Okay, so we've done a little bit of research and I think I might've hit on not one, but two PvP fire builds. The first up is the old POM Pyro build and the second is a deep fire version. Without further ado, here we go.
Ye gods and goddesses. This is a potential PvP arcane/ fire hybrid. The idea behind this build is to give us the quick "Execute" and increase our longevity against the opponents who wish to outlast instead of execute. What I did was give clearcasting, Presence of Mind and Combustion to stack with our Blast Wave, Pyroblast and Scorch. It should go without saying that you won't cast Pyro without Presence of Mind. Pyro is your execute move. After you put Scorch and Fire Blast on them (with Combustion), you need all the crit you can get to overcome the resilience your opponents have.
This next one is a deeper fire spec. No Presence of Mind here. In this build, you can see we've gone deeper into the Fire tree for our 41 point talent. It's horrendously inefficient, but it's another stun effect. Essentially that will be your bread and butter. Once again Combustion to help our crit chance and loads of stuns. Hopefully you'll be able to overwhelm the resilience and any stun resist abilities/ trinkets they carry. You need to go in full- bore and get your win in the first 30 seconds or so or you will be in a world of hurt.
There we go. A couple of (hopefully) Arena- worthy fire specs. Give it a go and have fun.
Edit: Curse my eager clicking. The second spec now has all the points assigned...
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Having Fun, One Minute After Another
So I've been playing my hunter a lot. Dinged 49 today and headed back to Feralas for some unfinished business, but not before dragging my guild mistress along. All I had to say was "Cute NCP!" and she was there. After much running around and murdering tauren like there was no tomorrow and numerous AFKs (stop interrupting my WoW, real life!), she and I ended up in the Hinterlands with our very own Sprite Darter Hatchlings. Utter cuteness. Jealously was inspired amongst many and now I have to go back to Feralas to help my guildies get theirs too. I don't mind. Free experience is free.
I logged after showing off the baby dragon- thing and went for a walk. It's a beautiful day and I just had to enjoy it. But as I was walking, my thoughts drifted to an old friend of mine who recently quit WoW. Not like I didn't see it coming a mile away, but it was kind of sad. We both ran gnome mages, leveled and instanced together and hit 70 about the same time. Watching good folks go is never easy.
But why did he quit when I haven't? Same classes, even the same spec for a while. He had almost the exact same gameplay experience I did. Hell, we were in the same guild most of the time.
Then it dawned on me. When Hallow's End came last year (right about when I first started), I got my candy and costumes and had a blast. Then New Years brought fireworks and hours in Stormwind City getting e- drunk. I did all the Valentine's quests for both my mage and my (oft- lamented) pally. Children's Week? Peanut is all the proof I need. My mage picked up the worg pup from LBRS (the spiders are icky. No thanks).
While I was doing these random things that didn't give me money or experience, he was grinding and powerleveling. While I whored myself on LFG (and having one great PuG experience after another), he got high levels to run him through instances to finish quests and get gear. He got epic drop after epic drop. He had more gold than he knew what to do with. I struggled to get vendor trash from mobs and barely had enough gold to buy my mounts.
If anything, I should've quit way before he did. My poor mage had no breaks and his had all of them.
He hated his mage. With a passion. He burned himself out. While I hate tooting my own horn, I was a much better player than he was, even if it did take me longer to max out. I honestly believe the reason I am still playing now is because I have taken the time to do the "useless" things in the game. It's kept me sane. It's kept me playing and learning my class and spending $15 a month to continue to have these experiences.
What this entire post boils down to is, I suppose, this: have fun. Do the things you want to do. Do you want every "Flimsy Male/Female ______ Mask," go for it. You enjoy your bizarre ret spec on that pally with the Stormpike Insignia? Don't listen to folks who say "Go Holy or Prot, Retnub." You want to Arena with a 0/0/61 build on your mage? For that matter, do you want to Arena with your hunter at all? Be the best you can be at it.
But most importantly, have fun.
I logged after showing off the baby dragon- thing and went for a walk. It's a beautiful day and I just had to enjoy it. But as I was walking, my thoughts drifted to an old friend of mine who recently quit WoW. Not like I didn't see it coming a mile away, but it was kind of sad. We both ran gnome mages, leveled and instanced together and hit 70 about the same time. Watching good folks go is never easy.
But why did he quit when I haven't? Same classes, even the same spec for a while. He had almost the exact same gameplay experience I did. Hell, we were in the same guild most of the time.
Then it dawned on me. When Hallow's End came last year (right about when I first started), I got my candy and costumes and had a blast. Then New Years brought fireworks and hours in Stormwind City getting e- drunk. I did all the Valentine's quests for both my mage and my (oft- lamented) pally. Children's Week? Peanut is all the proof I need. My mage picked up the worg pup from LBRS (the spiders are icky. No thanks).
While I was doing these random things that didn't give me money or experience, he was grinding and powerleveling. While I whored myself on LFG (and having one great PuG experience after another), he got high levels to run him through instances to finish quests and get gear. He got epic drop after epic drop. He had more gold than he knew what to do with. I struggled to get vendor trash from mobs and barely had enough gold to buy my mounts.
If anything, I should've quit way before he did. My poor mage had no breaks and his had all of them.
He hated his mage. With a passion. He burned himself out. While I hate tooting my own horn, I was a much better player than he was, even if it did take me longer to max out. I honestly believe the reason I am still playing now is because I have taken the time to do the "useless" things in the game. It's kept me sane. It's kept me playing and learning my class and spending $15 a month to continue to have these experiences.
What this entire post boils down to is, I suppose, this: have fun. Do the things you want to do. Do you want every "Flimsy Male/Female ______ Mask," go for it. You enjoy your bizarre ret spec on that pally with the Stormpike Insignia? Don't listen to folks who say "Go Holy or Prot, Retnub." You want to Arena with a 0/0/61 build on your mage? For that matter, do you want to Arena with your hunter at all? Be the best you can be at it.
But most importantly, have fun.
Friday, October 19, 2007
Leave It To Zball...
To forget to put up an email address for folks who might like to do something more than send me spam and porn links. That has been addressed and my email addy now sits off to the side under "About Me." And no, I don't apologize for not making it a link.
Erastus mentioned the frustration inherent in the patch changes for mages.
"On a more frustrating note, I have to say that I think it is kinda sad for WoW when the biggest change to the mage class is the ability to summon pepsi and candy machines."
Yeah. I understand perfectly. At the risk of sounding like I'm crying (because I'm not), the mage community rejoicing over "Summon Vending Machine" is a testament to just how much the class has been nerfed, especially recently. At least Blizz is attempting to address some of the issues with the mage class as a whole. It might take a while, but this new patch is a step, I feel, in the right direction.
Seper asked another question about PvP specs. What it essentially boils down to is this: if you want to be successful in PvP (especially Arenas), the classic mage build is 17/0/44. As of now, this is the best way to go by far.
17 points in the Arcane tree gives you the best PvP talent in the game. You want Improved Counterspell.
Improved Counterspell: Gives your Counterspell a 100% chance to silence the target for 4 seconds.
This stacks on top of the 8 second spell family lockdown. How you get to 17 points is up to you (though if you spec Wand Specialization for PvP, I'm revoking your Mage License).
Typical arcane talents -
2/2 Arcane Subtlety
3/5 Arcane Focus
5/5 Magic Absorption
5/5 Arcane Concentration (aka Clearcasting)
2/2 Improved Counterspell
Now to the Frost tree. What we want to do is freeze our opponents to get the most out of Ice Lance, which is your PvP bread and butter.
Typical frost talents -
5/5 Improved Frostbolt
5/5 Ice Shards
3/3 Frostbite
2/2 Improved Frost Nova
2/3 Permafrost
3/3 Piercing Ice
1/1 Cold Snap
2/2 Arctic Reach
5/5 Shatter
1/1 Ice Block (Get rid of DoTs today!)
3/3 Improved Cone of Cold
2/2 Ice Floes
1/1 Ice Barrier
3/5 Artic Winds
5/5 Empowered Frostbolt
1/1 Water Elemental
This increases our frost burst damage while giving every frost spell a good chance to freeze a target, setting them up for a chain of Ice Lance. Water Elemental will stay out for extra damage and another Frost Nova. I'll try to work out a fire PvP spec, but no high- ranked Arena mage would use it.
Erastus mentioned the frustration inherent in the patch changes for mages.
"On a more frustrating note, I have to say that I think it is kinda sad for WoW when the biggest change to the mage class is the ability to summon pepsi and candy machines."
Yeah. I understand perfectly. At the risk of sounding like I'm crying (because I'm not), the mage community rejoicing over "Summon Vending Machine" is a testament to just how much the class has been nerfed, especially recently. At least Blizz is attempting to address some of the issues with the mage class as a whole. It might take a while, but this new patch is a step, I feel, in the right direction.
Seper asked another question about PvP specs. What it essentially boils down to is this: if you want to be successful in PvP (especially Arenas), the classic mage build is 17/0/44. As of now, this is the best way to go by far.
17 points in the Arcane tree gives you the best PvP talent in the game. You want Improved Counterspell.
Improved Counterspell: Gives your Counterspell a 100% chance to silence the target for 4 seconds.
This stacks on top of the 8 second spell family lockdown. How you get to 17 points is up to you (though if you spec Wand Specialization for PvP, I'm revoking your Mage License).
Typical arcane talents -
2/2 Arcane Subtlety
3/5 Arcane Focus
5/5 Magic Absorption
5/5 Arcane Concentration (aka Clearcasting)
2/2 Improved Counterspell
Now to the Frost tree. What we want to do is freeze our opponents to get the most out of Ice Lance, which is your PvP bread and butter.
Typical frost talents -
5/5 Improved Frostbolt
5/5 Ice Shards
3/3 Frostbite
2/2 Improved Frost Nova
2/3 Permafrost
3/3 Piercing Ice
1/1 Cold Snap
2/2 Arctic Reach
5/5 Shatter
1/1 Ice Block (Get rid of DoTs today!)
3/3 Improved Cone of Cold
2/2 Ice Floes
1/1 Ice Barrier
3/5 Artic Winds
5/5 Empowered Frostbolt
1/1 Water Elemental
This increases our frost burst damage while giving every frost spell a good chance to freeze a target, setting them up for a chain of Ice Lance. Water Elemental will stay out for extra damage and another Frost Nova. I'll try to work out a fire PvP spec, but no high- ranked Arena mage would use it.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Been a Long Time Comin'
Yes it has. Sorry I haven't posted in a while. Unfortunately real life issues have conspired to cut into my playtime and keep me from really enjoying myself. So while I have a few minutes, I figure I'd hop on the bandwagon and give my opinions on a few things regarding the impending Patch 2.3, especially as it pertains to mages. (You can read it all here, and I highly encourage you to do so.)
Take a look at the patch notes and forums. While you're at it, take a look at the blogs I link to so you can get an idea of what you can expect from other classes. Besides, they have neat pictures and candy.
- Reduced mana cost for Arcane Intellect and Arcane Brilliance. Love love love. Gone are the days of ridiculously high mana costs, especially in a raid or group situation where you also have to provide food and water. It takes forever. Speaking of which...
- Ritual of Refreshment. This is a trainable spell (no farming or paying ludicrous prices for books either!) and supposedly it works like the warlock's Well of Souls, only it makes food and water. Once I can get my password to work, I'll give it a shot on the PTR and let you know.
- Arcane Meditation improves mana regen by 10/20/30%. This doubles the previous gains, so if you are deep arcane, rejoice!
- Detect Magic goes away. I'm a bit torn with this one, as I always liked to find out what kind of buffs enemies had, but I suppose I can do without. Most folks I know never used it anyways.
- Evocation regenerates 15% of total mana per tick instead of recovering mana based on Spirit regeneration. So why mages have Spirit on our gear anyways?
- Fire Ward, Frost Ward, Ice Barrier now absorb damage based on your +spell damage. Not sure quite how it scales yet, but I'm looking into it.
- No damage tax for Improved Fireballs and Frostbolts. That's right. Blizzard is apologizing for nerfing your damage output hardcore by "obliterating" the damage tax. Hail to the DPS gods again! Thy name is Mage! Except for frosties, which get...
- Hypothermia (hate!) debuff time increased to 45 seconds. I have no idea why they did this, but it was probably an Arena thing. Silly PvP, spoiling my fun like...
- No more portals in BGs. Are you serious? Honestly, there's nothing like opening a portal to Darnassus on top of a Well of Souls to brighten up a day. Strike this one from your Book o' Portal Tricks, folks. Alas, we barely knew ye.
Take a look at the patch notes and forums. While you're at it, take a look at the blogs I link to so you can get an idea of what you can expect from other classes. Besides, they have neat pictures and candy.
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