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Arcane Brilliance: A friendly introduction to mage crowd control
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, a public service announcement: An open letter to the guy who keeps breaking my sheep: Please stop. Sincerely, Christian P.S. -- Listen. I know it's Christmas and I should probably be doing a puff piece on things I want for my mage for Christmas or something like that. But I Simply can't stay quiet. We wiped 20 times in that heroic Grim Batol run last night, and though I know not everybody who plays this game reads this column, I have to do what I can. Evil triumphs when good men do nothing, or something like that. I know The Burning Crusade happened like two years ago. I'm well aware that there's a distinct possibility you started playing the game during Wrath. Perhaps you either don't remember or don't have any idea what a "Polymorph" is or why it's not in your best interests to immediately begin whacking whatever I just cast it on as hard as you possibly can. I'm willing to allow for ignorance. Mages, I can even understand it when you don't sheep things. Polymorph doesn't do any damage; in fact it heals its target! Why would you want to use a spell that doesn't blow things up when there are so many other delightful spells in your spellbook that do? It seems counter to everything we got into magecraft for. Wrath was a long expansion. For the better part of two years, we spent the majority of our time chain pulling and AoE-farming our way through every instance in sight, concentrating on one thing and one thing only: DPS. Recount gave us a number at the end of every boss fight, and if that number was higher than the warlock's number, we had done a good job. Sure, the fights sometimes had mechanics we needed to pay attention to, but they mostly involved moving from one place to stand and shoot to another place to stand and shoot. We forgot a very important part of our jobs as mages. We forgot how to sheep.
World of Warcraft patch 2.4.2 notes released
WoW Insider is reporting on the notes for the next patch to World of Warcraft. Even with the recent release of the much-awaited Patch 2.4, there are still numerous tweaks that have to be made. It's expected that there will be a number of these smaller patches between now and when the Wrath of the Lich King expansion releases, but no further 'major' patches ala the Sunwell. Patch 2.4.2 offers up several different changes to the game, including: A major revamp of the way players are rewarded Arena points. Being polymorphed by an NPC no longer causes player characters to heal, a potentially major change. A new tameable pet for Hunters. Tweaks to the Jewelcrafting, Enchanting, Engineering, and Leatherworking professions. The bosses Vexallus and Kael'thas are no longer immune to taunt on Normal difficulty in the Magisters' terrace encounter. A series of minor tweaks to the abilities of almost every class. The full patch notes are available at WoW Insider.
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.
