My buff! MINE!

Top Ten list of the coolest things that I'e done because of spell steal.

10. Blessing of Freedom from a Paladin, and then watched in amusement as a Warrior hit me with hamstring 4 times with Hamstring. I can only imagine his utter confusion as "Immune" kept popping up on his screen. Poor guy.

9. Snagging Ice Barrier from a mage... that just spellstole it from me a couple seconds ago.

8. Nature's Swiftness from a Shaman. What the hell am I supposed to do with that?

7. I first found out about a warlock's Fel Armor (it is called Fel Armor, right?) when I spellstole it in AB. Warlocks have an armor they can fire up to increase spell damage by 100? What the crap? I want that! So I had it for 2 minutes. And bloody hell, I want it all the time! What a godly buff...

6. In what I presume was a very strange glitch, I spellstole Shadowform off a Priest. Say what you like, the fact was, I had shadowform for 2 minutes, and the priest in front of me changed from a dark glowy elf to a plain old elf.

5. While fighting a warlock, he sacrificed his precious Voidwalker to gain enough time to get a Felpuppy out. I spellstole it, counter-spelled the summon, and wiped the floor with him. I love making gnomes cry. I really, really do.

4. Fighting a Discipline priest, and spellstealing Pain Suppression. I'm pretty sure I caused that little dwarf to cry himself to sleep... Oddly enough, spellsteal seems to snag this buff almost every time a priest casts it.

3. In a 2v2 arena, I was against a Warrior/priest combo. When the warrior rushed at me, I hit spellsteal instead of Ice Lance (d'oh) and snagged Shadow Resistance. Later in the fight, once the warrior was dead, the priest saw his chance to one shot me with Power Word: Death. It critted me for... 4. Thats right. Power Word: Death critted me for a grand total of 4. Best partial resist ever.

2. Presence of Mind from an Arcane mage in AV. Even worse, I didn't notice I had spell-stolen it. So I hit sheep in an effort to waste his cooldown. Imagine my shock when I cast an Instant Polymorph. I hit spellsteal again. Arcane Power? I wet myself laughing. Needless to say, I slaughtered the arcane mage.

1. Ice Block from a Dranei mage that was lagging. Thus letting my Paladin arena partner to get the killing blow, while I sat utterly confused in a block of Ice, staring in utter bamboozlety at my Ice Block button, which wasn't on cooldown... Why does this take the #1 slot? Because a Holy Paladin got the winning blow of arena match. THAT is made of so much awesome, I cannot imagine putting it anywhere else.

Mage Tanking

Todays post is an exciting one. Patch 2.3 is bringing many, many goodies to pretty much every class to the game. Blizzard is working very hard to get this game as balanced as possible.
The roles for every class is being expanded.
For example, paladins, once solely relegated to tanking and healing, are able to now fill the role of DPS in raiding content.
Shamans, too, are seeing buffs to their casting trees, allowing them to serve is utility mages and utility rogues.
Now, every class in the game is able to fulfill multiple roles in a raid.
As of 2.3, the mages horizons will be expanding beyond the classical DPS role.

It is with great pleasure that I bring you the reworked Arcane tree.
Since WoW came out, the Arcane tree has widely been considered the worst tree mages have avaliable. So many talents considered useless in so many ways.
Well, cheer up mages! Blizzard has heard your pleas!

Everyone give a round of applause to the new Tanking tree for mages!

The following changes have been made to the Arcane tree:

Arcane Subtlety has been renamed to Arcane Blatantly. Instead of reducing the threat caused by Arcane spells by 40%, it increases the threat generated by 40%.

Wand Spec has been outright scrapped, in favor of a new 2 point talent. Now, it increases the Stamina of the mage by 25%, and is renamed Arcane Stamina. Arguably the BEST tanking talent ever.

Magic Absorption keeps the same name, but instead of increasing spell resistances by 10, it increases the mage's armor value by double the mage's + spell damage value.

Magic Attunement stays the same, but now also increases the effect of "Mana Shield" by 50%. Mana Shield has been completely reworked, in Patch 2.3. Rather than absorbing damage and taking it from the mana pool, it now summons a Shield in front of the caster, fully absorbing damage equal to the Mage's total mana value. However, it now comes with a 10 second cooldown.

Arcane Fortitude now increases the mage's armor amount by 200% of the mages intellect.

Improved Mana Shield now reduces the cooldown of Mana Shield by 1 second per rank.

Arcane Mind has been renamed Arcane Constitution. It now increases both the mages Intellect and Armor values by 3% per rank.

Prismatic Cloak decreases all damage taken by 5% per rank, buffed from 2%.

Empowered Arcane Missiles no longer increases the mana cost of Arcane Missiles. Rather, it increases the threat generated by Arcane Missiles by 5/10/15%.

Mind Mastery, in addition to its usual effect, also decreases the cost of all arcane spells by the same amount.

Slow has been changed to a AoE effect, affecting all targets in a 15 yard basis. It also causes a very large amount of threat.

So there you have it! Arcane has been significantly buffed, allowing mages to be able to tank and still deal significant damage.

Now, as to how to tank.

First off, you won't have to struggle to find defensive gear. Blizzard has been kind enough to re-itemize all the Tier gear to support mage-tanking, with significant values for Intellect, Stamina and armor. Unlike most tanks, mages do not have to worry about stats like Parry and Dodge. We only have to worry about armor mitigation and our mana pool.
Because Mana Shield absorbs damage based entirely on how big your mana pool is, you want to have as much mana as possible. Also, as your armor increases based on intellect, a bigger mana pool means you have more armor.
So, the only real stats a mage tank needs to worry about is Stamina, and loads and loads of Intellect. As a mage tank, you should be whoring as much Intellect as possible. But hey, the re-itemization will help that significantly.
Take, for example, the new Tier 4 Chest Piece, "Aldor Constitution"

Constitution Robe of the Aldor
404 Armor
+40 Stamina
+66 Intellect
3 Blue Sockets
Socket Bonus: + 5 Stamina
Increases damage done by magical effects by 24.

TANKING TIPS:

Always run with Ice Armor up. You will love the increased armor value, and the slowing effects from it will let you get control over any mob that some other douchebag in the party pulls very rapidly.

Arcane Missiles are your best friend. They do a lot of threat, and a lot of damage, which means more threat. Relative to its threat, it's a very cheap spell to cast, and is uninterruptible. The perfect tanking spell.

Spam Mana Shield whenever the cooldown is up. It will make your healers job that much easier, and makes up for the lack of block, dodge, and parry skills that mages lack.

Threat generation is not an issue for a Mage tank. You have tons of threat generation already, and it is nearly effortless to pull aggro away from another idiotic member if your party.


I hope this has helped you out, and given you a few tips on how to tank as a mage.
Rumor has it, that Arcane Blast is being reworked into an Instant cast that forces the mob to target the mage for 8 seconds. We can only wait and see if this happens in 2.4! Or, maybe, it might sneak into 2.3 if we're lucky.

A Couple of Things

Ran Shattered Halls with the guild today.

Some things to mention.

Vox generally kicked my ass with damage dealt, beating me by over 200k damage.

We had a paladin tank running the first part. While not in the guild, myles is an alt of someone who is.
And we were brilliant. The ridiculously hard pulls generally went good, for what was essentially a PuG. 2 mages, paladin tank, enhance shaman, and holy priest on heals.
We wiped twice. Once in a pull where we accidentally pulled 4 additional mobs, and once on the last boss.

Now, I'm going to go into detail over arcane versus frost here, instance wise.

Arcane had more damage. Substantially more.
At the end of the instance, I had done 800k damage, and foxy voxy had just broke the 1 million mark. This shouldn't come as a surprise.

Frost doesn't take a lot of hurt. On Nethekurse, when he does that impressive spinny thing, the deathcoil bolts dug in a lot more on Vox. I thanked the frozen gods and continued casting, grinning behind my Ice Barrier. Meanwhile, over voice-chat, Vox sat their cursing. *evil grin*

When AoEs were called for, frost nova + cone of cold unleashed a world of hurt on some orcs.
There is a great deal of satisfaction to be gained from watching 6 orcs take 1500+ damage each from a single spell. Even better if you can instruct your arcane-missile-happy friend to blow frost nova eight seconds later. *evil grin*

Random tip: you must MUST must be able to get a shatter combo on any single target in an instance. Any time you see a frozen target that you can ice lance, DO IT! 124 mana for 2k damage? Yes please! It's a huge source of damage for a frost mage in an instance. This is why you should always get "Add" duty.

As a good example, take Bladefist. Adds show up in this fight, in the form of silly non-elite orcs.
These can be a real hassle for the healers, even more so if you only have one. Like we did.

Enter me, the frost mage. The first time we hit Bladefist, it went horribly wrong from the beginning. Three (3!) assassins patrolled right into our group as soon as the fight started.
So, here I was. On add duty. I thought I had to deal with these uber-powered, incredibly hard hitting orcs in waves of three. Our group bit the dust. HARD.

Second try, no pats. Just the regular, non-elite, non-70 adds. And they come one at a time.
I almost cried, my job was so easy. Frostbolt kite, root, shatter kill. NEXT.
Of course, when Fistblade went into "ZOMG" mode, things got a little more hectic. The combination of losing frostbolt time and Vox screaming "HOLY SHIT!" led to a few accidents.
(Vox doesn't like being smacked around, you see. Seeing multiple hits of 1k on his screen scared him. /cheer for Ice Barrier.)
One add got on the healer, and she took a couple of hits before I snagged aggro.
A couple adds ran into the paladin's consecrate... that was harder to get aggro back for, but a fireblast did it.
And other than that, most of the adds were flawlessly slaughtered.

So, in answer to the question, "Is frost viable in end-game PvE" the answer is definitely yes.
But taken in moderation. If you're doing, say, Karazhan, only one mage need be frost. Any more and the party starts getting a little gimped.
Our jobs are easy. Incredible crowd control, strong dps (and more sustained than other mage specs, I might add), add duty, and kiting. We can root mobs, kite mobs, sheep mobs, and unload incredible burst on frozen targets.
As mages, we also have access to powerful AoE spells, and as frost, we add CONTROL to that high volume of damage. For example:
Arcane Explosion = AoE damage
Cone of Cold = AoE damage, can be aimed more accurately than AE, crits very hard, adds a slow to all targets, and has a 15% chance of rooting all targets. And cheaper, too.

On top of that, we have far better mana efficiency than the other specs, having mana to use long after the other specs have gone OOM.
Oh, and Ice Barrier, which makes the healers job that much easier.
And Ice Block, basically an instant aggro dump.

Sounds a lot like a hunter, don't it?
If you want to look at it that way, Frost mages are the hunters of spell-casters. Played right, we offer a lot to a group. Played wrong, and you get a Blood Elf casting Ice Lance because it looks cool.

Remember, my children, the creed of frost mages, as laid down by the prophet Faxmonkey:
"If you can chill it, you can kill it."

To all you PvE whinos : Shut your trap. Frost is great for Instances.

Random fun story:

Mylesmason, the pally tank, had to go to a birthday party with his kid (Aww.... <3) so we had to PuG a new tank. Snagged another pally tank and... well, lemme put it this way. Myles was miles beyond this guy in the tanking department. Please don't slap me.
It was laughably easy to pull aggro.
On the second boss, Lost Cause's GM (the enhance shaman) pulled aggro... and kept it. Enhance shaman with spirit weapons, Blessing of Salvation, versus paladin tank with Righteous Fury up.
Enhance shaman kept the aggro the whole fight.
Now, what's awesome is that Oli had a shield, (a good one, actually) and busted it out.

And tanked.

You heard me, a shaman tanked Warbringer O'mrogg.

Sadly, no-one got a screenshot...