Mages, don't worry, you weren't left out of the love light this patch. Not at all. The number of bug fixes in your section of the patch notes does outweigh the number of substantive changes, but one of the substantive changes is very significant. Let's start with a bang:

• Reduced the mana cost of Fireball, Frostbolt, Frostfire Bolt, Arcane Blast, Arcane Missiles, and Arcane Explosion.

That could practically read "reduced the mana cost of mages." Great stuff. Looking at the numbers from the last beta build, the reduction seems to be on the order of 10%, which is quite noticeable when applied to your staple spells.

Living Bomb, which has been something of a controversial talent, has also been polished a bit:

• Living Bomb: Mana cost reduced to be the same as Arcane Explosion; no longer causes the caster to stand up when the final explosion occurs, and it is now possible for each mage to have a Living Bomb active on a target.

Frost mages, I'm sorry, but there's a herd of small nerfs (nerflings?) for you in this patch:

• Brain Freeze: Now only works on Frost spells with a chilling effect (was all Frost spells)
• Cold as Ice: No longer reduces the cooldown for Deep Freeze
• Deep Freeze: Now consumes a Fingers of Frost charge when used

No real way to sugar-coat all that, but it doesn't look too major to me, anyway.

And finally, the bug fixes. They may not be glamorous, they may not be exciting, but these rank-and-file patch notes keep the game running smoothly.

• Arcane Potency: crit bonus is now consumed immediately on cast of a spell with travel time, so you can't get double benefits from combos like Fireball + Fireblast.
• Blast Wave no longer gets double the intended crit bonus from Combustion
• Burnout now consumes extra mana as intended when Living Bomb crits
• Focus Magic now works properly when mages use the ability on each other (kinky)
• Frostfire Bolt (rank 2): periodic damage now benefits from spell power gains
• Master of Elements now works with Living Bomb
• Molten Fury no longer prevents Ice Lance ranks 2 and 3 from dealing triple damage against frozen targets
• Torment of the Weak now works correctly when the mage also has Molten Fury

Not much to say about the bug fixes. My question to you: did Frost need to be nerfed?

Tags: fire, frost, frost-mage, living-bomb, mage, mages, patch-3.0.2

Filed under: Mage, Patches