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Arcane Brilliance: Macrolicious
I used to be a mage purist. You know the type, those that would never load a mod, never write a macro for fear that it would taint the game. That was up until I recently discovered a little thing called focus. Now just about all my spells are macroed in one way or another, and I am a happier, more efficient mage for it. I thought this week, seeing as how it's been a while since Arcane Brilliance has posted, I would spend some time going over those macros that I use on a daily basis. If there are any that you particularly love, feel free to let us know. I'm always keen on adding to my collection.
Arcane Brilliance: The Magical Nation of Dalaran
Once again we're back with Arcane Brilliance, where we discuss all things mage-like. This week I'd like to talk a bit about our roots as mages in the World of Warcraft universe. In order to understand who you are and where you are going, sometimes you have to learn about where you've been. In this case, both our past as mages and our future are tied to the same place, namely Dalaran, or more specifically The Magical Nation of Dalaran.
Arcane Brilliance: Mages magicking BlizzCon
Arcane Brilliance is a little late today, but for a pretty good reason: I'm writing the column from the floor of the Anaheim Convention Center. Seeing as how we are coming to you live from BlizzCon, I thought it might be of interest to show you how mages are receiving the love from the Blizzard dev team. The first class panel didn't give us much in the way of new info on the mage, but there certainly were a lot of references to mages during the convention.
Arcane Brilliance: Armor does matter, part 2
Welcome back to another installment of Arcane Brilliance, an homage to the mages we are, and hopefully a place where we can learn a few things that will help us along the way towards becoming the mages we want to be. When we last sat down together, we went through the different types of mage armor, their stats and uses. As a result of the comments on last week's article, I tried a little variation in the use of the three armor types in my gameplay. You were right when you said that Mage Armor can actually give more punch than Molten Armor in instances; my addiction to crit was blinding me to the amazing damage that can be done when you don't run out of mana half-way through a fight. See, that's exactly what this column is all about, learning from each other how to become better mages.
Arcane Brilliance: Armor does matter, part 1
You asked for it, in comments, in emails, and now it's finally here. It's high time we sit down and talk about mages, don't you think? Matthew Porter and I will spend some time each week discussing the finer points of the pew pew, hopefully sharing some insights and starting some debates. We can't begin to tell you how to play your mage, but we can offer suggestions gleaned from our collective experience with the class. I would like to begin this odyssey into the world of magic with an unlikely topic: armor. When I first began playing the class, unlearned in stats as I was, I admit I tried my best to get items with as much armor as possible. But honestly, that's not the sort of armor I'm talking about. Each mage walks around with instant protection, and no, I'm not talking about meat shields either. As we gain levels we attain various armor spells to help buffer us from the aggro we will inevitably pull from the tank. It's these spells that although not often talked of, give mages endurance to go along with their substantial power. As a caster class, mages are the only class to receive damage dealing armor in addition to protective shields. The shadow priest can bubble, the warlock has their Fel and Demon armors, but only the mage has a combination of both. First, lets look at the armor spells available to mages. They come in three types, and each has very useful effects depending on the situation.
Bad news for new Mage arena gear
With the release of the Arena Season 2 gear on the public test realm yesterday the number crunchers went to town. What they quickly found was not good news for Mages. It appears that the +INT on the new Mage armor is actually less than the Season 1 gear even though it costs more to purchase.But wait, you say, this is the test realm, surely it can be tweaked before it goes live. Blizzard responded that the gear is being looked at, but if any changes were made to its stats, it wouldn't be in time for the content patch. The mage gear is going live in its current state.When it comes to numbers, I'm easily confused, but in this case my confusion stems from this: why put things on the test server if you can't tweak it based on feedback before it goes live? I mean...isn't that the point of a test server? Can someone with a great understanding of the Testing process enlighten me?
Get in line! Rezzing order and you
So someone moved, someone pulled aggro, someone didn't heal fast enough, or you just don't have the DPS. It's a wipe. Everyone's dead on the ground, and the raidleader calls for a Shaman to pop, or for someone to use their soulstone. I'm a resto Shaman, so this happens to me pretty often: I Reincarnate and I'm standing over 24 dead people. Who do I rez first?Obviously, the first people I go for are those who have a rez to use, so we can do some chain rezzing. Priests, other Shamans, and Paladins. But after that? Caralynn lays it out: while your first instinct may be to rez your MT or your friends, you should really be rezzing pet and buff classes before melee.Which makes great sense. Warlocks and Hunters need to drink and resurrect their pets, and that's a lot of time wasted if you rez them last. Mages and Druids use all kinds of mana casting those buffs, so they usually have to drink, rebuff after a wipe, and then drink again. And Warriors and Rogues are easy to refill-- Rage doesn't refill, and I wish my mana filled up as quickly as Energy did.So it's Other Rezzers > Pet Classes > Buffers > and then Melee. There are other schools of thought on this (one player says to rez RL girls first, wink wink say no more), but this plan seems to be the best. Plus, Caralynn points out that this has the added bonus of not having melee standing around trying to pull while clothies are rebuffing. If you time it right, everyone can be ready to go again at the same time. And this time, watch that aggro!
Speedrunning Shadowfang
This is something cool that I haven't seen in WoW before. The video above is a paladin named Daz on EU Bronzebeard speedrunning Shadowfang Keep in 11 minutes and 17 seconds.Now, I don't know if that's fast or not, only because I haven't seen anything at all about doing speedruns in WoW. Speedrunning (beating the game as fast as possible) has gotten popular for games in the 8bit era, probably because of emulators and save states, but WoW instances seem like a great place to race through. I wonder why it hasn't happened much yet. Well, except for that one big exception.One reason may be that, unlike battleground twinking (another "below the radar" kind of competition), the classes just aren't balanced for it-- while the paladin here does pretty well, I'd imagine that at level 70 in a lower level instance, a mage would always be faster, just because they can push out the most AoE damage. But that doesn't mean we can't pit the same classes against each other. Anyone want to give the pally's time a go and see how fast you can tear through SFK?
A crummy idea
Magimagic posted a forum topic that concerns all mages. He suggests, that since we summon food, water and gems and have access to the "summon water elemental" spell, that we should likewise have a "summon bread elemental." Now, certain posters mentioned some of the challenges that might come along with a bread elemental. Your elemental might aggro mobs around as soon as it is summoned. We all know ogres have huge appetites. Another brought up the valid point that bread is not, in fact, an element at all. And what reagents would be required for said summoning? A simple flour, no doubt, but I'm not sure how I would be able to find yeast in the game. A similar concept has been brought up in a previous post regarding the summoning of water. I know I keep a bag empty to summon water and food for groups and raids, and I love the idea of not having to feed and water entire armies. I'm not exactly sure the bread elemental is something that the devs will pick up on, but it certainly is a fun idea. I mean, everyone loves the Pillsbury Dough Boy, right? [via Tom Waddwell, image via Arturis]
Who needs CC anyway, amirite!?
Crowd control is definitely helpful, that I'll agree. It's much easier to do a Shadow Labs run with two mages who know how to sheep. But I also have to agree with sydney over at WoW Ladies: CC is far from necessary. You can have a great group and still fight all of the mobs all of the time.Gear, of course, makes a big difference. If your shaman has a few epics on him, chances are he can take a few hits before the tank has a chance to grab a mob off. And a group with tons of DPS can do really well at tearing down a mob as they pull them-- I've played in groups where we never once bothered with sheeping. We just had so much DPS that when we pulled something off of the tank, we killed it before it could hit anyone.Not to mention that even if you have a group without CC, there are plenty of abilities that you can use as CC. During my Heroic Slave Pens run this past weekend, we had me (a resto shaman), a prot warrior and a holy priest, a moonkin druid, and a warlock. Whoops, no sheeping or traps, right? Nope, but we did have cyclone, chain fear, my elemental pets, and mind control. Ok, well, my elemental pets did drop pretty quick (it was heroic, after all), but incredibly (even though we were a little undergeared for the instance), we made it far enough to pick up two Badges each. Yeah, the mind controller gave us a little trouble, but it was getting late anyway, so we called it.CC helps, and you do kind of need the basics (tank, healer, and DPS, although it's true that even with those, you can make some subs that don't seem possible), but the truth is that the limit of your group is the limit of the players in it. All of the classes have some ability to keep mobs out of play (or just keep them busy for a little bit until you're ready to fight them). It's just up to players to think of creative ways to do so.
Blue Notes: No free respecs, Polymorph bug is a bug
Several classes are having talents changed in 2.1, but apparently no-one's going to be getting free respecs. From Drysc to you:Free respecs are only given in cases where talent positions actually move and would break a build, and not in cases where talents are simply altered as far as the benefit they provide.So if I read this right, it means you will only ever get a free respec if they move a talent, not if they change it, no matter how radically. Yes, Improved Sap Dirty Tricks, I'm looking at you -- I'm sure there are a lot of Rogues, myself included, who had seven points in subtlety that will no longer be there post-patch. Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy about the change, but this seems like the kind of situation where a respec is merited, at least for players who had points in the affected talents. On the other hand, even the maximum respec cost of 50g is fairly painless to make these days, so perhaps it's a non-issue.And in case there were any doubts, Polymorph is still meant to restore health; the version on the PTR right now is bugged:This is a bug on the PTR at current, yes.
PTR notes: Not-so-Clearcasting for Shamans
By now, you've probably at least heard (perhaps in haiku form) that shamans are facing a serious nerf in the upcoming patch. As a Resto/Elemental shaman, I figured I'd take a few minutes to lay out for you just what we, your trusty totem-dropping buddies, will be facing.Y'see, there's this ability called Clearcasting. Mages, priests, shaman, and druids can all get it under certain specs-- it basically gives you a mana-free spell every few casts, the percentage of which changes by class. Mages at full spec get a 10% chance, Druids get it as a chance on melee attack, and priests get it as a usable ability (with a 3 minute cooldown).Now, this talent is especially useful for Shaman, since we are notoriously mana inefficient-- supposedly, that's our tradeoff for being able to melee, heal, and cast damage spells. Way back when, the Clearcasting talent (in the Elemental tree) had a standard rate of 10%, but just recently, in 2.0.10, it was changed to anytime we got a critical spell hit.That's huge. But it's also what the devs apparently didn't like.
You get water from a well
... and bread from a mill? Grettel asks an interesting question on the forums: Why don't mages get a water well? That would be a spell like Lightwell or Ritual of Souls that would create an item players can click on to get their own water (or food-- Grettel says a "flour mill" would work), instead of having the mage cast Conjure Water 60 times before every raid.It's not really a bad idea. The obvious benefit is that it would definitely save time, and since other classes have gotten timesaving skills like this, pretty much the only thing anyone waits for in a raid now is for the mages to make all the water they need to give out, and then drink again to regain all that mana. The only real argument against it is that unlike, say, Ritual of Souls, the mage water spell doesn't require any costs or reagents-- just mana. So the devs might counter that Ritual of Souls was meant to make the reagent cost cheaper for warlocks, but mages are supposed to use their mana-- that's how you play the game.I guess you could make a parallel with buffs as well-- if we're not waiting for mages to drink after conjuring their water, we're waiting for priests to drink after rebuffing all the time. The only way to keep that time from being wasted is to give the priests mana-free buffs, and that ain't going to happen, so maybe the devs aren't hot on the water well idea, either.But considering Ritual of Souls was implemented, a food and water well doesn't seem too far off. Maybe there'll be an extra mage quest in the next content patch?
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Adventures in Beta: Fun with Spellsteal
Second in our series of easily abused Burning Crusade spells is the mage's Spellsteal. This spell, obtainable at level 70, steals a beneficial magic effect from the target. The magic effect lasts two minutes. The fun thing about Spellsteal is that it's completely random. Sure, you can steal that warlock's Demon Armor - you can also end up with his Rank 1 Prayer of Fortitude, overwriting yours. Try for that shaman's Bloodlust and you might get Lightning Shield. It's like a giant roulette game with every buff in the world available!
