Fire mages are
ablaze with joy over today's
patch 3.3 PTR build, frost mages are a little iffy, and arcane is... pretty much completely untouched! Let's skip over any additional preamble and dig right in. Do note, however, that some of this is so far unconfirmed and comes from datamining. Considering these changes come from the PTR, any of it could change before patch 3.3 goes live.
Fire
- Improved Scorch: The debuff from this talent no longer stacks, and instead can apply the full effect from a single cast of Scorch.
- Glyph of Improved Scorch now increases the damage of your Scorch spell by 20%.
This is going to make a lot of raiding mages very happy. It essentially normalizes the debuff to match equivalent debuffs, like Improved Shadow Bolt. Streamlining an unnecessarily complicated debuff is a great thing. It'll lift a needless burden from mage DPS. And yes, there are mages
getting drunk in celebration this evening. It's somewhat disturbing, really.
Frost
- Frozen Core now also causes your Ice Lance criticals to reduce the cast time of your next Frostbolt or Frostfire Bolt by 0.4/0.7/1 sec.
- Glyph of Eternal Water - Your Summon Water Elemental now lasts indefinitely, but your Water Elemental can no longer cast Freeze.
Oh ho! What is this? Could it be an attempt at making frost raid viable? It's a pretty good move, too. The increased damage comes from having your pet with you nuking away at all times, rather than straight increasing the power of the mage's own nukes. The concern was always that if you pump up the frost mage, you make them even more dangerous in PvP, which is hardly something they need. PvP frost mages wouldn't want to lose
the Water Elemental's root, so you won't need to worry about this in the arena. It should work out pretty well. Assuming, of course, the Water Elemental and the frost mage get all the tools necessary to keep the thing alive in a raid.
Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of
Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to the Arthas.
WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.
Tags: arcane, fire, frost, frozen-core, glyph-of-eternal-water, glyph-of-improved-scorch, glyph-of-scorch, improved-scorch, mage, mages, patch-3.3, patch-3.3-changes, patch-3.3-wow, scorch, summon-water-elemental, water-elemental, world-of-warcraft-patch-3.3, wow-3.3-changes, wow-new-patch, wow-patch, wow-patch-3.3, wow-patch-news
Filed under: Mage, Patches, Analysis / Opinion
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Oct 13th 2009 at 8:15PM 
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 5)
volrathy Oct 13th 2009 11:50PM
@ jam whats a "proper" spec ?
eg ive been loving my new 29/42/0 specced priest hybrid (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=Frostmourne&n=Volrathy&group=1) with a focus of spamming shields for "preheals" and topping people up with coh and poh burst healing and things. I did 9.2k ehps coming first smashing a holy paladin and 2 resto druids by a long margin during toc 25 on the weekend with a "unproper" spec.
Who are you to say what is and what isn't a proper spec ?
Charlie Oct 14th 2009 12:09AM
@volrathy
It doesn't matter if you use a bad spec is you do well in raids. However, its near impossible to do well in raids as frost. It's just that bad (its about 25-30% below the other major three).
Also, your spec isnt that bad for how you heal (though needs some tweaking). Trade out Englightenment and Mental Strength for 3/3 Emp Renew, and 5/5 Divine Providence and you'll see way more throughput (the current talents you have in disc really aren't giving you much). Drop Serendipity (since you don't use GH), and pick up Holy Conc for some regen.
I would still suggest trying a typical disc spec. You don't get the full benefit of shields and im suprised you dont run oom like a some bitch casting all those shields w/o rapture. You will love Borrowed Time / PoH. and penance is awsome.
Seriously, try it out. You will need to get used to not having CoH but i feel like you have a Disc playstyle currently.
krizzlybear Oct 14th 2009 12:37AM
@jam: You assume that I am part of some elitist hardcore cutting edge guild. I am not. In fact, My guild is still doing Ulduar, and for our 10's, having no replenishment and nothing but arcane mages and ISB-less locks makes me a shoe-in for raidwide buffs. I also pull my weight with about 3.5-4k dps; it's not that great for my gear level (mostly emblems, 2pcT8, 2pcT9), but it's acceptable for the content that I'm doing.
I'm going to respond to your initial comment by saying that I feel sorry for people who feel like they have to spec a certain way just to be accepted into raids, and getting absolutely no enjoyment from it. I'd very much rather be a guildless happy Frost mage than a guilded and disgruntled fire/arcane mage.
volrathy Oct 14th 2009 12:45AM
@ charlie.. Englightenment and Mental Strength are required for my spec they are 2 of the main regen talents. Holy conc is pretty bad as my flash heals cant crit they are only being used when surge of light procs. Serendipty is required for the burst healing PoHs
Healing goes like this - PW:S (spam) - PW:S glyph crits and procs surge of light - cast instant flash heal on person (stack serendipity). Press CoH every cooldown. Blow off a big serendipity PoH. Keep spamming those shields also PoM whenever possible.
Also throw a few insults @ dps cause they aren't using my lolwell.
Emp renew why ? Its crap i dont use renew.
Have a look at my 2nd spec. I was disc all thru ulduar.
Bronwyn Oct 14th 2009 8:33PM
@Jam:
Until you actually play the underdog spec, don't be so jerky about it. I've raided in frost and sure, it doesn't get as much dps as the other specs but the dps I did in frost was perfectly respectable and I got no complaints. Unless you are attempting the absolute hardest of hard modes it's not as bad as it sounds. It's way behind in simulations but it's not as far behind in actual practice.
Task Oct 13th 2009 8:55PM
Well this gives me an opportunity to put forth more energy to leveling my Forsaken (and possibly Draenei counterpart).
Kudos to Blizz for doing this, for both Fire and Frost mages.
And to Xisa, don't whine until you read and understand what is happening in the PTR. If you aren't even doing PTR, then just keep playing on the live realms.
mike Oct 13th 2009 8:58PM
A possible raid viable frost spec and a simplified scorch!?
Awesomgasm.
Turtlehead Oct 14th 2009 7:04PM
Raid viable in the sense of "does more damage than now". Doubt out of "you still suck" unless they're some crazy good stuff when they figure out the changed pet scaling. The elemental is already up for large chunks of boss fights, heck, over two thirds of a shorty like an achievement Patchwerk. It's a DPS boost, definitely, but meh. And we lose the nova. A lot of us didn't want a permapet as the attempted fix because there'd be a downside. Sure enough!
The lance change smells like PvP. PvE it's nice but it's very silly. On live: it's a PvP talent, we don't cast lance unless moving because it's a DPS loss. The only good stat for us is haste so our bolts are screaming-fast. Changed: we take the PvP talent (we have the three points but they'll likely come from what little we have left in snaring), cast lance during FoF procs to haste our bolts which may have already been softcapped during procs, haste pots, and heroisms. My frosty's bolts are 1.8 or lower on live for large chunks of boss battles in good but not stellar gear.
I'm finally throwing in the towel and abandoning frost raid spec. Definitely going to check the PTR builds in hopes something changes but.... Make a snare/aoe spec as backup and no more frost nuking. Blizzard is so set on making this pseudo-shatter thing work in raids they just chuck more and more kludgy stuff at it. "Treat as frozen" "x4 if level +3". They can't admit it was a lousy idea and move on. Hopefully they'll start over entirely with the expansion.
Sorry to QQ about a large buff (quite obnoxious, I admit) but it's such a *stupid* buff. And ya know, much as I love my elemental to bits--I named him and I'm not a sentimental guy--if I wanted a big blue blob beside my toon 24/7 I'd load my lvl 20 bank alt warlock. What's the friggin' point if all the WE does is stand there and shoot? They could've made the glyph make my wand autofire while I cast, same damn thing.
Skarlette Oct 13th 2009 9:00PM
OMG the Scorch thing makes me a very very very happy Fire Mage! :D
Frank Oct 14th 2009 12:36AM
hear hear!
now i won't have to waste 4 scorch cast times, and instead spend time bringin' DA HEAT! woo!
Thundrcrackr Oct 14th 2009 9:56AM
Moar heat! Heat it like you mean it!!
Kadamon Oct 13th 2009 9:31PM
This is enough to make me play my Mage again. I haven't played her in ages.
Of course I also haven't actually played at all in a month now.
I can't wait to get home from this vacation and play again.
GoldenGoat Oct 13th 2009 9:39PM
A minor quibble;
Doesn't the WE go OOM rather quickly? If that's not addressed, this change might not be as potent as Blizz was hoping.
Artificial Oct 13th 2009 9:55PM
Yay! Now I can take Splashy everywhere! :D
VioletPheonix Oct 13th 2009 10:23PM
Splashy? That's cute, mine is alka-seltzer.
He always brings relief!
Todd Oct 13th 2009 10:00PM
Very sweet changes all around.
Benjamin Oct 13th 2009 10:02PM
if the water ele is permanent, should he get a custom name like every other perma pet in game?
jbodar Oct 13th 2009 11:05PM
They should, but they should be random like DK/Lock pets. Only Hunters should be able to name their pets, IMO. They'll probably use the same naming system as ghouls, I think, "Noun-Verber" and "Noun-Noun", but with references to water, ice, steam, etc.
Tolkfan Oct 13th 2009 10:14PM
SACRILEGE! Frost mages become a pet class?! Like those filth ridden mongrels, the warlocks?! Bring out the comfy chair!
Charlie Oct 13th 2009 11:18PM
I mean, all it does while permanent is shoot stuff.