Magecraft
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.
New mage forums!
Our friend Gazimoff of Mana Obscura has started a forum community for all of us mages! It’s still in beta, but feel free to stop by, register, and start talking with lots of other mages. A lot of bloggers you may know have signed up, and we have the full gamut of players from alt mages who haven’t yet learned riding skill to mages who are bravely attacking hard mode ICC each week. So whether you’ve just rolled a mage and are learning the ropes or you’ve been slinging fireballs since Vanilla, come check out the forums and chat with us! Aislinana and I both signed up on day one, so you can see us there.
The forums are designed to be friendly and inclusive: all mages are welcome and any sort of discrimination or slurs are not permitted. (Well, we do make fun of warlocks.) I know I’m already loving the opportunity to converse with other mages I’ve followed and respected from everything about theorycrafting to keybinds to the ever-changing Cataclysm mechanics. Hope to see you there!
Empowered Fire Does Beta – In Real Time!
So the Blizzard finally lifted the NDA it has had on the Cataclysm beta, and that means the Empowered Fire can finally start talking about all the things you want to know about. We’re currently trying to get Metaneira in the beta with me, since I was lucky enough to be in alpha. Sorry that we haven’t been immediately on top of ALL of the information coming out of the various WoW media sites – updated talent trees, new spells and mastery, etc. There’s a lot of stuff to sort through and test but I figured out an awesome thing that we can do in the meantime and for the next couple of months – live beta streaming.
I set up a video account on Justin.tv, which will allow us to stream stuff that I do in beta and will be streaming at random times during the week, but mostly on the nights when I don’t have raids or during the day. If you want to know when a stream is going live, just go to our Twitter (@empoweredfire) and watch for updates on when and what is going on. If you want to ask questions or suggest something you want to see, use the hashtag #efdoesbeta or chat in provided stream page. This is all a new experiment so bear with me as I try to figure out how this all works!
First official stream event will be Tuesday, July 6th at 7 PM Eastern Standard time – Goblin Starting Zone.
I will be rolling another goblin mage and going through the first 10 or more levels so people can see how the starting zone looks.
Hopefully this is as exciting for you guys as it is for me, and cross your fingers that this works as intended. Be sure to check Twitter and the stream at random times to see when I’m just random streaming from Cataclysm Beta.
Switchin’ It Up For ICC Hardmodes
As the ICC buff continues goes up and up and raids wear on and on, more and more of the raiding community has been tackling hardmodes. I know this is definitely true for my raid team, as we’re now 10 out of 12 hardmodes in Icecrown. While I definitely favor FireTTW spec for my overall play, there’s definitely 2 fights where arcane is just that much better, if you need the burst. If you play arcane continuously, there’s also some fights where Fire might benefit you. The whole situation just comes down to understanding the mechanics well enough to know the pros and cons of the situation. Most of the real critical DPS checks have been lessened by the 25 percent buff on most servers and will only get easier as we approach 30 percent.
The two fights in question are Lady Deathwhisper and Saurfang hardmodes. Why do I go arcane for these fights instead of fire? FOR THE BURST, MON! Lady D and Saurfang both have adds or add phases that are critical to DPS down as ranged, and arcane definitely helps with that. While fire, in my gear, does better damage overall, you really can’t be some of the cooldowns that arcane has available.
Lady Deathwhisper Hardmode: One of the reasons I initially switched to arcane on LDW is just because having Living Bomb do splash damage on Mind Control targets was not cool, and omitting that portion of my spells from the fight was a huge waste of DPS. This fight really brings every mage skill into question, no doubt. What might you be doing besides DPSing?
Spellstealing – There’s a buff that goes up on a lot of the adds you will be DPSing down (Fanatics) and that is not only a boost to your spellpower, but also makes the adds easier to DPS since they won’t be healing themselves. You might also be spellstealing buffs that get applied to Lady Deathwhisper by her mind-control targets in your raid. Fun ones are things like Earth Shield, or Power Infusion. I’ve even stolen Focus Magic off of her.
Counterspelling – Interrupting her casts in Phase 2 when she’s throwing out Frostbolts and Frostbolt Volleys is pretty important and might give your melee a break if no one is on the boss.
Polymorphing – Being on top of crowd control in Phase 1 when your raidmates get mind controlled is very crucial. Polymorph is a strong CC for members of the raid who aren’t directly in melee range, as I’ve found most of the sheep get broken if they are anywhere near the melee blender on adds. So stick to things like your ranged or healers, melee if you absolutely have to stop that rogue with all their cooldowns up from ganking your priests mid-fight.
Blink and Frost Ward also come in handy for getting away from bad things (Death and Decay, Vile Spirits in P2) or reducing damage in P2 when she Frostbolt Volleys. Never hesitate to use secondary abilities.
Secondary abilities aside, arcane’s DPS just won out here just due to the fact that we were having some problems with splash damage injuring our mind control victims. When you are learning a fight, this is pretty important and killing off folks early usually means a wipe later on, if not immediately. So switching to arcane didn’t feel like a big deal. And considering the fact that we needed a lot of burst on adds, it made it the optimal choice. While the heavy movement of the fight means I do suffer a little bit, overall, the benefits to the raid are immense. If you’re not having problems with splash damage, it might be alright to stay fire.
Heroic Deathbringer Saurfang – I’m almost positive some raids could swing mages being fire for this fight but I opt for arcane just because I routinely tear up add DPS as arcane. Most strats that raids suggest for this fight have ranged taking individual Blood Beasts as their focus before splitting off to help other range. I tend to stand near the back of the semi-circle on the left hand side because it is fairly easy for me to grab aggro on my beast and do a lot of DPS before it ever reaches me. I then switch and help the other ranged on my side. Arcane is very, very useful in this because if you save your cooldowns for beast phases, you can pump out a ton of damage on them and make this fight got a lot smoother. Having access to more channeled casts and high damage quick casts makes this optimal as arcane. What I try to do is watch the cooldown timer for the Blood Beasts and stack up Arcane Blast so that I have as much DPS for the one or two casts I can get off on the beasts before they get pushed back and then continue on DPSing them down once they are back in range. This means I have threat on them right away and they don’t go snarling off at a healer or a closer DPS. Don’t be afraid to pop off arcane missles or even an Arcane Barrage to polish off Beasts that are on someone else and have little health left. Beasts hitting a raid member just makes the fight harder for your healers, as Saurfang gains more runic power and the raid member might die from the melee swings.
So now that we’ve discussed why switching to arcane as FireTTW spec on certain hardmodes is beneficial, let’s discuss why fire is so useful elsewhere in ICC.
MOAR Damage?: Fire tends to scale a little better with 264/277 gear, but it really is a toss-up. However, the stats on a lot of the good 277 tier gear and off-set pieces favor Fire in terms of hit/crit budgeting. Well-geared arcane and fire come very close to eachother most of the time though.
Range: This is a big reason why I love fire on most fights. Arcane just doesn’t have the range of fire, especially if you stick with 1/2 or 2/2 Flame Throwing in your fire builds. There’s really no substitute for having options in where you stand because your primary spells can hit from the 35 and 41 yard range. This comes in handy on things like hardmode Putricide and Dreamwalker.
Mobility: Given that fire has more and higher DPS instant casts (Living Bomb/Fire Blast/Pyroblast where applicable), the mobility aspect comes into play on fights that require a lot of movement. You just have better DPS uptime when you’re not in fear of losing your Arcane Blast stack, or clearing it off with Arcane Barrage in an attempt to gain some DPS during high movement portions of the fight.
Splash Damage: This is mostly in regards to Heroic Gunship (lol) and Lich King. Living Bomb’s damage on adds (such as Shambling Horrors, Valkyries) is pretty amazing and not only churns out more Hot Streak procs but does quite a lot of collateral damage on ghouls and other adds that are in range. What I like to do during LK is keep Living Bomb up on him as well as Horrors (which has a lot of splashing on Drudge Ghouls), and also use my trusty Living Bomb macro to DoT up all the Valks so that they splash onto eachother as they are travelling along the same vector. You get a lot of instant damage (including Pyroblasts) this way. And that can be crucial going into Hardmode LK attempts.
The long and the short of it is that while there are mage specs suited more for some of the fights, I’d opt to say that arcane and fire do roughly the same damage in the hands of people who play the class well and there is no substitute for gearing and speccing as you feel more comfortable with, especially this late in the expansion. However, the things I outlined are just some of the ways you can get a little bit of the edge on some of the fights you may encounter while doing ICC hardmodes. Hope you enjoy!
On tanking, mages, and why rogues should die in fires
I know Ais has already apologized for the lack of updates, but I’m going to throw in another apology from myself. The past few months have been fairly hectic in that “real life” thing I occasionally indulge in: interviewing for new jobs, having a relationship end (and on the day before Valentine’s Day, too, which is good because I hadn’t met my dramatic irony quota that month), and generally trying to get more organized and focused. I’m doing pretty well now, though, and can invest more energy in projects like this site.
In game, I’ve been spending a lot more time on my tanks: my 80 prot warrior and my 80 prot paladin. Maybe it’s just making up for years of being squishy, but I love standing in front of bosses and protecting my raid. There’s still a lot of pressure in tanking: blowing your cooldowns at the right moment, making sure you’re positioning the mobs in the best possible way (I like to face them towards Ais’s boyfriend so he gets cleaved), and pushing buttons frantically to stay on top of the DPS who are just dying to rip aggro off of you. (Okay, the paladin tanking isn’t so much frenzied button pushing as lazily hitting them in order. I love my pally but warrior tanking is much more interesting and dynamic.) And yet, I don’t feel as stressed while tanking: no one’s going to spam Recount after a battle and point out how I did compared to everyone else. I can focus on being a member of a team, and working with everyone to achieve a certain goal. It’s a nice change of pace from DPSing on my mage, where I’m almost secretly hoping a rogue stands in fire and dies so I’ll beat him on the charts. I’m more than happy to give up ten-man raiding on my mage in favor of doing it on one of my shield-wearing girls.
But I do love my mage, and ICC has gotten better for Ais and me lately. I think the ranged DPS in our raid have really started working together to point out how we can make the fights a bit easier on us, and we’re beginning to function as a team. Tensions were high for a while, but I think our melee have finally realized that it’s not that half our raid is bad, it’s that the fights and our strategies for them were vastly favoring their playstyle. We’ve adapted some strategies, aired our frustrations, and I think we’re back to being a fairly laidback, happy group. (Until I watch someone keyboard turning to run out of Sindragosa’s death-grip, that is. RAGE.)
Enough about what I’ve been up to. Here’s a few of my thoughts about mage raiding in ICC:
1) Incanter’s Absorption is still worth it if you can get shielded reliably. In my raid, we’ve done crazy things where I’ll get fed shields on Rotface while I’m standing in the slime to DPS. The numbers I put out are nuts, but it just seems so gimmicky and stupid. I am actually looking forward to the nerf: too many mage mechanics are already dependent on very particular and often dumb things (Torment the Weak, I’m looking at you), and IA has always felt cheap to me. Is it fun to get shielded and watch your spellpower shoot up? Sure. But I don’t like sucking up to a disc priest and then standing in fire just to do more damage. (Note: this is no longer relevant after 3.3.3: IA is not nearly as valuable as it was since it only procs off of your own frost/fire ward and mana shield.)
2) Once you get two piece mage T10, your rotation may change slightly. The top DPS rotation still is stacking Arcane Blast to four and then using Arcane Missiles when Missile Barrage procs. However, the haste boost from consuming MBAM means that your less mana-intensive rotations aren’t that far off from the highest DPS rotation. If mana is a problem for you, don’t feel bad about using MBAM when it procs after the second, third, or fourth AB.
3) Four piece mage T10 is the most ridiculously awesome set bonus in the world. Other set bonuses look at mage T10 and weep, for they will never be so amazing. It’s especially fun when we do our weekly raid quests in Naxx and have a fight that lasts only 45 seconds—you just can’t touch a mage who blows Quad Core, Arcane Power, Icy Veins, and trinket(s), and who doesn’t have to worry about mana. I am actually really surprised it hasn’t been nerfed yet.
3) Yes, we’ve heard about proposed fire changes. I think that with the IA nerf, the combustion change (down to two minutes from three, thank goodness), pyroblast now benefitting from TtW, and the Glyph of Fireball change (instead of 5% crit, the cast time on fireball is reduced by .15 seconds), fire might be more in-line with arcane mages. Maybe. Arcane gives you controlled burst and amazing single-target DPS, which are both crucial in ICC encounters. Fire does well with multiple targets, but so far that’s only Gunship. (Dreamwalker has lots of adds, but they need to be burst down quickly and a lot of them won’t be up long enough for living bomb to explode.) But we’ll see: I know Ais is itching to get back to blowing stuff up with fireballs.
4) I hate trinkets so much. So very much. I lucked out and got a Muradin’s on my first ICC 10 run, but my guild has seen exactly one Reign drop in our TOC runs. Another one dropped on a pug Ais and I were in, and it went to a warlock in our guild—who then picked up the first (and only) DFO we’ve seen. I was trying to move away from the years-long feud between mages and warlocks and instead unite ourselves against rogues and DKs, but, man. *shakes fist at our warlock guildmate* I just know I’m going to be using Talisman of Resurgence until Cataclysm. (Of course, that’s not the worst of it: if I want to go back to fire for a boss fight, Rawr tells me I should use Dying Curse. *twitch* I’ll stay arcane, thanks.) Trinkets can suck my non-existent junk.
But, all in all, WoW has been treating me well lately. I love that Ais and I got Starcaller on our alts (especially since, uh, I might have been drunk at the time); I managed to get a Blood Queen’s Crimson Choker in my Sack of Frosty Treasures, which netted me quite a nice chunk of change; and we’re working on getting another mage friend of ours a Tiny Voodoo Mask trinket so we can do a voodoo gnome parade with -wait for it- 24 voodoo gnomes. (We’ll be glyphing for mirror image, of course.) Ais and I have done it with just the two of us and I will say that 14 pygmy gnomes RP walking through Dalaran will turn heads. I highly recommend it. I’m meeting new people, having fun goofing off on alts, and raiding doesn’t feel quite so tedious lately.
I hope our mage readers are faring well! How is Icecrown treating you?
Hey, frost mages!
Don’t say we never did nothin’ for ya. Lhivera has done some interesting testing based on information about (gasp!) warlock pets. It turns out that warlocks do more damage if they force their imps to cast by macroing the imp’s spell with their main nuke. Lhivera wondered if this would work for frost mages and the answer is yes: he noticed a 27% increase in his own pet’s DPS, which he estimates could boost his raid DPS by 3.8-5.5%. Not too shabby!
To take advantage of it, you’ll need to change your frostbolt to this following macro:
#showtooltip Frostbolt
/cast Frostbolt
/use Waterbolt
Unlike /petattack, this command will not cause your pet to stopcasting and start over with every keypress (something I personally discovered doing Vezax hard mode, heh). So macro up, frost mages, and make Splashy work for you.
(And don’t tell Ais I helped you out. Getting punched by a gnome isn’t fun.)
Quick hit: Mage T10 set bonuses
Yes, it is worth breaking the four piece T9 set bonus for two pieces of T10.
Goodnight, everybody!
HOW TO PLAY A MAGE
I don’t know about you guys, but I think we’re going to change our raiding guide to just have this video. As this is all you ever need to know about playing a mage. Ever.
Guki of Eldre’thalas – I don’t know who you are, or what you do, or if you even still play. But I salute you. We salute you.
I am going to finish crying with laughter now.
The New Hotness – Incanter's Absorption
I’ve been scratching my head for blog topics after our Great Reader Windfall of Aught Nine, and this one came to me via my friend.
He asks: “What’s up with Incanter’s Absorption?!”
Both Meta and I are pretty big proponents of this talent. Most people only heard of it back when it got nerfed during Naxx content due to the insane soloing a mage did in the Military Quarter by spell-stealing Bone Armor – the talent effectively allowed the mage to gain boss-level spell damage due to absorption mechanics from the armor. It’s been hotfixed since then to cap your effective SP gain to no greater than 5 percent of your health.
Still, why is this noteworthy? › 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...