Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Divine Intervention

Patch 2.3 is rapidly becoming one of the BEST patches mages have seen in.... ever.

So much is being addressed, so much is being fixed, its exciting to the point of me cheering audibly at work, earning the glares of my supervisor.

I've already talked about all the other goodies, like AI's cost being reduced, the reworking of evocate, co-efficient tax being removed, etc, BUT THE NEWS JUST KEEPS GETTING BETTER AND BETTER.

First off, here's something huge.

Remember the coming nerf to Ice Block, with Hypothermia going up to 45 seconds. REPEALED.
That's right! Hypothermia is back to 30 seconds! Good news for all mages!
Are you excited yet?
I'd like to point out I said "Good news for ALL mages". Anyone take a gander at why I would say all mages?
Anyone?

I have three words for you.

TRAINABLE ICE BLOCK.

Read it again.

Thats ok, I can wait.







Done salivating yet?

I am NOT kidding here. Ice Block IS TRAINABLE. Every single mage will now have access to this spell.

I've established many, many times before how Ice Block was pretty much a game-breaking mechanic for magery in arenas. Without it, you're guaranteed to get killed off by something stupid, like Beast Within.
Now we all get it.
CAN I HAVE A HELL YES??!?!?

Sure, the most viable spec for arena will still be frost, but its no longer exclusive to frost-specced mages. With Ice Block, this will let fire, and even arcane mages, a fair chance in the arenas now. No, you won't be seen at the same level of frost mages, but you're given a very good fighting chance now.

Voxmortis, rejoice, you can stop sucking so bad now.

So, lets recap. In 2.3, mages get:

1) A better Evocate
2) Better gear (through Zul'Aman)
3) Better arena survivability, and the arenas open up fairly to all mages
4) Improved Vendor status
5) No nerf to Ice Block
6) More damage
7) Better Ice Barrier and ward spells

So... yeah. Pretty much the most awesome patch EVER.
The loss of Detect Magic is kinda dumb, but that does nothing at all to overshadow the sheer awesome of this patch.
And to you arcane mages complaining about TLC and MSD.... I don't care. I've never been arcane, I never will be. I have little experience with end-game arcane (yes, I do have some, thanks to the magic that is PTRs), so I cannot offer an opinion on that.
Perhaps a guest post about it is in order?

Also:

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[███TANKADIN████████]►
[☼|☼|☼|☼|☼|☼|☼|☼|☼|☼]

5 comments:

Athryn said...

I think the changes are pretty awesome all around. I know that several of my non-frost mage friends are quite happy about the iceblock, and I think everyone is universally happy about the Ritual of Refreshment. I can't wait until 2.3!

Anonymous said...

I don't think trainable ice block is going to be in the 2.3 release (that's what I got out of it, anyway) but still, zomg awesome!

Grats to mages everywhere on their newfound superpowers! I wonder what'll be in the frost tree now...hopefully something equally awesome.

Anonymous said...

*tears his shirt off and runs around the house screaming at the top of his lungs while blaring away on a tuba and throwing bananas at roommates*


OH FUCK YES!!!!

Anonymous said...

...Vox plays a tuba?

Euripedes said...

Supposedly it's supposed to be in 2.3.
It's there in the code under the current build for 2.3, anyways.
As to whether it will be released or not, and make it into live this fast... who knows?