improved-scorch-glyph
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.
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