PTR
Full Mage Tier 10 Colors Available – Still Ugly!
What is this, I don't even
MMO-Champion posted a full mage and warlock set preview this morning, in a variety of rainbow colors. While warlocks manage to skate by with sets that feature a single tonal palette, we’re stuck with color combinations that strike me as more “acid trip” than “color harmony.” Full video of the mage set is found here.
Mage armor designers need to go back to art school as far as I’m concerned. If our tier set is like the orange-y one I posted up there, I’ll be happy. But if I’m stuck with magenta or green, I might just hide in RP gear out of shame until it is time to raid every week.
Mage T10 is Powerful Ugly, No One Surprised
What is this?
MMO-Champion just released some addition PTR info for 3.3, including tier set models for warlock and mage tier 10. Right now I’m rather flabbergasted at how ugly this is. I know that Icecrown is supposedly emulating some of the things we’d be fighting up on the glacier and indicate some level of camouflage, but this is just silly. We look like beat up a bunch reject Blood Princes and stole their clothes. It’s also is the same color palette as death knights. I’m hoping that other set colors get released because it’s a double insult to not only have a horrible set AND have the same horrible colors as another class. Least it isn’t purple, but knowing Blizzard, it won’t even be a cool purple like warlocks get if they do get around to updating the set colors.
The bone boots and mouth on the hat are making me boggle as well. Someone at Blizzard needs to just be taken out back and shot. Half of what’s wrong with this set is the hat design. The one saving feature of this tier are that the set bonuses are decent.
In other PTR notes, some updates for fire talents were included but seemingly are for PVP-oriented abilities:
- Burning Determination: The duration of interrupt immunity granted by this talent is now 20 seconds.
- Dragon’s Breath: The mana cost of this talent has been significantly reduced.
- Firestarter: When this talent is triggered, it makes the next Flamestrike cost no mana in addition to being instant.
- Blast Wave: The mana cost of this talent has been significantly reduced.
Finally, I really want a flying pony. Ghostcrawler promised me one.
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.
Jaina Gets Her Groove Back
Full-size image courtesy of the very sexy Bibi of mmo-champion.com
In line with Blizzard making pronounced model updates, it looks like our homegirl Jaina got a new makeover as well in the upcoming content patch. Say what you want about Jaina in terms of her place in lore, but I’m really excited about this.
I was never a huge Jaina fangirl or detractor throughout my WoW career and I never played Warcraft 1-3 at all. She always struck me as likeable even if a little bit hampered by some spineless behavior in the face of the men in her life (Arthas, Thrall, Daddy Proudmoore.) But she’s proven to be a very strong representation of the complex and unique female protagonists that Blizzard and Warcraft are known for. It also doesn’t hurt that she’s a mage, certainly.
One reason I’ve enjoyed playing in the Warcraft universe is because of how they present females – it isn’t unique to the fantasy genre, surely, but it is nice to see a giant popular MMO have a wide-range of villains and female heroes that are deep and interesting and people you want to interact with, rather than being Scantily Clad Heroine #6. It imbues my own character building and informs other girl players that they too can be important, strong females in Azeroth.
Jaina getting yet another face, one that I hope remains in the game, is something to look forward to. And it’s definitely a little more realistic than Alexstraza and Sylvanas “Tits McGee” Windrunner. Both of those models are very artistic and well-done but Jaina looks her part as a diplomat and very powerful mage without her ass hanging out. Granted, I would have liked a little more upgrading from her usual level 40 gear but this is a step in the right direction. Maybe this signals Jaina’s possible integration into the lore in Icecrown. Does she take up the sword, like she dreamt about in the comics? Does she destroy Frostmourne? Is she going to run off with Thrall? Will she scream with her head off and shoot pyroblasts at my sheep targets like the pro mage she was in Hyjal? We shall see.
Mage Tier 10
In a rather surprising move, Blizzard devs posted the Tier 10 set bonuses in a thread and asked for people to give feedback based on their class and spec. For mages, this meant that our set bonuses could be evaluated for fire, frostfire, arcane and frost, presumably so we wouldn’t end up with a four piece set bonus that was useless for half of the specs. To further my shock, Blizzard promptly (and, in my opinion, adequately) addressed the concerns listed by mages in the thread.
The original set bonuses were:
2 pc – Your Mirror Image ability also causes you to deal 15% additional damage for 10 sec.
4 pc – Your Hot Streak, Missile Barrage, and Brain Freeze talents also grant you 12% haste for 3 sec when the effect of the talent is consumed.
While I liked where the devs were going with these changes, the math just didn’t support it. Giving mirror images a trinket-like status seemed like a good idea to me — it’s already used as a threat dump, so it makes sense to line it up with other cooldowns. Making the four piece set bonus grant haste instead of spell damage (or, god help me, crit) seemed to be in line with my projections for Icecrown Citadel: we’ll finally hit the magic spot where gemming for haste will provide more of a DPS benefit than gemming for spell power. (Given full BiS T9/TotGC gear, we’re not quite there, but it’s close.) So, good ideas in theory, but there was one glaring problem: Blizzard forgot about the GCD. Mirror images and Hot Streak both trigger the GCD, which means the actual benefit of the bonuses is drastically reduced. Then you take into consideration Mirror Image’s long cooldown, which means that you get 15% additional damage for effectively 9 seconds every three minutes. You don’t have to crunch the numbers to realize that’s not a very big boost to your DPS.
But all is not lost, mages! Blizzard has updated the set bonuses. Observe:
2 pc – Your Hot Streak, Missile Barrage, and Brain Freeze talents also grant you 12% haste for 5 seconds when the effect of the talent is consumed.
4 pc - Your Mirror Image ability also causes you to deal 18% additional damage for 30 seconds.
Hot. Damn. The change to the Mirror Image bonus is significant: it provides a considerable cooldown to use on fights where burst is necessary — something TtW fire mages have lacked. My crappy napkin math shows it to be about a 3% DPS increase on a six minute fight, which isn’t too shabby. Giving the 2pc bonus a few extra seconds means we can likely squeeze in two casts with the haste bonus. I don’t have the mathematical talents necessary to model the effects of that, but intuitively I think switching the bonuses around was correct. I’m looking forward to someone really crunching the numbers to break down the benefits further.
Frost mages are still screwed by the Hot Streak/Missile Barrage/Brain Freeze bonus, though. Of course, if you’re raiding T10 content as a frost mage, you are probably quite used to being screwed over.
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