Blog Articles by keyword: mage
Cataclysm Enchantments and Gems
by Tachyon on Tue. 14. December 2010, 22:10
Filed under: mage, cataclysm, enchantment, gem
This is more a note to myself, but might be of use to you out there being in the same situation, getting ready for raiding by enchanting/gemming your blue (heroic) Cataclysm gear, so I thought I'd publish it here:Cataclysm Enchantments
Head and Shoulders (sic!) enchantments are again bind-on-account items sold by two factions in the game. The legs enchantments are created by Tailors and come in two qualities. New in Cataclysm are off-hand item enchantments, and there's no specific 2H enchantments in the game yet.
Head:
+60 Intellect and +35 Critical Strike Rating
Shoulder:
+50 Intellect and +25 Haste Rating
+30 Intellect and +20 Haste Rating
Cloak:
+50 Intellect
Chest:
+20 all stats
Wrist:
+65 Intellect
+65 Critical Strike Rating
+65 Haste Rating
Weapon (1H):
+500 Intellect for 12 sec (proc)
+450 Haste Rating for 12 sec (proc)
Weapon (2H):
no specific enchantments (yet)
Off-Hand:
+100 Intellect
Hands:
+65 Mastery Rating
Legs:
+95 Intellect and +80 Stamina
+95 Intellect and +55 Spirit
+55 Intellect and +65 Stamina
+55 Intellect and +45 Spirit
Feet:
+35 Mastery rating and slightly increased movement speed
+50 Hit Rating
Cataclysm Gems
BLUE
Blue gems give +Hit Rating, Spell Penetration and Stamina for Casters. As the latter two are only interesting for PvP, I'm listing only the +Hit Rating gems:
Rigid Ocean Sapphire +40 Hit Rating
Perfect Rigid Zephyrite +35 Hit Rating
Rigid Zephyrite +30 Hit Rating
PURPLE
Purple gems have mixed stats from red (Spellpower) and blue (+Hit Rating, Spell Penetration or Stamina). Again, only the PvE relevant ones are listed:
Veiled Demonseye +20 Intellect and +20 Hit Rating
Perfect Veiled Nightstone +18 Intellect and +17 Hit Rating
Veiled Nightstone +15 Intellect and +15 Hit Rating
RED
Red gems are certainly the best, as pure +Intellect is found here. Intellect results in higher Spellpower, higher Critical Strike Rating, a larger Mana pool, and better Mana regeneration (directly by MP/5, and indirectly with Evocaton).
Brilliant Inferno Ruby +40 Intellect
Perfect Brilliant Carnelian +35 Intellect
Brilliant Carnelian +30 Intellect
ORANGE
Orange gems have mixed stats from red (Intellect) and yellow (+ Critical Strike, Haste or Mastery Rating):
Artful Ember Topaz +20 Intellect and +20 Mastery Rating
Perfect Artful Hessonite +18 Intellect and +17 Mastery Rating
Artful Hessonite +15 Intellect and +15 Mastery Rating
Potent Ember Topaz +20 Intellect and +20 Critical Strike Rating
Perfect Potent Hessonite +18 Intellect and +17 Critical Strike Rating
Potent Hessonite +15 Intellect and +15 Critical Strike Rating
Reckless Ember Topaz +20 Intellect and +20 Haste Rating
Perfect Reckless Hessonite +18 Intellect and +17 Haste Rating
Reckless Hessonite +15 Intellect and +15 Haste Rating
YELLOW
Yellow gems boost only secondary stats: + Critical Strike Rating, Haste Rating and Mastery Rating.
Smooth Amberjewel +40 Crit Rating
Perfect Smooth Alicite +35 Crit Rating
Smooth Alicite +30 Crit Rating
Quick Amberjewel +40 Haste Rating
Perfect Quick Alicite +35 Haste Rating
Quick Alicite +30 Haste Rating
Fractured Amberjewel +40 Mastery
Perfect Fractured Alicite +35 Mastery
Fractured Alicite +30 Mastery
WoW patch 4.0 is live...
by Tachyon on Wed. 13. October 2010, 23:45
Filed under: patch 4.0, cataclysm, mage, fire, DPS
WoW patch 4.0 went live today on the EU realms. Of course half of the addons were broken (I couldn't event cast as spell) and had to be disabled, and some re-enabled as they were fixed with patches that were drippling in in hourly intervals.After fixing my UI, I respecced fire (my new spec is 2/31/3 Fire) and did some tests at the target dummies.
14k DPS sustained, only selfbuffed, that's just plain awesome, but see for yourselves:
(Tip: switch to HD, I recorded with 1080p)
Cataclysm NDA lifted
by Tachyon on Thu. 01. July 2010, 11:27
Filed under: cataclysm, expansion, mage, beta
The Cataclysm NDA (non-disclosure agreement) has been lifted today, so we can expect to see new information from the beta flooding the internet, yay!
MMO-Champion already published a compilation of the mage talents/spells for the upcoming expansion, and it looks fine!
Some goodies I've found:
- Spreading Chill spreads the chill effects to 1/2 additional targets on Frostbolt crits
- Improved Cone of Cold freezes the targets for 2/4 seconds
- Improved Polymorph delays damage taken by the target by 1.5/3 seconds
- Arcane Repulsion gives all of your armor buffs the ability to knock back and slow an attacker, once per minute
- Arcane Instability increases the damage of your next spell by 20/4/60% when one of your spells is pushed back or interrupted
- Improved Mana Gem increases your damage by 1/2/3% of your maximum mana for the next 10 seconds after using a mana gem
- Arcane Tactics is a raid-wide buff that increases damage
Links:
- MMO-Champion Cataclysm Mage Overview
- Cataclysm Talent calculator
- WoWHead Cataclysm Database
- Arcane Brilliance: Cataclysm beta highlights for mages
T10 Arcane Rotations revisited
by Tachyon on Fri. 12. February 2010, 18:59
Filed under: arcane, t10, rotation, mage, set bonus, featured
Within the mage community, there is still no consens on which arcane rotation to use, now that most raiding mages have the 2xT10 set bonus.
Some mages still use the ABx4AM rotation, others stick with the Mbarr if AB>=4 rotation, and I still see lots of mages spamming AB when they have lots of mana left, or during AP/IV/Bloodlust.
The poor mages seeking help in the official WoW forums are hinted towards the one or the other rotation, without anyone caring to explain why this or that rotation should be used. Arguing about arcane spell rotations is almost a People's Front of Judea vs. Judean People's Front thing.
Now several weeks have passed since the introduction of T10 gear, in which I was able to verify my simulated conclusions on T10 rotations. I cross-checked my results with those of other mages, browsed damage log reports of other guilds, but haven't found anyone using my suggested rotations yet. Good news is: my suggested rotation works, and it works well.
I used the same simulation as before, with the same settings:
- 3000 Spell Power
- Hit capped
- 20% Spell Haste before talents
- 50% Spell Crit including CSD
The casting strategies I used in the simulation are:
- AB Spam
Just chain-cast Arcane Blast, nothing more. - ABx4AM
Cast 4x Arcane Blast, and the Arcane Missiles regardless of whether Missile Barrage procced (the chance that it procced is 87.04%). Using this strategy, you have a fair chance to use MBarr immediately when it procs, with the penalty to cast unhasted Arcane Missiles in 13% of all cases (impacting your mobility). - Tachyon A/B
This is a generic casting strategy, where you cast Arcane Blast, use the Missile Barrage Proc after at least A AB stacks, or clear the stack with Arcane Barrage when Missile Barrage didn't proc after B subsequent Arcane Blasts.
This time I only used configurations where we always keep casting AB until Missile Barrage procs (B->infinity, so never clear the AB stack with Arcane Barrage) - Tachyon A/B, lazy
The Tachyon A/B rotations have one big flaw: they only work in that form if your reaction time is 0. Or if you can see some seconds in the future, to know if Missile Barrage will proc. Assuming that you don't have those superpowers, you'll notice a Missile Barrage proc only when you're already casting the next Arcane Blast.
To model this effect, I created a lazy strategy, where you can't use Missile Barrage procs immediately.
Here's the simulated DPS and DPM for each of the casting strategies, evaluated by casting 1'000'000 spells with each strategy:
As the non-lazy Tachyon A/B rotations are only applicable withing a theorycrafting sandbox, and the lazy variants are more realistic, if faded out the non-lazy versions a little to make the chart more clear.
Conclusions from the simulation:
- The DPS variance is relatively small, less than 4% from the best to the worst
- AB spam has the worst DPS and atrocious DPM. Never ever use this again.
- Waiting for 4 stacks of AB before using the MBarr proc yields the highest DPS
- Using MBarr even before 4 AB stacks yields almost as good DPS, with way higher DPM
- The Tachyon (A=0-2, B->Infinity, lazy) strategy has higher DPS and higher DPM than the ABx4AM strategy.
If you're below 50% case, you can start 3 spell casts of 2.5 sec base duration within the 5 sec 2xT10 proc uptime. With over 50% haste (and no lag), you can even squeeze a fourth spell start in, making maximum use of the haste buff.
During Bloodlust/Heroism, together with Icy Veins, it is therefore recommended to use the Tachyon A=3, B->Inifinity rotation (3xAB + 1xMBarr = 4 hasted spells if you're lucky with procs).
Detailled results for the simulated strategies:
- AB SPAM
11500295017 Damage done in 1984126.98 sec, costing 1719996236 Mana
ArcaneBlast:
* casts: 1000000
* crit: 59%
* avg hit=7756, crit=14096, cast time=1.98 sec - ABx4AM
11236529338 Damage done in 1925358.18 sec, costing 647990080 Mana
ABx4, MBarr 86.98%
ABx4, AM 13.02%
ArcaneBlast:
* casts: 800000
* crit: 59%
* avg hit=5726, crit=10408, cast time=1.85 sec
ArcaneMissiles:
* casts: 200000
* crit: 53%
* avg hit=14753, crit=28825, cast time=2.24 sec - Tachyon a=0, b->infinite, lazy
11047912901 Damage done in 1854542.44 sec, costing 620598122 Mana
ABx2, MBarr 40.0076%
ABx3, MBarr 24.0845%
ABx4, MBarr 14.396%
ABx5, MBarr 8.6189%
ABx(n>5), MBarr 12.893%
ArcaneBlast:
* casts: 777500
* crit: 59%
* avg hit=5767, crit=10483, cast time=1.84 sec
ArcaneMissiles:
* casts: 222500
* crit: 53%
* avg hit=13144, crit=25686, cast time=1.89 sec - Tachyon a=4, b->infinite, lazy
11259815033 Damage done in 1870174.6 sec, costing 729463468 Mana
ABx4, MBarr 78.4767%
ABx5, MBarr 8.6218%
ABx(n>5), MBarr 12.9015%
ArcaneBlast:
* casts: 819377
* crit: 59%
* avg hit=5967, crit=10843, cast time=1.85 sec
ArcaneMissiles:
* casts: 180623
* crit: 53%
* avg hit=14753, crit=28825, cast time=1.98 sec
If you give the new rotations a chance, please let me know about your experiences with them. I know it feels weird to use MBarr before the AB stack is full, the numbers are not quite as high as they used to be, but they're way more frequent.
Patch 3.2 - Call of the Crusade
by Tachyon on Wed. 05. August 2009, 12:47
Filed under: patch, mage
Patch 3.2 - Call of the Crusade went live in the US yesterday, and today here in Europe.For our guild this poses some problems right away, as we didn't manage to clear heroic Ulduar yet (Yogg-Saron has been killed in non-heroic Ulduar, but we have yet to bring him/her down in heroic mode). We haven't done a single hard mode encounter yet, and Algalon is probably going to join the league of skipped bosses such as Kil-Jaeden.
I'm wondering what we're doing on our scheduled raid tonight, whether it's going to be Ulduar (what I personally hope, I don't want the place to stay uncleared until we outgear it) or the new Argent Coliseum instances (5, 10, 25 men).
The profession changes are also very welcome, in fact I kicked Herbalism for Enchanting (cost me 2 days and ~8k gold to powerlevel it) so I can get the upgraded ring enchants. Alchemy has some new recipies for the new epic gems, and a new Flaks ( Flask of the North) to compensate for the boni other professions have. The flask itself is everlasting, and its effect remains for 2h. Of course it doesn't stack with other flasks, but that's what we have have Mixology for (increased effect of flasks).
I'm also eagerly looking forward to play the new battleground, Isle of Conquest.
As I've planned to do more PvP, it means that I had to give up one of my raiding specs (Arcane and Fire/TTW). Leaving Arcane behind was kind of hard for me, as I learned to love that spec almost as much as Frost back in its glory days, but under the aspect that Blizzard is rather forcing us to spec Fire, I didn't have much of a choice. My two specs are now Fire/TTW (20/51/0) for PvE, and Frost/TTW (20/0/51) for PvP.
Mage spell and talent changes:
3.2 brings mana cost reductions, mainly to compensate for the Replenishment nerf. Frost mages will be happy to get a mortal strike like effect with Permafrost, and Fire mages will squeal with glee when sprinkling Living Bombs on multiple opponents.
- Arcane Blast: Mana cost reduced by 12%.
Nice change, too bad it only affects AB and not also Arcane Missiles and Arcane Barrage. Arcane is still going to have a hard time, as it's quite obvious that Blizzard wants us raiding mages to spec into Fire (see 4xT8 and T9 set boni). - Frost Bolt, Cone of Cold, Frost Ward, Ice Armor, Frost Armor, Frost Nova, Ice Lance, and Ice Barrier: The mana cost on these spells has been reduced by approximately 15%.
Long overdue change for PvP. - Invisibility: Can no longer be interrupted by a hostile action or damage done during the 3-second Fade time, however an invisible mage is still vulnerable to Stun and Silence effects.
Invisibility is now a granted thread dump, random boss damage effects will no longer break the fade, and we can even continue nuking during the fade time. - Mirror Image: Images will no longer trigger the death sound when their time expires.
- Empowered Fire: In addition to its existing effects, this talent now also grants a 33/67/100% chance to regain 2% of base mana each time the Ignite talent deals damage.
This change looks like it could provide a solid mana regeneration, I've yet to test how much MP/5 this will yield on average. - Empowered Frostbolt: Instead of increasing critical strike chance by 2/4%, this talent now reduces the cast time of Frostbolt by 0.1/0.2 seconds.
0.2 sec less cast time is 2.5/(2.5-0.2)-1 = 8.7% haste, that's nice for PvP and compensates well for the 4% less crit. - Permafrost: In addition to its existing effects, this talent now also causes the mage's Chill effects to red)-uce healing received by the victim by 7/13/20%.
That's an effect similar to the warrior's mortal strike, only with 20% less healing, but at least spammable (mortal strike: 50%, 6sec cooldown). I find it already nigh impossible to kill a well geared healer in PvP, so that effect could help me in this regard.
Mage Tier 9 set:
- Tier 9 Set: (10 normal, ilvl 232 ):
Conqueror's Sunstrider's Regalia - Tier 9 Set: (10 heroic / 25 normal, ilvl 245 ):
Triumphant Sunstrider's Regalia - Tier 9 Set: (25 heroic, ilvl 258 ):
Totally Triumphant Sunstrider's Regalia
Set Boni:
- 2 pieces: Increases the armor you gain from Ice Armor by 20%, the mana regeneration you gain from Mage Armor by 10%, and converts an additional 15% of your spirit into critical strike rating when Molten Armor is active.
- 4 pieces: Increases the critical strike chance of your Fireball, Frostbolt, Frostfire Bolt, Arcane Missiles, and Arcane Blast spells by 5%.
PvE wise, the 2xT9 bonus will raise your spirit-to-critrating conversion from 55% to 70%. If you have, let's say, 600 spirit, the additional 15% is 90 crit rating, or ~2% crit (45.91 crit rating = 1% crit). Not too bad.
Ice Armor and Mage Armor are used in PvP situations exclusively, where running around in 2p T9 is debateable.
The 4xT9 bonus also gives more crit, thus Fireball and Frostfire Bolt specs profit the most. Arcane doesn't scale that well with crit, or even poorly compared to fire if we take the Hot Streak talent into account.
So all in all, mages can save a little mana this patch due to the talent changes, and I can't help but claim that Blizzard has given up on making all talent trees viable for PvP and PvE somehow. Fire will completely fill the PvE nice, kicking Arcane overboard, whereas Frost will continue to be the PvP tree. Makes me wonder if there's any place left for arcane...
4492 Spellpower yay!
by Tachyon on Sun. 26. July 2009, 11:52
Filed under: Mage, Trinkets
That's what happens when both of my trinkets ( Sundial of the Exiled, Dying Curse) and the 2x T8 set bonus proc at the same time: 590+765+350 = 1705 bonus spell power for a few seconds.Nevertheless I'm eagerly trying to exchange my trinkets, especially Dying Curse with its massive amount of spell hit, as I'm so much overcapped with spell hit (471 spell hit rating
) that I want to curse the bad itemization in Ulduar.
Seriously, what was Blizzard thinking when they increase the amout of spell hit with each new set tier, as if we weren't hit capped from the day we set our feet into the Northrend raiding instances for the first time.
And speaking of bad itemization: why is the 2-piece set bonus better than the 4-piece bonus (which is a complete waste for any spec that isn't fire)?
/shakesfistinrage
Patch 3.1 goes live
by Tachyon on Wed. 15. April 2009, 18:30
Filed under: patch, ulduar, spec, mage
Patch 3.1 - The Secrets of Ulduar - went live today in the US and EU.
Not much has changed since my PTR 3.1 post, and the mage class wasn't affected much by the many changes made in class balance.
The complete 3.1 patch notes can be found here:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/
Features in Patch 3.1:
Dual Talent specs
Class trainers now offer the ability to have a second talent spec for 1000 gold.
Each talent spec has its own set of mayor and minor glyphs, and its own set of key bindings. The two talent spec windows can be accessed by pressing 'N', that's also where you'll find the glyph sets now. Switching your talent spec is a 5 second cast (affected by haste!) and can be done everywhere when you're out of combat, except in battlegrounds and arenas. No tome of power is required for applying glyphs anymore.
As a mage, you will most probably want to have a raid-oriented spec, and a PvP/solo/trash spec.
My choice of spec is follows:
- Raid PvE: 56/3/12 Arcane
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#of0Vfz0IzxGuMtedcZb...
That's the spec I'm using now, I'm quite content with it. I decided to keep slow, and placed another point in frost to get 3/3 Ice Shards for superb Blizzard DPS. - PvP / Solo: 20/0/51 Frost-TTW
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#of0ic0McZZAc0fRbu0f...
Yay, finally back to frost! The 20 points into arcane are mandatory for PvP to get Torment The Weak and Improved Counterspell. That leaves too few points left to get all the goodies in frost, so I had to make tradeoff decisions between DPS/utility/cooldowns.
Ulduar / T8
The new raid instance, Ulduar, is the main focus of the 3.1 content patch.
My guild will venture into that place starting tonight, and I'm really looking forward to learning new encounters with my guild mates (unlike the T7 dungeons, where I got piggybacked through more or less, which was rather challenging for me as everyone except me was already quite used to the encounters).
MMO-Champion already reports severaly world first kills of Ulduar bosses by US guilds, seems they managed to use their head start to their advantage (but I'm sure that the EU-Guilds will get the credits for a Yogg-Sharon first kill).
Mage changes
The changes to the mage class are, like, not spectacular. At all.
Despite Blizzard announcing that they intended to make frost viable for raiding again, and fire solid for PvP, neither of that happened.
Frost continues its existance as a pure PvP or trash mob spec for the time being, but thanks to dual speccing, that's not much of an issue.
Out-of-combat mana regeneration was lowered, but that affect more the healing classes, as we mages got compensated for that loss by higher in-combat regeneration, so for us it eves out.
There are only two big changes concerning the mage class:
- Molten Armor and the according glyph now grants its crit chance based on the spirit, and no longer on a fixed value.
Molten Armor used to increase the crit chance by 3% (with the glyph: 5%), and now grants 35% crit rating (55% with glyph) per point in spirit.
Remember that it takes 45.91 critical strike rating for 1% critical strike chance, so to end up with the same crit chance as before, you'd need to have 394 spirit (without the glyph) or 417 spirit (with the glyph).
For PvP, this is a huge nerf (for solo play it doesn't matter that much), as you barely got any spirit on your PvP gear. With my current raid gear, I'm at 370 spirit unbuffed, so in a raid scenario my crit chance will be slightly higher than before.
Despite the PvP nerf and despite the fact that spirit is one of the worst stats to get on gear, I think the change is justified, and mages finally scaling with spirit is nice and necessary. - The Improved Scorch and Winter's Chill crit debuff were lowered to 1/2/3/4/5% (from 2/4/6/8/10%). After a few gazillion sour mage tears, we got compensated with an increased crit chance for Scorch, Fireball and Frostfire Bolt (1/2/3% with Improved Scorch) and Frostbolt (1/2/3% with Winter's Chill).
Argent Tournament
To be honest, I couldn't care less for the Argent Tournamentright now, but hey who knows, I'm sure I'll pass by some day anyway.
I never bothered to read into the details, but if I recall correctly it's a horse mount PvP duel thingy which rewards titles and vanity pets. Whatever.
Miscellaneous
- Mounts now can swim (and dive?)
- Flasks only last 1h (before: 2h). The recipies stay the same, but will yield now two flasks at once. Old flasks were migrated to 'mixtures' which can be transformed to 2 new flasks.
- Curse Gaming and WowInterface.com decided to block WoWMatrix requests. I switched to the curse client to keep my addons up-to-date, works quite well.
- A new boss named Emalon The Stonewatcher has been added to Archavon's Keep in Lake Wintergrasp. The new boss dropps the iLvl 226/232 Furious Gladiator PvP gear.
WoW 3.0 PTR testing and new Frost Spec
by Tachyon on Mon. 22. September 2008, 01:30
Filed under: mage, talents, spec, raiding, wotlk, ptr, deep freeze, patch
This weekend, I did some testing on the public test realm (PTR) with patch 3.0, in order to test the new frost talents, and have some fun with Blizzard now critting (it's about time!)On visiting the mage class trainer, I was surprised to find new spell ranks for Frostbolt, Fireball and Arcane Missiles at level 70, haven't heard of that before.
- Frostbolt rank 14: 630 to 680 Frost damage
- Fireball rank 14: 717 to 913 Fire damage + 92 Fire damage over 8sec
- Arcane Missiles rank 11: 280 Arcane damage every 1 sec for 5 sec.
Also the new battleground (Strand of the Ancients) is now in the game, though I didn't test it yet, as my addons are quite in a mess due to incompatibilites. I didn't take the time to fiddle with the UI and find out new hotkeys for most of my spells (Bartender3 wouldn't load), so I'd be handicapped for PvP anyway.
I finally decided what frost spec I'd take when 3.0 goes live. My focus is still on raid PvE, but I also took some PvP talents and included meaningful talents for a Blizzard AoE spec.
My new WoW 3.0 spec:
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=oZZAIccRfu0fdgrst
Reduces the casting time of your Frostbolt spell by 0.5 sec.
Must have talent. Reduces the Frostbolt casting time from 3 to 2.5 sec, which is a 20% DPS increase.
Ice Floes - Rank 3/3
Reduces the cooldown of your Frost Nova, Cone of Cold, Ice Block and Icy Veins spells by 20%.
Reduces the Frost Nova cooldown from 24 to 20 sec, Cone of Cold from 10 to 8 sec, Ice Block from 5 to 4 min, and Icy Veins from 3 to 2:24 min.
It's not a must have talent, the only component that makes it wanted for raiding is the reduced cooldown on Icy Veins (to maximize DPS).
Ice Shards - Rank 3/3
Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Frost spells by 100%.
Must have talent. Makes your frost spells crit for 200% of the normal damage, and with the Chaotic Skyfire Diamond metagem even for 209%.
Frostbite - Rank 3/3
Gives your Chill effects a 15% chance to freeze the target for 5 sec.
Neat for solo/PvP situations, useless for raiding (as boss mobs can't be frozen) - unless you combine it with Improved Blizzard, giving each tick of it the chance to freeze the target, which means superb AoE crit chance with Shatter.
Elemental Precision - Rank 3/3
Reduces the mana cost and increases your chance to hit with Frost and Fire spells by 3%.
Mandatory for PvE. I'm not sure whether the Elemental Precision Ghost Hit (+6% instead of +3% for Frostbolt) still applies in 3.0/WotLK, but I doubt so.
Spell hit chance is no longer capped at 99%, so for raiding situations, you need +17% hit (214 Hit Rating @ lvl70, 446 Hit Rating @ lvl 80), or +14% hit with 3/3 Elemental Precision (176 Hit Rating @ lvl70, 367 Hit Rating @ lvl 80).
Piercing Ice - Rank 3/3
Increases the damage done by your Frost spells by 6%.
Must have talent, no discussion.
Icy Veins - Rank 1/1
Hastens your spellcasting, increasing spell casting speed by 20% and gives you 100% chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while casting. Lasts 20 sec.
Must have talent.
Improved Blizzard - Rank 2/3
Adds a chill effect to your Blizzard spell. This effect lowers the target's movement speed by 50%. Lasts 1.50 sec.
Adds a snare effect to Blizzard, making the affected targets stay longer in the spell's area. The snare allows it also to proc Frostbite, combined with shatter this will turn Blizzard into a crit galore feast!
Arctic Reach - Rank 2/2
Increases the range of your Frostbolt, Ice Lance, Deep Freeze and Blizzard spells and the radius of your Frost Nova and Cone of Cold spells by 20%.
Must have for PvE (Frostbolt) and especially for PvP (Frostnova, Cone of Cold). Too bad it only increases the range of Blizzard and not its radius.
Frost Channeling - Rank 3/3
Reduces the mana cost of all spells by 10% and reduces the threat caused by your Frost spells by 10%.
Must have for PvE, the thread reduction is vital. It's now even better than clearcast, as you get the mana reduction directly, no wasted procs.
Shatter - Rank 3/3
Increases the critical strike chance of all your spells against frozen targets by 50%.
This. Is. SPARTA! The bread and butter of a frost or elemental spec (since patch 1.12 it increases the crit chance also for non-frost spells), mother to all shatter combos, and now also useful in raids, thanks to the Fingers of Frost talent. And it now only costs 3 talent points, and no longer has a prerequisite talent.
Cold Snap - Rank 1/1
When activated, this spell finishes the cooldown on all Frost spells you recently cast.
Allows you to gain more DPS by increasing the Icy Veins and Water Elemental uptime in boss fights, and saves your back in PvP fights by resetting Ice Block / Frostnova.
Cold as Ice - Rank 2/2
Reduces the cooldown of your Cold Snap, Ice Barrier, Deep Freeze and Summon Water Elemental spells by 20%.
Indirectly increases your DPS due to the reduced Cold Snap and Water Elemental cooldown. For two points, a must have, even for PvP, as it reduces the Ice Barrier cooldown from 30 to 24 sec.
Winter's Chill - Rank 3/3
Gives your Frost damage spells a 100% chance to apply the Winter's Chill effect, which increases the chance spells will critically hit the target by 2% for 15 sec. Stacks up to 5 times.
Up to +10% crit, now for all spells. Too bad it doesn't stack with the new Improved Scorch (+10%) or Boomkin aura (+5%). Might help your fellow fire raiding comrades, as they can skip adding Scorch into their spell rotation and just gain the effect from Winter's Chill. Sideeffect in PvP: WC is an additional debuff, making it harder to remove more important ones, such as polymorph.
Shattered Barrier - Rank 2/2
Gives your Ice Barrier spell a 100% chance to freeze all enemies within 10 yds for 8 sec when it is destroyed.
I'd say this is a PvP-only ability, but an incredibly powerful one. Adds a third way to nail your opponent to the ground (besides Frostnova and Frostbite), which helps shattering or deep freezing. It's also good that the effect just freezes the opponents, but doesn't do any damage, so it won't break sheep on any target it hits.
Meele will hate you for this, as soon as they slice away your Ice Barrier, they get frozen, allowing you to gain distance again.
Ice Barrier - Rank 1/1
Instantly shields you, absorbing x damage. Lasts 1 min. While the shield holds, spells will not be interrupted.
- Rank 6 (Level 70) absorbs 1075 damage
- Rank 7 (Level 75) absorbs 2800 damage
- Rank 8 (Level 80) absorbs 3300 damage
Never leave the house without it!
Arctic Winds - Rank 5/5
Increases all Frost damage you cause by 5% and reduces the chance melee and ranged attacks will hit you by 5%.
Nice, a plain +5% dmg, take it.
Empowered Frostbolt - Rank 2/2
Increases the damage of your Frostbolt spell by an amount equal to 10% of your spell power and increases the critical strike chance by an additional 4%.
Improves scaleability by adding +10% to your spell power. The crit chance used to be 5% for rank 5 points before patch 3.0, now it's only 4% but only requires to points.
Fingers of Frost - Rank 2/2
Gives your Chill effects a 15% chance to grant you the Fingers of Frost effect, which treats your next 2 spells cast as if the target were Frozen. Lasts 15 sec.
Now that's cool, a 15% proc which allows you to cast 2 spells that profit from shatter, even if the target can't be frozen. That's 2x Frostbolt, or 1x Frostbolt + 1x Deep Freeze with almost guaranteed crits.
Brain Freeze - Rank 2/3
Your Frost damage spells have a 10% chance to cause your next Fireball spell to be instant cast and cost no mana.
This is the most weird talent in the new frost tree. With 3/3 ranks, the proc chance is even higher, 15%. When Brain Freeze procs, you've got 15 sec time to release an instant fireball for free. Untalented fireballs won't do much damage, and only crit for 150% base dmg, but the instant cast (1.5 GDC instead of 3.5 sec casttime) evens this out. Don't expect too much DPS increase from this, the talent only shines because the fireball costs no mana, increasing your overall mana efficiency (DPM).
For PvP this is actually funny, having a little 'PoM Fireball' ready which can be cast while moving, that alone makes it worth taking it.
Might make spell rotations a little tricky, as you don't want to waist the Fingers of Frost proc on a Brain Freeze proc, so watch your procs carefully.
Summon Water Elemental - Rank 1/1
Summon a Water Elemental to fight for the caster for 45 sec.
Squirtle, friend to all frost mages. Will bite nastly rogues into the ankles while they stunlock you, helps you range-shattering with its ranged nova, and add its little share to your raid DPS. Must have.
Improved Water Elemental - Rank 3/3
Increases the duration of your Summon Water Elemental spell by 15 sec and your Water Elemental restores mana to all party or raid members within 100 yds an amount equal to 0.6% of their total mana every 5 secs.
PvE only. Increases WE uptime, and adds a little manareg to the party (for a lvl 70 mage with 10000 mana, it's 60 MP5).
Chilled to the Bone - Rank 5/5
Increases the damage caused by your Frostbolt, Frostfire Bolt and Ice Lance spells by 5% and reduces the movement speed of all chilled targets by an additional 10%.
Another 5% plain damage to your main nukes, and adds an additional snare which comes handy for your Blizzard (with 2/3 Imp. Blizz., it's 60% snare).
Deep Freeze - Rank 1/1
Causes x to y Frost damage and stuns the target for 5 sec. Only usable on Frozen targets.
- Rank 1 (lvl 60): 694 to 806 Frost damage
- Rank 2 (lvl 66): 787 to 913 Frost damage
- Rank 3 (lvl 72): 1018 to 1182 Frost damage
- Rank 4 (lvl 80): 1319 to 1531 Frost damage
Stunning your target means totally incapacitating it, so you can do anything to it (paint a moustache on its face, untie its shoelaces or just nuke the living daylights out of it without breaking your CC).
Even better, the freeze effect won't be broken on the target by damage, thus you have 5 sec of shatter opportunity. The Deep Freeze cast will also be affected by shatter, and you enter the global cooldown afterwards as DF is an instant cast spell, so 3.5 sec remain to unleash another Frostbolt/Ice Lance combo, or 3x Ice Lance if you're really quick.
The damage component of Deep Freeze gains 1.5/3.5 = 42.857% of your spell power.
Subcreation down, Alcaras pulled the plug
by Tachyon on Fri. 22. August 2008, 18:17
Filed under: subcreation, mage, community
My beloved #1 theorycrafting site, Subcreation, was taken offline yesterday. That's what you see when trying to access their page now:Alcaras, why, WHYYYY!
The subcreation forums were always a source of inspiration, and a meeting point for the best mage theorycrafters out there. Its intelligent, inspiring and honest discussions will be missed. At least for me, they leave a gap behind, which can't be filled by Elitist Jerks nor any other existing forum. Screw EJ, we want Subcreation back!
It was quite of a shock, seeing the Subcreation community gone, and having the forums no more (there's a whole bunch of reference material there). It's strange that this wasn't announced before, and that there was no way to discuss how the forums may be saved and continued.
Alcaras pulled the plug, and we're left with a crater where once the green and flourishing lands of theorycrafting and WoW discussion lay. Whatever the reason was, I hope we find out some day...
If that's really the end of it: thanks Alcaras and all of the Subcreation community, you will be missed! Special salutes to Qb (Qbert on US-Moonrunner), your postings, opinions and reviews were always excellent. Some of the subcreation regulars are also blogging (e.g. Tuna at spicytunas.com); at least this way I'll continue to read their opinions.
/salute & /farewell
WotLK Beta Frost Mage Talents
by Tachyon on Thu. 24. July 2008, 23:38
Filed under: wotlk, mage, talents, beta
Now that the NDA on the WotLK alpha/beta has been lifted, we're able to get a first impression of the new frost mage talents as they are currently in the beta. Blizzard is still tuning and tweaking talents (as they just did with the new arcane talents), and this is beta anyway, so don't take anything as granted, as it may be changed anytime before release.
A list of the new talents (also the fire and arcane ones) can be found in the Mage section of the WotLK Wiki. Here's my first review of the new frost talents, in respect to Raid PvE and PvP:
(2 Ranks, tier 8 Talent, requires 35 points in the Frost tree)
Gives your Frost damage spells a 5/10% chance to apply the Winter's Grasp effect, which increases the chance all attacks will hit the target by 2% and the target is considered Frozen for 5 sec.
PvE Rating:
PvP Rating:
Have you noticed it? CONSIDERED FROZEN! Yay! This must be like the biggest change WotLK is about to offer to us frost mages. It mainly means that targets can be frozen in a non-crowd control way. A 'normal' freeze roots the target to the ground, and the 'frozen' status is directly related to this CC (crowd control) effect. Meaning that if the target gets hit too hard, the CC effect will break. Bosses also are immune to CC effects, meaning that we currently can't freeze a boss, hence there will be no shatter crits. For the non-mages: Shatter is a talent which increases the chance to critically hit a frozen target by 50%.
So this talent introduces a 'considered frozen' effect applicable to bosses, and I'd almost bet that in contradiction to the 'normal' freeze it won't break immaturely.
Basically this means that shatter is now useful in a raiding spec, so during those 5sec every spell will have a highly increased crit chance. With a little spell haste, it's possible to squeeze two Frostbolts and a consecutive Ice Lance into this 5sec frame.
And: the more frost mages you pack in the raid, the more they will profit from each other, crit galore incoming! This talent is such an enormous boost to frost mage DPS, that I doubt it will make it into release in this form.
The second effect on this talent is to increase the hit chance by 2%. I assume that this only affects the meele hit chance, which wouldn't be bad, as casters already committed to reach the hit cap with talents and equip. So this is some raid synergy we bring for the meele classes in the raid, which increases our raid slot value.
For PvP, this talent is next to useless, as we already have Frostbite (15% freeze proc) and Frostnova (self and Water Elemental's) for our shatter crits. It's not bad, as it will increase your crit chance a little, and it's unlikely to be disspelled, but it adds more to the average DPS than to the burst damage.
(3 Ranks, tier 9 Talent, requires 40 points in the Frost tree)
Your Frost Nova and Frostbite effects also reduce the target's chance to hit with all attacks by 5/10/15%.
PvE Rating:
PvP Rating:
Useless for PvE. Completely useless for bosses, as Frost Nova/Frostbite can't be applied. Useless against meele PvE targets, as mages don't stand in meele range, especially not when the target is rooted by the freeze and this situation can be used to gain some distance. Also next to useless against casters, as the -15% hit chance doesn't make much of a difference, as we've also got counterspell to make sure we won't get hit. Hell, event if we get hit, with Ice Barrier and Ice Block we're the best survivalists among all casters, so we won't care.
For PvP, this can be nice in some situations, for example when you get jumped at by a Rogue which tries to stunlock the living daylights out of you, gets frozen by a Frostbite proc off your Frost Armor, and then is 15% less likely to hit.
Also you could root a caster with frost nova, and reduce his hit chance a little.
Anyway, the 15% is next to nothing, so I wouldn't really bother to take this talent.
(3 Ranks, tier 9 Talent, requires 40 points in the Frost tree)
Increases the duration of your Summon Water Elemental spell by 5/10/15 sec and increases the total health and mana of your water elemental by 10/20/30%.
PvE Rating:
PvP Rating:
Increasing the uptime by 15 sec results in 1 min / 3 min uptime (33%), or 50% on a long time average with coldsnap.
The Water Elemental contributes a significant part to the mage raid DPS, so taking this talent is highly recommended. It still currently suffers from a weak hit chance (gains no +hit from the caster), and only crits for 150%, but at least it gets a share (40%) of the mage's spelldamage, and also profits from the up to +10% crit from the Winter's Chill debuff. I'd recommend the Improved Water Elemental talent for PvE, but wouldn't care to take it for PvP, as chances are still high it will get killed before it expires. Its mana pool still won't last for the full duration, so make sure to have some sort of mana source in your group (shadow priest, mana totem).
In PvP, the +30% HP increases the survivablitily of the elemental a little, which is nice.
(5 Ranks, tier 10 Talent, requires 45 points in the Frost tree)
Increases the damage caused by your Frostbolt and Ice Lance spells by 1/2/3/4/5% and reduces the movement speed of all chilled targets by an additional 2/4/6/8/10%.
PvE Rating:
PvP Rating:
Frostbolt and Ice Lance are our bread and butter (solo, in PvP and thanks to Winter's Grasp now also in PvE), so this talents means 5% more DPS in all situations. Nice, wtb!
The additional movement speed reduction makes us more of a snare machine; combined with Permafrost we can now chill down our targets to 40% (Frostbolt), 30% (Cone of Cold) and 15% (Improved Blizzard).
Must-have talent for deep frost mages!
(1 Rank, 1.5 sec, 30 sec Cooldown, tier 11 Talent, requires 50 points in the Frost tree)
Stuns the target for 5 sec. Only usable on Frozen targets.
PvE Rating:
PvP Rating:
This one's interesting. I consider mages, and especially frost mages, to be the strongest CC-class ingame, that's why I rolled this class! Yet we alsmost completely lack the strongest of all CC-categories: stuns. The only mage stun is to be found in the fire tree: Impact, giving fire spells a 10% chance to stun the target for 2sec.
Other CC-categories are Mezz (rendering the target incapable to do anything, but breaks on damage. e.g. Polymorph), Root (rooting the target to the ground, e.g. Frostnova, Frostbite) and Snare (that's our speciality).
Now we get a stun effect which holds for 5sec. During those 5sec, you can do anything to the target, decorate it with flowers or paint a moustache on it, or use the time to unleash some significant burst damage -> Frostbolt, Ice Lance, Frostbolt.
PvE-wise unnecessary, but in PvP one of the upcoming killer abilities of our class.
In WTF-situations, it can be used as an escape mechanism: Frostnova, Deep Freeze, and you have enough time to face into invisibility without being interrupted.
Feel free to post your 2 cents on those talents, I'd like to read your opinion when I come back from vacation!
Brutallus
by Tachyon on Tue. 10. June 2008, 23:30
Filed under: brutallus, raiding, sunwell, mage, dps
Actually I intended to just play a few rounds of battleground PvP, and look for any groups seeking for a mage for the last couple of bosses in Zul'Aman (desperately need the trinket from Hex Lord Malacrass!), which is the usual things to do for me on half play evenings (I came online shortly before 22:00).So I was quite surprised when recieving a whisper of Schayol in midst of a battle in Arathi Basin, if I'd feel like doing some learning tries on Brutallus. I didn't hesitate for a second, learning a new boss fight I never encountered before is always a challenge for me, although I'm convinced that my gear is yet not quite sufficient for sunwell bosses, especially for Brutallus.
Brutallus is the second boss in Sunwell Plateau (after Kalecgos). He's got 10 Mio. HP, and a Enrage-Timer of 6 minutes, which basically means that the raid has to deliver 27'777 DPS sustained to kill him before he runs havoc. Divided by the usual number of 16 DPS classes, this means that each one of them has to provide an average of 1736 DPS sustained, given that no one of them dies during the encounter. Quite a challenge, that is, so advantage of each and every DPS buff has to me made, from Destruction Potions, Flame Caps to Drums of Battle, to live up to such a high DPS score.
My mage's equipment consists of a wild mix of T6 (robe, shoulders, 2 rings), T5, heroic badge rewards, PvP items and further items of dubious origin (Karazhan, Zul'Aman, crafted BoE), not quite at the level of a T6 mage. What especially hurts is not having the 4x T6 bonus (5% increased damage for Frostbolt and Fireball), gimping my damage output compared to the other DPSers in the raid.
At the moment, I'm at 1206 spell damage, 126 spell hit rating (capped for frostbolt), 69 spell haste and a mere 187 crit rating, that's quite below the stats I think I ought to have for Brutallus.
But as the raid's main goal was not to kill the boss by hook or by crook, but rather gather a solid feeling for the encounter and learn to handle the tactic and timing, it didn't matter that much, so I enjoyed the wiping and checked how well I'd do in terms of DPS.
The entire raid DPS was very low, as we did the tries unbuffed (half of the raid at least used some flasks/elixirs/buff food to check where in the DPS spectrum they lie). The group setup wasn't ideal either (I did have a shaman in my group, but the moonkin with the tasty 5% crit aura was in the other two mages' group), and we didn't use the Destruction Potions and Drums of Battle yet, but nevertheless the DPS was to weak overall.
I managed to settle on 1650 DPS, not really bad, but there's definitely some room for improvement (4x T6 bonus missing), but at least I was among the 4-8 top DPS in the damage meters.
One point that amazed me was our warlocks' DPS, they were the only ones to make more than 2000 DPS. It's sick how they scale with gear, compared to us mages...
The low DPS wasn't really a problem at that evening, as we happened to wipe always long before reaching the enrage timer (best try was 4:30 min), so we first have to learn how not to bite the dust before the damage issues get addressed.
I assume that the raid will manage to beat Brutallus within the next 1-2 weeks; the gear is more than on a ok level for almost everyone in the raid, and once we manage to keep our damage dealers alive until the enrage and learn how to maximize our DPS, the boss shall finally fall...
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