Blizzard Nerfs Mage QQ – New 3.3 PTR Changes
Big frickin’ changes for mages just got dropped on MMO-Champion just now. Makes me wonder if Ghostcrawler just started reading our blog. Hold onto your chairs, ladies and gents and onto the sexy changes:
Fire
* Improved Scorch now increases spell critical strike chance against the target by 5% but no longer stacks. (Up from 1%, Stacks up to 5)
Ice
* Frozen Core now also causes your Ice Lance criticals to reduce the cast time of your next Frostbolt or Frostfire Bolt by 0.4/0.7/1 sec.
Glyphs
* Glyph of Improved Scorch is now named Glyph of Scorch and Increases the damage of your Scorch spell by 20%.
* Glyph of Eternal Water – Your Summon Water Elemental now lasts indefinitely, but your Water Elemental can no longer cast Freeze.
I cannot tell you how much myself or Metaneira are squealing right now. This is a big step up for both PVE fire and frost mages. It feels like all of the grousing that mages have been doing for the past couple years has finally paid off.
Scorch being changed from a stacking debuff to a single-application debuff now means that we get the benefit of the Glyph of Improved Scorch as it is now, with the benefit of being able to use our third glyph slot with fireball/frostfire bolt glyphs. This is a huge DPS bonus on every single fight – scorch can be kept up easily across both single and multiple targets with little time lost. This is such a major fix to the biggest flaw in playing fire in raids and makes it very not only comparable to other mage specs but other classes as well in both playstyle as well as DPS.
The scorch glyph is an obvious change since the scorch spell mechanics will be changing. Will it be a DPS boost against other glyphs? Time will tell.
The Glyph of Elemental Water is a big boost for PVE frost – it gives them the benefits of their pets and doesn’t hurt those who play frost in PVP. Will this, along with Frozen Core talent make raiding as a frost mage more viable? We’re very excited.
Metaneira will be testing the new build on the PTR shortly and we will report to you about these exciting, and frankly ground-breaking changes.
I’ll be over here hyperventilating like a little girl.
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Holy crap, hello WoW.com readers!
/cast Conjure Whiskey
/cheer
This is fabulous news, especially since I am one of those rare people that feels fire and ffb specs are more fun than arcane. Since the recent changes to arcane have been made I have felt like I am a weak link as fire compared to arcane Mages. So last night I took that plunge and switched over. I will try to stay positive about it for now since really ffb is only a regem and retalent away.
btw Hello Metaneira!
I appreciate the frost buffs, but I’m not going crazy about the glyph. While it’s good for those PVE lovers, it’s really useless in PvP. I know, youre going to yell at me to shut up and respec for PvP, but I’d like it if I wouldnt HAVE to respec. The gap between PvP and PvE just got a whole lot bigger and I don’t like it.
Hi ya! *hic
Yep, another wow.com reader who found your blog. I My main is a mage and I’m a girl. I am completely thrilled to discover a blog about mages by females. Go figure.
Tomorrow I’ll be perusing the archives to see what I have missed. But from now on, I’ll be a devoted lurker. Oh – my beloved mage is frost too. On second thought, pass the whiskey bottle around again…
“I My”…..sigh…editing skills ftl…..
Yay! It’s great to see wow.com readers and we’re glad for the new people on the blog. We don’t have tons of archives just quite yet, but expect more from us. We’re just getting started.
Here via WoW.com.
As someone who loves Frost, I am cautiously optimistic about the changes to the WE. I’m just now starting raiding and added an Arcane spec, but I would go back to Frost in a heartbeat. It looks like we might even get an interesting spell rotation, too.
Also, I’m totally bookmarking your site and letting my guildies know about it.
Yay, thank you. It means a lot to have people spread the word.
I’m so excited about Frost, I’ve missed it so much!
Well the changes sound great! Raiding as a frost mage would be fantastic.. however I now have four glyphs 1. Frostbolt – a given 2. Elemental – also a given but the last glyph with the change to the ice lance mechanic do we use the ice lance or molten armor glyph.. It would seem that molten armor would be better cause it will proc ice lance crits more? Or is it going to proc enough with your other talents that you want four times damage on it?
/rejoice
another fine place for female mage-players to convene
i’ll be sure to stop back on a regular basis ^.^
the new changes are very…. interesting. i’m a die-hard arcane mage and really couldn’t ask for more after 3.2.2 but to know the months i spent being scorch-bitch and mastering fire were not a waste… i can viably switch between the two for the sake of fun and versatility without having to sacrifice my damage, which on TotGC 25man is really not an option. frost was fun the couple weeks pre-3.1 when i first started raiding, before i went “hardcore.” it’s almost tempting to have it as an off-spec just for the sake of having a pet, haha… they are so cute and angry. i’ll be curious to see how the pet holds up, is it more for frost-mage show ans pseudo-viability, or will it be a legitimate significant addition to frost-dps? every time my summon water elemental spell is up will i have to be using it cuz the pet dies in that short time-frame? or will improved water elemental be a waste of talent points?