Posts with tag mage

GuildOx sends us interesting news of a change in the ratio of specs for raiding mages. Prior to hotfixes and patch adjustments that happened over the past couple months, raiding mages were overwhelmingly fire specd -- over 90% of the top mages were specd into fire. Now? According to GuildOx data, 45% of the top mages are arcane spec, and 39% are fire spec. Prior to the changes, arcane was around 3%.

While this change in mage spec might seem an oddity and not necessarily important, it does serve to illustrate an key fact: balance changes can and do work. All these small changes to the way that the game is played, be it through small hotfixes or modifications to the encounter designs; these changes eventually lead to an equalization of spec and greater player choice.

Of course in a perfect world these minor changes wouldn't be necessary to correct major deficiencies. But, given that the game is so fluid and changes are a natural part of WoW these days, it's encouraging to see that they have the desired effect.

Is there a method to Ghostcrawler's and his team's madness? Yes, and it appears to be working.

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When the new 5.0 patch flips over on Aug. 28, will you be ready with glyphs? Blizzard is recycling old glyphs instead of making new spell IDs and charring old ones. Some glyphs are staying the same, some are new, but some share IDs with old Cataclysm glyphs.

Below is our list of new or changing glyphs for mages. This is not a list of changing tooltips, just which glyphs you ought to have if you want to automatically have the new glyphs when the patch flips over.

Mages have no new glyphs but seem to be the masters of musical glyph chairs, namely Icy Veins and Cone of Cold. If you currently have both, you will have both, so get both just to be sure.

Glyphs that are changing into new majors:

• Arcane Power becomes Arcane Explosion
• Arcane Blast becomes Arcane Power
• Frost Armor becomes Armors
• Fireball becomes Combustion
• Icy Veins becomes Cone of Cold
• Mana Shield becomes Counterspell
• Ice Barrier becomes Deep Freeze
• Living Bomb becomes Fire Blast
• Frostfire becomes Frostfire Bolt
• Cone of Cold becomes Icy Veins
• Mage Armor becomes Mana Gem
• Blast Wave becomes Remove Curse
• Dragon's Breath becomes Spellsteal
• Deep Freeze becomes Water Elemental

Glyphs that are changing into new minors:

• Slow Fall becomes Arcane Language
• Conjuring becomes Conjure Familiar
• Molten Armor becomes Crittermorph
• Arcane Barrage becomes Illusion
• Arcane Missiles becomes Loose Mana
• Pyroblast becomes Momentum
• Arcane Brilliance becomes the Porcupine
• Armors becomes Rapid Teleportation

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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Adam didn't convince me to do Moviewatch today -- I just decided to help myself to the job. I have a soft spot in my heart for machinima, mostly because I've always wanted to be a machinima artist myself. Unfortunately, I'm held back by the fact that I use a Mac. Yeah ...

Anyway, today's video is a music video for Sharm's I Went Fire On My Mage, a parody of Set Fire to the Rain by Adele. The parody tells the story of an arcane mage who decides to switch specs to fire after she realizes she doesn't have the physical endurance to continue playing arcane. (That will make more sense after you watch the video.) Sharm's lyrics are brilliantly funny and fit in well with the original music. In terms of the lyrics, it's definitely one of the stronger WoW music parodies I've heard. And as usual, she nails the execution of the song with her lovely voice. What else would you expect by now?

The video was created by machinima artist Rogahar, who uses a combination of footage from in-game capture and WoW Model Viewer. The video adds a lot to the song, impressing a tone to it which I don't think I'd have noticed nearly as much if I'd just heard the song on its own. The opening and closing shots of the video in particular really set a sad and then remorseful mood to the story.

My only complaint with the video is that by the third chorus, some of the images become a bit too repetitive, but seeing as this is Rogahar's first machinima (to my knowledge), I think it's forgiveable. For now, I'm looking forward to see more from this new artist. Check it out!

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Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.

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Each week, WoW Insider and Mathew McCurley bring you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which spotlights the latest user interface addons. Have a screenshot of your own UI that you'd like to submit? Send your screenshots along with info on what mods you're using to readerui@wowinsider.com, and follow Mathew on Twitter.

One of the most amazing things about World of Warcraft's addons is that you're always learning something new or adapting your interface to the new standards because you can build on top of what's already there. Sometimes you do the opposite -- take all of the information you've learned and processed but strip it all away and start from stratch. It's liberating to re-form your UI with years of potentially new and useful knowledge and expectations when going to build your legacy UI.

Magistrum sent me a screenshot for his mage's new UI. I looked at the picture first as I usually do when picking out a UI for the column and saw a very basic design that didn't jump out at me while being far from offensive. After reading the short email, it dawned on me that I was looking at this UI all wrong. This wasn't a first attempt at cleanliness with a new player, hitting the game for the first time. No, this was years of learning and understanding what makes your own personal UI yours. The little pieces are all in place where you want them.

It's a troubling yet underpublicized fact that four out of five shadow priests respecced shadow for the first time after experiencing a romantic break-up. Recent studies show that priests are 63% more likely to respec shadow within 72 hours of a break-up, while a separate poll found that 78% of healing priests had seriously considered respeccing to shadow after having an argument with their spouse or significant other. To the tenderhearted healing priest, shadow probably seems like a quick way to steel yourself and mend a broken heart; unfortunately, too few priests realize the two points they're putting into Masochism 'til they're staring down into an empty bottle of Volcanic Potion and wishing they could do the same DPS as a warlock.

The simple way to avoid all these drastic courses of action is, of course, to skip getting your heart broken in the first place. Easier said than done, you think? Perhaps, but knowing the battlefield of love will certainly help you avoid the more obvious pitfalls. Want to know what your best match is? What about your worst? This week, I've got the answers in a special guide to the classes.

As one of the youngest writers on the WoW Insider staff, I was of an acceptable age for Pokémon playing when Pikachu first sailed the ocean blue and Pokémon Red landed in my Game Boy Pocket. It was Christmas Day, 1998. I hadn't quite learned that electronics required battery power to operate at that point, and losing my Charizard because I didn't save once in an eight hour pocket monster marathon would be my most crushing video game defeat until our first 20k HP wipe on Professor Putricide 12 years later.

As you might expect from someone whose first video game glory days involved beating the Elite Four with a Mewtwo and thinking he was the best Pokémon master in the world, I'm a little psyched for companion battling. And by a little excited, I almost forgot to be excited about the rest of the awesome stuff coming in the freshly announced Mists of Pandaria, including the Pandaren themselves.

While I'm now allowing myself to be excited for monks, PVE scenarios, and the entire talent tree overhaul, I can't help alt-tabbing out of our blogging platform to decide which of my companion pets I'm going to level up first. Will it be my shiny new Murkablo, my staple Fossilized Hatchling, or am I going to go Black Kingsnake, just because no one else will? Maybe I'll even name him Onyx.

Make no mistake, this is a significant game changer for everyone. This is the dawning of unparalleled flexibility in personal customization choice. Arms warriors with Shockwave, fury warriors with Bladestorm. This is the biggest change to the game since reforging.

There are no tree examples for the upcoming Monk class yet. Galleries of each class's talents after the cut.

Blizzard has been on a spree of patch 4.3 raid information recently, first showcasing the new warrior tier 13 Colossal Dragonplate Deathwing-inspired armor as well as the warlock tier 13 General Vezax/Faceless Ones-inspired set called the Faceless Shroud. Druids and shaman also got to see their new gear. Mages are next up for a tier 13 sneak peek as well as a retrospective on the previous tier sets to showcase all the past mage regalia for transmogrification when the patch hits.

This new set, Timelord Regalia, looks absolutely awesome, with crazy explorer goggles and a nice color scheme. Mage tier sets have always been pretty cool, in my opinion, but this takes the cake. I love the goggles. Cataclysm armor design has been top-notch throughout, and this final raid's epic sets really bring home the weight of our actions at the end of the expansion.

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Brace yourselves for what could be some of most exciting updates to the game recently with patch 4.3. Look at what's ahead: new item storage options, cross-realm raiding, cosmetic armor skinning and your chance to battle the mighty Deathwing -- from astride his back!

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Each week, WoW Insider and Mathew McCurley bring you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which spotlights the latest user interface addons. Have a screenshot of your own UI that you'd like to submit? Send your screenshots along with info on what mods you're using to readerui@wowinsider.com, and follow Mathew on Twitter.

Greetings, Reader UI of the Week fans. Everyone seems to have some sort of food poisoning or stomach problems this week, and I have no idea what is up with that. We have a national stomach epidemic here in the United States. Here's something that won't upset your delicate bodily balance; Jack's smooth and slick user interface setup, centered around grouping, dungeons, and questing.

While I am a raider at heart, my recent obsession has been with players and nonraiding UIs. Not that I think that there is anything wrong with a raiding UI, but as someone who primarily lives in raiding content, it is interesting to look and see what 5-man-focused UIs are built around. With the coming of the Raid Finder in patch 4.3 as an introductory raiding system, more and more players are going to have to adapt their 5-man UI setups to a raiding environment if they want to succeed in taking down the big bosses of the raiding world. Jack's UI is a competent setup that can make the change and stands up on its own two legs.

Hi guys, you may remember me from last week when I threw a rock into a hornet's nest. I was frankly blown away by the responses, some of which were very well thought-out, that supported, refuted, or elaborated on the issue of tanking and if it is here to stay or on its last legs. Since I find that kind of discussion valuable, I thought, "Well, I can always find another rock, right?" And so here we are.

The DPS classes in World of Warcraft present us with a conundrum. If we consider the holy trinity of tanking, damage dealing and healing to be a pyramid that the game relies on, then the base of the pyramid is most easily envisioned as cornered by the tanking and healing classes and the apex occupied by the DPSers. The issue is, only four classes can hold up the tanking corner, only four can hold up the healing corner (and two of those classes are also in the tanking corner), and absolutely every single class in the game can stand on the top of the pyramid. This results in a pyramid that's metaphorically heavier on top than at the bottom.

Furthermore, of the game's 10 classes, four of them (the rogue, mage, warlock, and hunter) can only stand at the top. Whether or not they want to do something else is immaterial (although one assumes that they do not, elsewise they might have chosen a different class), because they simply cannot do so -- at least if we continue to visualize the game as based around the tanking/damaging/healing triad. So what to do?

Well, we can get rid of DPS classes entirely.

Blizzard has updated the community site tier 12 armor preview with the final 2 armor sets -- warrior and druid. Patch 4.2 is coming soon, as players prepare for the invasion into the Firelands to confront Ragnaros for the (potentially) last time. Each armor set for this raid tier has its looks originating from something in the Firelands, going for the instance motif over the class motif.

Warriors will dress themselves in the Molten Giant Battleplate, made in the image of the new molten giant model. You may remember molten giants and molten destroyers from the Molten Core. They also wander fields of lava in the Firelands, ready to lumber over to unsuspecting players.

Druids will be donning the Obsidian Arborweave sets, based on what appears to be the tree that Malfurion and the Avengers of Hyjal are growing in the Firelands as the foward base against Ragnaros. Maybe, as a restoration druid, you were upset that Tree of Life was not a permanent form anymore. Well, now you get to dress up like a tree. Compromise. Hit the jump for a pic of the druid set.

By the way, Obsidian Arborweave is the most "Blizzard" name for anything I have ever seen. I hope that guy got a raise.

Blizzard has been on an information release kick this week for Rage of the Firelands, the next content patch for Cataclysm. World of Warcraft has been known, for better or for worse, by its armor design choices. Some of the armor sets in WoW actually have transcended the game itself, becoming part of a healthy nostalgia for players old and new.

Firelands is not going to have any shortage of cool raid gear. The tier 12 armor preview has just been released and contains images of the paladin, mage, rogue, hunter, death knight and priest sets. Warlocks, warriors, shaman, and druids are currently absent, though we can bet druids will also have a fire motif, considering Fandral Staghelm's role in the Firelands raid.

Each week, WoW Insider brings you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which spotlights the latest user interface addons. Have a screenshot of your own UI that you'd like to submit? Send your screenshots along with info on what mods you're using to readerui@wowinsider.com.

It's Tuesday! Oh, boy! Reader UI of the Week! I've been dealing with a bit of addon upheaval these past few weeks, as a few dormant addons have come back into the fold after a long time laying low. It has completely thrown off my UI, until I muster up the willpower to change things a bit. Does that happen to you?

This week, we're going to be checking out Sakuyan's user interface. I chose Sakuyan's setup because I really enjoyed the explanation and images that accompanied the submission, and I wanted to talk about screen priority. This UI is tailor made for just that conversation.