Icecrown-raid-instance
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?
Mage Lang Syne
So it is the last day of the year, and I know many other blogs are doing retrospectives. But we haven’t been a blog for very long, really – certainly not for a year. I remember like it was only yesterday that I was leveling up Aislinana as fire, eventually frostfire bolt for eventual Naxxramas and generally being a nerd about mage stuff when Wrath came out. I’ve gone from being a noob in t6 gear and casting frostfire bolts to a sleek mage in 245/258 level gear with a new main arcane spec. I never thought I’d come this far or be this different. In my heart I don’t think I’ve really changed much – the talent points, the gemming, the spell rotations have, but intrinsically I’m still the same person. I’m a dedicated, hard worker who always looks to be better, to come farther than I have before. I have Metaneira and certainly this blog to thank for that – as well as MMO Champion (I love you, Beebs), Elitist Jerks (EJB represent), WoW.com, and mage theorycrafters like Manly, Euripedes, Lhivera, Ataxus, Kyth, Sancus (even though he calls me fat). An extra big special thanks to my raid team and guild for always supporting me – you guys have put up with me being a horrible mage for four years now. I love you all.
But mostly, I have to thank you readers for making this past (short) year of blogging so amazing – I never thought I’d be in this business of writing down words and having people read them. Or that I’d be helping out countless mages with my thoughts on stuff. So a big thanks to every single person who is out there reading these things now. I know we’ve been kinda quiet lately – personal life stuff, raiding Icecrown and definitely my copy of WoW collapsing in a heap haven’t helped much. But we will return in the New Year with more spicy words than ever – you can buy the whole seat if you want, but you’ll only need the edge.
Who knows what this next year of World of Warcraft and magecraft in general will hold. I know we will be there, together.
(It won’t be going frost. Screw you, frost mages.)
First Impressions: Icecrown Citadel
Ais and I had our first peek at ICC this week. I think it’s safe to say we’re both enjoying the instance: I actually missed trash pulls and Ais is adorably geeking out over the lore. I’ve been a bit distracted during raids lately, but I thought I’d put together a few of my thoughts concerning the fights from the magely perspective.
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.
3.3 Looms On The Horizon
I think everyone can feel the growing storm clouds of 3.3 and how close we are getting to what is to be the last real content patch of this expansion. WoW.com this week effectively “called” that the patch, if no server problems crop up, will be dropping next week. Background downloaders have started sputtering to a start, whispers have grown to a din, and everyone seems to be effectively girding their loins. While there is quite a lot of criticism for how the raid content is being handled (with gating and smaller attempt pools), most people are just excited to finally get their chance to punch Arthas in the face.
So what have you been doing in the meantime, in the long wait for the endgame? I know Meta and myself have been pretty busy little bees lately. Everyone seems to have been up to something to occupy their focus if they didn’t wander away from Warcraft to Dragon Age or Left 4 Dead 2. Our raid team (which Meta is now a part of!) has been eagerly clearing hardmode content in Ulduar to polish off our meta-achievement for raid drakes and being punted by Algalon. I’m not entirely sure that we will get Heroic Anub’arak before the patch drops, but if we are successful this weekend, I at least should be zooming to Icecrown Citadel on a 310 speed drake at long last. Both Meta and I have been focusing on non-magey alts, I a ret/prot paladin, and she a boomkin! (A boomkin, gasp! This is mage sacrilege.) We also have been doing fun things like tons of heroics with friends, and running ZG every week on two sets of characters to get our mages raptors or tiger mounts. (No luck just quite yet on that front.)
I have also been daydreaming about what Icecrown will be like, because I’m a imaginative freako first and a mage second. I dream of us storming Icecrown and seeing all the crazy new bosses and being victorious. I know that for our guild, this raid instance will be the four-year culmination of our namesake and our “story” in the game. Seeing Arthas die will be both an ending to one chapter in our long lives together, but a start of a new one. It sounds all a little hokey, but we’re roleplayers, mannnnn.
As soon as 3.3 hits though, expect lots of amazing updates. We will also be correcting our guides to reflect any changes in the upcoming patch, especially the delicious scorch one!
Comment and tell us what your aspirations for Icecrown are, what you have been doing to kill off the boredom, or any other nattering you want to share!
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