Tag: cataclysm

Getting Time To React

Posted on by Gazimoff

One of the things that I’ve seen thrown around lately is how reaction times are going to become important in Cataclysm. It’s not enough to have phased fights where a boss might require you to change tactics three or four times in order to defeat it. In the new expansion I’ve heard that we’ll need to pull off Nintendo-kid button-taps with incredible precision if we’re going to get near the top grade content.

One of the things I like about MMOs, particularly Warcarft, is that I don’t need some ninja-keyboard skills in order to play well. My reaction times aren’t nearly as great as when I was a d-pad wielding kid on Sonic the Hedgehog, and I like a game that respects it. Not only that, I like that the game runs on a variety of connections and doesn’t expect you to have the purest broadband money can buy. You don’t have to be lightning-fast in order to play, just reasonably stable.

The other thing that gets me is how reaction time is relative to what you’re doing. If you’re expecting something to happen, you can react to it quickly If you’re not expecting it or you’re focused on something else (like mashing your buttons as hard as you can or playing Grid whack-a-mole), then your reaction time is much worse.

Reaction times also change according to the role your playing. I know that I’m much better doing some things on my priest than I am doing them on my mage.

Besides, it’s not like tanks don’t have their own set of problems during boss fights. Their ordeals even extend into trash pulls.

It’s not like I don’t want there to be some challenge to game content – I want to face struggles and difficulties in-game as it makes the taste of victory so much sweeter. By the same token I don’t want an army of middle-aged geek gamers to feel that they suddenly can’t keep up because they don’t have the reflexes they had when they were 10 years old.
Warcraft rocks because it’s attractive to a wide demographic, not in spite of it.

A Snipe at the Socials

Posted on by Gazimoff

I was out at a bar recently with a few friends, discussing the many trials and difficulties endured by Warcraft players today… Heck, who am I trying to kid – my fiancee and her sister were trying to tie fairy lights to each other, while I tried to work out if a Havana Zombie wanted to be friends with me. All in all the night was a bit of a blur, punctuated by aggressive singing in Welsh and mourning over the lack of a kebab.

In one of those rare moments of clarity that you get when drinking heavily in a strange location, I remember realising that there were different types of groups there. You had the guys at the bar who were trying to drink as much cheap stuff as possible before heading on to a nightclub. You had a small group round a table, trying to make their rum and Coke last as long as humanly possible. And you had us lot, being as rowdy as hell and making sure we had fun whatever we were doing.

Fast-forward 24 hours and I’m nursing the hangover from hell. I’m drinking coffee and Mountain Dew Throwback in order to persuade some neurons in my skull to get off their arses and start firing. I’m eating fried everything between two slices of bread because my stomach didn’t get it’s promised kebab the night before and it’s sure as hell going to remind me about it now. I’m fidgeting with a biro like it’s a cigarette, subconsciously forgetting that I quit four years ago and that sucking on a pen lid isn’t going to help.

I fire up my laptop, click away and find myself on one of the Realm Forums. My eyes are immediately drawn to the top post of the day. “Get rid of RP Guilds” it proclaims. I’m thinking that maybe it’s one of those ‘strong headline to make a point’ kind of posts. I’m wrong.

It goes on to say how we should get rid of all guilds unless they’re dedicated to PvE or PvP progression. After all, the new Guild Levelling system means that unless you’ve got twenty raiders earning points for your guild every night, you’re just going to be left behind. Progress or die, that’s what the new system means.

Only it doesn’t.

I do some digging to see if I can validate this forum poster’s point and I find this excellent series of articles on what guild levelling will involve. There’s surprisingly little that actually involves endgame raiding. I can gain XP for my guild from a number of different sources including daily quests, battlegrounds and regular dungeons. Even levelling my professions helps out!

Now I might be a little slow here, but I thought that there were a number of reasons that you might join a guild. It might be because of the endgame raiding they offer you, or because they help put together arena or battleground teams. It might even be because you’ve played with them in other games or know them from other places and appreciate their company. It might even be because you like to just hang out and have fun, and it beats trekking across the country to see them.

I mean, imagine if someone came up to you in a bar and told you that your group were drinking wrong. That you should be in a larger group in order to take full advantage of the discounts on offer. That you should only drink certain spirits so that you spend as little as possible before you get plastered? If it were me, I’d try to strangle them with a strand of twinkly fairy lights.

The point is that just like with bars, we all play Warcraft for different reasons and get different things out of it. Some of us want to ensure that we don’t waste any time, that we go in there to do what we want to do as quickly as possible then leave. Some want to use it to meet new people, while others just want to kick back, relax and have a bit of fun with friends. It’s different strokes for different folks, with no right or wrong way about it.

The social players might not have a level-capped guild immediately, but they’ll get one in their own time. And they’ll be sure to have a ton of fun on the way.

Mage Playstyles in Cataclysm

Posted on by Gazimoff

The dust is beginning to settle following the almighty stack of class changes that came out last week. While Paladins are still waiting for theirs, the rest of the Warcraft population has been trying to work out what the changes mean for them. Mages are no exception – I wrote up an initial assesment shortly after the changes came out. There are a whole bucketload of opinions out there though that are worth digging through.

  • Euripedes starts off with a squee over the changes, following it up with a rant about the loss of Wards, the crappiness of Mana Shield and the Shaman hate.
  • Arioch has a desire to dance the Time Warp everywhere, but hates the Arcane Missiles changes.
  • Gnomeageddon is trying to be inspired by the changes, but struggling.
  • Krizzlybear is also doing the Time Warp and savouring the flavour of the changes.
  • Tarinae thinks the gains are pretty positive for mages.
  • Aurdon got crit by the wall of text and is still trying to recover.
  • ArcaneTinkerTank says the changes make him go hmmmmm.
  • Archaius thinks it’s Christmas with all the presents mages are getting.
  • Empowered Fire are excited by the changes.
  • WoW.Com has some initial reactions from their resident mage.
  • River is still waiting for more teleports. Oh, and he wants Blink fixed.

Now that the changes are out and the initial analysis done, what do the they actually mean? Can we start to work out how the typical mage will play, how the talent trees will play out and what each spec will bring to the table? Based on the information we currently have, I’ve done a rough sketch-out of how the three mage types will work.

Frost

The Deathfrost mechanic is probably the most interesting – cast Frostbolt on a mob and gain a damage buff. Now you could just carry on spamming Frostbolt, but then you wouldn’t take advantage of the Deathfrost bonus. Remember though that you’ll get random free Arcane Missiles procs, which will take advantage of Deathfrost.

But hang on – we’ve already got a spell that will make use of most of our Frost talents and it’ll take advantage of the Deathfrost bonus. Yes, Frostfire Bolt will live again in endgame raiding. In fact, as you gain more gear with the Mastery stat, this spell will do even more damage. Add into the mix talents like Brain Freeze and you have a setup that will allow you to cast high-damage spells that are instant cast, have no mana cost and benefit from Mastery.

The crucial bit is how Deathfrost will work. Is it a stacking buff that you ramp up, or a buff that sticks at the same level after you’ve cast Frostbolt once? Either way, you’ll end up with a rotation that has Frostbolt, Frostfire Bolt and the occasional Arcane Missiles proc. As the Deathfrost mastery bonus ramps up, you might even switch from one rotation to another, depending on how much bonus Frostfire Bolt gets. It could easily come out on top as the raiding spec of choice purely on the strength of Mastery

PVP as a Frost mage will be similar, except I’m expecting a lot more battleground play. There are bound to be talents that give you a boost to Wall of Fog, which are going to be incredible in rated battlegrounds. What I’d like to see though are two Wall of Fog bonuses – one in Fire and the other in Frost. The Frost one increases snaring duration, while the Fire one would increase the damage component of the Wall. Freezing Fog/Choking Fog.

I think there’s also a lot of chance for elemental mages to double-team as Frost and Fire, the Frost mage uses Wall of Fog, while the Fire mage uses Flame Orbs to send fiery death down the line from one end to the other. Depending on setup, it could easily hurt a whole group of players depending on how many get snared by the wall. A couple of classical AoEs and it’s all over.

Fire

It’s already been said that Fire Mages will play like Affliction Warlocks in Cataclysm, and the Ignite Mastery mechanic will make this even moreso. A Fire mage’s rotation is likely to shift from Living-Bomb-Scorch-Fireball then Pyroblast on Hot Streak, and change into something that focuses on maintaining DoTs and only casting Fireball or Pyroblast when you’re not reapplying a DoT or a debuff. Again, I think we’ll see a shift from one rotation to another as you accumulate Mastery bonus and the DoT element of the spell becomes more significant.

Burnout’s going to be a boon for Fire mages in raiding scenarios, as it’ll mean that they can continue casting even when out of mana. I’d like to see how this dynamic works – will it be a Life-tap style health to mana conversion, or will spells start consuming HP instead of MP? It’s also another way Mages can kill themselves, as if spell reflection and standing in the bad weren’t enough.

A Fire mage in PvP will be largely the same as it is now – great in battlegrounds where there is a chance to ramp up some serious damage against a single target or small groups. There’s also going to be comedy gold available when applying Living Bomb to multiple targets, triggering the haste buff from Pyromaniac and laying down some very quck cast Flamestrikes. I would like to see some kind of talent that will either cause Living Bomb to infect nearby targets, or that pushes all fire DoTs on additional targets.

In Arenas I expect the Fire mage to struggle. There’s no burst damage and little utility there, areas that the Arcane and Frost trees have always been good at. Let’s be honest though – Fire mages will play fine, I’d just be surprised to see them in the very top brackets of PvP. I don’t think the new Playing with Fire mechanic will help that much either – with Rogues able to stunlock a player completely, being able to AoE knockback, snare and get away is going to be tough to perform.

Arcane

I think that the Arcane spec is going to be possibly the only one that gets more annoying to play as the Mastery bonus becomes more relevant. The Mana Adept bonus basically means that in order to do the most damage you need a full mana pool. Great if you only need a short burst of damage to nuke someone down (arenas) or where you’re doing relatively short fights (solo or 5-man work). As soon as you have fights that stretch out and require you to start playing around with Mana gems and similar, it’s going to become more of a pain. Trying to keep your mana pool as full as possible when you’re in the last 30% of a bossfight is going to become a pain.

In fact, the only time I think Arcane is going to be reasonable is when you’re still gearing up at 85 and you still miss regularly in boss fights. A miss means that Arcane Focus triggers and you’ll get a small amount of mana back. With this mechanic it might make the mana management game easier, but it’s only going to be until you have enough good quality gear to hit bosses on a regular basis.

The other loss is in the three different rotations that Arcane has in Wrath. Currently there are three traditional rotations that are swapped when mana conservation, overall DPS or burst damage are required. I think that the Mana Adept bonus will upset this balance, meaning that just a single rotation becomes usable.

That said they may yet pull it back, particularly if there are talents that adjust the new Time Warp spell in some way. Currently the Exhaustion debuf lasts 10 minutes, meaning that you can’t fire off both a Heroism and a Time Warp in the same fight. If the Arcane mage is able to talent a way around this, either by reducing the duration of Exhaustion or increasing the duration of the warp, they may become much more useful.

The final kick-them-when-they’re-down for Arcane Mages is the final nerf of Incanter’s Absorption with the removal of the fire and frost wards. Euripedes pointed out on his rant (see link at the top) that Mana Shield is just not useful to mages at the moment – we have other ways of getting out of the bad stuff or avoiding damage. I agree that it really needs serious work to become useful again in order for this mechanic to become useful.

PvP as Arcane will still be doable – all the burst damage you know and love will still be there. As that fuel gauge moves from Full to Empty though the damage output will drop. It goes back to the old Three Minute Mage back from vanilla, where an arcane mage would pop Zandalarian Hero Charm and Talisman of Ephemereal Power along with your other cooldowns to do an obscene amount of damage for a whole fifteen seconds. They might rock in Arenas, but battlegrounds might be more of a sniper rather than Gatling gun affair.

Overall

If there’s one thing that’s clear from this arrangement of talents, it’s that mages will need to work with eachother and other classes moreso than ever in order to optimise their abilities. This isn’t just the Focus Magic round-robin that we currently have going, this is about syncing our crowd control and AoE together in order to deliver the best result. It’s about making sure that there’s a Scorch on the boss so that the Frostfire-bolt casting frostmage can take advantage of it as well as the fire mage. It’s about hitting Time Warp when it’s needed for the raid, and not when you need the 40% speed boost to Get Out Of The Bad.

It’s going to take some raw numbers to see how these stack up, followed by a bunch of people coding some spreadsheets, but you can see how the principles will pan out. It’s also early, but my feel is that it’ll be a close battle between Fire and Frost, with Arcane losing out as the spec of choice. It’s partly because of the mastery bonus being hard to take advantage of, but also because of the change to Arcane Missiles and how it’ll affect the spec’s rotation.

I’m also struggling to see how Time Warp will help that much. Don’t get me wrong, it means that a Shaman no longer has an automatic spot in a raid, but it also means that you’ll have a lot of Heroism shaped abilities and a huge cooldown in which to use them. Without reducing the duration of Exhaustion or allowing more than one to be used during a boss fight, there seems to be little practical purpose in spreading the ability around more.

For now though it’s a case of pulling up a chair and waiting until Beta is announced. When it opens, you can be sure that a lot of questions about the Mage mechanics will be answered by those with access to it. I think there’s something for all mages to look forward to, either in terms of how the Mastery bonuses will actually play out or in terms of how the new rotations will shape up. Either way, it’s a good time to be playing.

In the meantime, if you have your own insight into how the mechanics will play out, or want to share your own insights, feel free to sound off in the comments.

(Image Source: Poster for the stage magician Alexander Conlin)

Mage Cataclysm Preview

Posted on by Gazimoff

On the early hours of Saturday Morning, Bashiok unveilled the planned changes for Mages in Cataclysm. Some of them represent light touch changes, while others are fundamental changes to the way the class will work. As a response, I’ve stepped through each of the key changes and highlighted the changes that they’ll bring to the class.

New Spells:

Flame Orb (available at level 81): Inspired by Prince Taldaram’s abilities in Ahn’kahet and Icecrown Citadel, this spell allows the mage to cast a flaming orb that travels in front in a straight line, sending beams that cause fire damage to passing targets. Once it’s cast, the mage is free to begin casting other spells as the Flame Orb travels. While the spell will be useful to any spec, Fire mages will have talents that improve it, possibly causing the Flame Orb to explode when it reaches its destination.

In this copy of a raid boss mechanic, I’m hoping that this will be a targetable spell. I’m also hoping that the augmenting targets will increase the damage it causes while passing as well as the final damage it does when it arrives. I’d also really like to see some interaction between this and Living Bomb.

Time Warp (level 83): Grants a passive Haste effect much like Bloodlust or Heroism to party or raid members. It also temporarily increases the mage’s own movement speed. Time Warp will be exclusive with Bloodlust and Heroism, meaning you can’t benefit from both if you’ve got the Exhaustion debuff, though the movement-speed increase will still work even when under the effects of Exhaustion.

Although this initially feels useful, it’s essentially a tweaked copy of a Shaman’s Heroism or Bloodlust abilities. It’s also a copy of the Chrono Lord Deja’s ability in Culling of Stratholme. It’s unfortunate that it’s further ability homogenisation – unless there’s a reduction to the duration of Exhaustion we’re unlikely to see both Time Warp and Heroism being used at the same time.

Wall of Fog (level 85): Creates a line of frost in front of the mage, 30 yards from end to end. Enemies who cross the line are snared and take damage. The mana cost will be designed to make Wall of Fog efficient against groups, not individuals. This spell is intended to give mages a way to help control the battlefield, whether the mage is damaging incoming enemies (Blizzard can be channeled on top of Wall of Fog) or protecting a flag in a Battleground. 10-second duration. 30-second cooldown.

This feels like a situational spell more than anything else. I can see this being used heavily in battleground PVP (as will Fire Orb), but the raid uses aren’t as clear at present. If anything I feel that it brings back an old Mage role of add management – snaring, kiting and bringing errant adds back to the main or offtank. These old-school skills used by Hunters and Mages seem to have been dropped in favour of off-tanking.

Changes to Abilities:

Arcane Missiles is being redesigned to become a proc-based spell. Whenever the mage does damage with any spell, there is a chance for Arcane Missiles to become available, similar to how the warrior’s Overpower works. The damage and mana cost of this spell will be reworked to make it very desirable to use when available. This change should make gameplay more dynamic for the mage, particularly at low levels.

This is an interesting standout – in essence it’s extending the arcane endgame raiding rotation. It also means that there will need to be a replacement for the primary Arcane nuke for mages to use as they level up. If anything I think that this will make playing a mage more entertaining – having this mechanic interact with a Fire Hot Streak spec or Frost Deathfrost spec (I’ll touch on this later). I’m also expecting the Arcane Tree to act as a modifier on this proc chance.

We are planning to remove spells that don’t have a clear purpose. Amplify Magic, Dampen Magic, Fire Ward, and Frost Ward are being removed from the game, and we may remove more.

This seems a little dissapointing – I’d prefer to have more buttons than less, and have an increased use for this. The biggest knock-on effect for this will be Incanter’s Absorption, which will struggle to remain viable. I’m also dissapointed to see Amplify/Dampen Magic go – in pure physical fights Amplify Magic was a huge boost to healing, while Dampen Magic was a great help to the solo mage farming spellcaster mobs. The biggest resistance to using these was the duration and application of the buff – if it was party or raid-wide I think it would have seen a much higher use.

The ability to conjure food and water will not become available until higher levels (likely around level 40), as we’re making changes to ensure mages generally won’t run out of mana at lower levels. Once mages learn how to conjure food and water, the conjured item will restore both health and mana.

This is another dissapointing touch – seeing a core mage mechanic being pushed out to the middle levels. One of the appealing aspects of playing a mage is the strong level of self-sufficiency, and this changes push this aspect to one side. I’ll wait to see how a new mage levels before making a final judgement, but I’m not convinced by the mention of mana regen at low levels.

Scorch will provide a damage bonus to the mage’s fire spells. Our goal is for Scorch to be part of the mage’s rotation and a useful damage-dealing ability, even if someone else is supplying the group with the spell Critical Strike debuff. Scorch will provide the mage with more specific benefits, which can also be improved through talents.

This seems to be a hark back to the original scorch mechanic, where you had multiple Fire mages ramping up the Scorch debuff on a target. I’m also hoping for some use of this by Destro warlocks as well. The two specs used to complement eachother well, and I’d like to see a return to it. I’m hoping that it’ll work by applying a debuff to the target, rather than the debuff on the player that Arcane Blast creates.

New Talents & Talent Changes:

Arcane Focus will now return mana for each spell that fails to hit your target, including Arcane Missiles that fail to launch. We want Arcane mages to have several talents that play off of how much mana the character has and give the player enough tools to manage mana.

I like this change, mainy because it ditches the +hit component of the original. I’m hoping that we’ll see Precision go the same way, either by being modified or removed completely. Depending on it’s location in the Arcane Tree, it might be something that mages with other specs will pick up.

The talent Playing with Fire will reduce the cooldown of Blast Wave when hit by a melee attack, instead of its current effect.

Blast Wave is currently one of the spells that tanks hate mages using, mainly because of the knockback effect. Having said that, it’ll be great in PVP. It’ll also be great to augment with a Frost Nova->Blink, particularly by players with an elementalist spec.

Pyromaniac will grant Haste when three or more targets are getting damaged by the effects of your damage-over-time (DoT) fire spells.

This is a really interesting mechanic change. Currently Blizzard rules the roost when it comes to applying AoE to packs of targets. This will bring the Living Bomb Tab Flamestrike back into play, with multiple targets being dotted up before dropping the big AoE. I’m also hoping that mages will benefit from haste on DoTs in the same way that Warlocks and Shadowpriests will.

The Burnout talent will allow mages to cast spells using health when they run out of mana.

This is another steal, this time from the Warlock Lifetap. It’s going to be interesting to see how the health-mana conversion works. It’ll probably best be used while waiting for an evocation or mana gem cooldown to pop, but it also presents Mages with a new way to kill themselves. As if Spell Reflection and Standing In The Bad wasn’t enough to worry about…

Mastery Bonuses:

Mana Adept: Arcane will deal damage based how much mana the mage has. For example, Arcane mages will do much more damage at 100% mana than at 50% mana. If they begin to get low on mana, they will likely want to use an ability or mechanic to bring their mana up to increase their damage.

This is going to hit Arcane Mages hard, and probably push them back into the Arena PVP role of burst damage. In a raiding situation the Arcane Mage is going to be running out of mana towards the end of a fight, and with that drop in mana we’ll see a drop in damage. When you have players warming the floor and only a few left standing, this will not help.

Ignite: All direct-damage fire spells will add a damage-over-time (DoT) component when cast. The flavor will be similar to how Fireball works; however, the DoT component will be much stronger.

This will work brilliantly with the Pyromaniac change. I’m hoping for some stacking DoTs, so that we won’t see clashes between more than one mage. I’d also like to see these interact positively with other DoT enhancing abilities.

Deathfrost: Casting Frostbolt places a buff on the mage that increases the damage for all frost, fire, and arcane spells. The only damage spell that won’t be affected by this buff is Frostbolt.

Again, this looks like an interesting spec. I’m hoping that this will play well with Brain Freeze and Master of Elements, and that the new Arcane Missiles proc will work well with this. I’m also hoping this will encourage more Elementalist specs, bringing Frostfire Blot back into play. Having a spell that would benefit from Frost talents as well as being affected by Deathfrost will be incredibly useful.

All in, it’s a mixed bag for mages. Some good, some bad, but mostly a step in the good direction. As always though, the devil is in the detail, and we won’t see that until Beta. Till then, it’s all theory, guesswork and conjecture.

The Campaign for Cheese Sculpting

Posted on by Gazimoff

Tired of finding your bags full of Stormwind Brie? Desperate to find a use for your Darnassian Bleu? How about invoking the magical properties of Dalaran Sharp? How about making these overlooked consumables useful? Read on and discover how Cheese Sculpting could be the profession for you.

Since time immemorial players have been confused by the cheese they’ve looted. Some believe that it’s a conspiracy by the Tauren to invade their diet with this perplexing produce. Others feel that the diminutive delicacy has no place in their bags. With the announcement of Cheese Sculpting as the new Secondary Profession in Cataclysm these items will finally have a use.

Unlocking the mysteries of the fascinating fromage is something that all players with the new expansion will be able to pick up, with the ability to cut and chisel the cheese being skilled up in much the same way as other professions. Uncut cheeses will be available from vendors and creatures in the same way that they are now, with the rarer (and more potent varieties) only being available from specific creatures.

Cheese sculptors will also be able to use a variety of different milks in order to prepare their own crafting materials. These milks, once suitably prepared by being left in your personal or guild bank for a period of time, may even evolve into rare cheeses that give further modifiers when sculpted.

But what can cheese sculpting do? A number of carvings have already been unveiled, each with their own formidable powers:

  • Proudmore’s Potent Sharp: Increases spell power by 150 when washed down with a Flask of Port.
  • Fermented Brie of Horror: When exposed to the air, causes all beasts and humanoids to flee for 5 seconds. Any undead within 50 yards will be drawn to the smell.
  • Battle-ready Darnassian Bleu: Fortifies you and your allies, increasing stamina by 50. May cause monsters to flee when attacked due to halitosis.

More carvings are promised, with the ability to combine two or more cheeses making more intricate carvings possible.

Sitting alongside Fish Feasts and Flasks, Cheese Sculptures are sure to be a key part of both heroics and raids as we reach the endgame phase of Cataclysm. Although the thought of skilling up another profession from scratch is daunting, the idea of going through the revamped game world as I go should make it worthwhile.

I’m not sure if I’ll ever get used to my raid leader shouting “DEPLOY THE CHEESE” over vent though…



Finding Our Place

Posted on by Gazimoff

As we drift towards the end of Wrath and eagerly await the launch of Cataclysm, I’ve been taking the opportunity to reflect on how magecraft has fared. From the new spells the expansion brought through to the talent changes each patch, we’ve been through considerable change. And yet I can’t help but think that we’re not as special as we once were.

What started this all off was the movie Yesterday’s News. It’s about how the Meeting Stone crafter copes with a changing world where the LFD tool makes meeting stones redundant. It struck a chord with me – I’ve been seeing increasing numbers of mages struggling to get groups with both PuGs and their own raidgroups. Even my own raidgroup only tend to miss a mage when they don’t have any free strudel – other than that, there’s not really an issue.

The current state of mages was really brought home for me by Larisa’s great analysis of Paragon’s world first kill of Arthas in 25-man heroic mode. If you look at their raid setup you’ll notice that they decided not to bring any mages. There’s a thread explaining the choice on Paragon’s forum, where they pinpoint the slightly lower DPS output as the reason. A pure DPS class would get benched, with other DPS classes and hybrid classes specced as DPS being used instead.

What about the other tricks that mages have? With the homogenisation that’s taken place during Wrath, mages have only two unique tricks left up their sleeve – polymorph and strudels. Arcane Intellect can be swapped for Fel Intelligence, while even the recent Arcane Empowerment buff can be matched by Retribution paladins and Beastmaster hunters. Crowd Control has been sidelined for much of Wrath, with AoE tanking being the preferred method for the majority of trash pulls and offtanks used for adds during bossfights.

Larisa is right to be concerned – even though the difference is slight, she’s worried that raid groups will look to Paragon’s results as a reason why their own groups are underperforming, and may choose to run without mages as a result. This argument only stacks up when each player is equally skilful at their class and you’re purely relying on statistics to minmax, but that point may be missed on those looking to form groups, raids and so on. They’ll point to the Paragon forums and say that it’s official: mages don’t cut it any more.

The whole situation is compounded further when you have scenarios like the one described by Krizzlybear on their blog. Considering that with a mage’s three talent trees that you have one that still doesn’t compete against other classes and another that’s laughed at completely, you begin to wonder what the point of playing a mage is. Even the skill of the player is discarded entirely, despite when they demonstrate that they’re just as capable of keeping up.

I’m not trying to encourage anyone to change their spec; I had to go through Molten Core as a Frost mage even though I much prefer Fire. Rather, I’d prefer to see the three specs brought in line with each other so that they all bring solid DPS but also provide additional benefits depending on the chosen tree. I’m hoping that this will arrive with the complete talent revamp for Cataclysm, so that the differences between each tree aren’t in terms of damage output but in terms of playstyle and what else the mage can do besides damage.

These things are cyclical – I remember when Warlocks, Paladins and Warriors were all in the same position that mages find themselves in now. I’ve also got faith that thes problems will be resolved and that once again all three specs will be matched on a spreadsheet (even if the skill of the players can vary wildly). It’s an agonising wait though, considering that we’re currently at the end of March and Cataclysm is predicted to land in October. We might be looking at six to eight months before the pre-expansion patch is released and all the talent trees get revamped.

Till then, mages have a job to do. It’s up to us to show the rest of the Warcraft-playing public that in the 99.99% of cases that aren’t a Lich King heroic world first kill that we still have something worthwhile to contribute.

Battling the Burnout

Posted on by Gazimoff

Last night’s raiding was fantastic. We had a bit of silliness and fun, but we cleared up to (and including) Festergut, leaving the rest of the week clear for progression work. I also picked up Abracadaver, with the additional hit and haste making that transition to a Fire spec more possible if the numbers stack up. I’m not sure if the guild will go for it though – they’re already hooked on the Arcane Empowerment change.

My raiding schedule is pretty light though – I might spend two or three nights a week in a raid. I’m also pretty much exclusive to 10-man stuff – while I might pick up a 25-man VoA or ICC rep run, it’s not essential to me. It means my time is free to do other things like work on alts, roleplay, work on crafting or whatever else I fancy. I like to mix up my game like this – it means I’ve always got stuff to do.

It’s strange in a way. Back when I was hardcore I used to log in, raid, log off. I’d then repeat this cycle six or seven times a week with raiding being the only thing I’d play for. I had other people farming materials for flasks or other buffs for me. For those five hours a night, I’d focus on the screen and nothing else. Dinner would go cold on the plate next to me. The only thing that mattered was the next server first, the next boss, the next raid.

In the end, I burnt out. Raiding was impacting every aspect of my life. I would go to sleep at 2am, only to get up again at 6am and shuffle to work for nine hours. I’d snatch tokens of sleep on the train to work, running on coffee day and night. In all, it wasn’t a great way to live and I called time on it. I ended up quitting completely for a while and going cold turkey. I think Protflashes brings out a great example in this post. It’s well worth reading because it really shows what burnout feels like – you want to change  what you’re doing, but you feel you can’t because others are relying on you. There’s this sense of moral obligation that hangs there.

Anyhow, after a while I realised what I liked about the game – what kept me playing. I’ve already touched on the people side in previous posts – the strong team spirit we had as a raidguild was something that spurred me on. But more than that, I also realised that there’s about five or six different games that I play within Warcraft. Each of these smaller games like questing, gathering and crafting, duelling or PvP, dungeoneering etc. all work together to make this overall meta-game. It’s one of the things missed by other MMOs that I’ve played, which is why people tend to play them for a short time after release but then end up cancelling once they’ve finished with the few micro-games they like.

Larisa’s got a further point about it in her post about making our own Cataclysm. She suggests trying something completely new, like trying out PvP or experimenting with roleplay. It’s solid advice because it encourages mixing things up. Similar recommendations came back on Twitter, with taking a break, playing a different game, switching focus to a different game aspect or even just rerolling a new character.

The thing that gnaws away for me is inevitability, like we’re destined to go through this cycle of play-burnout-break-play. And even though we can mix things up by introducing new elements to our game, I’m not sure if it’ll help eliminate burnout completely – it feels like it’ll just extend that time between trying something new and growing weary of it. Then again, I can’t exatly talk from experience – I don’t know of anyone that’s avoided burnout or how they managed to do it.

I’m also beginning to feel that although we each have a personal responsibility for keeping our game fresh, there’s some responsibility to the guild or raidgroup to help keep their players interested in logging in. After all, we want people to feel motivated and wanting to play, not that they feel obliged to out of some kind of moral responsibility. How that should work, I’m not so sure. It’s like I can feel the shape of it, but not the detail. Maybe I’m too distant from guild leadership these days.

I hate leaving on a low note, but it’s something I see happening all around me and I can’t help but think that there’s something broken about it. If we can understand how to avoid burnout it’ll mean we feel happier about playing the games we love. If we don’t, I can’t help but think that this cycle is going to continue. Not just for Warcraft, but for every future MMO we choose to play.

Patch 3.3.3: Twisted Firestarter?

Posted on by Gazimoff

For us over in Europe tomorrow is Patch Day, while those players in the US are already downloading, installing and waiting for servers to come back online. Regardless, the theorycrafters have been out in force, pouring over every talent change and glyph update. But while some classes get some interesting updates, the changes for mages seem bland by comparison.

Before I get into my opinions though, let’s look at what’s been changed in the patch.

Arcane

  • Arcane Empowerment: This effect is now passive instead of being a proc off of critical strikes. The self damage buff remains unchanged.
  • Incanter’s Absorption: This talent now only grants additional spell power when damage is absorbed by Mana Shield, Frost Ward, Fire Ward, or Ice Barrier. The limit of 5% of the mage’s health on the spell power buff has been removed.

Fire

  • Burning Soul: Threat reduction is now 10/20%, up from 5/10%.
  • Combustion: The cooldown on this spell is now 2 minutes, down from 3 minutes.
  • Empowered Fire: This talent now also applies to Pyroblast damage.
  • Torment the Weak: This talent now also applies to Pyroblast damage.

Frost

  • Frostbolt: Spell power scaling on this spell has been increased by approximately 5%.
  • Brain Freeze: This talent now allows your next Fireball or Frostfire Bolt to be instant and cost no mana. There is a small internal cooldown to keep the Frostfire Bolt from immediately triggering Brain Freeze again.

Glyphs

  • Glyph of Fireball: No longer increases critical strike chance of Fireball. Instead, it now reduces the cast time of Fireball by 0.15 seconds.

Bug Fixes

  • Arcane Empowerment: Fixed a bug preventing Rank 3 from granting 3% damage.
  • Burning Determination: This talent will no longer sometimes have its effect removed by the same spell that triggered it.
  • Dragon’s Breath: Druids can no longer remove the disorientation effect from this spell by canceling their current shapeshift.
  • Enduring Winter: Tooltip corrected to match actual Replenishment mana regeneration numbers.
  • Fingers of Frost: Mages with Molten Armor active who have the Shatter talent will no longer lose Fingers of Frost charges when Molten Armor causes reactive damage. In addition, the effect from this talent now displays the number of charges on the buff icon.

In a nutshell, Arcane mages get a flat-rate buff instead of one that relied on crits, but lose out on the Incanter’s Absorption trick. Let’s be fair though, only the high-end mages were using this trick – for the average mage it’s no great loss. Fire mages get some interesting changes in the form of threat reduction, more crits and more damage when they crit often. It means that hitting the Hot Streak proc and getting that Instant-cast Pyroblast is becoming even more important. Frost mages get some slight love, mainly from the Fingers of Frost bug fix and the Frostbolt scaling changes.

Will this change anything? I’m seeing a lot of talk from the high-end about Arcane mages going back over to Fire, but the difference I’m seeing is marginal at best. I’m more worried about the practical rather than the theory, and how it’ll translate into bossfight combat.

While theory is great for when you’re standing still and just tapping your hotkeys, most Wrath bossfights involve some kind of movement or rhythm. Looking at the relative casting time of Arcane Blast versus Fireball, I think that Arcane will still win out for most fights where movement is important. It might be that the extra range from Flame Throwing will compensate for some of it, but I’m thinking more about encounters like Blood Princes or Marrowgar.

I also think that a fair chunk of mages just won’t bother. We ditched a ton of hit gear when Arcane became the spec to have and I reckon that there are several who can’t be bothered to collect the additional hit gear again just to go back. This is another one of those reasons why Hit modifiers really need to come out of the talent trees.

Frost will still be the spec for PVP mages, but the buffs still don’t push it up next to Arcane and Fire for raid suitability. It also feels like the tweaks and bugfixes are tinkering around the edges. I don’t think that Frost players will be on a level playing field until much later.

I think the real excitement will hit with 3.9, when the talents get their full revamp along with the Cataclysm stat changes. Until then, it feels like we’re just waiting for people to run the numbers before we go out, change our specs and regem our gear.

Nostalgia Is A Double Edged Sword

Posted on by Gazimoff

Two of my characters have been trekking though Thousand needles recently. Jupplar has been going back to the Old World to grind some gathering skills, while my Blood Elf mage has been finishing the quests at Freewind Post and the Mirage Raceway. All the while this nagging reminder kept on creeping up in the back of my mind. All this is going to change.

Don’t get me wrong though – change is not always a bad thing. The planned Gnomeregan Offensive is something I’m looking forward to enormously, partly because it closes a storyline that’s been left hanging since I first rolled my Gnome mage five years ago.

At level five you get a class quest to introduce you to your trainer. All the Gnomish ones have a similar feel to them – they talk about either preparing for an impending offensive to take back Gnomeregan or helping to resettle the evacuated population. The mage one – Glyphic Memorandum – starts with a letter.

To: New Students of the Arcane Arts:
You are required to seek out and study under the gnome Marryk Nurribit until such time comes that you are called upon to aid your people in re-establishing themselves in a new habitation. Please, without trepidation, prepare yourself for rigorous testing procedures and a difficult acclimation process as you find a domicile and/or any form of companionship with the local denizens.

Questions regarding your duties and abilities should be directed to Marrek Nurribit.

From a roleplay point of view, every Gnome’s life has been building up to the Offensive. It’ll be the most exciting thing to happen to the race, with the possible exception of Gnome priests becoming playable in Cataclysm. While I’m expecting the landscape and questing around Gnomeregan to change and become some kind of starter area, I’m not worried about it. For me it feels like the end of a chapter rather than the end of a story.

Nostalgia can cut both ways though. A fond memory of mine is when the guild I was in took a break from running dungeons to pay a visit to the Mirage Raceway. I remember watching the races and cheering on the Gnomish rocket-car, eating ice-cream and buying a chicken. Being there again on new characters reminded me of the good times we had, but then up crept the reminder that the entire zone will change.

Outside of Warcraft, I sometimes visit places that I haven’t been to for a time. They remind me of events that happened in my past, both the good and the bad. Places like where I grew up, where I used to meet up with friends as a kid. Places like where I heard the news my grandfather died, or where I struggled through difficult times in my life. Sometimes when I return to a place the entire landscape has changed; the buildings have been bulldozed or the green fields have turned to office blocks. It’s weird and possibly a touch melodramatic, but it feels like the memory I have no longer has an anchor – that the reality of it has started to fade.

The crazy thing is that I feel the same thing about some locations in-game as well. I know that Cataclysm is coming and that with it large changes will be made to the game world. I also know that logically it’s a great thing – quest hubs that have been problematic for years will get remade, huge unused locations will be brought to life and we’ll finally be able to use flying mounts everywhere. But at the same time I won’t be able to go back to the races, sit on the benches and cheer on the rocket cars.

Now I know I should get over myself – after all, it’s just a game. None of it is real – it’s all just bits and bytes, people and pixels. Then again, just because the environment is virtual doesn’t make the emotion any less real. The pride in getting a strong arena ranking, the cheer of taking down a new raid boss – they’re still real emotions that shouldn’t feel any less valid because they’re in a virtual setting. The fun we have with others, either as silliness in guildchat or testing new skills in dungeons, is just as authentic.

I’m still looking forward to Cataclysm and the changes it’ll bring. Being part of an evolving and changing world is more than I was hoping for when I started playing, even though I surprise myself when I realise I’ve been playing this for five years. The bittersweet taste is something that will fade in time, as new experiences flood in and push the old ones into the dusty corners at the back of my mind. For now, I’m making sure that my screenshots folder is backed up.

See you at the races.

Charting the Curve of Awesome

Posted on by Gazimoff

I’ve been levelling up a newbie mage using the Refer-a-Friend feature, and it’s been a slog. We’ve gone Hordeside and have no heirloom gear, so we’re relying on instance gear, random greenies and quest rewards to gear up. The slog is worth it though – I’m now getting to the stage where the new spells remind me how cool the class is. I even reckon that this coolness gets better as you level up, like mages have some kind of awesomeness amplifier built-in.

Let’s compare it with deathknights. With these guys it feels like all the awesomeness is blown in the first five minutes. It’s similar to a fireworks display – great to look at, but you’re picking up crap from the floor for weeks afterwards.

This is probably a symptom of what happens when you have a Bored Mage with PowerPoint. But it also reminds me of how things might change in Cataclysm. Will the Curve of Awesome look the same, or will the reshaping of the game world change how we feel about our favourite classes?

Honestly, I don’t have a clue. I just like graphs.