff.  Take it.
• Incanter's Absorption - *sigh*  Me and this talent go way back.  While it's not as cool as it used to be, this talent isn't complete trash.  Although I wouldn't use it with Mana Shield since lower mana = lower dps, it may actually be useful with the new Mage Ward.  Not a necessary talent, but one that is better than the PVP options.
• Improved Arcane Explosion - A little segue here... I had a mage tell me the other day that he used AE for AOE exclusively because it did more damage.  Sure it does more damage, but it puts you in melee range increasing your aggro and costs more mana than Blizzard does.  Plus we get Flame Orb now!  Why the heck would you use this spell?
• Arcane Potency - A good talent.  Uses two of your previous talents to boost your damage.
• Slow - With the changes to Arcane a while ago, I fell in love with this spell.  It's not only awesome for PVP, but also has PVE applications with Torment the Weak.  On top of that it's required for our 31 point ability.  Take it.
• Nether Vortex - Free Slow is good!  Perhaps not necessary, but it doesn't cost you anything to get a free snare + slow on the target you're already DPSing.  Thumbs up.
• Focus Magic - With this talent now so high up in the Arcane tree, only Arcane mages will have it now.  Arcane mages... and warlocks.  Stupid warlocks.  Stealing our spell.  Still a good one to have, although you'll see less mage daisy chaining.
• Improved Mana Gem - A short scaling DPS boost that's very sexy and very useful linked to a mana regen.  Take this one!
• Arcane Power - Part of our burst cooldowns and definitely a good one to take.  More damage is always a good thing, plus they lowered the mana cost!

As with the last spec I discussed, there's a limited amount of points to spend in the other trees, so here's where I put them and why:

• Master of Elements - Mana return is always a good thing, especially with the new Arcane.
• Piercing Ice - Increase to ALL spells crit percentage.  More crit coupled with Master of Elements means more mana return as well as more damage.
• Burning Soul - This isn't necessary, but is the most useful talent to put our points into given the lack of usefulness for Arcane mages in the other trees.  Less interruption means more DPS in the long run.
• Fire Power - While you won't find yourself using Fire spells that often, the application of Flame Orb as an AOE while channeling your Blizzard isn't a bad idea.  More damage is more damage.

• Master of Elements - Crit for mana = good.  Again.
• Burning Soul - While not necessary, good if there's a lot of raid damage, since you're less likely to be interrupted.  Not a bad place to put extra points.
• Improved Fire Blast - While Fire Blast isn't necessarily a part of the rotation now, it's instant cast and good to use while moving.  Not a terrible talent.
• Ignite - A DOT applied with crits.  Good talent.  Crit is a big deal with fire so take this one!
• Fire Power - Flat damage increase on all fire spells plus an exploding Flame orb?  Yes please!
• Blazing Speed - Usually when something has a movement speed increase, it's a PVP talent.  Not necessary, but probably fun!
• Impact - An interesting talent.  I could see including Fire Blast in the rotation with this talent for AOE purposes.  The stun is also nice for PVP.  Not necessary, but not a bad talent either.
• Cauterize - This talent makes me sure that Blizzard employs a very different type of designer in the mage department.  While you may survive a little longer with this talent than you might have already, you better hope you have friends among the healers.  PVP talent most likely.  Not gonna waste points here. (I KNOW what you're thinking.  "Gypsy, but this will keep us alive longer for more dps!"  Well if you'd get out of the FIRE in the first place, it wouldn't be a problem would it?)
• Blast Wave - Fire gets all the fun AOE spells.  This one has a slow attached to it instead of the knock back it used to have, thus pissing off a few less tanks and healers in it's use.  Sure why not.
• Hot Streak - Free Pyroblast?  Oh, hell yes.  Take this one.
• Improved Scorch - If I'm reading this correctly that means that Scorch is ALWAYS FREE.  Meaning no mana cost for a damage spell that puts on a nice debuff?  Free is ALWAYS good.  Take it.
• Molten Shields - So Mage Ward may be cool come Cata, which is fine, but this talent seems pretty "meh" to me.  Might be good for PVP if you have Blazing Speed, but otherwise I'd not waste a point here.
• Combustion - KABLOOIE! (Ok, I'm a little slap happy from staying up to write this post and that sounded like a cool word to put in a fire mage post.  Sue me.)  An instant cast fire spell instead of a buffing cooldown like it was before.  It does, however, combine all your dots into one big one so that if you time it well, you could get a good amount more DPS from this one.  Might be fun to play around with.  I'ma take this one.
• Improved Hot Streak - A no-brainer really.  This one gives you a guaranteed Hot Streak Proc after 2 crits.  Once you get your crit rating high enough, you'll be seeing a lot of free pyroblasts and I pity the fool on the other end of your spells.
• Firestarter - Assuming you aren't tanking (mages don't usually do that), this is fabulous for PVE.  Cast a spell while you're running out of fire!
• Improved Flamestrike - So Flamestrike is one of your base AOE spells and 2 points here gives you an instant cast Flamestrike. Plus if you Blastwave, you get a free flamestrike.  In my opinion not a necessary talent, but not a bad one either.  You can put extra points here.
• Dragon's Breath - ANOTHER AOE spell for Fire.  Very cool graphic to go with it.  Fun for PVP with the disorient, plus it's necessary for our 31 point talent.  Definitely going to take it.
• Molten Fury - Execute for mages!  Hurray!  Take this one too.
• Pyromaniac - Haste is good but this one has a catch, there has to be 3 targets with your DOTs on them.  Not necessary, but a nice on for AOE situations or anything with splash damage.
• Critical Mass - This is the talent that makes Fire Mages popular in raids.  That crit debuff is nice and while Blizzard's done a nice job of spreading out the buffs among the different classes for Cata, this debuff is applied as part of your rotation.  It also increases your AOE damage with Flame Orb and Living Bomb.  Definitely a Thumbs Up talent.
• Living Bomb - The Fire Mage's 31 point Talent and a regular part of their AOE and single target rotation.  Definitely going to take this, but I have to wonder how the DOT part of this spell is affected by Combustion in its new form.  Will it still explode at the end or just be a DOT?

As with Frost and Arcane, there are few talents in other trees that are actually good for this spec.  The ones I've found to be useful are as follows:

• Arcane Concentration - Free spells are good.  No mana is bad.
• Netherwind Presence - Yay Haste!
• Piercing Ice - Crit is also good!

Please make note that I am not actively in the beta or on the PTR testing this stuff out and this is all based on my own opinion.  I encourage you to try these talents out for yourself and find the spec that you like best, even if you disagree with me on some things.  Just promise me you won't stand in fire?  Please?

Now that the buff is in for ICC, guilds that were struggling are able to get past initial difficulties of the raid and move on to other things.  Having done the Lower Spire a number of times on my mage in both 10 man and 25 man, I put together this little guide to the first part of the Citadel specifically for mages.  We'll cover trash and boss strategy, weekly quests, and loot.

The big trash mobs you need to worry about in this instance are the Deathbound Wards that are summoned from the sides of the 2 rooms if someone trips one of the traps in the room.  Usually before pulling trash in the room, rogues or a warlock's Eye of Kilrogg are dispatched to search the room for traps.  These can appear underneath trash mobs so you have to be careful during pulls.  STAY BACK.  If you go rushing in, you may be the person that sets off the track and pulls the Ward on the group.  There are a few important things to notice about fighting these guys:

1. They have a frontal cleave.  Don't stand in front.
2. They're immune to taunt, so watch your threat.  Fighting these guys is a good time during trash to pop your Mirror Image and redistribute your threat.
3. Most importantly, these guys do an AOE interrupt.  If you get caught casting when they finish their skill, you get locked out of that spell family for a few seconds.  Your mirrors are going to be caught by this if they're up.  There's not anything you can do to prevent that, but if you have your enemy cast bar up where you can watch it, you can time your own spells around it.

It's possible not to pull any of the four Wards in the hallway rooms if the traps are avoided or disarmed by a rogue.  The trash on the sides can be skipped as well if your raid is careful.  In the second room, there are 3 groups instead of 5.  Once you're through the trash and the Wards, you come upon....

1. Marrowgar throws out blue fire for you to dodge in both of his phases.  It's called Coldflame and it does not heal.  DO NOT STAND IN IT.  There's no way to tell the direction or target of this spell; I swear Marrowgar has it out for me with this spell and throws Coldflame wherever I'm standing.
2. During his first phase, Marrowgar is able to be tanked and does a frontal cleave - so long as you're not standing with the tanks, this is entirely avoidable.  The thing you DO have to watch for in this phase is his Bone Spike Graveyard.  In 10 man, Marrowgar only spikes 1 person in the group; in 25 man, he'll spike three people.  The spike puts a DOT on the person who's impaled that does a good bit of damage and has to be healed through until the spike is killed.  It's easily targeted with a /target Bone macro.  When spikes are up, they're first priority for ALL DPS so be ready to switch when they come up.
3. Marrowgar's second phase consists of when he casts Bone Storm.  At this point, Marrowgar will start spinning around the room like a crazy person and AOE anything in his path.  His aggro cannot be controlled and he can't be tanked during this phase.  You can keep DPSing through this phase, but if Marrowgar comes your way, do your healers a favor and MOVE.  You can Ice Block through this or Blink out of the way.  During this phase he also throws out a bunch more Coldflames so be ready to get out of fire too.

Once Marrowgar's dead, you get some reputation, two Frost Badges, and loot:
Viable 10 Man Loot:  [Frost Needle]  [Cord of the Patronizing Practitioner]  Viable 25 Man Loot:  [Bone Sentinel's Amulet] [Crushing Coldwraith Belt] [Frozen Bonespike] [Loop of the Endless Labyrinth]

1. Lady D does a Death and Decay area of Affect on the floor in different spots that hurts.  A lot.  Move out of it.
2. She also likes to mind control random members in the raid in 25 man - they can be polymorphed into submission so long as you don't already have an add poly-ed.  It usually doesn't last very long so by the time the Mind Control ends, your poly will probably break.
3. Lady D's minions like to throw Curse of Torpor on players during this phase.  This can be easily dispelled by either a mage or a druid, but if you're able, at least try and decurse.  Sometimes those trees are too busy keeping your raid alive.

Once her Mana Barrier is down, Deathwhisper goes into Phase 2.  No new adds will be summoned, however any remaining adds will need to be killed so that the tanks can do their tank switch based off a threat debuff that Deathwhisper tosses on them.  Ideally, all the adds will already be dead before the barrier comes down.   Lady D will switch from targetted Shadow Bolts to Frostbolts which can be interrupted and hurt a lot if you get hit by them.  Throwing a counterspell at one or two of these isn't a bad idea.  She continues to mind control on 25 man, so your poly should be ready and free to cast on your peers should they go to the dark side.  The only new ability you need to worry about in this phase is when she summons Vengeful Shades aka Purple Ghosties.  These guys pick a random raid member to target and once they get within 15 yards, they blast them with an AOE spell that hurts everyone else around them.  You can run away from these as they despawn quickly.  Other than that, just burn the bitch down.

Viable 10 Man Loot: [Sister's Handshrouds] [Bracers of Dark Blessings] [Scourgelord's Baton]
Viable 25 Man Loot: [Nibelung] [The Lady's Brittle Bracers] [Shoulders of Mercy Killing] [Ring of Maddening Whispers]

I find it somewhat disturbing and amusing that a lot of the things I post for my fellow mages come out of the morons I've run into in the new random dungeon system.  So a quick shout out to Blizzard for putting the system in and giving men plenty material to keep me writing for years!

Today's topic has to do with one of a mage's more situational spells that's granted by talents in the arcane tree:  Focus Magic.  This 3rd tier Arcane talented spell allows the mage to put a 30 min buff on any friendly unit that will buff that unit's spell critical chance by 3%.  In return, whenever said unit has a spell critical hit, the mage gains a 3% spell crit chance buff for 10 seconds.  It is important to note that this only works on spell criticals, both to buff and to set off the proc affect for the mage.

Since you can buff any friendly unit, you can throw it on a friendly NPC if you like, or any player of your faction.  So long as that player/npc is in the same instance or zone as you and casts a spell that crits, the mage will benefit.  This naturally brings up the question of who to hit in any given situation.

Last night I was healing a random normal Lich King dungeon on the Ele/Resto shaman I'm currently leveling to 80.  It's well known that an Elemental Shaman is a mage's best friend along with Boomkin.  We have quite a few casters in our guild who aren't getting the benefit of either consistently in raids due to the majority of buff classes benefiting melee.  On top of that, I thought a shaman might be fun to try.

Anywho, we're doing normal Nexus and there were 2 mages in the group with me healing, a DK tanking, and a ret pally being an idiot.  We won't get into the details of how bad this group was, but the subject of FM came up via the less geared, clearly less experienced mage.  I offered my thoughts after he decided that the ret pally was the best choice for his buff.  But clearly, being a shaman in full heirloom gear, I was more of a noob and he continued to buff the ret pally because the ret pally had 4 spells in his rotation.  I chose not to fight with him further.  It was his own DPS he was stunting.

However, I felt it might be helpful to clarify for new arcane mages where this spell SHOULD go.  Looking at the mechanics of it, your first choice in any given situation is going to be a fellow arcane mage or another mage who has also taken the talent.  This is generally how my raid runs, all the mages daisy chain or share FM.  Please not that it only can buff one player at a time and the player that has it can only have one FM buff active at a time.  This means you can't have two mages throw FM on the same person and give that person 6% spell crit or two individual mages benefiting from one players crits.  It will only benefit the last mage to have buffed said player.  The proc will only activate on spell crit.  SPELL CRIT.  NOT MELEE.

Seeing as that is our number one reason to put it FM on a person, the rule of thumb is to put said buff on the CASTER with the highest probability of getting a critical strike with SPELLS.  Here is where the unbelievably stupid idea of the Ret paladin comes in.  Sure Ret pallies get spell crits; technically so do rogues, via poisons.  This does not make this a good idea.  Some damage from melee classes, despite coming from spells, count as physical damage.  This means the probability of your FM critting on a melee class is slim to none.  Paladins would get you an occasional exorcism, DKs might toss you an Icy Touch or Death Coil, Rogues a poison crit, hunters maybe a serpent sting?  Let's be honest here, you will benefit your group/raid the most by doing the maxing your DPS (all the damage and aggro avoidance aside):  in order to do that with FM, put it on a caster and save me the shame and head shaking.  The ONLY viable melee class on which to put Focus Magic is an Enhancement Shaman.  More on that later.

But which caster you say?  First and foremost, it's going to maximize your crits and that of any other mage in your group/raid by exchanging the FM.  When you do this, you get a nice roundabout of crits and up-time on the buff, plus you get a total of 6% every time you get a proc from your friend.  Since you can't put more than one FM on any given mage, if there are more than 2 mages in a group, you do a daisy chain, otherwise known as the "Mage Conspiracy" in my guild.  For example, if you have 3 mages in the group, Mage 1 will FM mage 2 who will FM mage 3 who will FM mage 1.  It's a nice little circle you make that is endless and happy and full of crit.  It also makes warlocks sulk which is always a good thing.

If you don't have another mage to FM or one that doesn't have FM, there comes a time of great thinking.  Keep in mind that DPS casters are not the only ones you can hit with FM.  You can also hit healers.  In an over powered heroic, this is usually not a fabulous idea because said healers are usually bored out of their skull doing things like tree-punch (I'm looking at you resto druids) or Holy Nova (ehem priests.)  If they aren't constantly casting at the same time you are casting, their chance of critting and procing your buff at an appropriate time is little to nill.  So in such a group, a DPS caster is a better choice.  Now, that's not to say you'll always have another DPS caster in your group -- a lot of times in my random heroics with strangers, I find no other casters but myself and the healer.  Thus the FM automatically goes to said healer.  However, this is where the enhancement shammy comes in.  Enhancement uses a complicated rotation full of shocks and procs for lightning bolt/chain lightning.  So if their crit is high enough, they're a viable choice.  How do you know if it's high enough?  You could armory them.  Or you could test it.

As for healers, certain healers don't do a whole lot of spell critting.  There's argument as to if HOT crits count at all for FM.  I haven't tested it, but if so, this limits a tree's viability as an FM target.  Disc priests are also a tough choice since a lot of their healing is actually damage prevention through shielding.  These are obviously better targets than a ret paladin, but if there's another choice take it.  Holy paladins are my favorite healers to put FM on -- they stack int and get a good deal of crit from it and crit all the time with their heal-spam.  The important thing to remember is that 3% crit, while lovely, is not likely to help a healer save a tank from dying better than better DPS output.  I had a mage tell me he had to FM his priest friend so "he can get those big crits to keep up the tanks" and was appalled since there were 2 other mages in the raid as well and we could have skyrocketed our DPS and made the fight shorter instead of hoping the priest could benefit from a measly 3% enough to not fail at tank healing.  On another note, the priest was holy and holy priests are raid healers.  Nuff said.

With DPS casters, it's also questionable if warlock DOT crits proc an FM for the same reason as a druid HOT -- both of these concepts actually place a buff on the target that do the critting, not the actual spell caster.  (Again, I have not extensively tested this data yet.  It's on my very long to-do list.)  So that leaves us with elemental shaman, shadow priests, boomkin, and other mages.  All mages love crit and it scales a lot better with fire and frost.  Frost has those nice shatter combos that keep your FM up and fire does it's living bomb thing which is full of critty fun too.  Elemental shaman have elemental oath that stacks up when they crit increasing the whole raid's crit on top of a lovely Totem of Wrath that adds to crit so you'll find them hitting up your FM procs too.  Boomkin also have a crit aura and their wrath-spam and eclipse give you a good chance at getting a proc.  Shadow priest are also a good choice as their channeled and direct damage crits will give you a proc.  In my experience, at level 80, any one of these will give you a constant up time of your procs.

With my recent exposure to the WoW community thanks to Wow.com's blurb, I've acquired a new kind of reader on my blog.  This kind of person is generally undesirable, completely useless, and otherwise ignored.  We have come to know them as Trolls:

Slang Dictionary (From Dictionary.com)

troll

1. n.
   an ugly person; a grouchy person. : Gee, that dame is a real troll. What's her problem?
2. n.
   an internet user who sends inflammatory or provocative messages designed to elicit negative responses or start a flame-war. (As a fisherman trolls for an unsuspecting fish.) : Don't answer those silly messages. Some troll is just looking for an argument.
3. n.
   a message sent by a troll (sense 2). : Every time I get a troll, I just delete it.

Definition #2 applies here most readily.  I have participated on a number of forums in my long years of internet exposure and I have found these specimens everywhere, no matter the type or format of forum or blog.  Anything that allows comments also allows trolls.   These people like to nitpick, insult, and argue.  But what makes a troll tick?  How do you stop them?


I've played on a variety of server types while on WoW and in on of my more recent server changes I transferred off an (RP)PVP server to a regular RP server.  On the previous server which shall remain nameless, I was a part of an ex-boyfriend's guild, widely known on said server for being a troll guild.  A small membership of said guild were clever and witty and did indeed troll on the forums pretty hard.  The rest of us just raided and laughed in the background at the burns they would throw at nubs and whiners.  My ex was the biggest troll of them all, so I got a first hand look at what sits behind the troll.


I can honestly say that some of these people are not bad.  Their quick wit and sense of humor provides entertainment for all, and I truly doubt they have the intent to hurt anyone.  However, their powers are used for evil in some situations, and despite best intents, people get their feelings hurt.  So why do they do it if it can go sour?  Usually just to entertain themselves (and occasionally others).  Look at the population of people that play WoW - people looking for something to get their mind off other things, like work or school.  Apparently the game isn't enough for some of that population, so they turn to the forums and blogs.  For others, it's just the thrill of the hunt.  Bullies have always existed along with society.  Wherever there is community, there will also be bullies.  These people feed off the misfortune of others, making themselves feel better in the process.  It helps them forget their own problems.  For a select special brand of trolls, there's no other explanation other than they're just assholes.  Nuff said.

I'll happily admit that sometimes a troll is in the right - putting someone in their place for a ridiculous complaint, shutting them up and moving people on to something more worthwhile to discuss.  However, we run across a few problems with these undesirables.

•  Sometimes (often), they just don't care.  Certainly, they're entitled to not care.  No one should or can tell you who or what to care about, and you don't have any business telling others.  However, common courtesy often eludes trolls.  They have little to no filter and telling them they hurt your feelings is not going to get you anywhere.  In fact, they'll probably troll you harder.

• They prey on anyone they see weaker than them.  This can cover any number of aspects; physical, mental, emotional, armory, gear score, level...  If there's any indication that they've got a one up on you, welcome to the target list.  Please note that this is only their opinion of these indications; it may or may not be true.  It's also important to note that trolls are not part of any guild or society.  There is no code of honor among trolls.  This means that they also tend to "eat their young" so to speak.
• They don't always have identifying marks.  Trolls don't run around with a badge pinned to their jacket or a special guild icon in their signature.  They often post anonymously or under a pseudonym to protect their true identity.  This often stems from a degree of cowardice, although it can also be to protect their loved ones.  Only the bravest trolls do so under their actual name (in WoW's case their main character). 
• They come in all shapes and sizes.  I have met male and female trolls.  Big ones, small ones; smart ones, dumb ones; mean ones, and funny ones.  Without the badge mentioned previously, there is no way to tell who or what is going to lash out at you in a post or even why.
• They cannot be exterminated.  They will always exist.  There will always be replies of "QQ more" waiting on you in your forum post or your blog.  Where one disappears, two pop up in their place.  This applies to banning, deleting, and other means of removal.  IP addresses are readily available as are accounts.

So what do you do with them?  Honestly, the best policy is to ignore them.  Remember how your mother always told you to ignore your big brother or sister and then they'd leave you alone?  The same principle applies here.  As long as you feed their fire, they shall continue to burn hot and heavy and all over your blog.  You can try to one-up them, but their arsenal is vast and unless you manage a hell of a re-troll, they'll be back for more.  I tried this once, for fun, and got my ass kicked; I'm not happy to report that, but I learned a lesson from it.  If you're desperate enough, you can always find a bigger troll to take care of them, but more often than not, you'll end up getting eaten along with the whelp.