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Arcane Brilliance: A pre-Wrath Mage primer
Each week, Mages from across Azeroth unite under the banner of Arcane Brilliance. We discuss all things Mage-related, from ways to clean Arcane Powder out of your underwear to fun tricks to play on Warlocks involving portals and the whelp room in Blackrock Spire. We talk about the hazards of Blinking and share stories of Blast Wave mishaps. Mages can be a testy bunch, and sometimes fights break out. Somebody misplaces a Fireball, a Blizzard or two, and suddenly everybody goes Invisible. Then we all share a good laugh when we realize we can all still see each other. Ah, good times.We're close, guys.The beta is finally closed. The zombie infestation came, we all ate some brains, and then it went. The scourge is still half-heartedly invading such strategically vital locations as the middle of the Tanaris desert and handing out purples, and Teneris Murkblood is still moping around Karazhan, listening to My Chemical Romance and hating his parents, but both of those events will almost certainly conclude any day now. We're only a little more than four days from Kil'jaeden and Illidan becoming two of the most lonely guys in the game. Maybe they can get together with Onyxia and Nefarian and go roast marshmallows over Ragnaros or something.Yes, the Lich King--and all that pent-up wrath of his--is almost upon us. Soon we'll all be ticking over to level 71 for the first time on live servers, folks will be trying to figure out how to run Ramparts with five Death Knights, and life on Azeroth as we know it will change forever. Mages everywhere will be packing their spellbooks, putting on their fanciest robes, and heading north. Seems there's a whole continent of flammable things up there, and they aren't going to hurl Fireballs at themselves, brethren.This week, we're doing one last preview of what awaits Mages on those distant shores. Say farewell to Tempest Keep, swap email addresses with Gruul, and kiss Brutallus goodbye. After the jump, we're off to Northrend
Mage mana costs to be slashed across the board
So Mages. Do you think you spend way too much mana to cast your spells? If you answered yes, here's some good news: The dev team agrees. However, says Ghostcrawler, they didn't want to reduce the cooldown on Evocation anymore, nor did they want to make Mage Armor so powerful that other Mage armors were no longer worth using. Thus, they simply lowered the mana cost on Fireball, Frostbolt, Frostfire Bolt, Arcane Blast, Arcane Missiles, and Arcane Explosion.Of course, we still won't know exactly how much until the next build hits the Beta servers, but it seems like it's got to be good news if it's anything of a significant cost reduction. Of course, some Mages are still hoping for a more active mana regeneration mechanic such as the Warlock's Life Tap, but in the meantime, hopefully this reduction is enough to make a difference. [Thanks to VyseV1 for the heads up!]
Breakfast Topic: New Wrath talents
It's definitely too early to tell, but since some of you lucky readers actually got into the Beta after Blizzard sent out invites yesterday, I might as well ask -- what new talents stand out for you? Even if you didn't get into the Beta (or haven't yet... don't give up hope!), I'm pretty sure you've read up on the new talents and gotten excited about some of them. I know I'm pretty stoked, specially since Paladins got so much love. Matthew geekasmed all over Titan's Grip so much that he wrote an entire Warrior column dedicating his undying love for it. Then there's Christian, who thinks Frostfire Bolt can change everything.Personally, I'm really excited about The Art of War, just because of the name (it's one of my favorite books, after all). It's also currently bugged in Beta, with crazy reports of over 20k damage on a Judgement. It'll be fixed pretty soon, of course, but I can't help but geek out over that. The Death Knight talent Infested Corpse looks particularly gruesome! And then I want to spec for Haunt to complement SL/SL. If you haven't looked at the new talents yet, you can check them out over at Wowhead's talent calculators or Blizzard's official one. Did anything catch your eye?
Arcane Brilliance: Why Frostfire Bolt could change everything
Each week Arcane Brilliance serves up a big slice of Mage-cake. Of course, Mages have a very different idea of what it means to "bake" and then "frost" something, so Mage-cake might not be quite what you're expecting. Unless of course you were expecting a blackened husk of indeterminate (vaguely Gnomish) origin frozen into a block of ice, in which case you'll get exactly what you thought you were getting.So last week was fun, huh?I have to say, I expected some controversy, but nothing like that. My earlier column about how much I love being a Mage got 32 almost universally positive comments, which seemed quite respectable to me at the time. This one, in which I bemoaned what I perceive to be a very fixable problem with the class (the fact that our DPS doesn't balance out our incredibly poor survivability) is at 200 and counting. Reading through them over the course of this week, terrified to post any sort of response lest I be torn limb from limb and devoured, it seemed like there was no middle ground. Responses ranged from "Please consider discontinuing this article from here on" to "I think this is the most well written piece on this site that I've ever read." Of the 200 responses, I'd wager 150 or so were negative.So what have I learned? You guys prefer optimism. Apparently.This week, I went in search of things to feel good about. I do still love to play my Mage--much moreso than any other character I have--and I truly want to be optimistic about the direction we're headed as a class. Once I went actively searching for happy thoughts, I found they were out there, in abundance. In fact, many of them were suggested within those same 200 comments.You see, as it turns out, Frostfire Bolt has the potential to be very, very nice. In fact, Frostfire Bolt could actually change everything. Come back after the jump to find out why.
