fire-glyphs
Latest
Arcane Brilliance: Fire 101
It's time again for Arcane Brilliance, the weekly mage column that believes there is no such thing as too much Pyroblast. You can certainly have not enough Pyroblast, as any fire mage who is desperately praying to the RNG gods for a second consecutive crit so that Hot Streak will grant him an instant one can attest. But you can never have too much. Never. Since publishing Arcane 101 and Frost 101, for our series of class 101 guides, I've received numerous requests for Fire 101. Where is it? When is it coming? Why haven't you written it yet? There's even one guy who I swear has emailed me pretty much daily inquiring as to Fire 101's whereabouts. These emails progressed steadily in their tone and verbiage from mild annoyance to frustrated desperation, to thinly veiled threats to do me bodily harm. It wasn't long before the emails began coming with increasingly creepy pictures attached: first one of a road map with a thumbtack in the southwestern portion of Nevada, then one of the "Welcome to Las Vegas" sign, then one of the street where I live, then one of my house, my driveway, and so on. The picture contained in yesterday's email was of a naked man who wasn't me standing in my bathroom brandishing a large knife. So, I've decided that today is the day! Now, please ... get out of my bathroom, crazynakedguy@iwillstabyouinthefacechrisbelt.com. As always, these posts come with a small disclaimer: these are meant to be basic guides covering a general overview of the spec from a PvE perspective. This one is meant as an introduction to Fire. It will not help you maximize your DPS on heroic 25-man Lich King. It will, however, help you get some idea of what the fire spec is, and how to go about playing it. Without further ado, I bring you Fire 101.
Arcane Brilliance: Grading the glyphs
Each week Arcane Brilliance writes a column about the ins and outs of Magehood. Mostly, what's in a Mage's hood is the Mage's face (which may or may not have a lower jaw), and what's out of a Mage's hood is fiery death. Did you see what I did there? It's clever word-play, you see...ins and outs...Magehood...in a Mage's hood...out...get it? Oh, fine. You try to come up with something witty every week! It's hard! Stupid italicized introductory paragraphs...I should have just gone with some more Warlock-bashing.I don't know about you, but when I was a kid, discretionary funds were rare and precious. There were so many toys to buy, and so little money with which to purchase them. If Grandma were to send me a card with five bucks in it for my birthday, that was a windfall of epic proportions. Each purchase had to be carefully planned, each dollar wrung for as much value as it could provide. Use the money now on a Storm Shadow action figure (with combat grip!), or save it to someday replace the NES controller that had died a premature death in the wake of a last second Tecmo Super Bowl loss to my little brother? Yes, my childhood was in many ways resource management training for later years spent playing games like Starcraft.And games like World of Warcraft.Do I spend my Stone Keeper's Shards on a meta gem now, or save them for that sweet Mammoth? Use my honor to upgrade my cloak now, or save it and get the trinket? Use that socket for spellpower or hit rating? Kill the Warlock, or kill the Warlock? So many choices. All of which brings us to this week's topic: what to do with our precious and very limited Glyph slots? Follow me through the jump, and we'll discuss.
