Empowered Fire

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?

Tags: arcane-mages, arcane-talents, arcane-trinkets, arcane-vs-fire, combustion-change, Icecrown-Citadel-raid, Icecrown-raid-instance, incanters-absorption, mage-tier, mage-tier-10, mage-trinkets