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!

© Aislinana for Empowered Fire, 2010. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: arcane-mages, arcane-trinkets, Dislodged-Foreign-Object, fire-mages, icc-mages, icc-raid, Icecrown-Citadel, Icecrown-Citadel-raid, Icecrown-mage-gear, incanters-absorption, mage-trinkets, Muradin's-Spyglass, Reign-of-the-Unliving

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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?

So far, the storyline is pretty amazing in this trio and it feels awesome to be a part of the main action again. The questline that you do to key yourself for the heroics is epic and brings you into the spiraling heart of the conflict. Jaina is our guide and takes us through the Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron and eventually the Halls of Reflection on our journey to try and understand the Lich King and his minions.

Forge of Souls is the home of Bronjahm. One might say he is the Grandfather of Soul…s. The forge has a lovely number of 4-5 trash packs and random popping skulls. It is short and sweet and has spooky funk to it. Counterspelling most of the casters here will be a big benefit, as well as gleefully popping Living Bomb on all of them and pissing off your tank as they all simultaneously blow up and come running for you.

Pit of Saron is the next instance – I really like the fact that it is essentially free-form in terms of what direction you go after you finish the questline. The open-endedness of the travel around the pit really makes you feel like you’re on this mad hunt for information with Jaina. This instance really heats up the action as far as the story is concerned, rising action if you will. Krick informing us that Halls of Reflection is where Frostmourne is located just puts all the more fire under our asses to get there. The battle up to Scourgelord Tyrannus through the cavern of ice, the chaos of it – there wasn’t a moment I didn’t feel truly absorbed into this grand adventure. And after all was said and done, and Jaina saves us from an untimely end – did you notice that all that is left are the mages amongst the Alliance crusaders? I hope you did.

Halls of Reflection takes the heat and passion of Pit of Saron and chills it down to sub-zero levels. It is a haunting, eerie place full of agony and mystery. I’d also consider it one of the hardest instances out at the moment, especially on heroic. The first room is where Frostmourne hangs, and Jaina discovers that her beloved Uther has been kept trapped in spirit form. We get a gruesome foreshadowing for what might happen in the future – someone will become the new Lich King. But whom? Only time will tell.

The first two boss fights for HoR take place in this first room, as they control pretty brutal spirits bent on destroying on us. This is not an easy round of mechanics. All the mobs have pretty lethal abilities that will take out even veteran, well-geared players. Utilizing all your class abilities as a mage will be useful here – counterspelling the priests or mages, using your Mirror Images for extra DPS and threat management, blink and iceblock for defense against the Shadowy Mercenaries. These are all very important. Decursing is important as well. After defeating both Falric and Marwyn, we find Jaina having the life strangled out of her by the Lich King himself as she had run off to chase him. And so comes the best part of the Halls of Reflection, being chased by the Lich King, in all his fury. Slowly. Agonizingly. He sends scores and scores of scourge after you up a long corridor that is gated by walls of ice that Jaina must break. If you are too slow, you will die.

All of this panic pays off as you rush out of the cave and realize it is a dead end. Just as you get to the platform, the Lich King catches up to you and…

I think you should just see that for yourself.

I’m so incredibly impressed in what these instances have done for me lately. Not only have they brought me back to a spec that I had long neglected for raiding and brought me right back into the thick of the plot for this entire expansion. There’s no reason for people to not appreciate it for what it is – good storytelling and amazing game mechanics. The instances are thoughtful, varied and challenging. They aren’t like how other heroics are put together and they really give you a sense of urgency and danger. You feel like the goddamn hero that you’ve been portrayed as all along. If you’re lucky and in my battlegroup, maybe we will have the pleasure of exploring these terrifying halls together. I know I will be in there as often as I can, fireballing mobs away.

PS: A special shoutout to Nouta/Yaqar of Cenarion Circle for whispering me last night to say hi! I love our readers!

© Aislinana for Empowered Fire, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: bronjahm, fire-mage, fire-mages, Forge-of-Souls, frostmourne, Halls-of-Reflection, icc-5mans, icc-mages, Icecrown, icecrown-5mans, jaina-and-arthas, jaina-proudmoore, patch-3.3, Pit-of-Saron, playing-as-fire

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Marrowgar
I stayed arcane for this fight, with good results: I was able to burst down the bone spikes quickly while doing solid damage to the boss. The only tricky things are the aggro reset after Bone Storms and the Coldflame, which is easily avoidable. (Pop frost ward if you find yourself taking a tick from it, particularly if you have Incanter’s Absorption.)

Lady Deathwhisper
Mages have a lot to do on this fight. In 25 man mode, random raid members will get MC’d, so be quick with a polymorph if you’re able. Depending on your raid’s strategy, you may be required to focus down adds or stay on the boss full time; either way, arcane is probably your best bet. Arcane has the superior threat reduction talents, which is very handy for DPSing down the adds (especially given that establishing and maintaining threat on them can be dicey): Ais stayed fire for this fight and found herself subject to a lot of unwanted attention. When Lady Deathwhisper empowers a Cult Fanatic, the mob will get a decidedly sexy spellstealable buff — these need to be purged off quickly, so you might as well get the benefit from stealing it. Apart from that, the fight is pretty straightforward: kill what you’re assigned to kill, avoid ghosts that are coming towards you, move out of death and decay. Piece of cake.

Faction Warships
I’m gonna level with y’all right now: I got my rocket pack and I promptly stopped listening to anything my raid leaders were saying. (Sorry Weazey and Gradar.) ZOOOM! My role was to stay on defense, so I flopped to FFB, cast living bomb on every single thing in sight, then spent my time doing Rank 9 and Rank 8 flamestrikes followed by blizzard. But, seriously: rocket packs. ROCKET PACKS. Um. I’ll pay more attention this week and report back.

Deathbringer Saurfang
All of the damage on this fight is physical, so buffing everyone with Amplify Magic is a good idea. Three of the four mages in my raid had 2/2 Magic Attunement so we split up the buffing responsibilities. I started out as FFB for the slow applied by the main nuke and so I’d have blast wave to knock back mobs close to me, but after one pull I swapped back to arcane: DPSing the mobs down quickly seemed more beneficial than kiting them around with frostfire bolts.

So, for the first four fights in Icecrown Citadel, arcane still looks to be the most beneficial. Fire or FFB will probably do better on Warships simply because of the AOE capabilities of living bomb explosions, but arcane will still do well enough. In short, arcane will do better on any fight where you’ll need single-target DPS or controlled burst; fire will do very well on any fight with multiple targets tanked near each other.

I think Ais and I have made it abundantly clear that neither of us are going frost any time soon. The buffs simply weren’t enough: simulations show it lagging drastically behind even frostfire bolt. Sorry, frost mages.

I hope you all enjoyed the first taste of ICC! It’ll be a while yet before we get more.

© Metaneira for Empowered Fire, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: frost-ward, icc-mages, icc-raid, Icecrown-Citadel, Icecrown-Citadel-raid, icecrown-mage-strats, Icecrown-raid-instance, patch-3.3

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