WotLK Beta: Aesthetic Change for Mages

Following up from my previous post about some general aesthetic changes, I will now talk about some specific aesthetic change for Mages. Just to clarify some things, aesthetic changes are changes in a spell or animation which have no major impact in the original spell mechanic. Pretty much means a change in the way it “looks”. Lets take a look at a few of them.

Changes to Existing Spells:

Here is are some of the changes made to existing spells that have been changed in the WotLK Beta. They are small graphical upgrades to make the spells look “cooler” or more noticeable when activated.

Now when you Ice Block, there is a small pulsing Frost Nova emitting from the block of ice when activated. Just a small graphical upgrade from old version of Ice Block which won’t have any impact on the game. It just looks… “cooler”.

Icy Veins now longer makes your hands glow like you are casting a Frost spell, and now gives your character a frosty glowing effect when activated. It gives a sort of aurora look to the Mage.

Now this will actually make an impact on PvPing. Before when activated, the Mage will just look like he/she is casting a Frost Spell, and some players won’t notice Icy Veins was activated unless they were paying attention to the player’s buffs. Now the Mage willl have a big visual indication that Icy Veins is popped, which just screams; “purge me!”, “silence me!”, or “don’t let me cast!”.

Polymorphs:

Currently we have the normal [Polymorph: Sheep], [Polymorph: Pig], and [Polymorph: Turtle]. In the expansion, we will also get [Polymorph: Black Cat] and [Polymorph: Serpent] in the form of purchasable tomes. Then we have [Polymorph: Penguin] and [Polymorph: Bear Cub] in the form of Mage Glyphs.

The tomes are currently purchasable in Dalaran, for a low low price of 2375 gold before any rep discount. Ouch! The glyphs are available from the new profession, Inscription. I will be using the penguin and baby bear Polymorphs for awhile, then switch back to my turtle once I realize that everyone and their mother will be using them too.

For PvP purposes, the different versions of Polymorph is there simply to add insult to injury by turning your opponent into a cute little animal before unleashing a volley of spells upon them. For PvE, there is a much bigger impact.

In a raid with multiple Mages, having different Polymorphs will come in handy when there is multiple crowd control is involved. If Mage #1 has turtle, Mage #2 has pig, and Mage #3 has sheep, it will be a lot easier to call out re-Polymorphing of targets when you know which Mage needs to do it. Instead of, “Whoever sheep just broke, re-Polymorph it!” you have, “Turtle broke!”.

Though with the correct usage of Raid Targets, this shouldn’t be a problem, but it can help.

New Icons:

Ahh of course, the new icon. This has been a long running joke for us Mages since patch 1.5 when the only change we got for the entire patch was a “new unique icon for Mage Armor”.

In the beta, you can purchase the tomes for the new Dalaran Intellect/Brilliance, which gives your Arcane Intellect/Brilliance spell a “new and unique icon”. You can purchase them from the same vendor as the Polymorph tomes, and they will run you for 451 gold for Intellect, and 475 gold for the Brilliance.

I guess now if you are raiding with two Mages total, you can tell which Mage has been slacking off and not buffing the raid.


Tagged as: Polymorph,

Comments

  • Gnomeaggedon said:

    Cool as, I wanted more poly flavours… you have made me a happy Gnome….

    Of course is there an occasion (apart from Shattered Halls.. where you aren’t polymorphing anyway) where there would be more than one mage in the party…

    Joke… great post… loving it… Gives me something to dream about when I am away.

    Gnomeaggedons last blog post..Post Your Bank

  • Larísa said:

    The prices made me go…oooops! I seriously hope you’ll get plenty of gold out of questing and killing. I guess you will… If not we can look forward to some serious grinding…

  • Mae said:

    Awesome!! I had no idea about the Ice Block, I’ve not used it yet on the PTR. Icy Veins, I’ve used and I really like the new graphical affect. Also, when target’s are affected by Fingers of Frost… or maybe when you use Deep Freeze, not sure which it was, the target appears to have a huge icicle coming up through it from the ground up. Not a great description, I know, sorry. lol.

    Ooh!! I’m also looking forward to the new Polymorphs. I never got Turtle, it’s quite sad. I’m going to start working on it. Regardless of cost, I’m getting the new polymorphs!! Though, on the PTR, I haven’t seen anyone with Polymorph: Baby Penguin on their list of available glyphs. Maybe I haven’t looked hard enough. Do you have any idea how to get them?

  • Tuna (Author) said:

    @ Larisa

    Yea those prices are way too high, but I’ll probably still get it just to have it.

    @ Mae

    The icicle coming out of the ground effect is when you cast Deep Freeze, and it really does look cool. I too haven’t seen the Penguin Glyph yet. I’m glad I was able to grab my Turtle book way back when ZG was still being run. It’s hard nowadays to find people willing to go.