Focus Magic: Patch 3 Point 2 Point 2

Patch 3.2.2 was a big one for Mages, and OMF covered it in this edition of Focus Magic

Intro

Note: The Introductory Skit from this episode is not replicated here. Go listen to it if you wanna hear it! :-D

Welcome to another exciting edition of Focus Magic, guildmates! As per normal (as per normal, as per normal), I am your host, Dahkar. You might've heard of me as OLD MAN FRANKS!

With Patch 3.2.2 being here, it's time to talk about it! This was a minor patch in the grand scheme of things, but it gave us mages some GREAT buffs! One of them redesigned a Fire Talent into something worth taking again, and the the others made another spec exciting and raid viable again! Let's run em down!

Fire Buffs! Because setting things Aflame is never not fun!

First buff actually concerns Fire, and it's a change to our classic cooldown ability, Combustion. Combustion, when triggered, now applies a flat 50% increased change for a non-periodic fire spell to critically strike, lasting until the mage does three non-periodic critical strikes. You know what this means, mages? It means no more gorram Living Bomb ticks munching your gorram Combustion charges! It means you have a much better chance at getting some guaranteed Hot Streak Procs. It means that you should respec your Fire and Frostfire builds to pick this talent back up right away. If you recall a few podcasts back, I recommended not taking this talent in a Deep Fire/Torment the Weak build in favor of an additional point in Student of the Mind. Now with this change, Combustion is no longer wasteful, because it more or less ignores a Glyphed Living Bomb's ticks. This makes it MUCH more of a DPS increase because it gives you much better burst.

Let the Dominance of Arcane Begin!

The second change, or more accurately SET of changes, all concern Arcane Blast and the Missile Barrage talent. Arcane Blast's debuff is now stackable up to 4 times, each time increasing the mana cost by 175%, down from 200%. The damage increase per stack remains the same. Missile Barrage, if fully talented, now has a 40% chance to proc off Arcane Blast, compared to the previous 20% (which still applies to all other arcane spells). Oh, and it also makes your Arcane Missiles cost no mana. None. And just for that icing on the cake, if both Clearcasting and Missile Barrage have procced, and you fire an Arcane Missiles, Clearcasting will not be consumed. Freaking BRILLIANT.

This makes a Deep Arcane Build (something on the order of a 57/3/11 build which I've covered in previous podcasts, see the wiki for those notes) viable again for futher along endgame raiding. Previously, the higher in content progression you got, the worse Arcane measured up, because of the proliferation of crit on gear. Arcane did not gain as much from crit as Fire, Frostfire, and even to some extent Frost did.

Now with this change, Arcane is now equally competitive with Fire on the top end of damaging specs. I highly recommend you give it a try.

New Rotation. 2 Buttons. Win.

The new rotation we use is simple and a LOT more efficient than Arcane used to be, thanks to the per-spell mana cost increase reduction and the fact that Missile Barrage equals mana-cost-free Arcane Missiles. Simply Stack Arcane Blast 4 times, then use Missiles if Missile Barrage is up by then (almost certainly will be). If it's not, keep spamming Blast until it does. Just make sure you get 4 stacks before using Missile Barrage.

As you can see, There isn't much room for Arcane Barrage. I find it useful sometimes if you're having zero luck with getting a Missile Barrage proc and need to move, but for the most part, it's not needed at all.

Talent Builds!

Builds are a bit fluid now, you can refer to episode 2 of Focus Magic to go over essential Arcane talents, with a few caveats.

• 1. I no longer consider Prismatic Cloak essential, with the changes to Invisibility we got in 3.2, so you can free up those points if you like.

• 2. Arcane Barrage is an iffy thing. It's sometimes useful, but for the majority of the time, you probably won't use it. You can lose this point if you want.

• 3. As raid wide damage tends to happen more often in ToC and Ulduar, making good use of Incanter's Absorption can be quite a DPS boost, especially if paired with Fire/Frost Ward or a helpful priest! 2/3 points in the talent is usually sufficient to get you to the talent's maximum, try it out and see if it works for you.

Give Arcane a fair try mages, whether you're new to raiding or fighting your way through Ulduar and ToC Hard Modes, the spec is solid! Plus all that free hit rating never hurt anyone!!

Outtro! Man that one was short…

That should pretty much cover all of the changes in Patch 3.2.2, my friends. Onyxia is waiting for you, so be you Fire, Frostfire, or Arcane, grab some friends and tear her apart! This has been Dahkar, aka OLD MAN FRANKS, remind you: Help control the gnome population, roll a troll today!!