PoM Pyro For Nubs

In the old days, back when level 70's were still fresh and the majority of us were still getting boned in Hellfire or goofing off in Nagrand, the mage forums were alive with cries and screaming about PoM Pyro.
Specifically, the Arcane Power + Presence of Mind + Pyroblast + Damage Trinket that was causing mages to output incredibly high numbers with a single spell. Especially when the thing crit. (See above picture)
Many, many people called for nerfs, for cooldown to Pyroblast, for anything and everything to lower the damage that mages can output.

Idiots, the lot of them.

The forums have quited down about this issue, but roughly once or twice a day, a new thread pops up complaining about PoM Pyro, complaining about being one shot, on and on and on.

Now, I hate to take the standpoint of many other trolls, but I don't really have a choice here.

Y'all are idiots. Seriously, L2play, nub.

You will only ever get hit by incedibly high amounts of damage from PoM Pyro in the following situations:

1) You are an idiot, and do not know how to play or gear for PvP.

2) You have yet to spend enough time gathering resilience, and you are squishy and mine eyes. And when thou art squishy, thou gettest squished.

First off, every class in the game has options to survive / become completely immune to a Pyroblast. You might not always have these options avaliable to you, but then again, the mage is not always able to PoM Pyro you for insane amounts of damage.

Druids have little choice but to take the damage and hope for the best. Bear form can take an incredible beating, and you always have the options of Heal over Time spells. If a druid's reaction time is fast enough (which it will be if your any good at PvP), you will be able to shrug off a Pyro without much, if any, difficulty.
Of course, if you're a Bad Druid, you will get rofl-stomped

Warriors have a load of hitpoints avaliable to them, and most of them will simply raise their eye-brows at Pyroblast. Spell-reflect is also avaliable to be used, and quick warriors can knock up a spellreflect on a PoM Pyro fast retro-actively.

Paladins can bubble, and are usually in the same boat as Warriors HP-wise. No, you will not always have bubble avaliable to you, but you will always be able to heal yourself. And when our Counterspell is on cooldown, there is shit all we can do to stop you. The fact is, you're a Paladin. You can survive a Pyro. Not a problem.

Rogues can CloS. Oh, look, no damage. And don't complain about that being on cooldown. It's 1 bloody minute. You have that sucker ready to go, don't you? I have never, ever fought a rogue (since CloS became trainable, mind you) that was not able to pop CloS while fighting me. And if you're Subtlety spec (I see you little blink-stealing buggers), then you probably won't be killed by Pyro anyways. The laws of gambling and cheat death are in your favor.

Fellow mages can shield themself, Spellsteal Presence of Mind, Arcane Power, whatever, Ice Block themselves, even silence the other mage to prevent a Pyro. There are a lot of options avaliable to cut down on some of the damage, avoid the damage for a while, or completely avoid it.

Warlocks are strange in that some of them can take the damage, some can't. Some will be totally immune to fire damage for a while, some will simply be impossible to get high damage with (Soul Link, dontchaknow?), and some will simply deathcoil/chain fear/pinkhearts you when they see major cooldowns being used. Or spell lock you. Or simply eat your Arcane Power/Presence of Mind. Warlocks quick on the uptake will be like "What is this mage doing? Arcane Power? /sigh... spell lock... deathcoil... hrm, that was fun, wasn't it, mister wasted 3 minute cooldowns?"
Some warlocks simply will not have the reaction speed/spec, and will eat a lot of damage. Which they'll usually shrug off anyway, use a health stone, or fear / drain life you. Whatever they're into, I guess.

Priests are one of the more vulnerable classes to a successful PoM Pyro. They only have one lousy bubble, which even in its buffed form, can be knocked aside rather quickly. Specced into Disc, the priest will be hurting the mage substantially as well, but thats not much of a consolation when you suddenly eat 4k damage. A priest practically has to be disc spec to survive a PoM Pyro, because Pain Suppression / Improved MiniBubble are simply that good. Holy is pretty much boned, as is Shadow. Its certainly survivable, they are just a wee bit more vulnerable than other classes.

Shaman can have a lot of trouble with PoM Pyros. They only have one reliable way to avoid it, and thats Grounding Totem. Which the mage will probably shoot an Ice Lance at. /shrug. Without that, you are naked to the massive damage. At this point, only earth shield and praying Counterspell is on cooldown can save you. Thats no fault of your own, its just you class doesn't do good againt Mages.

Hunters are the worst off class versus a PoM Pyro. They're only defence, Feign Death, is little more than a distraction that might buy a second, or two if the mage is slow on the uptake. The only real defence hunters have is to try and keep the mage locked down as much as possible. Scatter shot, Wyvern Sting, Intimidation, even Arcane Shot and hope it dispells something important.

But even if you don't have the cooldowns ready to go, even if you don't have any real defences against a PoM Pyro, it should not be hard to shrug off the damage if you have any level of decent gear.
You're here to PvP, right? Then pick up some stats that are suitable for the job.

Pyroblast taking too much out of your hitpoints? Get more stamina. Pyroblast critting you for 7k? Grab some resilience, and watch that crit damage steadily fall.
Watch that 7k turn into 4k, assuming it crits at all anymore.

If you get the right gear, and all those shiny 3 minute cooldowns and 21, 31, 11 tier point talents will amount to is hitting for 2-3 thousand damage, and maybe critting for 4000-ish. Assuming it crits at all. And seriously? Thats not very much damage at all.
Literally any PvP spec (besides healers) can easily deal out that much without a lot of effort.

And just for speccing to get PoM Pyro, that mage is squishy as hell. We pay through the nose to get a crap load of damage, and watch it all amount to practically zilch thanks to Resilience.
A single Holy Light spell from a Paladin in any decent amount of healing gear will be able to heal up the entirety of a PoM Pyro.

In conclusion.

Stop whining. Learn to Play. Get some fuggin' resilience. PoM Pyro ain't that great, when you bother to build even a half-assed defence against it.

Ok, No More Roleplay

That was ugly. Really, really ugly.


Awesome things that have happened.

1. We got the Spellfire Belt
2. We finally reachd max skill in wands
3. Reached the Hit cap as arcane
4. Six months after getting it, my epic red gem of +12 spell damage has a home
5. Dinged 30 on an alt
6. Got epic boots!
7. Reached over 20% crit rate unbuffed
8. Hit Honored with the Sha'tari Skyguard
9. 300 Resilience in PvP gear. Woo!
   

I Try To Roleplay

After many months of playing a troll, I wondered what it would be like to roleplay one. Hmm....

"Yo, mon. I am Euripedes, and I am a mage. The forces of the arcane, and the elemental powers of fire and frost are at my control. I can destroy you in a blaze of fire at a whim. I can become immune to anything and everything, including gravity. I can even turn the most potent enemy into a cute wittle piggy.

So why, I ask, is the Darkspear tribe in such a horrible condition? Why is our entire society degraded into a tiny little hovel at the bottom of Durotar? We are trolls! We are strong! Why do we not take action?

*sigh*

I suppose there is something to be said for sacrificing oneself for the greater good. It is no longer about the Tribe, it is about the Horde. We have a Warchief now. We have blood brothers now, outside the tribe.
We are scarred peoples. The trolls used to weild far and widespread power. Our history is one of bloodshed, of betrayal, and death. Our empires were torn to pieces by the elves, by the humans, by even other trolls. We, the Darkspear tribe, have fallen very, very far. But we will have our revenge. Of all the members of the Horde, we are the only ones to not have a land to call our own.
The orcs are even more scarred than we trolls. Their entire race, used, abused, and tossed aside like a ratty rag. Yet they saved us. We owe the orcs a great deal for our continued existence, and it is my pride and honor to fight and die beside them.
The Tauren are an honorable people, and I have a great deal of respect for them. They have solid societal and shamanistic values that have grounded the Horde, at least on Kalimdor.
The Horde of the East is a thing entirely different. The Undead, I can sympathize with. They've died, for Zul's sake, died and continue to fight on. But I do not trust them, and I will never trust their motives.
And the blood elves... traitors to their own kind. The remnants of the high elves, shunned by the Alliance for their dealings with Lady Vashj, among other things. As far as I'm concerned, they are not true members of the Horde, just lost elves with nowhere else to go.
And I cannot stand them! They are self-important, condescending pricks! What gives you damned elves the right to look down on me? What gives you the right to think yourself higher than me? You do realize that the land your precious Silvermoon was Troll land? You do realize that all you pansy ass elves are descended from trolls?
This world, it used to be ours. You, you damn elves, are nothing but the ungrateful bastard children of trolls long dead. And I will suffer your superiority no more.

But I do not hate them. I merely cannot stand them.

But the Alliance.... /spit. Conniving shitheads! The Night Elves have hunted us for centuries. They do not care. They show no mercy. They slaughter us all, given the slightest opportunity.
I hate them so... I will kill them. I will maim the men, rape the women, torture the children. They will scream. They will beg. And I will never show mercy. They will die, humiliated, and in incredible pain. They deserve no better.

And the humans.... *hisssss*. They are even worse. They will suffer even more. They will watch themselves burn, they will watch their loved ones suffer and due in front of them. It is merely justice. They have done the same to trolls, now they will suffer the same fate.
They will not die alone, but surrounded by their friends and famiy. They will watch their cities burn, watch their children fed to our Mounts, watch their wives tortured, watch their husbands ruthlessly maimed and left bleeding in the burning streets to die.

The dwarves and the gnomes are damned for their decision to join the Alliance. They will die and burn with the rest.
The gnomes especially. I HATE GNOMES!! How is it POSSIBLE for a race that annoying to develop? How can they go day to day without killing themselves? They are a cursed people, annoying as hell. They deserve nothing better than death out of spite. Stupid gnomes.

And the Dranei... what the crap are they? A bunch of self-righteous morons who worship "the light". The light? What the hell? You would base your entire civilization off a source of illumination? What is wrong with you?
Just stay out of my way so I don't have to kill you.

Fucktards, the lot of them. Nothing but a bunch of fucktards."

I was banned from the server. Something about breaking the ToS or something... I think it might have been the whole raping elvish women part.

Void Reaver has Down's Syndrome

Get it? Oh, I'm such a hysterical douche bag. Gucchi, don'tchaknow.

So, yeah. Anathema downed Void Reaver Thursday night. My jello sex buddy Sequel snagged some Tier 5 shoulders, and is hot and ready for some Tier 5 pants. Or, you know, something else Tier 5.
For those not in the know, the 2 piece set bonus from Mage Tier 5 gear is called "Cheating". It increases the damage dealt by Arcane Blast by 20%. For an arcane mage, this means... wait for it... a 20% increase in damage dealt.

Ok, ok, I exaggerate. But lemme put it this way. For an arcane mage, this set bonus is similar to:

For Druids: Increases stamina, spell damage, and healing done by an amount equal to the number of times people made fun of feral druids when the level cap was 60.
For Hunters: Increases the chance your Arcane shot will instantly kill your target by 10%
For Paladins: Gives you a 30% chance after saying the F word to become immune to all types of damage as long as you can continue saying the F word.
For Priests: Mana pool is changed to the infinity symbol.
Rogue: Gives a 30% chance for you to deal forty thousand damage to all targets within 100 yards whenever you smile maliciously. This damage causes no threat.
Shaman: All heals and damaging attacks automatically increase themselves to be the highest in the raid group.
Warlock: Curse of Agony stacks, doesn't cause threat, and no longer triggers the GCD.
Warriors: Stamina increased by fifty five thousand percent, and Mortal Strike now one-shots whatever is targeted, whether or not the ability is actually used.

So you see how awesome that set bonus is.

Anyways, I have to say that being there, being a member of the raid that took down Void Reaver, for the first time for this guild, is pretty damn sweet. I mean, sheesh, how many times to you get to be there for a guild's first kill? Of a Tier 5 boss?
Sure, its Loot Reaver, but c'mon! This troll hasn't even seen the inside of Karazhan yet.


In other news, the Blog is going to get a facelift, me thinks.

Going to add an official blog roll or something, maybe switch over all the linky type stuff onto the right hand side.
Some colors getting changed, maybe an entire new template. And *gasp* maybe even my OWN somewhat customized template!

And the World of Magecraft's are going to be revamped, and are going to have some additional stuff added to them. Maybe even some real theorycrafting and math added.
And of course, far more pointful. Stay tuned!

$15 A Month

It comes with raiding guilds. It just does.
It's called drama.
Where people freak out, yell things on Vent, and TYPE THINGS IN CAPITAL LETTERS.

There is no avoiding it.

Anathema downed Lurker last night. Again. It took several tries before it went well, and on the second last attempt there were some pretty big freakouts.
A couple people flipped about people not getting their asses in gear, blah blah blah, and just generally getting mad at other people in the raid for not holding up their end.
Then there was the following response:
"GUYS ITS JUST A GAME"

This is a typical response to many of the people who complain about people not doing their job.

It is just a game. It is meant to be played. Have fun, enjoy what you're doing, don't flip out because a mage forgot to polymorph so and so, or a rogue pressed the Envenom button too early and ate a stormstrike that the elemental shaman was supposed to have.

And so on.

You have some valid points there. It really is a game. You really are supposed to have fun here. You're paying $15 or so per month to play, so enjoy every minute of it, amiright?

But you're forgetting something.

This is WoW. World of Warcraft. It is not an RPG, it is an MMO. A Massive. Multiplayer. Online. RPG.

You know what that means?

That you are not the only person here paying $15 a month. There are at least 24 other people around you paying the same thing.

See that orc up front in the heavy armor? He's paying $15 a month to get the stuffing knocked out of him by everything from giant ogres to oversized jellyfish who shoot lasers from their eyes. Why does he do this? Why does he pay $15 a month to get shitkicked repeatedly? So everyone can have fun and enjoy awesome loots.
See that little troll at the back? The sexy one in the tight fitting dress? She's paying $15 a month to keep everyone else alive. When the orc in heavy armor gets hit, she's there to save his life. When something goes wrong, when some crazy ass naga goes around bitchslapping warlocks, she's there. Why does she do this? Why does she pay $15 a month to live a high stress job of any wipe being initially blamed on her? So everyone can have fun and enjoy awesome loots.
See that Tauren at the back there? the big guy with the giant tiger named "Fluffles"? He's paying $15 a month to shoot arrows into the bad guys. When the bad guys die, the tank stops getting bashed. When the bad guys die, the healers don't have to heal anymore. He's paying $15 a month because its damn fun to kill stuff.
To quote Shatha: "When I'm having fun, I want to kill stuff. When I kill stuff, I'm having fun."
That Tauren, he's here for murder.

So explain to me the logic that this is a game and you can do whatever. Explain that.

If you're a tank, and you bust out a 2H weapon, and die, and then everyone else dies, you just wasted everyone else's time. Everyone else does't think its hilarious to watch a tank get one-shotted. You may have enjoyed your $15, but everyone else did not enjoy their $360.

If you're a healer, and you start trying to DPS, then everyone else dies. The tank dies, the other healers die, and you die. Again, you just wasted everyone else's time and money. Their $360 a month, wasted because you wanted to have fun with your $15.

If you're a damage dealer, do the job right. Don't pull aggro. Do your job, and hurt the enemy. Do your crowd control properly. Everyone goes home happier, and you don't waste anyones time. Pulling aggro at the beginning of a fight with a 4k crit is NOT your job! Do it near the end, where you don't put everyone at risk by pulling aggro from the tank.

Learn your job. Do it well. Don't be an asshole. There is at least $375 a month at stake here, play it like you mean it.
And everyone, not just you, can have fun. And there will be phat lewtz for all.

World War One, all over again

Ever since 2.3, there have been some major changes to Alterac Valley.
These changes, I think, were supposed to make it more strategical, and try to end the endless zerg rushing of pre-2.3 AV.

The very first iteration of AV was a monstrosity, filled with random NPCs, and even a random rampaging Troll. It has undergone many, many changes, streamlining the battleground into a PvP battleground again.
However, it is one that requires a great deal of execution compared to the Old AVs.

Pre 2.3, you got honor when you killed stuff. Thats it. So everybody bum-rushed everyone else, got tons of honor, and churned out thousands of honor.

Now, things are different. Do you still get honor from killing stuff? Damn right you do. 62 honor for killing the Captain, destroying a tower or bunker. You also snag a hefty 83 honor from killing the end general.
!BUT!
At the end of the game, your team is awarded 41 honor for having intact towers, and a living Captain.
So you lose honor when a Tower is capped from your side. You lose honor when Balinda/Galv get killed.
Furthermore, when one of your towers is capped, you lose 75 reinforcements. And when a captain dies, there goes 100 reinforcements.

In essence, the new AV requires a solid defence now in addition to a powerful offence.
If everyone from your team zergs forward, you lose honor when Alliance kills your stuff. But, if no one goes on offence, then you don't get any honor from killing stuff.

The old Horde adage was "Defence is for pussies". The whole horde mentality was one of simply swarming whatever needed to be done. In AB, for example, nobody would defend Lumbermill, because if alliance capped it, horde would simply zerg it back. I participated in this many, many times while leveling up, and witnessed 5-caps at 29, 39, 49, 59, and 69.
In warsong, traditionally horde would not have anybody on defence, and simply attack the alliance. Any defence the alliance had (which was generally 4-8 people) were simply steamrolled, and we killed the alliance flag carrier on our way back. That was how warsong was played. Alliance would put up defence, horde would annihilate defence, horde would win.
Over and over again.
Pre-70, thats how the game is played. I cannot say this is true everywhere, but on Stormstrike, if horde ever devoted more than 10% of its avaliable resources to defence, we would lose. Guaranteed.

But times, they did a-change.

And now AV is unfriendly to pure offence strategies.

So. You need to have some folk on defence, and they better be some damn solid folk.
Don't misunderstand this. You do not win an AV by having Defence. You delay your opponents victory through defence.
All defence serves to do is slow down and hinder the enemies attack, while your own offence pushes through to ultimate victory. At absolute maximum, half the raid group will be on defence. ABSOLUTE MAX. You need a minimum of 20 people on offence if you expect to be victorious in any kind of timely manner.
So, where do we devide who goes on defence, and who goes on offence?
First off, the people on offence will be fighting a lot of NPC's, while those on defence almost never will, and will almost exclusively be fighting other players.
Thus, people with PvE builds and gear should go on offence right off the bat, and those with PvP builds and gear are better suited to playing on defence.
Second, there are some very nice talents/abilities that lend themselves specifically to a role in AV. Rogues, for example, have been longstanding examples of excellent Tower-cappers. If you can "Ninja" a graveyard or Tower, you are an incredible asset to a team.
Any and all AoE fears are incredibly useful on defence. Priests and warlocks can ruthlessly upset the offence of the opposing team. In the same regard, a Druid's Cyclone ability can be devastating if you cyclone the main tank of the other team.

You get the idea.

So where do we stand, as mages?

If you're in Karazhan gear, play offence. You have better PvE skills, and will be far more useful to an effective offence.
If you're sporting S2 arena gear, you're better off on defence, as you'll be more suited to the heavy PvP combat that comes from playing that side.

And now to specs.

If you're arcane, you are very well suited to playing on Offence. Solid DPS and raid power, coupled with the brief PvP potential from those 3 minute mage abilities, will make you perfectly suited to playing Offence. When your offence runs into the enemies defence, you can pop those powerful abilties to steamroll them, and get right back on to killing Archers/whatever.

Fire spec is kindof a tossup. In general, you're better of on Offence, putting those handy damage abilities to good use. However, abilities like Dragon's Breath are incredibly potent, and can seriously shut down the offence of an enemy. A 3 second AoE stun is ridiculously powerful. Use it wisely, you can make a huge dent in, for example, enemy healers. Dragon's Breath can also be used on offence, and, indeed, Blastwave + Dragon's Breath can often single-handedly break a stalemate. The sheer amount of devastating damage seriously weakens your opponents, allowing your teammates to take them down quickly.
You will often die rather shortly after unleashing Blastwave/Dragon's Breath on a collection of alliance/horde, however.

Frost is an amazing defence build. No if's or but's about it. Slows, roots, what's not to like? You can frustrate any advance easily. The whole makeup of frost is mastery of kiting, and doing massive damage while the enemy is rather strictly controlled. In essence, it is perfect for defence. And if some brilliant people are defending with you, you can be unstoppable.
In old AV, I've witnessed 3 frost mages and a pair of warlocks stall the entire alliance offence for a good 45 minutes. Endless roots and fears kept them at bay for a very long time.

TL;DR version: play to your spec and gear. Prot warrior with 19k hitpoints? Go on offence and help tank stuff. Shadow Priest with 12k hitpoints and 500 resilience? Go on defence, and be the shade that wouldn't die. Resto shaman in Tier 5, with mp5 so high it makes Holy Priests cry? Go on offence, and spam chain heal. Resto druid sporting S3 gear? Stay on defence, you will piss a lot of people off.

And if you find yourself in one of those stalemate AVs, where the whole fight is essentially btoh sides rezzing and killing each other every 30 seconds?
I feel for you.
Attrition battles in the new AV really, really suck.

AFK!!!

I experienced my very first AFKers in Arathi Basin today.

I was shocked. I was horrified.

I burst into tears at this heresy. Here we were, 11 horde strong, trying to fight off 15 alliance. For the entire battle, alliance held 2 bases, and horde held two bases, and there was always one or two nodes that were in conflict. Sometimes alliance would get three, sometimes horde would get three.
Sometimes Alliance zerged mine, and at one point alliance was capping everything except blacksmith.

And these ungrateful bastards sat in the starting room, getting their daily quest done for doing nothing at all.

Did I spam "AFK" report them? Darn tooting I did. I even went to the /bg chat and said "Report those damn AFKers"

To which some twisted soul replied "type /afk report to see the interface".

After he said that, three people on horde side promptly left the battleground

/slap

So that puts horde at 8 versus 15.

I took off my clothes and danced naked at farm.

7 horde versus 15 alliance.

Did we lose? Yes, we lost rather horribly at that point.

Was I happy? Damn right I was.

Some jackhole AFKers aren't getting a daily quest done on my watch.

The Ultimate Raid

Sure, you may have cleared Serpentshrine Cavern. You may have beaten the Eye, finished Hyjal, and even managed to take down Illidan himself.
But are you ready?

Are you ready for the ULTIMATE test of your mettle, your abilities to withstand such incredible and chaotic forces, and yet still maintain control and do your job?

I am, of course, talking about the World of Warcraft Forums.

The official WoW forums are known to cause serious injury to ones ability to think coherently, and have been proven to cause a loss of all basic motor skills.

Here are some Gems of comments I found from the Mage forums. Whether they are said in all seriousness, or as a joke, well, take a guess! That makes it so much more fun!

• Make ice block able to crit!
• in a world where a zombie can summon and then launch bolts of ice from their hands, gravity is the least you have to worry about. (In response to someone suggesting that Ice block should be able to crush someone if the mage uses it while above them)
• You mean this level 62 Paladin didn't hit 2500 in every bracket and then come post about it in the mage forums? (It was a keylogger)
• I could macro a Nintendo controller to play a 23/38 lock to maximum efficiency.
• Did anyone actually read my post? (to which the response was) silly bunny, this is the mage forums! no one ever reads well thought out posts!
• Oh pray do tell, how long does your CoC last ?
• NEW AND EXCITING METHODS OF EXPLOITING STUPIDITY!
• I swear, she told me she was 18!

Ehhh, not much of a post. But I laughed.

And its my blog. So whatever.

How To Not Pull Threat

A very real danger to any DPS class is the risk of pulling aggro from your tank, and thus getting yourself horribly squashed, and potentially wiping the party.
If you have mad DPS, but keep pulling aggro and getting killed 15 seconds in, you are useless. Worse than useless, you are a liability to the party.

Don't be the warlock who opens each fight with a Shadowbolt crit of 4k.

Don't be the Boomkin who starts off every boss fight with a Starfire crit.

And please, for the love of all that is Mageness, don't be the mage who fires off PoM + Pyro the same second the Paladin first hits the mob.

So, here are some strategies on mitigating threat, and how to work with your tanks to avoid being a dumbass.
You may not always be able to avoid threat, but you can mitigate it.

1. The most obvious way to avoid pulling aggro is to put points into whatever talent reduces the threat your spells do. For Arcane, its Arcane Subtlety (40% reduction), Fire mages have a 10% reduction through Burning Soul, and Frosties have a 10% through Frost Channeling. There is no reason not to get these talents, and the Fire and Frost versions are painful to go without.
   
2. Give your tank a little bit of a head start. If there is a hunter in the party, misdirect will give your tank a huge boost to their threat, but it still won't be enough if you drop three crits in a row right off the bat. As Arcane, ease slowly into the fight with Arcane Missiles, and ramp up from there. Does AM hit hard? Why, yes, it does. But, as a channeled, its threat is more spread out than any other Arcane spell. An excellent opener. As a note, though, the Arcane tree has rather low innate threat, so you can simply open as normal with Arcane Blast. As a frost mage, don't worry about it. Chances are pretty good frostbolt won't cause any problems, and if it does, well, the target is slowed and so easily controlled. You can Ice Block twice as much as anyone else. If you do ever run into aggro issues, ope with an Ice Lance or two to start the crit debuff with generating practically zero threat. As Fire, open with Scorch. Scorch does not produce a lot of threat, even when it crits, and has an added perk that practically requires you to open with it. The whole increased fire damage thing? Yeah. You gimp your own damage if you don't have that at max debuff at all (or almost all) times. If there is still aggro issues with opening with Scorchx5, then downrank. Rank 7 works very well for avoiding early aggro, and has the added bonus that it still tossses up the debuffs. Wait to use fireballs for at least 10 seconds.
3. Get an enchant. A new enchanting formula for your cloaks and capes reduces all threat by 2%. Far, far better than the 20 Spell Penetration alternative... unless you're one of those kinky mages who likes Agility.
4. Don't be afraid of using Invisibility when it is needed. Whatever threat you have, it cuts it in half. If you use it around midfight, or a little earlier, it effectively means that it is impossible for you to pull aggro, no matter what you do. Take, say, Mechano-Lord Capacitus in heroic mode as a fire mage. Full Scorch debuff, then fireball away, and let the crits flow. When you hit about the 110% aggro mark of the tank, hit invis, let 6 seconds go by, cancel it, and keep right on fireballing. You'll be at the bottom of the threat list, blasting out thousands of damage in a single fireball.
5. If you suddenly snag aggro, Ice Block. This option will become avaliable to any and all mages soon, and its an instant aggro dump. You get all that threat back, however, but its ten seconds where you were doing nothing and your tank was furiously getting aggro back. However, don't dump the aggro on the poor Holy Priest next to you. That's just uncalled for. Dumping aggro in the Hunter next to you is acceptable.
6. Do something else. Mana running low? Evocate. Took some AoE damage in a fight like Grandmaster Vorpal or Thespia? First-aid yourself. An add pop up that needs to be taken care of? Sheep it if you can. Healer suddenly pull aggro from a flesh monster thingy in Arcatraz? Take care of the situation, and save your healer and tank a helluva headache. The latter option is especially good for frost mages. A non-elite mob that can be rooted? /scoff
7. And above everything except #1, KNOW YOUR TANK. If its a Warrior, give them a bit to get at least one or two sunders up before you damage the mob at all. Same with druids, except its called Mangle or something. It looks like a little slashy mark on the debuff bar. In the case of a Paladin, you can start right away, but start low. Use a downranked spell a time or two. In the case where multiple mobs are being tanked, Warriors are the most sensitive here. Do not attack ANY mob until the warrior has put at least two sunders on it. Again, same with druids. Paladins it doesn't matter too much, so long as you let Consecrate do its work for a bit. A good rule of thumb: on the main mob, let about 8 seconds of continuous casting go by on the main mob. Fire can judge this the best, as the perfect time is when Scorch reaches max debuffs. Then, unload with some AoEs. Flamestrike, Blastwave, Dragon's Breathe, whatever, you'll be good to go. Paladins are the best AoE tanks in the game, revel in it.
8. Get an addon that shows people's threat levels. Omen is arguably the best one out there. It's pretty, full customizable, it keeps track of aggro on multiple mobs, and is backwards compatible with threat meters like KTM.
   

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.

Arenas on the PTR

Thanks to Anathema and the joy that comes from raiding and shooting fireballs at Lootreaver, I will probably NOT be spending a lot of time within arenas on the live servers.
I will most likely be doing my competitive arenas on the test realms.

Here is my thinking:

Respeccing every week or so from raiding fire, to PvP frost would cost a fortune. Can I make up for it with dailies? Yep.

OR

I could remain fire on the live servers, hit the honor cap, borrow 2k gold, copy my character over to the test realms, give the gold back, and spend all that honor and get a ridiculously awesome geared out dude on the test realms. Even better, I can copy myself four times to have 8k gold ready to go, if I wanted.
And... here's the kicker. I've already done the latter with the PTR's for 2.3.

I partnered up with a Blood Elf (female, obviously) for some hawt two on two action.

[Random rogue build that I could never even pretend to understand] + [Frost mage] = 1803 rating.

Thats right. You heard me. 1803 rating.

Don't believe me? I would gladly show you proof, except I can't, because for some extremely odd reason, whenever I hit the screenshot button, the screen simply freezes, and I need to reboot my PC. Natch, the pic is gone. Hoo boy I'm going to get some flak if I ever post that on the forums.
Trolls ftw. (SCREENSHOT OR IT DIDNT HAPEN)

Anyways, where was I?

Ahh, yes.

So, on the 2.3 PTRs, our team was called "What Would MacGyver Do" after a T-shirt the rogue thought was hysterical.
His rogue, rather appropriately, was called "Cárcelcebo", which is Spanish for "Jailbait". Directly translated, he tells me, via the google translator.
Obviously, my name was far more simplistic, "Spade". Named after the technical term for a shovel.

Anyways, our strategy was simple. Since "Cebu" (as I called him) was always stealthed, I'd open combat... in some way, and he'd go from there. My job primarily was to tank, at least until someone started targeting him. At that point I'd rush in and save the day, giving him a chance to Vanish or some such rogue thingy.

For example, one of our earlier battles was against a Warrior/Paladin team. Natch, the warrior rushed me, and Cebu went after the Paladin. It takes a good 7 seconds for the warrior to realize his healbot is being shitcanned, so he intercepts Cebu. At that point, I bust out the water elemental, and root them both. Thus letting Cebu to run off... leaving both the Paladin and warrior deliciously rooted. Being 17/0/44 specced at the time, I silenced the Paladin, and dropped a Shatter combo, and that was done.
NOTE: Cebu always ran with Crippling and Wounding poison up. Thats just what he did.

In general, our fights went very well. I'd always take the opening hits, and then Cebu would kill something. Almost every single fight went that way.

For example. Warlock/Druid team. He opens up on the resto-druid, correctly guessing the warlock was soul-link specced.
Natch, with Wounding poison, the druid is turned into a sad panda and is quickly slaughtered. The whole focus-fire thing is just awesome, especially when your partner is smart enough to tab target + Blind the warlock. We kept that poor warlock out of comission the whole time we killed the druid.
I sheeped him first off, which he trinketed out of. Then got blinded. When he came out of that, his fear was counterspelled by yours truly.
Poor little impotent gnome warlock.

As a side note, frost mages love soul-link warlocks. We really do. You know why? Because of that damage sharing thing, Ice Lance doesn't break Frost Nova. Meaning, of course, that I can Frostbolt + Ice Lance + Ice Lance + Ice Lance before the thing breaks.

Meaning that I do more damage to you when you have your damage reducing skill active.

Feel free to cry. You won't be the first.

Some other notes.

Enhance shammies were almost scary with 2.3. It's almost a return of the juggernauts of the pre-TBC era. Scary-arse, relentless killing machines.
This is not due, too much, to intrinsic changes to the Enhancement tree. Quite bluntly, excellent shamans, who were resto up to this point, gave Enhance a try. Now, all these shamans are very good players, which means their nigh-unstoppable as enhancement, simply because they're damn fine players.

Retribution Paladins are actually a threat now. In one battle, I was gang-rushed by two of them, and before I knew it, had taken three crits of almost 2k damage. !BOOM! There goes half my health to a fucking Paladin.

Did we still win? Yes, we did. Did I, personally, survive? Yes, I Ice Blocked, and let Cebu (who prided himself on his skill of slaughtering Paladins) kill one of them while I was blocked. It was an awe-inspiring sight, really, watching a Paladin be killed off in less tha ten seconds. Poor guy didn't have a trinket, I think. He sat all the way through Kidney shot...

Anyways, a quick rundown.

Warriors were, in general, easy for me to kill, but almost impossibly hard for Cebu. In the arenas, he'd mostly annoy them while I killed them, and run away like the little girl his elf was whenever they targeted him.
A couple times, he was ham-stringed and killed by them. It made me laugh. He called me a jackass.
/shrug

Druids are a tough class to beat as a mage. Well, when they're played properly anyways. Insant HoTs, the ability to break/be immune to any and all CC effects makes them a dangerous foe.
Fortunately, for a rogue, a druid is pretty much a non-issue. /gank, /rinse, /repeat.
I'd usually just frost nova/rank one frostbolt to annoy them while Cebu did some creepy animal molestation thing involving a pointy object.

Hunters were... interesting. It fully depended on skill. Poor hunters were rapidly, and rightly so, annihilated by the two of us. Good ones were infuriatingly hard to kill for Cebu, but only a moderate challenge for me, depending on spec. In general, one good ambush from Cebu and a Shatter from me would spell the end for them.
At least a dozen times, though, Cebu was killed by the hunters while I was otherwise occupied running away from a BigAngryPet, Ice Blocked, or silenced. Once, I was even Wyvern Stinged and caught without a trinket/iceblock or anything else. (That was a survival hunter/affliction warlock combo... ridiculously hard on the CC-breaking abilities).

Mages were... well, it made me sad, actually. Our strategy came to this: sheep the mage, then start opening fire on the other guy. Cebu would rape the mage. If the mage was any good, I'd chuck a silence on him and wait for Cebu to get around to killing him again whilst I harassed the other guy. Usually I'd start casting polymorph on the other guy as soon as it had gone through on the mage, simply due to the fact that I expected the rogue to break sheep right away. I was wrong only once, when a fellow troll mage was arcane-specced and didn't have a trinket.
Feh, Cebu killed the poor guy in about 4 or 5 GCDs.

Paladins were generally easy. I'd kite them, Counterspell when needed, and let Cebu sit on their heads and sing merry Irish jigs about revenge.

Priests were also laughably easy to kill, no matter the spec. We would ALWAYS focus fire the priest, and it would ALWAYS die really, really fast. Apparently, Water Elemental Freeze + Shatter combo + Ambush + Rogue resisting AoE fear (or trinketing out of it) leads to a very dead priest. And that is, of course, assuming the poor priest even gets a spell off. Generally, he had been kicked/counterspelled or even Blood Elf Racialed into impotence.
I pity them. I really do.

Rogue fights were hysterical. We developed a strategy, whereby if nobody was visible when we started, Cebu would walk almost right behind me. Usually, it would go like this:
Random rogue Ambushes Spade!
Cárcelcebo Ambushes Random Rogue!
Spade uses blink!
Rogue realizes he is basically fucked!
Rogue fights are generally determined by who gets off the first blow. That's just the way it is. So when a rogue fights another rogue, it's very similar to a knife fight in a phone booth, where the second rogue gets to shoot the first one with a musket first.

Shamans were almost a non-issue. Both me and Cebu can quickly shut them down and kill them. They died fast and often.

Warlocks varied a lot. It kinda depended how the fight started with one of them. Generally, if I fail to land a shatter early in the fight, it's going to be tough. On the same token, if Cebu didn't get to use an opener from stealth, we're far, far worse off. Teams with warlocks we lost to on a very frequent basis. A warlock could keep Cebu crowd-controlled a long time; he'd have to blow trinket and CloS just to touch the damn thing a few times. Of course, when Cebu touched things, they died really fast. If Cebu was given at least 4-ish seconds uninterrupted on the warlock, we'd most likely be victorious.
Generally, we would quickly kill the warlocks partner and try to keep the warlock subdued (counterspelled, kicked, blinded, anything and everything).
Makes the fight soooo much easier.

A Spartan way of Life

So.

Fire in PvP.

I've been specced fire on the Public Realms for a couple weeks now, and I feel it is only fair that I provide a somewhat more in-depth analysis of how it plays out at 70.

Well.... where to start?

The first thing you notice is that the damage you can unleash on hapless foes is... ridiculously high.
Like, we're talking I three-shotted a fellow mage in Arathi Basin. With fireball, fireblast, and Dragon's Breath.
We're talking I fight a rogue, and they pop sprint and run for it. To slow them down, I hit Dragon's Breath... which outright kills them.
We're talking a fireball/fireblast combo that drops a hunter from 100% life to 20%.
We're talking sheeping a warrior, killing the paladin in 6 seconds, then slaughtering the warrior in another 8.
We're talking a stalemate on the alliance bridge in AV, where a bunch of hunters/healers are bunched there holding off the entire horde offensive. And Blastwave/Dragon's Breath scattering them like flax. And netting me over 20k damage done in 3 seconds.

If that isn't a good enough idea, it's effortless to top the damage charts when you're in the game. The damage fire dishes out is at an unholy level, and I found myself the #1 kill target within minutes of each fight.
In a Warsong Gulch, I fought middle with a warrior and a holy priest. 66 honorable kills later, the alliance stopped trying to attack us. Needless to say, I was top of the damage meter, beating the number two slot by... get this... 202k damage.
I was even responsible for killing 5 alliance flag carriers, who made the fatal error of trying to "Go Tun".

Quite simply put, Fire is devastatingly power of you leave the mage alone for 2 seconds or longer. And even then, it still kicks ass.

Also, sheeping something and getting off a full-cast Pyroblast is an incredibly evil and fun thing to do. Especially when it drops half their health in a non-crit. L2Trinket, imo.

The second thing you learn is that you are incredibly squishy. Like, we're talking three shotted by a dual-weilding warrior squishy.
A geared Season 2 Warrior killed me in under 4 seconds.
That's how squishy a fire mage in PvP is.

But to be fair, we have better survivability than arcane mages, because Dragon's Breath, quite simply, is a godly spell. About 1k damage on non crits that stuns for 3 seconds? AND it's an AoE?
I fully support renaming it "Summon Warlock" because it can be that devastating. It can shut down 5 or 6 healers at once, and do enough damage to them that they won't be healing anyone else for a while... or ever.
As fire, there is no end to how badly you can fuck with a healer. First off, you have a ton of damage. Then, every fire spell you cast has a 10% chance to stun. Third, you have a ton of damage. Second... err... fourth, you have a spell that interrupts, stuns, has a chance to stun more, and does more damage. Oh, yeah, and Counterspell, which prevents any healing spells from being cast for 8 seconds.
Now, go find a Holy Priest. Make it your bitch.
Paladins are also acceptable. Please be sure to Spellsteal Blessing of Freedom and Frost Nova the hapless Paladin.

The tl;dr version: Dragon's Breath is a sadistic spell, that causes emotional anguish among anyone and everyone who gets struck with it. Used properly, it's like an AoE deathcoil with a twenty second cooldown.
Used wrong, you look stupid.

A critical problem with any non-frost build is the lack of a certian reliable crowd-control breaker.
Every mage has access to Blink and (unless you suck) a trinket. That gives every mage two reliable ways to break things like fear and stunlocks. But... thats not enough.
What if you need blink to escape Intercept? What if you escape Kidney Shot with it, but then find yourself Blinded seconds later? Hmm? What then?
Quite simply, to be better able to survive this highly unfortunate situations, you want, nay, NEED to have a third reliable stun-key (opposite of stun-lock... get it? Oh, I'm so classy!).
And that skill, that tool, is the godly Ice Block.
Damn, I'm like a priest for that ability.
I should go form the church of Ice Block or something.

I cannot believe how incredibly awesome that ability is.

And I am finding hard to believe how I survived without it.

TRAINABLE ICE BLOCK KTHXBY!!






Also.


HADUKEN!