fire-mages
Where Have We Been?
Our deepest apologies, thoughtful readers. We have had at least a month’s absence from writing awesome posts and we are here to set things right. In-game stuff has been eating a ton of our time, plus assorted bad moods and job hunts. The impetus to write is weak in the face of such things as moodiness and Icecrown bosses, as it were. But I am here to give you a peek into what sorts of oddball things both Meta and myself have been poking around with.
1.) Raiding Icecrown Citadel, hating on some rogues.
Icecrown has been exciting, seeing new content, but equal parts frustrating because we have a melee-dominated raid. While we do not lack for buffs, our raid definitely makes boss strategies for our melee, who are some of our top DPSers. We’re struggling on getting ranged/casters more benefits out of this, but has been hard going. Tempers flared quite a lot, and Putricide was like pulling teeth some days. We’ve messed with our arcane specs quite a bit to compensate for things like pushback on Festergut but ultimately went back to making use of Incanter’s Absorption because of how many of the later fights have static damage pulses or lots of raid-wide damage to take advantage of. We rock Blood Council spectacularly hard though, which is nice. Arcane is still the best spec to use, but Meta and I both bust out our Nibelung staves and go fire for trash usually. Just for kicks. We’re closing in on Sindragosa and Arthas at the moment, so hardmodes await.
2.) 10 Mans…Anyone…?
Neither Meta nor I have a stable 10man. We’ve made some progress with other raiding mains who don’t have one either, and a bunch of alts and rotating people every week or so. We even downed Rotface the other night. It’s been difficult – one night a week or only 2 or 3 hours and not everyone is fully geared enough on their alts to make a lot of fast progress. Hopefully the Captain Chin (Wrynn) buff will help us at least poke at some new 10man content. Meta has been nice enough to tank on her warrior or paladin for these runs so I get a shot at a Muradin’s Spyglass.
3.) Trinketsssss…yess…pretty trinkets…
Neither of us has a Reign of the Unliving, Dislodged Foreign Object, and I still don’t have a Muradin’s. However, both of us now have the voodoo gnome trinket from ZA. Resulting in tons of voodoo gnome parades.
4.) Our Alts have been doing well though!
We’ve been having fun doing a lot of raid weeklies and goofing off with TOC10 and even Ulduar. We did so well in Ulduar the other week that now our alts have the Starcaller title. Fancy that. We also managed Tribute to Skill (not Mad Skill, but soon!) as well. Meta’s paladin came back from her Horde vacation, and my shaman started trying out resto and really liking it. We’re both pretty nicely geared right now, although both of us could more ICC 10 for sure. See #2 though.
That’s all we’ve been nosing around doing other than old Vanilla and BC content for RP gear and mounts. Should have an update on delicious mage changes though. Fire doing tons more damage? Say it ain’t so!
Playing With Fire – Thoughts on the Icecrown 5-Mans
Blizzard has ignited a deep and abiding lust back in my heart – playing as fire spec. Ever since they released the three new 5mans, I have had an insatiable desire to flop back to my abandoned fire spec and blow everything up. Why is this? I guess it is finally time to do something other than run around in a room with no trash for once. Fire is pretty incredible for doing these heroics with – it doesn’t have quite the control that frost does for these places, but it definitely has the excitement and damage that I enjoy.
Ever since I switched from my “primary” spec to my “secondary” spec, it felt like coming home. It was a forbidden, sexy thrill. But let’s not forget about the instances, shall we? › Continue reading
Patch day whooo!
It’s official: 3.3 hits today! Whether you’ve been meticulously following every change and quirk on the PTR or if you’ve been completely out of the loop for the past couple of months, we’re here to help you get caught up quickly. Our guides have been updated accordingly (3.3 Raiding Guide, Ding! 80!…Now What? (for new 80s), and our Mage Leveling Guide), but if you want to jump in as soon as servers are live (whenever that may be), here are the salient points.
Arcane changes
Arcane was left largely untouched, and still looks to be be top mage DPS for single-target situations. The big change here is a bit of utility: the Arcane Empowerment talent now also adds 3% increased damage by your party or raid after a critical strike with AE, AM, ABarr, or AB. This utility buff is the same as the one provided by ret paladins and BM hunters, so for 25 man raids this won’t likely make a difference.
Fire changes
Even though I’ve only played fire a handful of times since 3.2, I’m still excited about the scorch change: one cast of scorch now applies 5 stacks of the increased critical strike chance debuff. The Improved Scorch glyph has been renamed Glyph of Scorch and now increases the damage of scorch by 20%. (No, you don’t want to pick it up. Might be fun for a PVP fire build, though.) Given that mages and locks are the only ones who can apply the crit debuff, and given that fire does very well on fights with multiple targets (particularly if they are tanked near one another), we’ll still see many fire mages in ICC.
Frost changes
Here’s where mages got the biggest overhaul, though unfortunately the changes fell short of frost mages’ initial hopes. Deep Freeze was tweaked so that it now does damage to targets immune to stun (i.e., raid bosses). A new glyph was introduced for frost mages as well, Glyph of Eternal Water, which gives you a permanent water elemental but you lose the ability to cast the nova spell. Fluffy’s waterbolt spell’s mana cost has been reduced, so you shouldn’t have to worry about him going oom too quickly. (Longer fights may require a resummon, I’m not sure.) All these changes are nice, but frost still falls very short of the potential output of arcane, fire, or even frostfire.
Other mage-related changes
Black Magic went from being a piece of crap to being the best enchant for decently geared mages. It’s decidedly better for players who have a one-handed weapon, though it’s likely still an improvement for mages with staves equipped. You’ll want to download the latest version of Rawr to get a more accurate answer dependent on your own gear and raid buffs.
Mana costs on all lowbie spells have been reduced, which means that leveling mages (and other classes) will be able to use their spells without going oom after three casts. Attack has been changed to auto-attack, and it won’t even show up on a new mage’s bars now. These changes mean mages won’t spend levels 1 through 20 wanding and meleeing, so good job on that account, Blizzard. If you’ve ever thought about leveling a mage, now is an excellent time to start!
Fire mages will no longer be able to drop on top of a mounted player, cast unglyphed blast wave, and knock him off his mount. Pity — I have to admit I enjoyed doing that after the occasional WG battle.
That’s it as far as mage-specific changes, but there are dozens more affecting all areas of play. Full patch notes can be found here. So many changes! I’m geekily excited about the macro language changing so “@” now means “target=”, but I’m likely the only one. Hey, my polymorph macro is long enough as it is.
Good luck, mages! May your servers be stable! And, hey, if you’re in Ais’s and my battlegroup, you might run into us as we’re furiously pugging heroics. 
Ding! 80! …Now What? (The Guide)
- Updated for 3.3. Changes have been made to Gear and Spec sections to reflect content in-game.
So you have decided to roll a mage and fate has allowed you to hit level 80. Congratulations!
You made it to the big-time…and now you’re scratching your head. What do you do now? You’ve had fun levelling but now you have all sorts of things to worry about as a new 80 – do you just do heroics? Raid? Run circles around Dalaran? There’s lots of things to consider and all of it is confusing. Sure, you could just ask your guild, but a lot of times people who have been level 80 for a while just point you at Elitist Jerks. This is not always very helpful because it’s tailored for progression raiding and min-maxing. That’s why we’re here to give you some information specifically for the new-to-80 mage (who is interested in PVE). Some of this info has an overlap with Meta’s 3.2.2 raiding guide, but I will be explaining some basic things with a little more detail. If you are looking to jump right into raiding, her guide might be more beneficial.
Table of Contents:
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.
Scorch Bitching
This has been sitting in the back of my mind for a while, but came back to forefront last night during my raid. Sometime in every fire mage’s life, you’re gonna be that mage that has to cast Scorch. Maybe it’s because the other mages in your raid are lazy, or you have no warlocks in your raid, or you just like doing it. (Jesus, what’s wrong with you? I kid.)
Still, every mage at some point has had to be the “scorch bitch.” Last night it was me, due to our very wonderful demo lock being absent. I have been playing arcane 24-7 since 3.2.2 so it was even a bit weird just playing fire in general. When our faithful deathknight scribe handed me the scorch glyph, I felt like a part of me died inside. I’d been keeping scorch up for years, but having to glyph it is what really made it reality.
Why is this such a hated job of mages? I think it is the terminology more than anything – “scorch bitch.” Think about the other sorts of things that “bitch” connotes. Aggressive females and female dogs aside, bitch is frequently used in the gaming community and the world at large for the weaker, more effeminate, and dominated person in a situation. A scorch bitch has been, in the past, the weakest mage in a team, and they are sacrificing their personal DPS so that the other casters and mages can comfortably go on doing whatever it is they were doing. This negative image is one of the reasons that makes “taking one for the team” a lot less palatable. Why do you want to help the raid out when you’re essentially being likened to something less powerful, and ultimately less capable at DPSing.
Other classes have to take a personal DPS hit for debuffs. Rogues don’t get called “Expose Armor bitches”, druids don’t get called “mangle bitches” – there’s a lot more neutral terminology. And people seem to react a lot more nicely about it, in my heavily-biased mage perspective.
What made me feel better about my changeover to cover scorch last night was how nice the other mage in my raid was. He’s been my scorch-buddy-in-crime for 2 years now, and he thanked me for how nice it was that I picked up the slack myself. It was awesome that our raid scribe already had a scorch and fireball glyph waiting so I didn’t have to go buy them myself and could swap back and forth with ease. Your raid treating you bringing scorch as a benefit and less of a curse is a good thing. I think that we should herald this new age of “bring the player, not the class” by treating debuffs and buffs from everyone as something positive that a raid member does (Basically how we’ve been treating shaman all this time). Let’s throw off the shackles of oppressive naming and negative attitudes, not only from raids but mage-kind in general. Scorch isn’t great, but it’s a really awesome benefit to your raid and something we need someone to bring, in whatever form. Revel in it! You’re doing a great thing!
I was definitely enjoyed playing the part of the scorch-bot last night. Being an efficient robot was a lot more positive than being a crappy mage. And I felt good about providing that buff for my raid. Plus, it was fun to play fire again and try out a glyph I had only looked at with pure derision. Reclaim your debuff, my fellow mages! Scorch-bots, scorch-mages, scorch masters unite! Take back the word, make it your own!
At least until Blizzard fixes the mechanic at least. We can only hope.
Fire At Heart, Arcane At Mind
You know, I used to scoff at the idea that Lhivera, a well-known mage theorycrafter, used to present – “talent specs are not tools used to optimize your character for a particular kind of performance.” Even to me, as a fairly enthusiastic roleplayer AND raider, it seemed a pretty naive view that your character shouldn’t swap specs in order to gain an advantage in raiding. Maybe I had this view because I’d never had to move out of being a fire mage for my entire career.
But looking at myself, I wonder if I played right into what he was speaking about – even when frost was pretty much the only spec a mage could play in such fire-immune dungeon as Onyxia (1.0) and Molten Core, I stuck with fire. It is something I felt comfortable with and a playstyle I really enjoyed, even at my meager beginnings four years ago.
All of this weighs heavily on my mind as I made my first really serious foray into the world of arcane raid speccing last week with the advent of 3.2.2. I’m pretty sure many of our hard-won fire mages are feeling the sting of swapping to arcane, but once again, Blizzard has decided to tip the scales slightly and make arcane for all intents and purposes one of the best specs for high-end competitive PVE play.
Sure, I tried arcane for the 2 or 3 weeks back in Tier 5 content (specifically A’lar) when the Mystical Skyfire Diamond had been unchanged pre-2.3, but I wasn’t really feeling it. After the changes to the arcane rotation and mana useage, I’ve clocked some real raiding hours playing with my new spec and generally feeling unsure about how much I want to like arcane.
Is it remorse? Is it genuine admiration for the spec now? It’s strange and certainly in the minority to feel twangs of new appreciation for your class after something as “minor” as a talent spec change but maybe this is what Lhivera was really getting at all along. The specs we choose reflect us innately as players and the sorts of things we enjoy.
But I can’t say I am -not- enjoying some of the things the arcane playstyle brings in contrast to fire. While I love the gigantic crits, intense fireworks and DoTs of fire-spec, there’s something to be said about having my DPS buff continue across multiple targets, very little windup on pulls and having situational tools to increase my DPS versus my DPM. I know that according to fairly veteran arcane mage Euripedes of Critical QQ has some things to say about how the arcane playstyle has been made a lot worse on things like movement and rotation, but the spec and rotation as a whole still has a lot of configurability.
While I’m still continuing to grasp the real fundamentals of how arcane works in raids (my cooldown useage is still rather sloppy) – I’m terribly fond of how my DPS has increased just due to the mechanics of our raids, as well as the varied playstyle. I was allowed to go arcane quite fortuitously because of our caster lead (a warlock) decided that he swap to Demonology for the Shadow Mastery buff, allowing both myself and our other mage to try out arcane. So far, all three of us have been having fun doing something new for once. Being a scorch-bringer no longer has also been quite enjoyable, and the buff that demo locks bring with Demonic Pact is a huge raid-wide DPS increase.
Are there downsides to change? Of course. I miss Living Bomb and its dazzling EXPLOSION effects. I miss crits. I hate that one of my better arcane trinkets is from normal Trial of the Champion and hasn’t dropped yet. (HATE) I dislike how movement is quite the largest downside of the spec since so many fights in Trial of the Crusader require it.
Blizzard may never make a drastic change again with arcane or fire, but I doubt it. Will I be arcane forever? Probably not. Fire and arcane are still pretty dead even in most considerations. I’m just always seeking to further my DPS and my play within the confines of my raid and if something becomes a clear choice in damage, then that’s what I have to do. It is fun certainly that Blizzard has still given mages a lot to work with in choosing what they want to do or what kind of mage they want to be. Deep down, I’m always going to be a fire mage no matter what.
I’m never speccing frost however, and that’s final. Screw frost.
Mage Raiding Guide – 3.3
- Updated for 3.3! Changes have been made to Specs, Enchants, Major Glyphs, and Reputation to reflect content in-game.
As a member of an LJ community devoted to Warcraft, I found myself giving the same advice to new mages over and over. After a while, I compiled it into this handy-dandy guide you see below. I hope it will be a good resource for mages looking to start raiding.
Table of Contents:
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Empowered Fire Guides
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