Focus Magic: Race Changes

A smorgasboard off topics in this episode of Focus Magic, including Race Changes, a preview of Patch 3.3, and more.

Intro

The "Focus Magic" segment of the alea iacta est podcast covers news, rumors, special topics, and of course, spoilers about the Mage class, and goes into great details about the topics discussed. So, if you haven't read, listened to, or watched the items we talk about, you might wanna GET OFF MY LAWN!!

Hoist up your robes and bring your wands at the ready, friends, because it's time for Focus Magic! This time around, we're going to discuss a wide array of what's happening in WoW related to us as of late! With patch 3.3 on the horizon and a LOT of exciting things happening to us there, plus the recent arrival of paid race changes, we've got loads of stuff to discuss, so lets get started!!

Race Changes! Now go turn yourselves intro Trolls. NOW!

Paid race changes are FINALLY here, and I was terribly excited to see it happen. Although I didn't take advantage of the service for my own mage, you might find yourself wanting to do so! We are currently limited to only three races: Troll, undead, and Blood Elf, but with the advent of Cataclysm, we will also gain Goblin and, somewhat surprisingly, Orc. Incidentally, after Cataclysm, the Tauren will be the only race in the entire game that cannot be mages, oddly enough.

What should you choose?

So when it comes to deciding if you want to faction change your mage, you've got several things to consider, primarily the look of the race and it's racials. Racials are mostly not that big of a deal. Undead have their Will of the Forsaken, a PvP-trinket like effect. Blood Elves can regain mana and do an AOE silence with Arcane Torrent, and Trolls have the 30% casting speed increase for 15 seconds from Berserking. If you're looking to min/max your character, you might consider a switched based on that. All three can be useful in either a PvE or PvP setting, some of them are more situational in certain environments than others.

I personally prefer to choose based on the look and feel of a race, and that's why my mage is a troll. I love the race, it's my personal favorite amongst the Horde. Undead are also a great looking choice, if you don't mind the exposed joints making your armor look like it's torn. Blood Elves are okay...I suppose...but not my personal cup of tea. Perchance if they actually clarified their recent history and did something about the 15 bajillion factions of Blood Elves out there....I digress. Give a consideration to a possible race reform, my fellow mages, because we can do it now! For $25 per character, you can change their race, completely choose the new look, and even get a name change thrown in. Not a bad deal in my view.

Patch 3.3

Let's jump ahead to patch 3.3. Okay, let me just say this. Patch 3.3 is STILL on the PTR. NOTHING is final yet. I'm going to talk about these changes AS THEY STAND at the time of this recording. Do NOT take them as final. If you want to be up to date, check the newest patch notes on WoWWiki.com, or the recent posts on MMO-Champion.com. There, disclaimer over.

As things stand right now, we've got a LOT to look forward to in 3.3. In the grand scheme of things, you can consider these changes minor, but minor as they are, they fix a LOT of gripes we've had in Wrath so far.

Arcane’s new Raid Utility

Arcane is getting some raid utility, a feature it didn't use to have. Arcane Empowerment will now also grant 1/2/3% additional damage done by your party or raid for 10 seconds adter you hit a critical strike with any offensive Arcane Spell. Pretty sweet. Just be warned, this effect is the same as Beast Mastery Hunter's Ferocious Inspiration and Ret Pallie's Sanctified Retribution. Ergo, they don't stack. Still, you can now serve as a source for this buff if your raid was lacking it, and as an Arcane Mage, you'd be crazy not to take Arcane Empowerment for the personal DPS increases anyway.

Fire Buffs: Or YAY SCORCH ISN’T ANNOYING ANYMORE!!

Fire got some AOE buffs and a REALLY nice change involving Scorch. Let's talk that one first. Improved Scorch has been re-designed. A Single cast now puts up a 5% increased chance to critically strike with spells debuff. Previously, that took 5 casts of the spell, or one if you glyphed for it. Now you can get that same effect without the glyph!! The Glyph itself was changed to boost Scorch's damage by 20%. No more choosing between this glyph and Living Bomb!! No more need for a, quote, "Scorch b@%$&!". Any mage with Improved Scorch can do it now! Awesomeness!

The AOE changes are as follows: Blast Wave and Dragons Breath have had their mana cost reduced, and Firestarter was changed to make the Instant Flamestrikes it triggers also cost no mana. That's all really cool, but it does beg the question of what they plan to do with this. These talents would be pretty good if one was AOE grinding/questing with Fire, though Frost's control and survival abilities make it still a better option for that. And in a raiding situation, there are FAR too many good single-target DPS talents that would have to be given up to get these, unless you built a seconday fire AOE spec for dealing with trash mobs. I suppose that will not be OUT of the question once this patch drops. Perhaps Icecrown boss fights require a lot of AOE?

Personally, I think we have a serious talent bloat issue on our hands, especially in the Arcane tree. Too many points are wasted going deep enough to get Torment the Weak. I think it would open up a lot of options in both the fire and frost trees if that talent was moved down a tier or two. We could start to build good utility specs which encompass good single target and AOE damage with the extra talents, But alas, it seems my dreams will not be realized.

Guess what’s Back? Frost!

Finally, let's talk about the spec I am most excited about: Frost. Folks, Frost looks like it's coming back as a viable raid spec in a BIG way. This one is still the most of a work-in-progress, but here's what has changed as of now.

• One, we're getting a new Glyph called Eternal Water. This glyph will make our water elemental a permanent pet! However, to balance the PvP side of things, it will no longer be able to cast Freeze. Okay, I can make that trade! The water elemental also got an 80% reduction on the cost of Waterbolt.

• Secondly, Deep Freeze is finally being changed to be USEFUL in PvE. Against targets permanently immune to stuns (such as almost all raid bosses), Deep Freeze will now do damage. In case you forgot how this works, Deep Freeze would normally provide a 5 second stun, but it only worked against targets that were frozen or considered frozen. So now, we have an ability to use with our Fingers of Frost procs. When it procs, you'll fire off one frostbolt, and then a Deep Freeze for a ton of damage. I don't have exact test numbers for you, but from my reading, it's really high, easily worth more than the average frostbolt.

Frost Speculation

That's what we've gotten thus far, and I don't believe they're done changing things by any stretch of the imagination. One change has already been tested and reverted as not useful enough. Frozen Core would reduce the cast time of your next frostbolt or Frostfire bolt by a second after getting an Ice Lance Critical strike. It was looked at as a way to encourage use of shatter combos, but it simply wasn't enough of a DPS boost to warrant the change, so they reverted it, giving us the change to Deep Freeze in it's place.

They've also thrown out another possible option of adding Frostfire Bolt to Brain Freeze, and it also would not surprise me to see some changes to Enduring Winter, which as of now, is somewhat useless beyond maybe a single point for replenishment. But that's all speculation, and we'll keep an eye on it as the patch gets closer to being done. And right now, I wouldn't put money on it being done anytime soon. This is probably the final big patch for Wrath of the Lich King, and there's a lot of epic things bound to happen in it, plus I doubt they want to leave lots of time between then and Cataclysm, which is rumored at the moment for summer of 2010. I'd bet we'll see 3.3 near the beginning of December.

Shatter Combos in Frost

Speaking of frost, I was asked to talk about Shatter Combos. I've covered this in older episodes, but I'll run it down again. The idea of a Shatter Combo is to hit two frost spells at once on a frozen target, so that they both crit for big damage before the Freeze effect breaks.

If you have a frozen target (from Frost Nova or Frostbite), you'll cast a frostbolt at him and as soon as the cast is over, immediately shoot an ice lance. If timed right, they'll hit the mob at the same time, both will crit, and the freeze will break. You can do this with other instant cast spells in lieu of Ice Lance, but it's harder to manage because Ice Lance has a travel time and a spell like Fire Blast does not.

Remember that if you have both the Frostbite AND Fingers of Frost talents, they proc at the same time. So if you see frostbite trigger off a frostbolt, don't go for a shatter combo right off the bat. Your next frostbolt will likely crit AND break the freeze, but you'll have another charge of Fingers of Frost left. Use that one to perform a shatter combo off of.

Outtro

That's all the time we have for today, my fellow mages! Until next time, this is Dahkar, aka Old Man Franks, reminding you: Help Control the Gnome population: roll a troll (or race change into one) today!!