frost-mages
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.)
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:
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.
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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