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by Christian Belt 
Oct 23rd 2010 at 12:00PM
I thought I'd throw that picture of the tier 11 mage set up there to start the article because it looks so awesome. Someone in the comments section last week suggested I spend an entire column waxing poetic about how cool our tier 11 looks, and I want you to know that I gave the idea serious consideration. Could I come up with a thousand words on one set of gear? Yes, yes I could. Would it be worth reading? No, probably not. But did I want to do it anyway? Yes, yes I did. Let's leave it at this: I really, really want to put that flaming skull mask on my mage's face, and I don't care how many
So now that the insanity of patch week has come and gone, how are you coping? Got your mage's specs all sorted out? Comfortable with your new spell rotation yet? Updated all your addons? Disconnected a few dozen times trying to summon the Headless Horseman? If you're still looking for a bit of help, check out last week's column on mage specs, glyphs, and spell rotations for a basic primer. This week, I figure I'd just spend the column going over a bunch of stuff I ran out of room to mention last week, along with a few new things that have occurred to me during this week's play.
Fun with Firestarter
To recap: Firestarter is a new fire talent that allows you to cast Scorch while moving. With no additional description required, this is already cool enough. It gives you something to cast during movement periods in fights and provides a powerful PvP tool. Even if that was all the benefit the talent provided, the single point spent there would still be a no-brainer. But this past week, as I've experimented a bit with the spec, I've found some extra bonus awesomeness that stems from this talent that I feel compelled to share.
First of all, did you realize that "while moving" also includes "while falling?" Because it totally does. Let us briefly consider the ramifications of this. Imagine flying on your mount above Wintergrasp. Now imagine you see a warlock, hovering up there, maybe AFK, maybe distracted by a Fallout Boy video on the MTV. Or whatever channel still shows music videos these days. You decide that warlock's time has come. But he's so far up in the sky! What to do? Let's think for a moment. We have a spell called Slow Fall ... and a Scorch spell that can be spammed while falling ... and the promise of instant Pyroblasts to come ...
I can see you all, sitting at your computer, nodding slowly in unison, a gleeful grin spreading slowly across your collective faces.
One other thing to consider: two points in Improved Scorch makes the spell completely free to cast. Now, I'm not suggesting that you take that talent and eschew Fireball altogether, relying upon Scorch spam for your primary nuke from now on. The DPS numbers for Scorch-spam versus Fireball spam are fairly close at level 80 from what I've seen, but I haven't even begun to look at any hard theorycrafting on the subject. The idea of a mana-free primary nuke you can spam while moving is undeniably attractive, but I can't recommend the concept without numbers to back it up. Does the shorter cast time, which in turn provides more frequent Hot Streak procs, outweigh the smaller Ignite procs, lower base damage and spell-power coefficient? What about the ability to cast a completely free primary nuke during longer, more mana-intensive encounters? We run low on mana, but we can always switch to Scorch spam, not only conserving mana but returning it through Master of Elements. The possibilities are still bouncing around my brain right now, joyous little balls of magely potential. More on this as I figure it out.
Good gravy, I could do a whole column on Scorch.
Glyph troubles
As a great number of you pointed out last week, our prime/major glyph situation is all kinds of buggy. A large number of mage glyphs that should be prime are currently considered major (cough ... Fireball), and in one case (cough ... Mage Armor), don't even exist in game anymore. Mage Armor's glyph isn't in any scribe's recipe list post-patch, so unless you already had the glyph on your mage prior to the patch or had one lying around in your inventory, you can't learn it. Since Mage Armor is pretty much a mandatory glyph for Arcane mages, this is a problem.
Thankfully, the issue should, hopefully, be hotfixed very soon. Once the problems go away, though, we'll have to readjust our glyphing strategies. Whereas now most mage specs don't even have three worthwhile prime glyphs to apply, after the hotfix we'll actually have to make some hard decisions as to which of several quality prime glyphs to go with. Good thing we can switch in and out on the fly, huh? Look for some more glyph content in a future column after this stuff gets sorted out.
Get Combustionhelper ... right now
I'm not even kidding. If you are a fire mage, you need to download this addon right this second. It's incredibly simple, but so unequivocally useful it's kind of ridiculous. All it does is visually track your DoT effects on your primary target for you so you can easily tell when it's a good time to hit your Combustion button. Go get it now.
You are no longer hit-capped
Well maybe you are by now, but you may be one of the many mages I've been running into lately who haven't quite gotten around to adjusting their mage to the fact that we no longer have any hit talents. Seriously, guys. Elemental Precision is no more. That means you've got to add hit rating to hit the cap. My quick fix was to replace one of my trinkets temporarily with Maghia's Misguided Quill, available from the old Frost Emblem vendor for the low, low price of 695 Justice Points. You may have better luck with a combination of regemming and/or reforging some of your gear. In any event, check your hit percentage. Is it capped? Do you have 0% chance to miss a raid boss? No? Then you need to make recapping your hit your first priority before trying to raid. Do whatever it takes and get there. I'll remind everyone since it's been awhile since we talked about it: raising your hit is the single most effective way to raise your DPS until you reach the cap.
In related news:
Spirit is completely useless now
It used to raise your crit rating thanks to Molten Armor, but not any more. Other classes got talents that convert spirit into extra hit rating, but not mages. Take a look at your gear. My guess is that some of the stuff you're wearing has spirit on it. You may still have the occasional Purified Dreadstone in a gem slot or two. Here's the deal:
All of that spirit -- every last point of it -- is completely worthless. Spirit is a healer stat now. The only benefit it provides for mages is out-of-combat mana regen, something that hasn't been even marginally useful since the early days of vanilla WoW, and even then it kind of sucked.
So regem those slots, and reforge as much of the spirit on your gear to something more useful. Like hit!
You can rename your water elemental
Got a lot of tips on this one. Just copy/paste the following into your chat bar:
/run PetRename("creative water elemental name here")
Just substitute whatever you want to name your water elemental inside those quotations marks, hit enter, and you're good to go. You must have the quotation marks around the name, and you must have the parentheses around the quotation marks.
Disclaimer: This only works once. That means if you try to fool around and name your big blue buddy something stupid to test things out, you're stuck with that name. Don't be the guy running around with a water elemental called "Bob." Unless that's a name you really like. Think carefully. Also, this may or may not be a bug, and it could very well go away the moment Blizzard decides to fix it.
True story, I named mine "Warlocktears" and was very proud of that name. I thought I was incredibly clever. Then, literally like five minutes later, I get the following email and screenshot from a reader named Marcus:
While stumbling around the mage forums, I found a post on how to rename your water elemental!
The command is as follows:
/run PetRename("NAME")
Replace NAME with your bubbly buddy's new name (mine was appropriately named "WarlockTears").
Yeah, so apparently great minds think alike? I'm just not that creative? Loads of people hate warlocks and want to imagine that their water elemental is the giant, animated evidence of their girlish weeping? Anyway, have fun renaming your elemental.
The name is permanent for now, meaning it will stay through death, resummons, logging in and out, spec-switches, respeccing, and anything else you can think of. Cool, huh? To anyone from Blizzard who might be reading this: Don't take this away from us. Just leave it alone. Don't nerf our fun. There's absolutely no sense in it.
That's it for this week. Here's hoping everyone's enjoying Blizzcon. I really, really wish I could have been there. I simply could not get the time off this year. There's always next year, right?
Every week, Arcane Brilliance teleports you inside the wonderful world of mages and then hurls a Fireball in your face. Check out our recent look at how much I hate damage meters or what to expect for mages in patch 4.0.1. Until next week, keep the mage-train a-rollin'.Filed under: Mage, Analysis / Opinion, (Mage) Arcane Brilliance
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 5)
Zalvi24 Oct 23rd 2010 12:48PM
int increases spell power, plain and simple,
Wraithanne Oct 23rd 2010 1:10PM
Considering Int=SP now, gem Int. If you need Crit, reforge any Spi you had.
Deathknighty Oct 23rd 2010 12:41PM
HYDRAPWN, HERE I COME!!!
Oteo Oct 23rd 2010 12:48PM
Do you ever care about how many warlocks you have to kill?
Zalvi24 Oct 23rd 2010 12:49PM
not enough my friend, mot enough
Oteo Oct 23rd 2010 12:55PM
Wait... so one of Archmage Pants' mages is a named Steehl, and the only US mage named Steehl is a fembelf in the Shadowburn battlegroup, and since the Archmage is in the Shadowburn battlegroup, does that mean I have a chance of getting into a random dungeon group/BG with Archmage Pants?! :3
Harvoc Oct 23rd 2010 1:04PM
@ Oteo
I think that's the reader Marcus's pet. I doubt that it's actually Christian's own pet.
Swifteye Oct 23rd 2010 1:06PM
@Oteo
I could be wrong, but from what I read, I believe "Steehl" is actually the reader named Marcus that sent Pantsie-poo an email with the same Water Elemental name, not The Pantstastic One himself.
Sorry to crush your hopes and dreams, heh.
Oteo Oct 23rd 2010 1:09PM
Drat. :l
Sinthar Oct 25th 2010 9:34AM
Never worry about the ammount you have to kill - just do it.
As a non PVP'er I never used to go for the 'for the horde' or 'for the alliance'. So recently on my alliance mage i was asked and thought 'what the hell - thrall wont be there for much longer'. So off to ogri we went (all 30 of us). As normal we lost about 5 en route, and another 1-2 to d/c's
Worried we wouldnt make it - we decided just to charge immediately. So we did - and horde in ogri being what they are on our server immediately responded with a defense raid. I decided I was going to defend the raid from the horde, so after building 4 AB stacks on Thrall (and not forgetting to use my red rider gun from last christmas) I turned. My joy was unrestrained when I saw 5 locks enter, supposedly to dot everyone to death. Each one fell in turn to a mighty AB - the smallest one was 50k (yes I was in res gear to help with the incoming damage). To my even greater joy, more ran in, a DK - spat, a Druid in bear form - 70k crit - splat, I was enjoying it so much when the achievement dropped, i didnt even turn round to see Thralls body, I got over 50hks myself (at least 10 were locks!) in that room - finally falling as I was the last in the raid to survive, and was stunned from behind by someone, before taking massive damage myself.
Surprisingly enought the raid fell apart when we went to thunderbuff - mostly cos we got seperated and waited for 15 mins just before the boss for stragglers - which meant when we did engage him about 50 horde were waiting for us - and i was targetted 1st :)
sullyXXX Oct 23rd 2010 12:53PM
That set is so cool... looks more warlock-ey though. Although the Warlock one looks like batman, so I'd rather have ANY other tier except the warlock one. My poor main :'( (those were warlock tears)
Nekhbah Oct 23rd 2010 3:18PM
It's official, Warlocks have ruined Batman.
Zhiva Oct 23rd 2010 12:53PM
I named mine "Seiche".
Fernin Oct 23rd 2010 12:59PM
Awww, how cute. The mages are dressing up like locks now; a pity idol worship doesn't stop them from being second rate casters. On the upside though the flashy outfit does make it that much easier to see where to throw the FWOOM at. :)
PrincessRosario Oct 23rd 2010 1:15PM
Aww, were you the warlock I just Slowfall+Scorch+Pyroblast! spammed to death over Wintergrasp?
Fernin Oct 23rd 2010 1:32PM
Of course not, it was one of your lock-look-alike buddies. No proper warlock would be stupid enough to just sit up in the air above a PvP zone. Mages on the other hand.. :)
Bvannas Oct 23rd 2010 1:40PM
Your right, all the proper warlocks are on the ground, not up in the air.
You know why?
Because they were all killed by mages.
Fernin Oct 23rd 2010 1:59PM
That's just a delusion caused by the intense effect even the weakest cast of Fear has on the Mage mind. Coincidentally it's also why the mages are airborne, they tend to run of cliffs in terror whenever a Warlock is about. And please do, don't worry or be ashamed by it; it's a normal reaction the awe of being in the presence of a warlock. :)
Artificial Oct 23rd 2010 3:35PM
There's nothing demonic about that skull. To the extent is says "warlock" to you, it's because so many warlocks are wannabe necromancers who didn't realize that's an entirely different class, and got stuck messing around with demons instead of skeletons. Alas, most warlocks are less than sharp, so they don't even notice that death knights are the ones with a skull theme, not warlocks...
Artificial Oct 23rd 2010 3:38PM
In fairness, I should note that many warlocks do run around with skulls on their gear, but you always see horns on the skulls (i.e. they have a demon-skull theme, not a human-skull theme as this armor has). The reason they invariably use demon-skulls is because they can actually kill demons, whereas getting a human skull would require killing a mage, something far beyond their capabilities.