improved-scorch
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. 
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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