Patch Notes? /rofl

OMG! The patch notes for 2.4 have been leaked!

Let's see what kind of idiocy the guy who came up with these thought of...

-Ritual of Refreshment will now complete faster when activated by 2 additional players.

Uh. This isn't.... this isn't anything. Once everybody has clicked, it takes a couple seconds for the table to appear, but this is due mostly to lag rather than anything else.
This was a concern? By whom? Were people unable to ninja the mage bikkits fast enough? This isn't a patch note, this is nonsensical.

- Counterspell: The duration has been reduced to 6 seconds, and cooldown reduced to 20 seconds.
Counter spell, 8 second school lockout, 24 second cooldown.
Earth Shock, 2 second school lockout, 6 second cooldown.
Pummel, 4 second school lockout, 10 second cooldown.
Shield Bash, 6 second lockout, 12 second cooldown.
Kick, 5 second lockout, 10 second cooldown.

Starting to notice a trend here? Every "interrupt" spell thingy in the game can effectively lock down a spell school for anywhere from one third of the time to half of the time. Never more than half, never less than one third.
Putting Counterspell as a 6 second lockout with a 20 second cooldown will, unequivocally, make it the weakest spell interrupt in the game. This nerf would move it underneath the 30% effective interrupt line, making, quite literally, everything else a better interrupt effect.
Obviously, this could never happen. The QQ would be immense, and even a mages mortal enemies, the warlocks, would realize this.
Besides, it doesn't even make sense that, allegedly, the most powerful purist caster class in the game would have the weakest anti-spell abilities in the game.
Somebody didn't do their basic math... /wink

- Ice Lance now has a 6 sec cooldown.

Hahahahahahahahaha! Ahahahahahahahahaaa!!! *snorrrt* BAAAAAhahahahahahahahahaaa!

- Spellsteal: It is no longer possible to remove a Shaman's Ghost Wolf buff with this spell.

It never was, dumbass. I mean, yeah, it would be cool, but.... ya know, I even got all excited, went in game, and tried to do this. Not spellstealable.
I'm a sad panda now... you jackass.

- Arcane Power: The spell damage bonus has been reduced to 20%, from 30%, but the mana cost penalty has been removed and it now also increases your chance to crit with spells by 5% for the duration.

K... no. Just no. The entire Arcane Tree is built around the fact that mana consumption is placed on manual. An arcane mage can use up mana as fast as he likes, or as slow as he likes. Effectively, he is the only type of mage who can effectively "throttle" his DPS as required. You need look no further than Arcane Blast to see this relation between mana spent versus damage dealt. Things like a cast time are irrelevant. Its a straight up mana versus damage relationship. Arcane Power is one of the defining talents of the Arcane tree. More damage at the cost of more mana is exactly what the arcane tree is about.
And frankly... who in their RIGHT MIND would let mages have 20% increased damage, and 5% critical strike increase for NO ADDITIONAL mana cost?! Are you insane? The QQ over that would be, quite bluntly, utterly insane. It would take the mage forums a good month to dry out over those tears.

- Improved Blink has been replaced by Arcane Efficiency, a talent that reduces the mana cost of Blink, Counterspell and Spellsteal by 25/50%.

Well, this, at least, makes sense. Mages have been asking for a long time for a reduction in the mana cost of Blink and Spellsteal, which pretty much means Arenas only. Which means that only Arena mages would be interested in this.
However, due to its rather stupid positioning in the Arcane Tree, no arena mage will actually get this, although many will try and think of a deep-ish arcane spec that works.
Unless your partner is a resto druid, it won't work. Really. It won't. Don't even kid yourself. It won't work.

- Slow: The mana cost has been reduced by approximately 24% and the duration reduced to 12 sec, from 15 sec.

*Sings the Nobody Cares song*

- Master of Elements: This talent now also reduces Fire and Frost damage taken by 2/4/6%.

Someone just made this up off the top of their head, didn't they? It's like a more stupid version of Frozen Core.

- Dragon's Breath: The disorient effect will no longer break on damage over time effects.

Kinda a very real problem, considering how many fire effects have DoT effects. It breaks far too much, but in reality, we don't really seem to care much. It's basically a glorified spell interrupt. You can defend it, come up with all these crowd control examples, but seriously. Stop. Think. It breaks on damage, just like Repentance or Polymorph or any of those other things. How often do you really use Dragon's Breath to crowd control something for 3 seconds? If you answered "only when fighting elite mobs", you answered correctly. In any practical example of its use, its basically a massive "Inflict Epic Confusion Here".
And, of course, if you PvP, it's an incredibly useful spell interrupt. Like an Earthshock. Except its an AoE. And does more damage. And looks more awesome.

- Icy Veins: The cooldown has been increased to 5 min, from 3 min and no longer increases your chance to Freeze targets, but now gives your damage spells a 30% chance of applying a chill effect, reducing the target's movement speed by 50% for 5 sec.

Haha. This makes zero sense. I know Blizzard is going to make efforts to try and make every single spec viable for both PvP and PvE, and Icy Veins was an effort to make the frost tree more attractive raiding wise, with the bonus that it would allow frostbolt to become more effective in arenas. Until it was dispelled anyways.
This new version is idiotic. A Chill effect to all spells? Please, have some common sense. If your using it in an arena, its going to be on Frostbolt, which already comes with a guaranteed Chill effect. If you're using it for raiding, a Chill effect is like PoM Pyro'ing a bubbled Paladin. Utterly pointless, stupid, a waste of time.
See below for the cooldown analysis.

- Frozen Core: This talent now increases the mana cost of your Fire spells by 2/4/6%, but reduces the mana cost of your Frost spells by 2/4/6%.

The only people who would be interested in this would be raid frost mages, and possibly arena frost mages. Arena mages are already hard pressed talent point wise in the frost tree, and there literally is no points to spare for this. Even if they wanted to, the increased cost of Fireblast would be kinda silly, since that is the most expensive damage spell arena mages use.
Raiding Frost mages should be highly interested in getting it, as it will pretty much negate any point that Clearcast ever had.

- Ice Floes: This talent now also reduces the cooldown of Icy Veins.

So. With these rather stupid patch notes, the changes to Icy Veins are as thus. The intention was to make frost more attractive to raiders, and indeed, very few mages now run raids without the godly Icy Veins. Increasing the cooldown, as the previous note suggested, would make the spell far less attractive. Tossing in the Ice Floes thing here, and the talent really only becomes attractive to raiding Frost mages.
Meaning, essentially, that this would make the frost tree more viable for raiding in an arbitrary, nonsensical manner.
Look. Understand this. Frost does less damage than fire. Plain and simple. You cannot change this fact. It IS a fact. End of story. This is not going to change.
If you want to make a DPS tree more attractive to raiders, it has to perform well. The Frost tree is the lowest DPS spec mages have avaliable. Therefore, why choose it over one of the other specs? If a DPS class cannot DPS, it needs to have a reason for existing.
Take Ret Paladins for example. It is a DPS class that isn't... well, "on par" with the other DPS classes. However, it brings a level of utility to a raid, such as 3% improved crit rate for everybody raid wide.
Its stuff like that, that makes a tree attractive to raiders. Frost doesn't have that, and it must if Blizzard ever expects it to be a solid Raiding tree.

- Arctic Winds: This talent no longer increases all Frost damage done, but now increase the critical strike chance of your Frost spells by 1/2/3/4/5%.

This actually makes sense. Frost already loves its crit rating a bunch, and this type of talent change would start putting it on par with Fire's crit rate. However, this would actually result in a net.... nothing to frost DPS.
The current Arctic Winds is a 5% increase in DPS, all the time. This new Arctic Winds thingy would be a 100% increase in DPS, 5% of the time. Which, mathematically, works out to an increase of... 5% in DPS. Ha. Look at that. Nothing happens at all.
Of course, it would be awesome in any sort of PvP perspective, since mages are built around the whole Burst Damage thing in PvP. An extra 5% crit would be far more useful in a competitive arena than an extra 5% damage.

- Empowered Frostbolt has been renamed to Empowered Frost and no longer increase the critical strike chance of Frostbolt, but now also increases the amount of bonus spell damage that effects your Icelance spell by 1/2/3/4/5%.

Stupid. Whoever bothered to think up this stuff was an idiot.
If you all can remember, Ice Lance gains 14.29% of our bonus frost damage.
Lets say you have 800 frost damage. Ice Lance will get an additional 114 damage.
Now let's say this change is implemented. Ice Lance will get an additional 154 damage.

So. We replace an increase of 5% critical strike rate on frostbolt, for an additional 40 damage on Ice Lance, and 120 on frozen targets.
Arena mages might think its cool, as it makes Ice Lance hit a little harder than usual, giving them slightly more burst potential. On the other hand, they could just as easily lament the loss of burst potential from the Frostbolt nerf. It depends a lot on play style.
Personally? I'd lament the Frostbolt nerf.

Oh, yeah, and raid frost mages would literally freak. A loss of that 5% Frostbolt crit is, quite bluntly, a loss of 5% DPS.
Which, of course, conflicts entirely with the other Frost changes which were supposed to make the frost tree more attractive to Raiders. Than this, which makes it ugly again.

TL;DR version:

This "patch" is a fake, because it is filled with stupidity.

Oh, Yeah, Patch 2.3.2

So as you may have noticed by now, patch 2.3.2 went live.

Let's go over the good stuff, shall we?

First off, there has been some major changes in the frost tree. Major, as in, 3 talents have been seriously moved around.

1) Trainable Ice Block.

Anyone who's spent some time reading this blog knows my thoughts about Ice Block. Bluntly, it is an incredibly useful skill that can be used to incredibly good effect in both PvE and PvP. In arenas, it is a necessary talent that literally any mage will need to be widely successful. Without it, the mage is at a very serious disadvantage survivability wise. Versus warlocks, for example, you gonna eat thems DoTs without an Ice Block. Ice Block is a cooldown that allows you to survive other people cooldowns. Spot a PoM Pyro headed your way? Ice Block. Spot a giant red raptor coming your way? Ice Block. And so forth.
PvE wise, it can be a major life-saver in an incredibly high amount of PvE encounters. Magtheridon? When the entire raid takes 6k damage at 30%? Ice Block. No damage for you!
Hydross got yeh Watery Tombed? Ice Block. No damage for you, or anyone standing near you.
Have three Cave'ins dropped on you at the same time in Gruul's? Ice Block. It'll save you for a bit.
Pull aggro on Illidan? Haha, you're fucked. No, seriously, Ice Block it onto the ungrateful warlock next to you. That'll show that snooty demon master a thing or two about Soul Link.

In conclusion, a very welcome addition, one that mages have and are going to continue rejoicing about for days to come. And to the following classes: Warriors, Rogues, Hunters, Warlocks, and Priests, the QQ was delicious, let's do it again some time. Maybe over lunch? I'll bring biscuits.

Cold Snap has moved to Ice Block's old position. Ok, cool, seems fine to me. Because....

ICY VEINS!! This new spell is bitching. Reeeeeal bitching. Need I go into detail? Well, too bad, 'cause Girl Meets WoW did it for me.

However, I would like to touch on this fact...

If you're raiding fire, you now essentially have two choices here. 10/47/3 (+1), the old spec; 2/47/11 (+1), the new spec.
Basically, you keep all the same fire raid talents, and just mix up where the other points are going. Frost? Or Arcane? Minimum of 11 points frost for Icy Veins, or 10 points Arcane. Do with the last point as you wish. Don't matter too much.

I heartily recommend everyone keeps putting the 2 points into Arcane Subtlety, by simple fact of the 40% arcane threat reduction. Will help with AoE fights, if they're called for.

The frost tree is practically garbage raid fire wise, you're only really there for 4 talent points. 3 in Elemental Precision, and 1 in Icy Veins. The rest, we could really care less. I put 2 in imp. Frostbolt, because the other option sucks so hard it makes Bill Clinto raise his eyebrows.
Tier 2, 2 points went into Improved Frost Nova, and the other 3 into the 15% chance to root. Imp. As I do a lot of random PvP in my spare time, stuff like rank 1 frostbolt does get used frequently, so the 15% root there is noice to have. 1 second snare, or a 1.3 second snare that has a 15% chance to root? I went with the latter.

Now, as to Icy Veins itself. To put it bluntly, you DO NOT want to spec to get this right as you start you're raiding career. Why? Because you're mana pool won't survive.
Putting 10 points into Arcane nabs you Clearcast, which essentially gives you a 10% mana efficiency boost. Icy Veins gives you a DPS boost, but at the cost that you are, essentially, using 20% more mana for those 20 seconds. If you're mana pool is a little on the low side, Icy Veins will see you going OOM disturbingly often.
Stick with Clearcast until you have at least 8500 mana with Arcane Intellect up. Shouldn't be hard, but there ya go. Once you have about that much mana, snag Icy Veins, have a sexy 3 minute cooldown, and make sure you're using your brand new mana gems often =D

Speaking of those brand new mana gems, they are some might fine stuff.

See, the top level gems now come with "charges". A single mana gem can be used 3 times, meaning that over longer fights, you don't have to downrank your gems, simply use the same best one over and over again.
Oh! And the amount of mana it restores has been buffed, too, so it restores the same amount of mana as Super Mana Pots.

The mage community has been complaining about mana efficiency for quite some time. To put it bluntly, we run through mana much faster than any other mana-based class, with the notable exception of Shadow Priests. Each mana using class has a way to restore mana, and up until these last couple of patches, the mages was the worst. We had an 8 minute cooldown spell that restored ~30% of our mana, and some rather crappy mana gems that could hardly rival the old school 60 raids style mana potions.

This has largely been fixed, thankfully. Evocation has been buffed right the hell out (shut yer trap, leveling mages, suck it up. What the 70's want, they get).
With the mana gem "fix", our mana pools are far more padded out then they were a short time ago.
And we have the druids to thank for it, I'm sure. Those crazy peeps have an unnerving ability to come to a forum, take all the gripes and QQ of an entire class forum, and condense it into a short, well-worded, intellectual, and excellently formatted post.

WTF, druids? WHAT THE FOOF?

Oh, and that means the PTRs are down...

Le sigh. Arenas then!

I was on a 2v2 for a while, paired with a BM hunter (Tauren, therefore "pre-made"). He was pretty good, we played 28 games, won 25 of them. To be fair, at least half of those involved a ret pally, so no surprise there. The 3 we lost were all the exact same team. Rogue and Warlock. Never encountered that kind of arena team before. Oh, well, we kept getting owned by those guys. Made me a sad panda.
Also went onto a 3v3 team with an Arms warrior and a Disc Priest. Very odd makeup, don't you think? Priest/Warrior/Mage... well, it was odd. Ended up with 1698 rating there, so no love lost, I guess. The Warrior was insane... only spoke Spanish. Made for some very interesting times.

Let me take the time to say this... Whoever that priest was, I love you. All of our wins were because of you, and your incredible skill. I am honored to have PvP'd with you. AoE fear bombs at precisely the right moments, heals that seemed to land the exact moment they were needed most... it felt like you were omnipresent.

Ehh, might do some more arena posting later. I might have to, considering that this might be the last arenas I do for a while. I have purchased the Orange Box, you see, and TF2 has consumed my mind.

Patch 2.3.2

Arena season 2 doth draw to an end, heralding the start of a new season of bloodshed and gnashing of teeth.
Less than a quarter moon's cycle from now, a new season of slaughter will begin.
And lo, in this season of killing, a voice descended from the heavens, and did announce in a blue voice:

"I am Eyonix, your Lord and Master. I speaketh thus!
There are a few nice improvements we're making to the mage class in patch 2.3.2 (a small patch that will be on the public test realms soon) and we wanted to share them with you. First, we'll start out with two changes affecting all mages. Ice block will become a core ability, trainable by all mages at level 30. Additionally, conjure mana (rank 6) will restore 1800-3000 mana and will now have three charges, meaning you can use it three times before having to create a new one.

To be sure we're clear here, yes, the same cooldown will still apply between usages. :P

Cold snap will be moved to Ice block's position in the talent tree and its cooldown will be reduced. As a side note, it will no longer reset the cooldown on fire ward. Moving in to Cold snap's spot will be a brand new ability called Icy Veins. This new ability will decrease casting time for all spells by 20% and increases the chance that chilling effects freeze the target by 25%. It's an active ability, lasting 20 seconds and has a 3 minute cooldown."

And there was much rejoicing.

Ok, first off, I would like to say the following.

TRAINABLE ICE BLOCK BITCHEZ!!

So. Let's have a look at how this all plays out.

First off, the change to mana gems is very, very nice. Blizzard apparently does listen to the community, and the mages issues with mana seems to have been heard rather nicely. They already fixed evocate, a joyous change that was only dreaded by those mages that stacked spirit (/mock).
And now they're fixing mana gems. Making them restore a far heftier chunk of mana, and giving it multiple charges.
Oh, God, multiple charges. That is a very sexy mana gem now. Now if only I could trade them to the healers in the raid group, I'd leap for joy. As it is I can only bounce up and down happily.

Ok, now to the meat.

Icy Veins.

Mmmmm..... tasty.
20% reduction in cast speed, and 25% increased chance for freezing. Will this be QQ'd about by other classes? Hellz yes it will. Will mages rejoice? Hellz yes we will.

Let's look at it practically.

Let's say you cast Frostbolt. It has a 2.5 second cast time, and a 15% chance to freeze the target it hits.
Activate Ice Veins, and that frostbolt now has a 2 second cast time, and a 40% chance to freeze. Therefore, in a 20 second window, you can cast 10 frostbolts, rather than 8.
And of those ten, roughly half of them will freeze your target to the ground.
And every time that happens, you can unload with a Frostbolt/Ice Lance shatter combo.

If Blizzard renamed this ability from "Icy Veins" to "God Mode", I wouldn't be surprised.
This ability, used right, is incredibly powerful.
Look at it this way:

This ability makes you do more damage. As well, any damage you do has a high chance of letting you do even more damage. And every time you do even more damage, you have a high chance of being able to do more damage. And so on, and so forth.

I'll give you a paper doll example.
Let's assume frostbolt hits for 1500, crits for 3000. Ice Lance hits for 1000, and crits for 2000.

Say you see some random mob. You activate Icy Veins and fire off a frostbolt. It hits the mob for 1500, no root. 2 seconds have gone by.
So you cast frostbolt again. This time it roots. (1500 + 1500 = 3000 damage so far) 4 seconds have gone by.
You cast frostbolt again, and add Ice Lance at the end to get a shatter. They both crit, for a total of 5000 damage, putting your total damage dealt at 8000. 7.5 seconds have gone by.
You cast frostbolt again, it hits for 1500 (Total damage is now at 9500). 9.5 seconds have gone by. Freeze procs again.
Another Shatter combo. Frostbolt doesn't crit, Ice Lance does, but frostbolt procs Freeze again.

Now, at this point, only 13 seconds have gone by. You have dealt 13000 damage (thus putting your dps at 1000), and your target is rooted, ready to be struck with another Shatter combo.

So you see the power this will have?

It won't be quite this good in PvP, as you have to take into consideration that your opponent will try to ruin your fun. As well, you have to factor in diminishing returns into the whole root equation.
Realistically, after the first freeze, the second and third ones will only let you have time to get off a single Ice Lance. And the fourth will be immune... until 15 seconds from the first has gone by.
Since the ability lasts 20 seconds, you will be able to get a full on Shatter combo in at the end, and at the beginning. And a couple Ice Lance thingies in the middle.

Now, toss in Water Elemental anf Frost Nova into here, And you could easily be looking at keeping your target perma-rooted for almost 20 seconds.
(Permafrost, W/E's Freeze, and Frost Nova all have diminishing returns, but they are all on different timers at this time.)

When this hits the PTRs, I will be spending a LOT of time there.

Hell, I'll probably spend the cash to do this on live servers too. 'Cause it is, quite simply, that good.

And if you're a mage trying to do Arenas without speccing frost... after Icy Veins gets introduced, you have no choice. You must be frost... you just have to. No if's or but's, your speccing frost if you expect to get anywhere.

And to the rest of you... I hope your Paladin's Blessing of Freedom isn't on cooldown.

Courtesy of Bill Nye

Consider the following.


Tonight was patch night. 2.3 goes live, and the forums go wild.

Trainable Ice Block is in the code, but it is not implemented. Sadly, the devs are delaying this until 2.4, most likely to "rework" it to suit being a trainable skill. Warlocks were crying long and hard about how incredibly overpowered it would be that all mages would have Ice Block. Complain they did about how pointless there DoT spells would be against mages in PvP.
Somehow, they all failed to realize that any mage above 1650-1700 rating is Frost specced, and thus will have Ice Block. Thus rendering a warlocks DoT spells pointless.
If you're complaining abotu the arcane/fire mages having Ice Block and ruining your arenas... well, you're obviously bad enough at PvP that NOT ONLY are you unable to reach a bracket where EVERY MAGE has Ice Block, no matter what, but you have trouble fighting mages in the first place. I hate to say it, but... seriously, learn to play your warlock.
HOW is it possible for a decent 'lock to have difficulty versus a mage? You can strip our buffs, silence us, effectively CC us for seconds at a time while still damaging us, and our only defence against your cheap, effective, instant cast, no cool-down attacks is on a 4-minute timer that we need to spec for, that even with an 8-minute cooldown (that we need to spec for), we still have to wait 30 seconds to use again.
And did I mention that you guys have far more hitpoints than any mage does?
Nonetheless, you're whining is fruitless. We WILL get Trainable Ice Block, and there is nothing you can do about it.

Healers everywhere are cursing under their breath at the incredible boon to dps raiders that was axed for this patch. I've covered in previous posts how incredibly awesome Ice Block is in any raid/instance environment.
It solves a lot of headaches, makes the healers job far easier, and reduces a great deal of strain from the raid as a whole.
If you can't understand that, you've never been in a situation where a squishy was at risk.
If you aren't frost, your survival options are as follows:




So you see the problem?

Coefficient taxes are gone, thus resulting in a very nice boost for frost and fire mages everywhere. I've already done the testing (FINALLY!) on Dr. Boom.
With a flat +damage of 500, Fireball's DPS went up by almost 100! And a +100 dps increase in Fireball is nothing to sneeze at.
Keep in mind that excludes crits, and only takes into account a lousy spell damage of 500. Oh, and the Scorch debuff was not stacked, either.

Ritual of Refreshment is nice, but I would deeply appreciate a better name, and maybe a graphic that doesn't look so... futuristic hard trance refreshment table. It seriously looks like their should be a large fat man in the background DJ'ing up some music that goes something like "NNtz NNtz NNtz NNtz NNtz"

And here is something incredibly overpowered that I think might get hotfixed and/or nerfed.

Are you, the blog-going reader, aware that Polymorph does not require the mage to be facing the target he is Polymorphing? There has to be Line of Sight, but the target can still be Sheeped even if it is 25 yards directly behind the mage.

Thank you.
For considering the preceding.

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.

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:

●████▄▄▄██▄▄▄▄▄▄▄---===
▄▄=████████=▄_
[███TANKADIN████████]►
[☼|☼|☼|☼|☼|☼|☼|☼|☼|☼]

Goddamn Typos!!

So, as it turns out, the amount of honor gained from the Daily PvP Quests was a type.

Rather than giving 4000 honor, apparently it only gives 400 honor.

Well.

Ain't that a serious letdown.


As Flirt so calmly pointed out in his comment on the last post (it is a "he", right?), the temporary health gain is not that great. Keep in mind this is according to a Paladin.
REBUTTAL.
Mages are among the lowest Stamina classes in the game. We also have no way to heal ourselves, outside of first aid/cannibalize.
Sure, the hp is timed, and can be counteracted by someone who's watching the second timer intelligently.
But to a mage, this is big. It really is.

[The following are overly exaggerated reactions used primarily as example and humor]
Paladin: "1750 life? Pfft. Flash of Light beyotch"
Warrior: "1750 life? Will it make my butt look big?"
Druid: *See warrior's response, but the latter question is asked rhetorically*
Priest: "Oooh! Shiny! Awww, it doesn't stack with + healing? /huff /pout"
Hunter: "Whats this 'Arena' you speak of?"
Warlock: "1750 life? DEATHCOILDRAINLIFEFEARLOLOLOL *wonders why he doesn't have any friends*"
Rogue:
Shaman: "1750 life? Pfeh, Lesser Healing Wave, beyotch *secretly farms AV for it*"
Mages: "OMGOMG I'm dying HALP! *Sheeps mob* I hope that doesn't break! First aid for the love of God! Ack! Aggro! Noo! /smush"

To me, it's a warrior's Last Stand, but I can use it whenever.
To me, it's a warlocks healthstone, sans the warlock.

With no self healz, and enough hp to get 4 shotted by crit-heavy arms warrior, as a mage, I am overjoyed at any opportunity to make my hps go in a direction that is filling my health bar.

To you healers I say, Pfft! Pffft I say!

Show me a mage who can heal himself, and I'll show you an Undead Warlock in disguise.

Holy PvP Trinkets, Batman!

Just hitting the PTR are brand, spanking new PvP trinkets. Epics, dont'cha know.

There are five of them, only 2 of which are applicable to mages.

[Battlemaster's Audacity] and [Battlemaster's Depravity].

And no, those don't link to anything. But purplez are awesome, yes?

Anyways.

Audacity increases damage done by 47, and Depravity improves spell crit rating by 40.
Think thats all well and awesome? Check this out:

Use: Increases maximum health by 1750 for 15 sec.

Now, if you're sitting there saying "HOLY FUCKING ZOMG", you, sir, like to PvP.
Essentially, what we have here is a trinket that supplies a solid boost to spell damage/crit, and an on use +175 stamina.
This, my friends, is the MECCA of PvP trinkets. I don't care what you say about the Elementals Deck, Bloodscryer Gem, Vengeance of the Illidari, whatever, THIS TRINKET IS FAR BETTER.

However. It will cost you a great deal to get your grubby little hands on this trinket of golden awesome.
Thirty thousand honor and 40 AV marks, to be precise.
Still worth it? Fuck yes.
I don't even need to explain myself, do I? C'mon! 1750 hitpoints! Do you have any idea how amazingly powerful that is?
Ok, yeah, totally useless in PvE, and somewhat limited in battlegrounds, but in arenas... this could quickly become a make-or-break trinket, especially for low stamina classes (READ: MAGES).
And besides, 47 spell damage is incredibly spiffy for a trinket slot. 40 crit... just not worth it. Really.

Crit rating is already one of the worst stats you can stack for arenas. If you're going to take the time and effort to gather 30k honor, and waste it on the crit version of this gem... please, resign from this class immediately. There is NO LOGICAL REASON to choose crit over + spell damage.
Resilience eliminates your crit rating. People in arenas have a lot of resilience. Therefore your crit rating is moot. If you stack crit, you negate their resilience... well, at least part of it. You negate their defence against being hit with a crit. When you do crit, you still suffer quite a loss of damage through the same resilience.
Spell damage, however, is mitigated by stamina. Stamina is what keeps your opponent alive, it gives them hit points. The more damage you do, the faster they die. Therefore the more + spell damage you have, the faster they die.
Crits are a random occurence. You cannot depend on them for sufficient damage, and it is counter-acted by a static stat that doesn't directly effect how fast the target is killed. Spell damage is a constant. You can always depend on it to do damage, and it is counter-acted by a stat that directly effects how fast a target is killed.
Besides, if you try and stack crit, you are gimping yourself. You sacrifice stamina, your own resilience, spell damage, and intellect, just to counter-act resilience.

So. Go with the +47 spell damage trinket. You cannot go wrong with it.

Also, there is a sudden change to what the PvP Daily Quests give you.
These quest used to award 11g99s, about 2k honor, and some marks of honor from whatever the instance was for.
Now, the marks have been dropped... in favor of another 2k honor.

Can we get a hell yes?

S1 gear going for honor, brand new trinkets costing a boatload of honor...

My business is puntin' gnomes, and business is good.

I want to shoot something

I'm in one of those moods.

You know the one where it's incredibly difficult to restrain yourself from throttling children?
The one where, if you lacked self-control, would cause drunken sailors to blush at your profanity?

Yes, one of those moods.

There are two sides to Patch 2.3 for mages. The PvP side, and the PvE side.
The PvE side is chock full of awesome stuff, all well-deserved and desperately needed.

And the PvP side... well, it only gets worse with every adjustment that's announced.

For those who don't know, arenas are about survivability. Of the three mage specs, only ONLY only Frost spec has ANY survivability. By the simple nature of arenas, frost is the only spec that is viable AT ALL in the arenas.
Thus, any mage who wishes to participate in the arenas, and win the majority of the time, MUST spec frost.

Now, hands up here. Can anyone tell me which Mage tree has been the most heavily nerfed? Anyone at all?
If you guessed frost, you got it!

In any patch, Frost has either been ignored or nerfed (with one excpetion). The release of the Burning Crusade saw the only buffs frost ever receieved, namely Ice Lance and Water Elemental. Ice Lance was promptly nerfed the next patch, and the water elemental took 2 patches before it would function properly.
Thankfully, pre-TBC us frost mages were largely ignored (with the noteable exception of Patch 1.4, when frost nova was put on diminishing returns. This didn't really effect much at the time, just made it so mages couldn't stagger Frost Nova. Nowadays, if you have two mages in an arena, this hurts a LOT). In Patch 1.11 we recieved a little love, with Cone of Cold getting more damage and the introduction of "Winter's Chill"

Then TBC hit. Frost mages rejoiced at what we had. Water Elemental? Ice Lance? HELL YES! Melee classes stood no chance in the path of our fury, and we finally had a way to better combat those pesky hunters and warlocks. With these might fine tools in our arsenal, we had some incredibly potent burst damage. The term "SHATTER" was born. You could hit a single target 2-3 times with a single Ice Lance, making the damage caused by frost mages feared by pretty much anyone.
And this was rightly so. "We're mages" we thought, "You can't spell 'Damage' without 'Mage'"
And so we reveled in our glory, finally the masters of ranged damage the WoW handbook always said we were supposed to be.

And that patch 2.0 hit.

Increased the chance Frozen effects are broken when the target is critically struck by a spell.

To the layperson, this means you get 1 (One) crit per Frozen effect. Gone were the days of hitting someone with an Ice Lance twice. The mages responsible for this nerf (the ones who'd do nothing but spam Frost Nova and Ice Lance) were quietly murdered and raped (in that order) in their sleep. In front of their family and friends.
The term "SHATTER" grew in popularity, as now the standard manuever was to time a frostbolt/ice lance together to strike at the same time.
Frost's burst took a heavy hit, but hey, we're ok with that. We're not happy, but at least we still have incredible survivability. Hell, it even made sense. In the days before Ice Lance, you would need to have the target remain rooted to take a second frostbolt as a crit. With Ice Lance, that wasn't needed. Generally, two crits off a root had always been the rule. It's just now, we got both off in 3 seconds rather than 6.

Patch 2.1 saw some more nerfs, and some serious shakeups. (We got a new Ice Barrier, the only positive thing about this patch.)
Arctic Winds was changed to also increase frost damage by 1-5%, thus forcing frost mages world-wide to respec to get this now mandatory talent
Frostbite, too, was put on diminishing returns. Again, no noticeable effect for a single mage, but it hurt any sitation where more than one frost mage existed. There was a lot of QQ about this sharing DR with Frost Nova, which proved incorrect. They had separate DR's, which shut the forums up, at least until they scrolled down in the patch notes.
And... patch 2.1 saw the introduction of Hypothermia into the game.

We were stunned. Shocked. Astonished. And (rightfully so) PISSED RIGHT THE HELL OFF.

The developers have since explained that Hypothermia is supposed to prevent the mage using Ice Block twice against the same opponent.

But wait, there's more! (Jump to patch 2.3)

NOW they're INCREASING the duration of Hypothermia.

The reasoning is provided quite clearly by Eyonix:

[quote]We were finding that the current duration of hypothermia was simply not long enough. Mages were easily able to buy the time they needed to iceblock a second time when fighting the same opponent. This is basically what we were looking to prevent. I understand that this isn't the answer you're looking for, but these are the facts.[/quote]



Mull that around in your head for a while.

Thats ok, I can wait.

So... Mages were able to iceblock a second time when fighting the same opponent... this is what we were looking to prevent...

Mages were able to survive long enough to continue surviving against an opponent... who survived right along with them... without iceblock...

You see what this means yet?

Figured it out?

You see us mages were living too long. We were suriviving against our opponent for longer than 30 seconds.
Apparently that is unacceptable. Apparently, we are not supposed to live long enough to iceblock again on the same person.

This other person seems able to live those 30 seconds. Yet nothing is done to try and shorten their lifespan, only ours.

What makes us so special?

What makes it so fucking important to make sure we die before our target does?

What gives you the fucking nerve to do this to us?

We are already the least survivable class in the game. It is a downright struggle to stay alive no matter what we are doing.

And now... you decide we're living too long in PvP. So you throw this at us.

FUCK. YOU.

Why don't you just have us automatically die after 30 seconds? This is what you're trying to do to us, so why not come right out and do it?


Oh. Yeah. One other thing. The amount of armor on the Mage Arena gear is being halved.

So.

We were told that we were doing too much damage. Us. Mages. Our very meaning for existence was nerfed.
Then we're told we're not dying, like we're supposed to. So they make it easier for stuff to kill us efficiently.
They halve the armor on the Arena gear, which works out to any physical damage attacker gaining 4.7% more damage against us.


RECAP

Mages are forced to spec frost to be competitive in arenas, due to its survivability.
The amount of damage a frost mage can dish out is nerfed.
This is closely followed by the survivability of frost being heavily nerfed.

For the love of GOD someone tell me the fucking logic here.

Welfare Epix

The idea of welfare epix has been tossed around for a while. Basically, it's the idea of a character expending little effort to get shiny new purple gear.

The idea first came to be (correct me if I'm wrong) when the hardcore Arena players, namely those who devoted hours every week with very high ratings, saw people who's arena teams had all-time high scores of 1400 walking around with the same gear they had.
So, natch, they cried fowl. 2 really crappy players could get together, lose 10 times a week, and accrue arena points, then turn them in to get FANTASTIC gear for... well, nothing. Hell, I got the S2 gloves from a 1300 rated team.
Hence the term "Welfare".

Hence also the changes in arena gear in 2.3.

In 2.3, you (YOU) [you] have your own personal arena rating based on the matches you play in.

You're on a 2v2 with 3 people, let's say Hunter, Mage, Paladin. The Hunter and Paladin tend to lose every match, but the Mage and Paladin tend to win every match.
So, the arena team itself will have a passable score, maybe in the 1400-1600 range. Of that, the hunter will have a much lower rating (think 1200-) because he loses a lot. The mage will have a much higher rating (think 1800+) because he wins a lot.
Ok, most of that was pulled out of my ass, but you get the principle.
So, by introducing personal ratings, and making it so some gear requires you to have a certain rating, the S3 gear is much more prestigious than previous seasons.
So the top Arena players will get the respect that they deserve, and the scrubs they wipe the floor with will get... let's have a look at what we scrubs get, shall we?

With the ontroduction of Season 3, the other season gear gets a wee bit cheaper. S2 gets cheaper point costs, and S1 (brace yourselves) goes onto the Honor point system.

My reaction is as follows:

"HOLY SHIT"

So... Blizzard decides to take away Welfare Epix by forcing you to have a personal ranking to wear the S3 items, but then goes around and hands older Epix straight to the honor system?

Anyone with any intelligence is spending all day inside AV, maxing out their honor. AV is, right now, a Zerg game, with tons of honor to be had, very very quickly.
We're talking hundreds of honor per hour, easily. My personal best rate was 3.4k honor in a single hour.

So, with a good solid week of playing AV (or a single honor weekend), I could pretty much get any and all the S1 arena gear.

I think the meaning of "Welfare Epix" just got a whole lot more... welfare...like...ish?

So, do I farm honor until my eyes fall out, and pick up S1 arena gear, causing me to be the laughing stock of PvP'ers everywhere, or do I turn up my nose and purposefully gimp myself with a Steamvaults quest reward for a hat?
Let's do some quick comparisons, shall we? Let's see the numbers!

HEAD
Hydromancer Headwrap --> Gladiator
+4 Spell Damage
+33 Stamina
-12 Intellect
+30 Resilience
(No change in sockets, although the Glad comes with a Red one)

PANTS
Imbued Netherweave (lol) --> Gladiator
+12 Spell Damage
+15 Stamina
-1 Intellect
+30 Resilience

CHEST
Frozen Shadoweave --> Gladiator
-40 Spell Damage
+21 Stamina
-2 Intellect
+24 Resilience
(And an additional socket, and a red socket =D)

SHOULDER
Frozen Shadoweave --> Gladiator
-18 Spell damage
+21 Stamina
-2 Intellect
+21 Resilience

So, replacing my two cruddy blues will net me 16 more spell damage, 48 stamina, 60 Resilience, and a loss of 13 Intellect. Well, this is a no-brainer. Two pieces of Welfare S1 coming right up.
The case of the Frozen Shadoweave stuff is definitely a little trickier. I'd lose 58 spell damage and 4 Intellect, but gain 42 stamina and 45 resilience.

So, we have to look at gems to make up our minds. To put it bluntly, I get more gems out of the Gladiator stuff. I get an extra red socket, which could lessen the damage I lose, and toss even more resilience gems into those yellow sockets. AND I get a nice set bonus of 35 resilience.
By replacing all of my gear with S1 Welfare stuff, I could seriously amp up my hitpoint pool, and easily add 140 Resilience!! And that's not including gems!

And please note that this does not take Crit rating into the equation AT ALL. I don't need it, but there it is. Replace those four pieces, and I'm looking at 84 crit rating. Thats... pretty nice.

I'll run this past a few people I know, but it's looking like I'll be snagging me some welfare epix. At least two, anyways.

See ya in AV. I'll be the one killing Mancuso, Randoplh, and that dwarf Stout guy at the same time.

I can haz moar daily quests??!?!?1

SWEEPING CHANGES.

Ok, not really, but there are some very large changes in regards to battlegrounds in patch 2.3

Daily quests have been added targeting a random battleground for that day

Hmm... this could go either way. On the one hand, it provides hard-core PvP'ers a way to earn gold doing what they love to do best. Will this also serve to increase reputation with those said factions? Could it be that I won't have to cap the flag in Warsong 1133 times to hit Exalted? Perhaps that title of 'Conqueror' isn't as far away as it used to be...
On the other hand, this means that the gold farmer type people are going to be clogging up my battlegrounds... this, again, is a mix. I could end up in an Arathi with 7 people horde side only there for the cash... or maybe most of alliance side is only there for the cash. Each daily quest seems simple enough “Win the battleground, get 12 gold!”
Either way you look at it, every battleground could be full of the nubs you see running around AV, freaking out when Alliance caps snowfall.
Will I get essentially free kills from a druid in 65 greens? Or will I be hampered when my whole team decides to zerg mines, and /dance because that was the daily quest?
Gonna have to delve into the PTR's to test this one out... Speaking of which, Dr. Boom data is ridiculously hard to get off the PTR’s. We’re talking competition from 6 or 7 other people. AT FOUR IN THE MORNING.

Player's will now be able to cast spells for free for a few seconds after being resurrected, and before a battleground begins.

I cannot believe how awesome that is. Typically, after rezzing, I'd just pop Molten and hop right back into the fray. With this, I could hit every self-buff I have. You get about 5 seconds of free casting. And that pre-BG free spellcast is nothing short of awesome. I think I'll go spam Ritual of Refreshment because I can.

ALTERAC VALLEY

Hoo boy, some major changes here.

1. Additional Warmasters no longer report for duty upon destroying an enemy tower. However, enemy warmasters still despawn on destroying the associated tower. Easier boss pulls ftw?
2. All Warmasters are linked to each other and their respective generals, and can no longer be pulled individually. No more Vanndar only pulls? Aww... *single tear*
3. Honor from capturing towers has been increased. Presumably, this is to counter the following change:
4. No more Commanders and Lieutenants. While the patch notes state this much more delicately, the fact is simple. Mancuso, Randolph, Murp, all those wonderful elite honor farms are hereby removed. Such a pity, considering solo'ing one of those was an excellent way for a young mage to test his kiting skills. This, I think, will prove to be a general decrease in the amount of honor gained from an AV. I dont care what this says:
5. Bonus honor is only given in battle for destroying enemy towers and killing the captain (Read, That Orc Dude / Annoying Blonde Mage). Upon conclusion of the battle, bonus honor is given fro surviving towers and surviving captain. Now would be a good time to mention the new mechanics of AV.
6. Horde and Alliance have a limited number of reinforcements avaliable. This number is reduced by player death, loss of towers, captain deaths. If the reinforcements reach zero, that team loses. If the General dies, reinforcements default to zero. Basically, this is going to turn AV into a prolonged battle of attrition. The constant Zerg rush of the current AV will pretty much die off completely. Alliance could win the whole game by turtling at that damn bridge. A fear-bomb, causing the opposing team to wipe on Drek'Thar could hugely swing the game in Horde's favor.

Look at it this way. With these changes, AV is going to return to the old days, where AV could go on for hours. The difference is, with the reinforcement cap, it will have the same kind of "time limit" that EotS and Arathi have (Warsong, sadly, still lacks this time limit). We're going to get a feel for the new AV in Patch 2.3 here, and report back our findings. Should be interesting to see if the new AV turns into a bottle-necked war of attrition (think First World War) or game that requires some serious coordination and tactics (think a Starcraft 2v2 team match). The way the patch notes are making it look, we're going to get honor based on what we have left at the end. So, the longer the battle goes, the more stuff gets asploded, the less honor we get.

Goodbye Honor Cow.

Additional bonus honor is now awarded upon completion of Arathi Basin, Eye of the Storm and Warsong Gulch.
So does this mean that AV will not be the honor-cow it is now? Will we see Arathi and the rest of them be competitive from an honor/hour perspective? We'll have to give this a run on the PTRs as well. Could be, we're going to look at a lot more PvP gear making the rounds.

Hmm... PvP epix. We need a discussion on that too. Look for it later this week : Welfare Epix.

A swift kick in the pants (Patch 2.3)

Patch 2.3 is on the way, and as any serious wow blogger must do, here is my thoughts on it.

Ritual of Refreshment will allow players to pick up their own stacks of food and water

Any mage that complains about this deserves a swift kick in the pants. There is no downside to this. It summons mannabiscuits, which restore both HP and MP. Each Ritual has 50 charges. The fact that it costs a reagent is a minor inconvenience to an otherwise great, and long overdue, spell. I don't care what some mageholes say, the ability to get food/water to an entire raid group in one spell is fantastic. If you're running Gruul's, which would you rather do...
1 - Summon a stack of food/water for every single member of the raid.
2 - Cast one spell, and let everyone else take what they need.

Seems obvious to me.

Damage coefficient reduction removed from Improved Fireball and Improved Frostbolt

FANTASTIC. It's about time this senseless nerf was removed. Mages doing too much damage, my sweaty ass. Over half of "damage" IS "mage" for crying out loud. While this will not have much of an impact in PvP, a 10% increase in damage is still nothing to sneeze at. In PvE, especially high-end raiding, this could have a huge impact. Fire will climb right back up those DPS charts (assuming standard rotation of Scorchx5, fireballx2). Raiding mages, rejoice. Unless your Arcane, in which case you're going to be looking jealously at those fire mages again. Sorry 'bout that. And for any frost mages in the PvE area, you will notice this right away, since frostbolt is about the only spell cast in an instance.

Evocation changed to restore 15% of your total mana every 2 seconds

Thank you, so very very much! As it stands right now, 8.5k mana and no + spirit, I get 3k mana from evocate. Embarrasingly sad for an 8 minute cooldown. This new way will grant me 5.1k, which is far better, but still leaves evocate as "meh". I mean, its an 8-minute cooldown! Why not have it restore our entire mana bar? It's channeled and can be interrupted by literally anything. How is it overpowered to have it simply restore 25% of our mana every 2 seconds?

Arcane Meditation increased to 10/20/30% mana regeneration

. . . ? Ok, now I'm just confused. The new evocation basically says "Ok, sorry about spirit there. You'll never need it again". This new change says "STACK AS MUCH SPIRIT AS POSSIBLE" Confusing, yes? Nonetheless, a very solid buff (arcane mages rejoice!).

Ice Barrior gains additional benefit from spell damage bonuses

Learn to spell, Drysc. Anyways, on the surface this looks cool. But lets dig deeper... The base damage absorbed by Ice Barrier is going down, and will benefit from (correct me if I'm wrong) 10% of bonus frost damage. For me, at a sad amount of +625 frost damage, this lands me a nice... 62 damage absorbed. Woo. Awesome.
This will provide some much needed scalability to this spell, but depending on how much + damage you have, ranges anywhere from a mild nerf to a huge buff. If there are any raiding frost mages out there with 1200+ spell damage, congrats. Your Ice Barriers will be the envy of everyone.

Fire Ward and Frost Ward now gain additional benefit from spell damage bonuses

See Ice Barrier above. Hazzah Scalability, boo for reduction in base damage absorbed.

Detect Magic removed, all players will see their target's beneficial effects at all times

Very, very interesting. This will certainly shake stuff up on the PvP scene. Being able to see all positive buffs will provide a LOT of information about your opponent. In a 3v3 arena, and two peeps are visible? Check 'em out. What buffs they got? Arcane Intellect, and no mage? He popped Invis, prepare for imminent nukeage. Mark of the Wild? Can't see a druid? Kitty is incoming. No out of place buffs? Paladins, beware, there's a rogue behind you.
As for mages in specific, some are lamenting the passing of this debuff. Gone are the days of detect magic/polymorph macros. Now paladins can debuff their allies at will, blah blah blah. Shut the hell up. Seriously. If you see a Paladin and a warrior running at you, who do you polymorph? If you answered Warrior, you failed. Ice Lance the warrior to prevent Charge, then sheep the Paladin. Then unload an instant or two on the warrior (Cone of cold is best). This forces the paladin to bubble/trinket to keep his warrior buddy alive. Then you kill the Paladin. Simple. Put it quite simply, paladins can heal one thing at a time. Themselves or someone else. Attack the paladin's friend, he heals his friend. Attack the paladin, he heals himself. Make sense? Hit the warrior, pally will try and save him. Thats your cue to mess that plate-wearing healbot up.
Detect Magic was only ever used as a way to protect a sheep. Detect Magic/Polymorph would tie a mage up, easily, for 3 seconds. And for what? To keep an opponent player sheeped for an extra few seconds, while waiting for a cleanse/dispel magic/somethinglikethat.
And who has enough time to spend a GCD on Detect Magic in the smaller arenas anyways?
This change will be, basically, an inconvenience to mages in 5v5, where they could afford the time to spend 3 seconds on sheeping a target.
This change will go largely unnoticed in 2v2's and 3v3's. Right now, it's simply too much time spent on a single polymorph. Time that should be, nay, NEEDS to be spent elsewhere.

There are a couple of other changes in 2.3 that are pertinent. The most alarming change is this:
Arcane Shot will dispel one magic effect in addition to its normal damage

Well, so much for frost being able to fight hunters. "You're overreacting!" No, no I'm not. As frost, how you fight a hunter is pretty much always set. As you get in close, you unload with at least 2 instants (fireblast, cone of cold), root them (by them I mean hunter and pet). Sheep the pet if you have time. Get to Deadzone. Shatter combo. Instants again. If they're still alive at this point, try to get another frostbolt off while waiting for an instant to finish its cooldown. Or, if you have the incredibly useful WE out, root 'em again, and repeat the Shatter combo.
In order for this scenario to work, you have to assume some things:
Assumption #1 - the hunter is not beast master spec, and if he is, BigRedSquishyKiller is on cooldown
Assumption #2 - the hunter is not marksman spec, and if he is, Scattershot is on cooldown.
Assumption #3 - you have Ice Barrier up, so the hunter doesn't kick your ass before you can start unloading some damage.
Ice Barrier is an incredible tool against hunters. At the very least, it allows us frosties to close to dead zone without getting too banged up. At best, we get an uninterrupted frostbolt.
If Arcane shot destroys my precious Ice Barrier, there is very little chance I'll win. No longer is having all my cooldowns and WE out the best scenario, it is the only scenario, and contingent on the hunter not having scattershot or any ability that breaks a root.
For arcane, this also can have a huge impact. How'd you like to see Arcane Power, a 3 minute cooldown of sheer awesome, get eaten by a glowing arrow on a 6 second cooldown? Or better yet, watch Presence of Mind get dispelled.
Fire mages, this won't change anything. Ok, nevermind, kiss goodbye to combustion, yet another 3 minute cooldown defeated by a shiny, pointy stick.
Well, hey, at least we get spellsteal. Situational and very expensive. Woot. /wrists
So it seems I'm going back to the days of getting my ass kicked by hunters again.

One other change I want to talk about before wrapping this up. Blizzard is changing the way the servers communicate with the client, effectively removing the need for /stopcasting macros, unless you actually want to stop the spell. Again, the mage forums are alight with people crying about how this effectively nerfs Shatter combo, Goodbye super burst damage, all this stuff.
So far, Dr. Boom tests on the PTR compared to the real servers seem to be producing... no real result. I'll post the data later, right now, it looks like mages are, once again, whining about nothing.

Oh, and one other thing... "Hypothermia" is being increased in duration to 45 seconds.

*Goes and swears in a corner*

Blizzard has kicked me in the balls, and my life is pain. Mechanics like this shouldn't even exist in competitive PvP. Arenas are, in essence, a battle of cooldowns. Forcing people to wait even more time to use a cooldown is simply ridiculous in a competitive environment.
Mechanics such as Hypothermia, Weakened Soul, Forbearance... they simply shouldn't exist.

IN CONCLUSION

2.3

PvE = HUGE THUMBS UP

PvP = Swift kick in the pants