Guest Post
The Frosty, Refreshing Side of Cataclysm
Empowered Fire is very happy to have renowned frost theorycrafter Lhivera guest post for us on the changes happening in Cataclysm. See, we don’t hate frost mages!
The Frost tree is undergoing some pretty significant evolution in the Cataclysm beta. While there are still significant changes to come, I thought I’d provide an overview of the changes as they stand so far.
Damage: It Doesn’t Matter Yet
Before going into details, I wanted to address this subject that keeps coming up in discussions: it is far too early to start worrying about whether Frost’s DPS is going to measure up to that of Arcane, Fire and other DPS specs. Blizzard has not even attempted to balance the numbers at this point. That’s generally something that happens toward the end of beta, and we’re nowhere near that yet.
What’s going on now is the process of creating a rotation that both works and feels right, using the right number of spells and a set of expected talents. They’re trying to make certain that Frostbolt, Frostfire Bolt, Deep Freeze, Frostfire Orb and Ice Lance all fit into Frost’s DPS process gracefully. It doesn’t matter yet how much damage the rotation does, only that all these spells have a place in it.
If a spell performs too poorly to fit into the rotation, that’s a problem. If a spell performs so well that it drives other spells out of the rotation, that’s a problem. Getting them balanced with each other is the current task. Only after that, which may still be weeks away, will they begin worrying about balancing total DPS.
DPS Depression, an Exploratory Rant
Enjoy Empowered Fire’s very first guest post! Daeena’s own blog can be found at wowfailure.wordpress.com.
A couple of weeks ago I fell into what I’d like to call a “DPS Depression.” People are so quick to insult DPSers or write them off as replaceable or unnecessary and after a while it becomes incredibly frustrating to both hear and deal with. It doesn’t take much to be a DPSer, but it takes a lot to be a GOOD DPSer. There’s a key difference between the two and anyone who figures out what that is gets a gold star. However, there’s more things behind my depression than just that.
Before dropping a couple thousand hours on my mage, I used to be one of the proud heal-flinging folks. I clung to my chain heal button as if it were my only salvation. For context, I’ve played a healer in pretty much every multi-player game since…well…ever. (If a healing class was available.) This priestly-inclination had gone back as far as the archaic MuD days where I would sit and use my “c tel DT” macro over and over in fights. I was, if I may toot my own horn, a pretty damned good healer. This extended well into my WoW career. It wasn’t until sometime around BT in the Burning Crusade that I switched to a mage.
I realize the whole DPS/healing/tanking thing is a “grass is greener” scenario. But to me, healing was ridiculously easy. It always has been. Be proactive, hit heal buttons, collect loot, you’re done. I switched to my mage because I wanted to step out of my box and challenge myself. I had no idea just how challenging it would turn out to be. When I went into my latest DPS depression, I debated leveling up one of my healers so I could hide behind the familiar shield of healing once again. The only thing that kept me from doing that was…well actually there are a lot of reasons that I’ll get into here in a minute.
› Continue reading
Search Empowered Fire:
Archives
Empowered Fire Guides
Categories
Recent Comments
- Aislinana: That’s actually an add-on I’ve been looking for for a long time. I’ve been using...
- Apple: @Brenlog – The problem with that is that some offensive/bad words are parts of other words. So, you ban...
- Apple: I have an addon called TinyPad that lets you toggle a little text-window that saves your text from session to...
- Tami: Hey there
We’d love to repost this on the Border House! Can you email me at tami at borderhouseblog... - Alyxx: Thank you! I’ve noticed an upswing of racist language in tradechat on my server recently. I’ve...