Category: Mage Mumblings

My Warcraft mage-specific thoughts, guides and musings.

Guild Wars 2: Spellcasters Quick Guide

Posted on by Gazimoff

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you’ll probably notice that I have an ongoing love-affair with spellcasters in MMOs. Call it a mage, wizard or sorcerer – if it hurls magic then I’ll probably be playing it. Perhaps it’s because I identify with the thought of an intellectual magus studying to become proficient in arcane lore. Maybe I just have a primal desire to launch balls of fire from my hands. Who knows.

Earlier this week, ArenaNet announced that Pre-purchases of Guild Wars 2 will start on April 10th. As an added bonus everyone taking part also gets access to beta weekends. If you’re thinking of going for this MMO then I’d seriously suggest going for this deal, if only to get used to just how different this game is for spellcaster types.

As a result, I’ve gone through my notes from the closed beta back in February and pulled together this quick guide on spellcasters in Guild Wars 2, focusing on how they work, what the common features are and what sets them apart. I’ve also tried to explain how each profession feels in order to give you an idea of the playstyle. I’ve been a bit brief in some of my explanations, so if you have questions please let me know in the comments!

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A Thoroughly European Convention

Posted on by Gazimoff


Besides keeping an eye on new releases, there are traditionally a handful of important dates in the gaming calendar. The season starts with the Game Developers Conference in early March, sweeps through to E3 in June. You then get a cluster of them up to September with PAX, Gamescom and the Tokyo Games Show. You’ll even find video games spilling over into the San Diego Comic Con and Gen Con.

Over in the UK we’re blessed with a single visit from the game industry. The Eurogamer Expo lands in London towards the end of September, being one of the last stops for the year. It’s a rare chance for British gamers to try out some of the upcoming releases. On Saturday 24th September I’ll be there, soaking up the atmosphere in Earls Court.

There’s two main reasons I’m attending: Guild Wars 2 and Star Wars: The Old Republic. I’m keen to get a look at both games since they’re the two hottest MMOs that are talked about at the moment, plus it’s going to be interesting to play them off against each other. I’m also interested to see if people are planning an MMO “flight path” from Warcraft to Rift to The Old Republic to Guild Wars 2, instead of betting on a game for months or years.

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Firelands Legendary Staff: Get Ready!

Posted on by Gazimoff

Patch 4.2 is looming towards us at a steady pace, bringing with it a whole truckload of shiny new stuff for us to get stuck into. The current best guess is that it’ll be hitting live servers on 21st June in US and 22nd June in Europe, putting it at less than two weeks away.

With patch 4.2 comes the Tier 12 raiding content and the new Firelands raid instance. It’s also when the new caster Legendary staff becomes obtainable. Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa’s Rest will be the single most important item of loot for almost any raiding damage-dealing caster.

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Mages and Patch 4.2

Posted on by Gazimoff

A lot of us have been in a kind of holding pattern since 4.1 came out. Some of us have been focused on mopping up the current tier of raiding, like a roast dinner with lashings of gravy that you just need a bit of bread to polish off. Others have been filling a few gaps here and there with the troll content, using the new epics to fill a couple of gaps in our gear.

Patch 4.2 is approaching. With it comes the new Firelands raiding and questing zone, the new Mage legendary staff, a new tier of armour (and a new round of sympathy for Priests) and a truckload of other stuff besides. Putting the new juicy content to one side though, there’s the inevitable class changes as well. It’s early days so far and there’s a promise of more to come, but Mages are already tasting both sides of the nerfbat.

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Mages & PvP – Fun, Lethal, or Both?

Posted on by Gazimoff

This guest post is from Bordy, a veteran player of games and dealer in lethal puns. You can find his unique brand of humour on Twitter @snuffleorc

I have played WoW since the retail release. Gazimoff is the one to blame for getting me into it. It was by no means though my first MMO. That honour goes to Ultima Online. Playing with a dial up connection and (in current terms) an incredibly slow PC, I both loved that game and hated it.

My recollections of the game now are vague, so my apologies for anyone who knows better, but to me the world was pretty standard fantasy fayre, although gameplay was fun. Unlike WoW, the game was classless and you picked and chose skills from across a range, meaning that the ultimate combination became so widespread that the bulk of characters were effectively (as far as I could tell) fighter-mages.

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Reader Q: From Arcane to Fire

Posted on by Gazimoff

I recently got a reader email asking for some advice with improving their fire spec. I love getting messages like this as it gives me a chance to help someone out and get geeky about my favourite spec at the same time. This particular email was eerily familiar…

We started raiding last evening and had great difficulty controlling the adds. Since then I have been asked to go as fire for the supposedly superior AoE. I’ve spent a little time on the dummies and my DPS is at best unpredictable. I’m guessing this is because I’m not criting enough to proc Hot Streak often enough and therefore having to recast scorch to get the de-buff. Just how much crit do I need and what would be worth reforging?

The first thing is that you’re not alone. I was also struggling with my fire DPS, particularly when compared with Arcane mages. Arcane is great for when you’re learning fights as the simple rotation allows you to focus on positioning and targeting. The great thing is that I found some really simple techniques that allow me to maximise my fire DPS.

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Mages and Patch 4.0.6

Posted on by Gazimoff

It’s about a month and a half since Cataclysm was released. In that time we’ve seen a flurry of tweaks, changes and hotfixes to some of the biggest bugs in the game. Not everything can be fixed with a hotfix though, which is why patch 4.0.6 is bringing some pretty serious changes.

Why 4.0.6 though? Blizzard will never admit it, but patch 4.0.4 could not be found anywhere. Patch 4.0.5 was desperately trying to be an expansion in it’s own right, but this method was not allowed. It was last seen on the hills outside Irvine, howling to the other feral patches that never made it and living off stale internets discarded by open wi-fi outlets.

This leaves us with Experiment 4.0.6, a patch designed to bring union and harmony to the classes, restoring balance throughout the playerbase. Or something.
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The Veteran Mage Toolbox

Posted on by Gazimoff

Cataclysm has been a wake up call for many of us. After enjoying the new quests and zones and chomping through five more levels, several of us have thrown ourselves into the new dungeons. While completing these new instances on normal mode is straightforward, heroics can be a brick wall.

The trouble is that Wrath has made us lazy. The tricks and techniques we kept up our sleeves were crucial back in the days of Vanilla, and remained so for the early days of Burning Crusade. Unfortunately that all went out of the window with instances that could be zerged and almost limitless healing available. With the arrival of the new expansion, those days are gone.

The biggest obstacle to completing heroics is survivability. This means either avoiding or preventing the causes of damage, or being able to withstand damage when it occurs. Crowd Control is a large chunk of this – being able to polymorph a mob so that it doesn’t engage in combat. That’s only part of the picture though – Mages have a ton of other tricks and abilities that can help to keep a mob busy or help you take less damage.

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Mage Resources Need You!

Posted on by Gazimoff

It’s incredible to think that we’re days away from the next expansion. In less than a week, we’ll be doing the new quests, entering the new dungeons and collecting the new gear. Expansions are the great equaliser – everyone starts at the same position again. Newer mages get a fresh chance to join raidgroups at the start of an expansion, as almost all are recruiting to replace tired veterans or character changes.

It also means that it’s time to sweep away the older guides that no longer apply to a sundered world. A lot of the core mechanics have changed, while guides to the new dungeons, heroics and raids are sorely needed. There’s also a need for gear information, upgrade paths and so on. Think of all the questions you’re likely to ask as you level through the new content, and these are the ones that are likely to be asked.

Over the next few days I’ll be refreshing the content in the Mage Resources page to ensure all the links are relevant for 4.0 and Cataclysm. But this also means that I need your help to update it and ensure all the great guides and articles that everyone has written get included.

If you’ve written a guide or article on anything mage related for 4.0/Cataclysm – or know of one that someone else has written – please leave a link in the comments.

If you’re thinking about writing something  but don’t yet have a blog, feel free to post it in the relevant part of the Mage Forums. I’ll be sure to include a link to it from the Mage Resources page, plus other forumites can provide their own thoughts and feedback on it!

Thanks for all your help!

Choose Your Mage: Alliance

Posted on by Gazimoff

With the release of Patch 4.0.3a, new race and class combinations became available for players to try out. Mages have become one of the most accessible classes, with all classes except Tauren having them available as an option. With all new quest content, revamped zones and streamlined zones, it’s never been a better time to choose a new mage.

Unfortunately having so much choice can be bewildering. Choosing which race to play is as much about how they feel as what bonuses they give. You might want to play an explosive Gnome instead of an aristocratic Blood Elf. Whatever your drives or desires, this two-part guide should give you everything you need about choosing your ideal character. This week I’ll be covering the Alliance races, while next week will be the turn of the Horde.

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