Quick and Dirty Fire Guide

by Tachyon on Wed. 14. April 2010, 02:20

Filed under: fire, guide, raiding, spec, talents, featured

First and foremost, Fire was always my least favourite mage tree. Deep in my heart, I still am a Frost mage (/curses Blizzard for completely ruining it as a raid spec), and have fun raiding with an Arcane spec.
But as my guild is stuck in progress at the Lich King, I had to take desperate measures to optimize my contribution to this particular fight. In other words:
I'm raiding with fire and flames at the moment.



According to Kamigami Tools, Fire is now (since 3.3.3.) up to par with Arcane on some ICC 25 fights (especially Professor Putricide and Sindragosa), and even outperforms Arcane on the Lich King fight (and some other fights in heroic ICC too).

This quick and dirty written guide aims at experienced players who want (or have to) give Fire a try. I suggest reading my Arcane Mage Guide also, as all the stuff I don't mention here (gems, enchants, gear planning, faster casting) are mentioned there.

The Spec

I pondered long about the spec, and only after I was convinced that every point sits where it belongs I cross-checked it with the fire specs of high end mages. The fire spec of the first mage participating in the heroic ICC Lich King kill only differs by one point, so I think there's not much room to negotiate

Endgame Fire Raiding Spec:
53/18/0 Fire/Arcane

Stats

As a fire mage, you have no talents to increase your hit rating. If you assume that you have 3% hit from raid buffs, you need to get the missing 14% (or 13% if spacegoats are in your raid) from your gear. That's 367 hit rating, which should not be hard to get.
Stats priority (updated!)
Hit Rating (until cap) > Crit Rating > Spell Power > Haste > Spirit > Int

Spell Priority System

Fire doesn't use dynamic rotations like Arcane. There's not even a fixed rotation, but rather you will decide what spell to use next using a priority system:

• Priority 1: Keep Improved Scorch up
  Improved Scorch lasts 30 seconds, and increases the spell crit chance on the target by 5% for all casters. Warlocks' Improved Shadow Bolt has the same effect, and doesn't stack with Improved Scorch, so if warlocks in your raid have Shadow Bolt in their rotation, you can forget about applying the Scorch debuff.
• Priority 2: Keep Living Bomb up
  Living bomb does great damage on your target, especially when other targets get hit by the splash damage at the end. Remember that the huge damage comes at the end, so when your target is likely to die within 12 seconds, it's not worth (re-)appying it.
• Priority 3: Use your Hot Streak procs
  Hot Streak procs allow you to cast instant Pyros after two subsequent nonperiodic crits with fire spells. The biggest issue here is Ingite Munching, which causes the system to forget to bank the ignite of one spell if two fire spells crit more or less simultanousely. If you have at least two pieces of the Tier10 set, consuming the Hot Streak proc will give your 5 seconds of +12% spell haste (of which 1 global cooldown is wasted, at least 1 second), this makes it worth using at least when the haste buff isn't up. The pyros are mana consuming, if you ever run into mana problems you may want to use the instant pyros less often.
• Priority 4: Fireball chaincasting
  Pretty straightforward.
  

Configuring TellMeWhen

If you use TellMeWhen, you might want to watch for following procs/debuffs/cooldowns:

BUFFS/PROCS:

• Hot Streak: Buff, Player, When present, Timer

TARGET DEBUFFS:

• Improved Scorch: Debuff, Target, When present, Timer
• Living Bomb: Debuff, Target, When present, Timer, only if cast by self
• Ignite: Debuff, Target, When present, Timer, only if cast by self

COOLDOWNS:

• Combustion: Cooldown, Spell or Ability, When usable, Timer

Useful Macros

This macro lets you cast Living Bomb on the target under your mouse pointer, or if nothing there, on your selected target. Very handy to apply Living Bomb on multiple units without having to lose your current target!

#showtooltip Living Bomb
/cast [target=mouseover,harm,exists,nodead] Living Bomb; Living Bomb
Useful Addons

Keeping up Living Bomb on multiple targets isn't that easy, but fortunately there's a nice little addon that helps here:
Living Bomb Tracker shows a little tooltip when hovering with your mouse cursor over a target, showing whether Living Bomb is applied and how much time is left ticking before you can reapply it.

Understanding Ignite

Ignite is a core mechanic you are expected to understand if you raid with fire.
Whenever one of your fire spells crits, it will do 40% of that damage as DoT (Damage over Time). On a single crit, there will be two Ingite ticks, the first after 2sec, the second after 4sec, both doing 20% of the direct damage component of the spell that crit. If other spell crits happen when there's still Ignite damage to tick, the new Ingite damage is added to the amount that is left to tick, and the timer starts anew to tick after 2/4 seconds.

Example 1: Single crit
t=0sec, Fireball crits for 1000 damage. 400 damage (40%) is added to the Ignite bank.
t=2sec, Ignite ticks for 200 damage (half of what's on the bank)
t=4sec, Ignite ticks for 200 damage (the rest), Ignite debuff expires on the target.

Example 2: Multiple crits
t=0sec, Fireball crits for 1000 damage. 400 damage (40%) is added to the Ignite bank.
t=2sec, Ignite ticks for 200 damage (half of what's on the bank)
t=2.5 sec, Pyro crits for 1500 damage. 600 damage (40%) is added to the bank. Ignite timer is reset
t=4.5sec, Ignite ticks for 400 damage (half of what's on the bank)
t=5sec, Fireball crits for 1200 damage. 480 damage (40%) is added to the Ignite bank.
t=6sec, Fireball crits for 1000 damage. 400 damage (40%) is added to the Ignite bank.
t=8sec, Ignite ticks for 640 damage (half of what's on the bank)
t=10sec, Ignite ticks for 640 damage (the rest), Ignite debuff expires on the target.

This effect of banking Ignite damage is called 'Rolling Ignites'. Back in the classic days, there was only one Ignite bank per unit, so fire mages all added to the same pool. If their crit chance or number was high enough, Ignites could roll for a very long time, increasing the size of the ticks and causing aggro problems to the fire mage which caused the last crit. In vanilla WoW, once Ignite was applied it ticked every 2 seconds until it expired. The damage of the first tick was not substracted, but instead each tick was meant to do half of the banked damage. If rolling ignites occurred, the new Ignite damage was banked to the initial damage and the tick timer was reset to 2, so any damage from the first tick could tick again. This bug caused the banked damage to grow to massive dimensions sometimes, and was a hidden damage boost of fire mages. That had been fixed with patch 2.0, giving each player its own ignite bank slot, substracting any damage ticks and resetting the timer when a new crit occured.

What this means for you: be aware that not all your damage is unloaded directly, and subsequent crits can delay the dot damage (theoretically ad infinitum). Any Ignite damage still banked when your target dies is lost, this is part of the reason fire specs are atrocious for levelling or any target that doesn't live long enough (such as the Ice Spheres in the Lich King fight).

I hope you enjoyed this guide. If there's anything you think should be added, drop me a note in the comments. Now go and RELEASE THE BURNING KRAKEN!

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Tier 10 Set Boni from an Arcane Mage's Perspective

by Tachyon on Wed. 09. December 2009, 18:46

Filed under: arcane, spec, talents, sets, patch, 3.3, haste, tier 10

EDIT 2010-01-22: Tested and verified the mechanic of the T10x2 proc, added and corrected a few things in the article.

Patch day, 3.3 went live today in Europe. This time I refrained from summing up the changes (new raidwide 3% crit buff by Arcane mages, Fire and especially Frost get some small buffs) and instead point to WoW.com's patch 3.3 coverage.

Instead, I will focus on the new Tier 10 sets (presumably the last set we get before the next expansion) that are introduced by patch 3.3.

The Tier 10 armor sets come in three flavours, with an item level of 251, 264 and 279 respectively.
The starting set items are bought with Emblems of Frost, and can be upgraded with normal and heroic (Vanquisher's) Marks of Sanctification.

Emblems of Frost
Emblems of Frost can be obtained from the following sources:

• (3) as loot from killing any boss in Icecrown Citadel
• (3) as loot from killing Toravon the Ice Watcher in Archavon's Vault
• (2) as reward for running the first Daily Heroic Random each day (new in 3.3)
• (5) as reward for completing the Weekly Raid Quest (new in 3.3)

Mage Tier 10 Set(s)

Bloodmage's Regalia Set Boni:

• 2 pieces: Your Hot Streak, Missile Barrage, and Brain Freeze talents also grant you 12% haste for 5 sec when the effect of the talent is consumed.
• 4 pieces: Your Mirror Image ability also causes you to deal 18% additional damage for 30 sec.

Mage Tier 10 2-pieces bonus

After each MBarr cast (Arcane Missiles on a Missile Barrage proc), you gain a buff called Pushing the Limit, which increases your haste for the next 5 sec by 12%.
Note that you gain this buff after channeling Arcane Missiles finishes (or is interrupted), so you gain the full 5 seconds for your next casts.

To find out how much the 2-pieces bonus is worth, I adapted the Casting Simulation acordingly and ran it again with the same parameters as before (3000 Spell Power, Hit Capped, 20% Spell Haste before talents, 50% Spell Crit including CSD). Here are the results:

.	A=0	A=1	A=2	A=3	A=4	A=5
B=0	5261 DPS 14.21 DPM -10.47% DPS -16.80% DPM	5153 DPS 16.19 DPM -12.31% DPS -5.21% DPM	5173 DPS 16.37 DPM -11.97% DPS -4.16% DPM	5257 DPS 15.4 DPM -10.54% DPS -9.84% DPM	5417 DPS 13.39 DPM -7.81% DPS -21.60% DPM	5459 DPS 11.98 DPM -7.11% DPS -29.86% DPM
B=1	5186 DPS 32.99 DPM -11.75% DPS +93.15% DPM	5161 DPS 33.43 DPM -12.16% DPS +95.73% DPM	5195 DPS 27.76 DPM -11.59% DPS +62.53% DPM	5315 DPS 21.96 DPM -9.55% DPS +28.57% DPM	5485 DPS 17.42 DPM -6.65% DPS +1.99% DPM	5532 DPS 13.75 DPM -5.86% DPS -19.50% DPM
B=2	5401 DPS 32.77 DPM -8.08% DPS +91.86% DPM	5378 DPS 33.02 DPM -8.48% DPS +93.33% DPM	5395 DPS 28.96 DPM -8.19% DPS +69.56% DPM	5499 DPS 22.17 DPM -6.42% DPS +29.80% DPM	5642 DPS 17.5 DPM -3.98% DPS +2.46% DPM	5664 DPS 13.78 DPM -3.60% DPS -19.32% DPM
B=3	5597 DPS 29.15 DPM -4.75% DPS +70.67% DPM	5578 DPS 29.2 DPM -5.07% DPS +70.96% DPM	5566 DPS 26.8 DPM -5.28% DPS +56.91% DPM	5648 DPS 21.78 DPM -3.89% DPS +27.52% DPM	5776 DPS 17.24 DPM -1.70% DPS +0.94% DPM	5774 DPS 13.58 DPM -1.74% DPS -20.49% DPM
B=4	5760 DPS 26.16 DPM -1.97% DPS +53.16% DPM	5750 DPS 26.22 DPM -2.15% DPS +53.51% DPM	5728 DPS 24.78 DPM -2.52% DPS +45.08% DPM	5783 DPS 20.96 DPM -1.59% DPS +22.72% DPM	5873 DPS 17.08 DPM +0.00% DPS +0.00% DPM	5863 DPS 13.44 DPM -0.23% DPS -21.31% DPM
B=5	5857 DPS 24.1 DPM -0.33% DPS +41.10% DPM	5850 DPS 24.18 DPM -0.45% DPS +41.57% DPM	5818 DPS 23.2 DPM -0.99% DPS +35.83% DPM	5861 DPS 20.1 DPM -0.27% DPS +17.68% DPM	5939 DPS 16.75 DPM +1.07% DPS -1.93% DPM	5858 DPS 13.44 DPM -0.31% DPS -21.31% DPM
B=6	5904 DPS 23.15 DPM +0.48% DPS +35.54% DPM	5903 DPS 23.12 DPM +0.46% DPS +35.36% DPM	5869 DPS 22.39 DPM -0.12% DPS +31.09% DPM	5903 DPS 19.63 DPM +0.46% DPS +14.93% DPM	5980 DPS 16.57 DPM +1.76% DPS -2.99% DPM	5915 DPS 13.36 DPM +0.66% DPS -21.78% DPM
B=7	5936 DPS 22.53 DPM +1.01% DPS +31.91% DPM	5933 DPS 22.65 DPM +0.97% DPS +32.61% DPM	5902 DPS 21.96 DPM +0.45% DPS +28.57% DPM	5932 DPS 19.45 DPM +0.95% DPS +13.88% DPM	5997 DPS 16.47 DPM +2.05% DPS -3.57% DPM	5940 DPS 13.31 DPM +1.09% DPS -22.07% DPM
B=8	5954 DPS 22.26 DPM +1.33% DPS +30.33% DPM	5951 DPS 22.25 DPM +1.27% DPS +30.27% DPM	5916 DPS 21.64 DPM +0.68% DPS +26.70% DPM	5942 DPS 19.31 DPM +1.13% DPS +13.06% DPM	6008 DPS 16.39 DPM +2.25% DPS -4.04% DPM	5958 DPS 13.28 DPM +1.40% DPS -22.25% DPM
B=infinite	5977 DPS 21.83 DPM +1.72% DPS +27.81% DPM	5979 DPS 21.84 DPM +1.74% DPS +27.87% DPM	5939 DPS 21.37 DPM +1.07% DPS +25.12% DPM	5970 DPS 19.08 DPM +1.60% DPS +11.71% DPM	6031 DPS 16.3 DPM +2.63% DPS -4.57% DPM	5991 DPS 13.25 DPM +1.96% DPS -22.42% DPM

The best spell rotations when having the 2pT10 bonus are the A=0|1, B->Infinite rotations (lower left corner in the table above). They even have higher DPS than Arcane Blast spamming (which has 5788.37 DPS @ 6.68 DPM), so it's also the preferred rotation for burst phases.

The A=4, B->Infinite rotation that is the current 'state of the art' shouldn't be used anymore with the 2pT10 bonus, as it yields marginally lower DPS and way worse DPM compared to the A=0|1, B->Infinite rotations.

Recommended 2pT10 rotation: A=0|1, B->Infinity
Spam Arcane Blast, use Missile Barrage immediately or after the next Arcane Blast cast.

But now much is the DPS boost with the set bonus?
A=0, B->Infinite:
Without set bonus: 5560 DPS @ 21.88 DPM, 254.11 mana/sec
With 2pT10 Bonus: 5977 DPS (+7.50%) @ 21.83 DPM (-0.23%), 273.8 mana/sec (+7.75%),

The 2pT10 bonus here gives a plain +7.5% DPS boost, that's pretty massive!

The A=0, B->Infinite rotation with 2pT10 yields 5.43% more DPS compared to the A=4, B->Infinity rotation without the bonus (5669 DPS @ 16.30 DPM), that's the effective DPS increase as we are also swapping our main spell rotation.

New peak haste cap!

The haste peak is defined by:

• 1% per 32.79 haste rating on your gear
• 6% from Talents
• 5% from Wrath of Air Totem
• 3% from Swift Retribution or Improved Moonkin Form
• 20% when Icy Veins is active
• 30% when Bloodlust or Heroism is active
• 12% from 2pT10 procs after casting MBarr

The haste peak cap is reached when your spells (Arcane Blast and Missile Barrage + Arcane Missiles, both having a 2.5 sec base cast time) have an effective cast time of 1 sec (subsequent spells can't be cast any faster).

The haste% factors scale multiplicatively, so your haste peak cap now is at:
(2.5 / (1.06*1.05*1.03*1.2*1.3*1.12) - 1) * 3279 = 814 (813.337) haste rating.

Please note that I ignored the effect of Speed Potions and on-proc haste Trinkets; if we take those into account the haste peak cap would be even lower.

Black Magic

Also note that the weapon enchant for Black Magic has been changed in patch 3.3, and can now proc 250 haste for 10 seconds (proc chance: 35%, 30 sec assumend internal cooldown). When you're at 564 haste or above, Enchant Weapon - Mighty Spellpower might still be the better choice though.
For PvP though, Black Magic is godsend!

Mage Tier 10 4-pieces bonus

The 4-pieces bonus is really nice and works like second Arcane Power (and yes, it stacks), giving mages an even higher burst potential. With a 30 sec duration and 3 min cooldown, the average uptime on a fight with infinite duration is 1/6, which is a plain 3% damage boost. The shorter the fight duration, the larger the uptime, when we keep Mirror Images on cooldown. If we assume randomly distributed fight durations between 1 min and 10 min, the average uptime is 22%, which is almost a 4% damage boost. If you use it along with your other cooldowns such as Arcane Power, Icy Veins, Bloodlust/Heroism and Trinkets, the bonus is worth much more.

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Tachyon's PvE Arcane Mage Guide

by Tachyon on Sat. 10. October 2009, 00:29

Filed under: arcane, guide, talents, featured

Why is arcane so popular these day? It's not only due to the fact that since patch 3.2.2 it can compete with fire specs again, but also most mages seem to prefer arcane over fire due to the proactive playstyle which is both more challenging and more fun.

Fire mages are forced into a very reactive play style. They know exactly which spells to cast when, as the normal cycle (chaincast Fireball) is only disrupted when debuffs expire (Living Bomb or Scorch, reaction: reapply) or a Hot Streak proc occurs (reaction: use an instant Pyro as your next spell). This results in a more or less steady mana burn rate, so you just cast and hope you never go out of mana. You'll find yourself with a half full mana pool on the end of a fight, knowing that this mana was just wasted.

Arcane, on the other hand, has 3 cooldown abilities at hand (Arcane Power, Icy Veins, Presence of Mind) which allow for burst damage when the mage requests it. Not only that, but arcane mages have multiple cast cycles with varying DPS and DPM, so they can adapt their casting strategy on the fly to optimize their actions for any situation. That's what proactive casting is about, looking ahead and planning how to play to live up to the full potential. In this ability to adapt lies the arcane mage's greatest potential to do extraordinary damage.

This is a guide for effectively playing an arcane mage in a PvE (Player vs. Environment) raid scenario. It's not a beginner's mage guide as it implies you already know how to play a mage in general, so I'm not going to explain core mage concepts and spells for the leveling folk or the lazy buggers who bought their mages on Ebay or inherited a friend's account. This guide also doesn't cover how to play an arcane mage in PvP, sorry.

But if you've just switched to arcane for the first time, rerolled arcane now it's up to par with fire specs again or if you're already playing arcane and want to make sure you didn't miss an aspect or two, this guide is for YOU!
Oh, and /cheers to my friend and co-worker Elrydion on EU-Malygos who just hit 80 some weeks ago with his mage and for whom I wrote this guide!

Talent Specs

Core Spec: 53/3/11, 4 points left to spend
This spec stub contains all the important talents needed for an arcane spec. I even dare say that any arcane spec which isn't based on that stub is suboptimal.

Most arcane specs are derived from this core spec, here's some of them:

Allround-Spec: 56/3/12
Max. range, max. intellect, Slow and max. Blizzard crits.
This is the spec I recommend to any new arcane mage, as it performs well in any scenario, be it hardmodes, normal modes or 5men / solo. It's also the arcane spec with the highest AoE damage thanks to the additional point in frost.

Classic Spec: 57/3/11
Optimized on single targets, with Slow.
That's the classic out-of-the box spec you'll see in any other arcane guide. Nothing bad about it, has a negligibly small bonus to single target damage (+3% spirit, which gives a little more crit), and does less AoE damage the the allround spec.
I personally wouldn't recommend this spec to anyone, better go for the allround spec instead.

Spirit Spec: 57/3/11
10% more spirit, but on the cost of not having the max. range for arcane spells. 3 points for ~1% crit is rather expensive.

Incanter's Absorption Spec: 57/3/11
2/3 points into incanter's absorption, no Slow.
This is a spec for more experienced arcane mage who want to toy around with Incanter's Absorption to squeeze a little more spellpower from absorbed magical damage (only complete absorbs count, make sure to use your frost/fire ward where appropriate). The benefit of this spec is very situational (a lot of bosses do fire/frost damage, but you need to know in advance when to expect it and cast your ward, which costs a global cooldown), but in some encounters, like Twin Val'kyrs, it can do devastating damage.

Glyphs

For arcane mages, there is exactly one set of glyphs that makes sense:

Major glyphs:

• Glyph of Arcane Blast
  Increases the damage from your Arcane Blast buff by 3%.
  This increases the damage done with your next arcane spell by 15% + 3% = 18% per stack, so instead of an 15/30/45/60% increase you get 18/36/54/72%.
• Glyph of Arcane Missiles
  Increases the critical strike damage bonus of Arcane Missiles by 25%.
• Glyph of Molten Armor
  Your Molten Armor grants an additional 20% of your spirit as critical strike rating.
  As a PvE mage, Molten Armor is the only armor you'll ever use. Molten Armor grants you 35% of your spirit as crit rating, or 55% with this glyph, or 70% with the glyph and the 2pT9 bonus

Minor glyphs:

• Glyph of Slow Fall
  Your Slow Fall spell no longer requires a reagent.
• Glyph of Fire Ward
  You have an additional 5% chance to reflect Fire spells while your Fire Ward is active.
• Glyph of Frost Ward
  You have an additional 5% chance to reflect Frost spells while your Frost Ward is active.

Stats

As with any mage spec, your primary focus should be getting hit capped.
Your base chance to hit a boss is 83%, and you get 6% + Hit from talents, and 3% from Misery or Improved Faerie Fire in a raid. That leaves 8% (210 Hit Rating) or 7% (184 Hit Rating) (if you're Alliance and got a squid faced space goat in your raid) until you're hit capped.

Apart from Hit Rating, Spellpower and Haste Rating are your most important stats. Arane doesn't benefit that much from Crit Rating, as the crit multipliers are rather low (compared to fire and frostfire).

Haste rating has soft caps, as you cannot cast more than one spell per second (when the cast time is lower, you enter the global cooldown util the next spell is ready 1sec after you cast the last). As an arcane mage, your spell rotation only consists of Arcane Blast and Missile Barrage AM, which both have a 2.5 sec cast time.
If you combine the 6% haste from talents with the 3% haste in a raid environment (from Swift Retribution or Improved Moonkin Form ), and stack Icy Veins (20% haste) and Bloodlust/Heroism (30% haste) on top of that, you end up with a 70.3208% haste peak (haste stacks multiplicatively). With 1% haste per 32.79 haste rating, you'd need (2.5 / 1.703208 - 1) * 3279 = 1534 Haste Rating to reach the haste peak soft cap. You'd still improve your DPS outside haste peaks, but it's worth lesser and lesser until you reach the hard cap at 4229 haste rating, where not even Icy Veins or Blood Lust/Heroism will be able to further hasten your cast time.

Stats priority:
Hit Rating (until cap) > Spellpower ~= Haste Rating > Crit Rating > Spirit ~= Intellect.

The chart below shows the % DPS increase per unit stat once you reach the hit cap (raid buffs applied, the chart doesn't vary that much depending on your gear):



Gear planning

The easiest way to do gear planning is to use a stats ranking site. Stats ranking works as follows: you assign a weight for each stat to define how valuable it is for you, and let the ranking site then calculate the item value for all possible items (sum of the weighted stats on each item).

I usually use the spellpower equivalent values for each stat as a weight, with the exception of hit rating which just gets a fixed value assigned (more hit rating is no benefit, but losing hit rating will at least have a tradeoff cost if you're not much overcapped). My weights are:
Spell Power = 1, Hit Rating = 0.2, Haste Rating = 0.98, Crit Rating = 0.53, Intellect = 0.37, Spirit = 0.35

My favourite loot ranking site was lootrank.com, which was merged with GuildOx some weeks ago.
When applying the weights above in GuildOx, you get the following loot rank list:
Arcane Mage Loot List (hit cappped, all instances).

Use this as a starting point, check or uncheck the raid instances and professions (BoP crafted items) you have access too, and adapt the weights where necessary.

Gems

The choice of gems is pretty much dictated by the weights of the stats. Best choice is of course the pure +spellpower gems. Carefully consider how much benefit you get from the socket boni, and decide if it's worth to discard them and putting just red spellpower gems into the sockets.

• Meta socket:
  Chaotic Skyflare Diamond
  +21 Critical Strike Rating and 3% Increased Critical Damage, requires at least 2 Blue gems
  This is the non-plus-ultra meta gem for any mage spec. The critical strikes of your spells gain 3% more damage before any talent is applied, so this is a significant boost for your DPS. Rule of thumb is that it's worth about 200 spell power.
• Red socket:
  Runed Cardinal Ruby (red)
  +23 Spell Power
• Yellow socket:
  Reckless Ametrine (orange)
  +12 spell power and +10 haste
• Blue socket:
  Purified Dreadstone (purple)
  +12 Spell Power and +10 Spirit

In order to activate the Chaotic Skyflare Diamond meta gem, you need two blue gems (2x Purified Dreadstone). Try placing them into blue sockets if possible, and then decide which yellow sockets you want to fill with Reckless Ametrines (only if the socket bonus is worth it). Fill the rest of the sockets with Runed Cardinal Rubies, regardless of their color.
Oh, and make sure to not forget to add an Eternal Belt Buckle to your belt.

Enchantments

• Weapon (1H Sword/Dagger):
  Mighty Spellpower -> 63 spellpower or
  Black Magic -> 35% chance on cast to proc 250 haste for 10 seconds, 30sec internal cooldown.
• Weapon (2H Staff): Greater Spellpower
  -> 81 spellpower
• Head: Arcanum of Burning Mysteries
  -> 30 spellpower, 20 crit rating
• Shoulder: Greater Inscription of the Storm
  -> 25 spellpower, 15 crit rating
• Chest: Powerful Stats
  -> 10 to all stats
• Legs: Brilliant Spellthread
  -> 50 spellpower, 20 spirit
• Hand: Exceptional Spellpower
  -> 28 spellpower
• Feed:
  Icewalker -> 12 hit rating, 12 crit rating (if you're not overcapped with hit), or
  Greater Spirit -> 18 spirit, or
  Tuskarr's Vitality -> minor movement speed increase and 15 Stamina.
  I recommend Tuskarr's Vitality as it's optimal for movement fights in ICC content
• Wrist: Superior Spellpower
  -> 30 spellpower
• Back: Greater Speed
  -> 23 haste rating

...plus any profession specific enchantments (e.g. rings, Lightweave Embroidery on your cloak).
For a quick enchantment check, go to be.imba.hu. This site checks if you already got the recommended enchantments, and which enchantments are recommended for each slot.

Spell rotations

If you haven't read my article on the 3.2.2 spell rotations, you might want to read it in a calm minute. Here's the extract of the spell rotations that make up your casting arsenal:

Single target rotations:

• Standard DPS Rotation:
  Spam Arcane Blast, use Missile Barrage when it procs and AB is fully stacked (4 stacks).
  Use: standard rotation as long as you can keep your mana up.
• Optimal DPS/DPM Rotation:
  Spam Arcane Blast, use Missile Barrage as soon as it procs
  Use: on long fights or if you get low on mana, until you can evocate.
• Mana Recovery Rotation:
  Spam Arcane Blast, use Missile Barrage as soon as it procs. If no procs occur after 2..4 AB stacks, clear the stack with Arcane Barrage.
  Use: when you really start to run out of mana. The rotation can be kept up pretty much forever
• Burst Rotation:
  Spam Arcane Blast, disregard any Missile Barrage procs.
  Use: on burst phases (Arcane Power, Icy Veins or Bloodlust/Heroism) or when the raid is requested to do insane DPS for a short time, or when you can afford to burn the mana (before Evocation comes off cooldown)

AoE Damage:
Arcane, especially the variant with 12 points in frost, is the spec with the highest burst AoE (Area of Effect) damage. You're verly likely to draw aggro if you dont start carefully. A good advice is to take your your Mirror Images before starting to bomb, so your initial aggro is split up on you and your images which prevents you from surpassing the tank in the aggro list on the first few seconds.

Casting Flamestrike every 8 seconds is a good idea, as it adds a nice little DoT to your AoE targets. Note that each rank of Flamestrike (FS) has its own DoT component, so whilst 2 subsequent FS Rank 9 won't stack, FS Rank 8 + 9 will (you could even stack rank 9+8+7+6+..., but due to the penalty the lower ranks get, this is not advisable)

AoE Sequence:

1. cast Mirror Images
2. (Presence of Mind)
3. Flamestrike Rank 9
4. Flamestrike Rank 8
5. Pop trinkets, activate Arcane Power and Icy Veins
6. Spam Blizzard, reapply Flamesstrike Rank 9+8 as soon as the DoT expires, rinse and repeat.

Cooldowns

Arcane is a very proactive mage spec, which not only lets you vary your cast cycles on the fly, but also has a number of cooldown abilities which boost your DPS for a short time.

• Arcane Power (AP)
  2 min cooldown, with talents: 1 min 24 sec
  When activated, your spells deal 20% more damage while costing 20% more mana to cast. This effect lasts 15 sec.
• Icy Veins (IV)
  3 min cooldown, with talents: 2 min 24 sec
  Hastens your spellcasting, increasing spell casting speed by 20% and reduces the pushback suffered from damaging attacks while casting by 100%. Lasts 20 sec.
• Presence of Mind (PoM)
  2 min cooldown, with talents: 1 min 24 sec
  When activated, your next Mage spell becomes an instant cast spell.
  + Arcane Potency (2/2): Increases the critical strike chance of your next damaging spell by 30% after gaining Clearcasting or Presence of Mind.

Use your cooldown abilities whenever available, preferrably during Bloodlust/Heroism. PoM gives the next spell a +30% crit chance, so this is best used when your next spell does high damage, hence you want to use a PoM-AB when your AB stack is full for the highest bang for the buck.
You should wait some seconds into an encounter before popping your cooldowns, as you rely on raid debuffs on the target and want to give your tank a head start building aggro.

Initial burst sequence on the start of an encounter (all cooldowns ready):

• Mirror Image (to split your initial aggro)
• 4x Arcane Blast
• Use any trinkets that can be activated
• Presence of Mind, Arcane Blast (instant)
• Arcane Power + Icy Veins (make a macro)
• Arcane Blast spam until Icy Veins fades
• Use Invisibility if necessary before your mirror images fade

Useful macros

Burst damage macro
This macro activates Arcane Power, Icy Veins, Trinkets and your Mirror Images at once (unless the ability is on cooldown, of course). Mirror Images should only be included when you have the 4xT10 bonus, otherwise I think it's better to activate them separately. The numbers 13 and 14 refer to your trinket slots, you can adapt the macro to only use the slot which contains an 'on use' trinket.
/cast Icy Veins
/cast Arcane Power
/use 13
/use 14
/cast Mirror Image
Tips & Tricks

Evocation
Evocation is ready every 2 minutes, but takes 8 seconds to cast (before haste is applied).
If you'd use it every 2 minutes, you'd be casting for 112 seconds and evocating for 8 seconds every 120 seconds. That's a significant loss, and to compensate for that you would need 120/112-1 = 7.15% additional haste, or 233.5 haste rating.
Arcane Blast spam gives you only 2% more DPS than the standard rotation (AB until MBarr, use at 4 AB stacks), but costs almost 60% more mana, so unless the encounter has idle phases which allow to use Evocation, you'd better not chaincast AB but rather preserve your mana so you don't have to evocate that often.
If you have to use Evocation, the best time to do it is on the last second of Heroism/Bloodlust/Icy Veins (the cast time is determined upon the start, so you can prolong the effect of those haste buffs).

Range
Both Arcane Blast and Arcane Missiles have a range of 30y. With the Magic Attunement talent, you can and should increase your range by 3/6y.
I know it's very tempting to skip this talent partially or completely and invest the points somewhere else, but I highly recommend to spend those 2 points there.
3/6y may not seem that much, but it's not the range that is important but the size of the area given by that range (3y -> 21% more area, 6y -> 44% more area). The larger the area is, the more likely you won't have to move to get something in casting range, which is very important for fights on which you have to spread out or when the boss is moving or spawns adds. Moving will hurt your DPS badly, so whilst range does not increase your DPS, it can save you from losing DPS.

Faster casting tricks
The matra for high damage is ABC: Always Be Casting. Any second you aren't casting is lost damage. Move only when necessary, and if you have to move use Arcane Barrage before your AB stack expires.
But also when you don't move, you're still losing time between your casts due to the latency between your computer and the WoW server. It's only a few dozen or hundred milliseconds, but boy does that add up quickly! Here's some tricks how to reduce the idle time between spells:

• Be aware of lag gaps between your spells, and minimize them by all means:
  Find out how to optimize your TCP connection for WoW. Bandwith doesn't matter, it's the response time that matters. Use Leatrix Latency Fix (or edit the Windows registry yourself) to set the TCP Acknowledge Frequency to 1 (ACK on each TCP packet), that will reduce your ping significantly.
• Use Quarz or any other cast bar addon that shows the last latency measured. You can start casting the next spell as soon as the casting bar enters the latency area (when it does, the spell is supposed to be finished on the server, only your UI does not know about it yet due to the latency). It's rumored that even when you start a little too early casting the next spell it won't be lost but queued on the server, so you theoretically can do seamless chaincasting.
• Don't mash the buttons. Klicking a keyboard button fires two events: pressed and released. Be aware that spell casting starts on the 'released' event. Pressing and releasing costs time (about 70-80 ms if you're fast), so when chaincasting press and hold the button in advance, so you only have to release it for the next cast.
• The Snowfall KeyPress addon can help you casting faster, what it does is to trigger spells on KEY_PRESS instead of KEY_RELEASE events. Give it a try, you'll love it.
  

Disclaimer

Reading this guide while on a rollercoaster may cause dizzyness or motion sickness. Contents of this guide may settle during shipping. No gnomes were harmed during the production of this guide. Guide is written using 100% recycled electrons. May contain traces of peanuts, see details on reverse side.


If you think this guide is missing something important, or if you think you found a mistake, please tell me in the comments so I can keep this guide up-to-date, thanks!

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Catching up

by Tachyon on Thu. 22. January 2009, 02:26

Filed under: raiding, naxxramas, frostfire, talents

My last post was almost a month ago, and honestly I didn't spend much time in the game lately, due to two weeks of vacation (<3 snowboarding) and 10 days without internet connection (my provider messed up something with the invoices).

Due to my long absence, my guild completely outlevelled me in terms of raiding (content clear since beginning of January), which makes it hard for me to catch up again. My equipment is not quite ready for raiding, as usually did heroics and PvP while waiting for a chance to get stated with raiding again. 10-men Naxxramas raids happened to take place mostly during the weekend, either on Saturnday evening, or worse: on Sunday afternoons, which to me as family father of two baby kids was not a time to spare.

But finally this evening I was able to participate a 10-men Naxx raid with my guild (mostly twinks of our core raiders). It was quite a stressful evening for me, trying to read through a stack of printed WowWiki raid tactics to refresh the raid encounters I only once ever saw at lvl70, when I retro-raided classic Naxx with a PUG.



For each completed wing I got an achievement, which honestly was a little embarrassing, but comforting at the same time. I'm confident that now I cleared at least the 10-men content, I will enjoy the encounters better next time, and also be better prepared for the 25-men versions.

My equipment has also slightly improved, as I got The Soulblade, Contortion and Heroes' Frostfire Robe and -Shoulderpads. Many many thanks to my guild for making this possible, and I hope I didn't mess up too much in my first whole Naxx raid...



Now I'm at least at 1646 spellpower, hit cap, 24.5% crit and 7.8% haste selfbuffed, and I feel a little more confident to catch up with raiding seriously again. Whish me luck!

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Frostfire Bolt tested

by Tachyon on Thu. 27. November 2008, 00:47

Filed under: frostfire bolt, elemental, spec, talents, leveling, frostbolt, glyph

I recently dinged level 75, and decided to give the new Frostfire Bolt (FFB) a try. The build I chose is basically a fire build without Improved Fireball, and 18 points in frost to get the full advantage of Shatter: 0/48/18 Frostfire spec.



What I like about this build and Frostfire bolt in general:

• The spec has almost all the talents that make the FFB go *boom* (2 points in Burnout are missing, need lvl 77 to get the full potential of FFB)
• Hot Streak is seksy! This allows to throw out an instant Pyroblast on any two subsequent FFB (or Scorch, Fireblast or Fireball) hits.
• The build still has the full damage potential of Blizzard, thanks to Shatter, Frostbite and Improved Blizzard.
• The maximal range of FFB is larger (40y) than that of Frostbolt (30y, 36y with Arctic Reach), which makes it the perfect spell for pulling (distance + snare = even more distance)
• New fun shatter combo: Frostnova, FFB + Fireblast -> good chance that both crit and thus proc Hot Streak -> say hello to instant Pyro!
• The FFB Glyph actually makes sense (2% more base damage, +2% crit)

What I miss or don't like about it:

• I seriously miss Ice Barrier. Running around without it is like going shopping naked, and generally a bad idea on a PvP server. Ice Barrier gives you the same announcement effect as the blue colored poison dart frogs have: don't mess with the blue dude!
  Of course you don't really need Ice Barrier to survive while levelling, but it usually absorbs enought damage for you to never get hurt. Without it, I constantly lose some HP and have to regenerate more after a few fights, as I get a bad feeling starting a pull with only half of my HP left.
  Ice Barrier is also essential in PvP. As a rule of thumb you can count twice its absorb amout as virtual HP, and with Shattered Barrier you gain essential utility against meele attackers (especially in AoE situations)
• I miss the Water Elemental a little, but just a little. It has undisputed value and contributes a lot to DPS and utility, but hey I could live without it if I get its DPS from elsewhere. I still hate it for not scaling well (it just gets 40% of my Spellpower, but no hot/crit/haste at all) and forget to bring it out regularly (though most of the time I don't need it just for killing 1-3 mobs and then travelling again), but in the end I miss its ranged nova and separate threat pool in instances.
• I loved Deep Freeze for its croud control and mobile burst capabilities (FoF->DF->move and icelance), so I miss it now already.
• The mana consumption is way higher with a FFB or fire build than with frost. If MMOs were a little more realistic, I would pee an ocean every five minutes, I'm reallly just drinking all the time. Hot Streak with an instant Pyro waiting and no mana left = no fun.
• Blastwave is nice, but I can't seem to fall in love with Dragon's Breath. Cone of Cold feels so much better than this 'zomg look I ate chilli!" spell. For AoE I wouldn't use it anyway, for that we have Blizzard now.
• I think I hate Ignite. Sure my FFB and fire spells crit all the time, but the Ignite dot is usually just wasted as mobs tend to die before it starts ticking. When my FFB or Pyro crits and the target has 2k HP left, I could just stand there and wait 4 sec for it to die, but that's so silly and I don't have the nerves to wait, so in the end I put an end to the tragedy with a quick Fireblast before it drives me crazy. Better waste mana and ignite ticks than my sanity.
  Frost is so much more honest, if you crit a nice big number responds to your action, that's instant reward and not the DoT fluff of a critting fire spell where tiny 'me too!' numbers plop up some seconds later.

All in all the FFB spec is not bad, and I'd consider it the preferred spec for instance/raid runs if your mana pool allows it. Former fire mages should love it, pulling with a snare can be so much more fun, but for frost mages it just hasn't the versatility we need.


I'm yet unsure whether I will be raiding with Frost (0/10/61) or Frostfire (0/50/21) once I reach level 80.
If only we could have the promised dual spec right away, then I'd take Frostfire for instances and raiding, and Frost for PvP, but we probably will have to wait for the 3.1 patch before we can have two specs with hopefully also two sets of Glyphs.

My biggest concern for frost is the Frostbolt Glyph. Adding 5% damage is nice for sure, but removing the snare component completely spoils frost for me. I'm playing frost since the vanilla beta, but I can't think of any issue that bothered me as much as the Frostbolt Glyph is now. If I want to be raiding, the +5% damage is a must, but then my Frostbolt is completely screwed for solo and PvP. Seriously, I just won't use that glyph, and no sane frost mage should be forced to use it.

There's only one thing you can do with the Frostbolt Glyph: put it back into the original packaging, return it to Blizzard and claim refunds because it's KAPUT.

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Preparing for the 3.0.2 patch

by Tachyon on Tue. 14. October 2008, 07:38

Filed under: patch, talents, tips

The WotLK compatibility patch 3.0.3 is currently going live in the US, and will hit Europe tomorrow (October 15th).

My guild stalled raiding completely in the last 3-4 weeks, but tomorrow we will pick up raiding Sunwell again and intend to kill Brutallus for the first time this id, now that all trash packs and bosses get their health points reduced by 30%.

There's lots of things to prepare for wednesday, as the patch has a broad impact on talents, addons and game mechanic.

How to prepare for patch 3.0.3:

• The new WotLK talents are now in the game, and all talent points have been refounded. Chose your new spec wisely.
• Visit your class trainer, he's got some new spell ranks available (at least on the PTR this was the case). For mages, Frostbolt rank 14, Fireball rank 14 and Arcane Missiles Rank 11 are available.
• Note that the hit cap has been raised from 99% to 100%, and the Elemental Precision ghost hit bug has been removed. You now need 17% to reach the cap, that is 176 Hit Rating with Elemental Precision, or 214 Hit Rating without it.
• Update your addons, most of them (in my case Bartender3 and Recount/Recap and some more) aren't compatible with 3.0.3.
• Adapt your macros, some spells/abilities have changed. 'Remove Lesser Curse' has been renamed to 'Remove Curse', so change it early before causing a wipe.
• Use (right-click) your mounts/pets to 'learn' them and thus adding them to the new mount/pet interface, this frees also some bag space, It was rumored that mount speed items such as the Riding Crop now become applicable enchants, and that they can only be applied before you learn the mount. Be careful to verify this! Also adapt your mount macros to include now the name of the mount, and not the former mount item's name (they're usually different)
• If your talents include procs (such as Brain Freeze, Fingers of Frost or Hot Streak), consider using a specialized addon such as TellMeWhen to display them, making it easier to not miss a proc.
• If you've accumulated enough honor and marks, go get the new PvP trinket and cloak, they're excellent also for PvE
• Get a shave and a haircut in the new barber shops

That's quite a lot of preparation to be done, I'm curious if we manage to raid at all on patch day, but I hope that we get at least a group together to kill/free Kalecgos.

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Crowd Control effects explained

by Tachyon on Fri. 03. October 2008, 21:35

Filed under: crowd control, deep freeze, talents, spec, gameplay, pvp

Nobody seems to be familiar with the old terms for different crowd control (CC) effects anymore.
I guess that's why the player community has a hard time comparing different character classes' CC effects, and lately underrate the new Deep Freeze talent, especially now the latest patch stripped the damage component off it.
Back in my DAoC (Dark Age of Camelot) days, we used to distinguish 4 classes of CC effects, which I take the occasion to reintroduce here, from the weakest to the strongest:

Snare
Lowers the movement speed of the affected target, but does not disable them to do anything.

Our arsenal of snare effects resides in the frost tree, where most spells have a snare component built in (Frostbolt, Cone of Cold, Frost/Ice Armor) or can have a snare with special talents (Improved Blizzard).
Arcane mages can have an even stronger snare effect, Slow, which not only affects the movement speed, but also the attack/cast speed. The daze effect of Blast Wave in the fire tree is also a snare (50%), and lasts for 6 seconds.
Snare effects are very effective against meele targets, allowing you to keep your opponent at distance (unless you're also snared). Snaring a non-meele or ranged class is only effective when supporting other meele players in your group, making it harder for the target to escape.
Our strongest snare is Improved Blizzard, which can reduce the movement speed down to 15% if all snare-enhancing talents are taken.

Root
Movement imparing effect that glues the target to the ground for a given amount of time, but does not disable them to do anything but moving.

Again, this is primary useful against meele classes.
Our basic root CC is Frostnova, and the Water Elemental's Water Nova. Frostbite adds a proc to Frostbolt, Cone of Cold, Frostfire Bolt, Improved Blizzard and Frost/Ice Armor which has a 15% chance to root the target.

Mezz
Mesmerizes the target, disabling it to do anything. Effect breaks as soon as the target gets hit.

Polymorph is our primary mezz, but has the annoying sideeffect to heal the target quickly to full health. An other instant mezz spell can be found in the fire tree: Dragon's Breath disorients the target for 3 sec.

Stun
The king of all CC effects: Completely incapacitates the target for a short time, and damage won't break the effect.

The only stun mages had was the Impact talent, which gave fire spells a 10% chance to stun the target for 2 sec.
In patch 3.0 and WotLK, Impact will be able to proc from all spell schools if you can spare 13 points in fire for this talent. That will be interesting for channeled effects such as Arcane Missiles and area effects in general.
And the frost tree gets a new ultimate talent, Deep Freeze, which can stun a 'frozen' target for as long as 5 seconds. For PvP, this is still godsend, although the damaging component was removed in the latest patch.
Hint: if the Fingers of Frost effect is active, you can instant-stun anyone you want, preferrably a healer trying to get a heal off.

While most of the CC effects in WoW fall into one of those categories, some of them have exotic side effects. Druid's Cyclone for example would be a stun, but renders the target invulnerable for its duration. The Warlocks' Fear is something between a mezz and a stun, as it can break on damage. The Priests' Mind Control would also be a stun, but with a much stronger sideeffect which almost qualifies as an own CC category.

The changes to Impact as well as the new Deep Freeze provide us with more stun tools, so from a CC perspective, we can be pretty pleased with patch 3.0/WotLK.

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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

Improved Frostbolt - Rank 5/5
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

Must have, as it's essential for PvP, and helps you survive in PvE in 'oh snap!' situations, or when your healers have a hard time keeping the raid alive.
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

Hey, this does significant base damage. And, most important, gives us access to the holy grail of crowd controlling: a stun. The only other stun that mages can have is the Impact talent in the fire tree (10% proc chance).
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.

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WoW 3.0 Compatibility Patch

by Tachyon on Tue. 26. August 2008, 06:49

Filed under: patch, WotLK, talents

Every expansion requires a compatibility patch, that brings the WoW client to a version which is compatible to the expansion, but does not include its specific features. With this compatibility patch, you can play the same WoW that users who don't buy the expansion will experience, including the new talent trees and professions, but none of the new zones, items, or increased level range.



Blizzard added such a patch (2.0) almost two months before The Burning Crusade shipped, and now they're doing it again with patch 3.0 before lauching Wrath of the Lich King.

Quote from Eyonix ( see original quote):

With the release of Wrath of the Lich King approaching, we wanted to provide you with some important information. In preparation for the expansion, we will be issuing a new content patch in the coming weeks. Much like the patch made available shortly before The Burning Crusade's release, this content patch is designed to bridge current game content with that of the expansion and will contain some exciting changes and additions.

We have outlined some of the larger features scheduled to release with the patch below:

• New class spells and talents
• Stormwind Harbor
• Barbershops in capital cities
• Zeppelin towers outside of Orgrimmar and Tirisfal Glades
• Two brand-new Arenas featuring challenging new layouts, terrain hazards, and moving obstacles
• Guild calendar
• Hunter pet skill revamp
• New profession: Inscription

As mentioned above, this is not a comprehensive list, just some of the major highlights. We?ll post the full patch notes as soon as they?re available. Regarding Inscription, please note that all Burning Crusade players will be able to select Inscription as one of their two professions and level up to a skill level of 375 with it. Upon the release of Wrath of the Lich King, players who purchase and install the expansion will be able to continue leveling in Inscription and the other professions beyond 375.

The pre-release of the new talent trees and the guild calendar was expected, but the addition of the new Inscription profession, the barber shops and the new arenas were quite a surprise.

This patch is soooo full of opportunities:

• Testing the new talents
  The changes in the talent trees are massive, it might as well be a new game you play. The patch is a good occasion to test and explore the new talents, so you can experiment which talent combination works best for you. I hope there will be a beta version of the patch on the Public Test Realms, so we can test all trees and talent combinations with virtually free respecs.
• PvE progression
  The new talents and especially their synergies will likely result in a boost in raiding environments, aiding you jump over whatever hurdle you're facing in progression. Too little DPS on Brutallus..no more!
  
• Shave and a haircut
  Aye, it's a fun feature and money pit, but I'm foreseeing large queues before the barber shops. Look at my new hairdo, mom!
• Inscription
  Inscription can be levelled to 375, and even if you won't choose this profession, I'm sure you'll *love* to fiddle about inscribing your spells
• PvP
  Arenas are fer sissies, but BG PvP will give you a chance to test your new talents and also experience in what way the other classes changed. Prepare for a refreshing new experience in the battlegrounds (and whine threads flooding the forums)

No date for the patch has been anounced yet, and the talents aren't final, nor are all working properly yet, so it's too early to come up with talent build suggestions. I'll reserve those for when the patch goes live (or when the PTRs are open)...

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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:

Winter's Grasp
(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.

Brain Freeze
(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.

Improved Water Elemental
(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:

Currently, the Water Elemental lasts 45 sec, which in relation to the cooldown of 3 min means an uptime of 25%. If you use coldsnap, the average uptime will reach 2x0:45/4:00 = 37.5%.
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.

Chilled to the Bone
(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!

Deep Freeze
(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!

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