Spicytuna» Mage

PTR Patch 3.3 – Permanent Water Elemental

Tuna — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 03:15:58 +0000

In the latest Build (10571) on the Public Test Realms, Blizzard made a few changes to the Mage class- all good ones. It looks like they have the Fire and Arcane tree right where they want them in terms of PvE DPS, and are working towards making the Frost tree more viable. Once again, you can find the complete list of changes from MMO-Champion here, and like always, I’ll be focusing on the Mage changes.

Improved Scorch

While playing as PvE Fire, the most annoying part was stacking up the Scorches to five stacks. It wasn’t too bad when you can coordinate with other Fire Mages, but without the [Glyph of Improved Scorch], it was a waste of DPS time. Especially if none of the Mages remember to reapply the debuff and let it fall off. Waste of more precious DPS time re-stacking the debuff again.

The new changes makes it so that you only need to apply the debuff once, and reapply it once it is about to fall off. The new Glyph for Scorch would now just increase the damage of your Scorch by 20%.

Frozen Core

What used to be a PvP only talent that is rarely used, now a must have for both PvP and PvE. Not only does it reduce the Spell Damage you take by 6%, your Ice Lance crits will reduce the cast time of your next Frostbolt by 1 second.

In PvP, you already cast a lot of Ice Lances. To randomly stack Winter’s Chill on your target, to take out totems, or to do damage on frozen targets. You will cast a lot of Ice Lances. With the new talent change, you would now do some more damage after you catch your opponent with a Frost Nova, Deep Freeze, or when Fingers of Frost procs.

In PvE, you will no longer be just chain casting Frostbolts. With the new 2 piece bonus of the upcoming Tier 10 Mage set, we’ll be casting more reactive- much like the Fire spec. We will have be on the lookout for Brain Freeze procs, and be ready to use our Fingers of Frost procs to throw in the last second Ice Lance crit.

Brain Freeze procs will give use 15% Haste for 5 seconds, and Ice Lance crits will give us a 1.3 second Frostbolt (if you have absolutely zero Haste w/ 2 points in Empowered Frostbolt). DPS increase? I think so.

Glyph of Eternal Water

Now this is a huge change for the Frost Mage. This Glyph will essentially make the Frost Mage, a pet class. From a PvP standpoint, this will seem overpowered, but disabling the pet’s Freeze ability makes it so that this Glyph won’t be used in PvP. No pet assisted Shatter combos is a no-no for a PvP Frost Mage.

As for PvE, not having the Freeze ability won’t be a problem, and having the Water Elemental’s DPS up for 100% of the time, will be a big upgrade to the Frost Mage DPS. In a group/raid setting, the Water Elemental shouldn’t have any Mana problems with Replenishment buffs, and with the Pet scaling with the player’s stats, Squirtle shouldn’t be missing if the player isn’t.

PvE Mage Spec – 18/0/53

Major Glyphs:

I chose the Ice Lance Glyph over the Molten Armor Glyph since Ice Lance will be more used much much more now. Eternal Water Glyph will give you a permanent Water Elemental, and of course- you will have the Frostbolt Glyph.

Arcane Talents:

For the new Frost spec, I took 3 points of Spell Impact and 1 point Student of the Mind, since Ice Lance and Fireball has become more important in the Spell rotation. Since I will be using the Ice Lance Glyph over the Molten Armor Glyph, Spirit won’t be as important anymore.

Frost Talents:

Since you have a permanent Water Elemental now, Cold as Ice won’t be needed anymore, and the reduced cooldown to Cold Snap and Ice Barrier aren’t as important in PvE.

As I stated before, with the new 2 piece bonus for the Tier 10, Brain Freeze will be an important talent to pick up, and the more procs, the better. So I put 3 points into the talent.

Enduring Winter isn’t as important anymore since increasing the duration of your Water Elemental won’t be necessary when your pet lasts indefinitely now. 1 point into the talent just for the Replenishment buff is enough just in case you are in a group/raid without it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything, but these new upcoming changes really sparked my interest for the next patch. Hopefully this will motivate me to start posting regularly again.

Krizzlybear beat me to it and gave his thoughts on the new changes already, so stop on by and read what he has to say on the changes too!Related Posts:

Mage Tier 8 Is Really Ugly

Tuna — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 10:59:02 +0000

Why oh why did Blizzard decide to mess with the Mage outfits? A Tunic!? Seriously!? Rarely do I get a piece of gear, and refuse to use it because of the way it looks, but this sure did. I’m talking about the [Conqueror's Kirin Tor Tunic].

I got my Tunic maybe two weeks ago with 58 x [Emblem of Conquest], but I refused to replace my [Valorous Frostfire Robe]. I used the excuse of not wanted to lose my 4pc Bonus. Fair enough.

Then I got two more pieces of T8, and replaced my remaining T7 with T9. Okay, so I have 3pc T8, and 2pc T9 now. Still with me?

Thankfully, the helm can be hidden.

I now had the tunic, helm, and leggings for my T8.5 set, and shoulders and gloves for my T9 set, and was one of the ugliest Mages on the server. Only second to my friend’s Mage, who also has an [Icehowl Cinch] that looks like a Heavyweight Championship Belt.

Then I realized a way to cover up the ugly tunic and make my character look somehow decent. Something I haven’t done since I first hit 80. I wore a Tabard!

Summer Skies or Argent Crusade?

After going through my collection of Tabards, I narrowed it down to two that I felt that would go nicely with the rest of my gear: [Tabard of Summer Skies] and [Tabard of the Argent Crusade]. Which one do you think I should use?

Right now I’m leaning towards the Argent Crusade one since it gives me an additional Buff in my upper right-hand corner.

Related Posts:

WoW Insider’s Secret Mage Page

Tuna — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 22:41:50 +0000

There seems to be a hidden directory on the WoW Insider’s (now just WoW.com) website. Maybe it is just a work in progress. Maybe it was it was just lost in the transition of going from WoWinsider.com over to WoW.com. Maybe it is an abandoned project, never to see the light of day again.

Or maybe it is already known to everyone and it is just me who just found it. If so, I couldn’t navigate to it from the main page. The page I found is this: WoW Insider’s Guide to Mages.

Either way, it is a nice little page with links to a few important links and articles that any Mage or Mage-to-be should take a look at. There is even a list of great Mage blogs that you may recognize. Criticall QQ, Armageddon’s Coming, Pew Pew Lazers!- to name a few.

If you do a bit more digging around on WoW.com, you will find that there are similar pages for the rest of the lesser classes too!

If you compare the Mage page with some of the other classes, then it looks more like a work in progress. The section for Talents, and Glyphs are missing. The section for Mage Addons is also missing.

If these pages have been left for dead, then we should bring notice of these pages to the peeps at WoWInsider so that they may revive it and make them known to their readers. Make it possible to navigate to these pages from the main page- or even add links for them on the main page.

If it weren’t for a Wordpress Stat plugin, I would have never found this page. I’ve been getting hits from this page maybe a couple times a week- so there is at least somebody out there who knows of this page. Maybe and WoWInsider mole using these pages as their own personal bookmark (gasp!).

Anyways, you guys should take a peep at the class pages. WoWInsider really do have some very nice articles for each class, and are definitely worth the read.Related Posts:

Is it Faster to Blink or Mount Between the AH and Bank in Ironforge?

Tuna — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 09:15:38 +0000

I asked this question last time when I talked about the new changes to Mounts that may happen in Patch 3.2. Well it’s time to test it out.

Currently, most Alliance Mages in Ironforge will simply Blink between the Auction House and the Bank. We won’t bother to mount up like most other classes. But is it faster? Here are the times with the current 3.0 second cast:

Blinking to/from AH/Bank: ~13 seconds
Mounting to/from AH/Bank: ~12 seconds
Blinking then Mounting to/from AH/Bank: ~10.5 seconds

As you can see, it would be fastest if you Blink out of the AH/Bank to where you are able to Mount up- then ride the rest of the way to your destination. What about the Patch 3.2, 1.5 second cast Mounts?

Blinking to/from AH/Bank: ~13 seconds
Mounting to/from AH/Bank: ~10.5 seconds
Blinking then Mounting to/from AH/Bank: ~9.0 seconds

With the new changes to Mounts, we can get to our destination even faster. You know what though? Old habits are hard to break, and even though it will be about 4 seconds longer, I’m still just going to Blink and bunny hop my way to the Auction House without Mounting. Taking that extra step to Mount up is just too much work for my lazy ass.

Special thanks to “Pinkies” the Gnome Mage for helping me out on the PTR. She saw my Blinking back and forth between the AH and Bank for like 2 minutes before she stopped to ask me WTF I was doing. She then help me race between the AH/Bank and help take down times. Hurray for /timer.Related Posts:

PTR Patch 3.2 – Frost Mages Get Mortal Strike and More Haste

Tuna — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:10:42 +0000

In the latest PTR Build 10072, Blizzard had made a few more changes to the Mage class- Frost Mages in particular. This had been brought to my attention by the folks at MMO-Champion, and you can view the entire list of changes here. Like always, I’ll be concentrating on the Mage changes.

Frost Mage by Dan Scott

The changes to Empowered Frostbolt and Permafrost has been updated on the latest Test Realm Patch Notes. You can read the notes here.

Here is the list of changes in the new build:

Fire

Living Bomb can now be used on multiple targets at the same time.

Frost

Ice Barrier mana cost has been reduced from 25% of base mana to 21% of base mana.
Cone of Cold mana cost has been reduced from 29% of base mana to 25% of base mana.
Frost Ward mana cost has been reduced from 16% of base mana to 14% of base mana.
Frostbolt mana cost has been reduced from 13% of base mana to 11% of base mana.
Ice Armor mana cost has been reduced from 28% of base mana to 24% of base mana.
Ice Lance mana cost has been reduced from 7% of base mana to 6% of base mana.
Frost Nova mana cost has been reduced from 8% of base mana to 7% of base mana.
Empowered Frostbolt now reduces the cast time of your Frostbolt by 0.1/0.2 sec instead of increasing its critical strike chance by 2/4%.
Permafrost now also reduces the target’s healing received by 7/13/20%.

The Living Bomb on multiple targets we knew from before, and is now just clarified by Blizzard.

Mana cost reduction across most of the Frost Spells. Like I said before, any Mana cost reduction on Spells without any drawbacks is always a welcomed change. I’ll take it.

Losing 2/4% critical strike chance on Frostbolt for a 0.1/0.2 second cast time reduction on Frostbolt seems to be a big change. Let’s look at some math to figure it out.

% Spell Haste at level 80 = (Haste Rating / 32.79)

Haste Rating needed at level 80 = ((Base Cast Time / Desired Cast Time) – 1) * 32.79 * 100

If we put 2 points into Empowered Frostbolt, it would reduce our Frostbolt casting time from 2.5 seconds, to 2.3 seconds (assuming you have no Haste on your gear). Let’s see how much Haste Rating we would need to get from gear to get your Frostbolt that low.

((2.5 / 2.3) – 1 ) * 32.79 * 100 = 284.9451 Haste Rating or about 8.69% Spell Haste for Frostbolt. I’ll take that over 4% critical strike rating for Frostbolt. Add any Haste you have on your gear, and you’ll have a sub 2.0 second Frostbolt in no time.

Another big change is that Frost Mages are getting a Mortal Strike effect on their Permafrost. This will cause an uproar in the non-Mage communities since this will be making Frost Mages even MORE powerful in PvP.

Dispelling against a Frost Mage will be even more painful. You would need to cleanse off the Frostbolt/Cone of Cold/Frost Nova effect, Winter’s Chill effect, maybe Frozen effect, and now Permafrost effect.

I like how Blizzard can’t make Frost Mages more viable in PvE without making them too powerful in PvP, yet they can just make Frost Mages even more powerful in PvP. Oh wells, I’ll still take the buffs.Related Posts:

PTR Patch 3.2 – Living Bomb on Multiple Targets

Tuna — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 10:00:40 +0000

Now that I’m back into the mood to return to the World of Warcraft, I copied my character over to the new Public Test Realms to see what was going on with the next patch. So far I am liking it.

The next content patch (3.2) will be called Call of the Crusade, and will introduce some new dungeons and badges, which you may already know. So we’ll skip that. I just want to talk about the upcoming Mage changes.

From the latest PTR Patch Notes:

Mages

Arcane Blast: Mana cost reduced by 12%.
Invisibility: Can no longer be interrupted by a hostile action or damage done during the 3-second fade time, however an invisible mage can still be stunned or silenced.
Empowered Fire: In addition to its existing effects, this talent now also grants a 33/67/100% chance to regain 2% of base mana each time the Ignite talent deals damage.
Water Elemental: All pets now receive 40% of their master’s resilience and 100% of their master’s spell penetration. In addition, if a player is at their appropriate spell hit chance or hit chance maximum, their pet will be at the maximum for spell hit chance, hit chance, and expertise. If they are below the maximum, their pet will be proportionately below those maximums.
Enduring Winter: Replenishment: This buff now grants 1% of the target’s maximum mana over 5 seconds instead of 0.25% per second.
Undocumented Change: Living Bomb can be cast on multiple targets.

The change to Arcane Blast will be a buff to mana starved Arcane Mages, allowing them to cast more, and do more damage. Anytime mana cost on spells are reduced with no drawbacks, it is a good thing.

The change to Invisibility is a nice buff. It was always annoying to have your Invis canceled during boss encounters by random AoE damage. Now threat happy Mages have zero excuses to pulling aggro. In PvP, Mages will now be even harder to kill, and for non-Arcane Mages, will have another viable escape technique under their belt.

2% base Mana return every time Ignite ticks? I’ll take that. This will be helpful for Fire Mages who find themselves going OOM too early. Remember, Base Mana is what you have BEFORE gear is added. So for all level 80 Mages, your Base Mana is 3268. So you will be getting ~65 Mana per Ignite tick.

If you are Hit Capped, so will your pet. Finally Squirtle will be Hit Capped for PvE, which will help out Frost DPS a bit. And for PvP, having your pet be harder to kill is always a good thing. Good buff for Frosties.

1% of your Max Mana every 5 seconds, versus .25% of your Max Mana every 1 second (1.25% over 5 seconds). Yes it is a slight nerf since your Mana gain will be .25% less, but for Frost Mages, this will help eliminate situations where you lose a tick of Replenishment sometimes when your Frostbolt refreshes the buff. Plus this change will make it less spammy (at least for me) on the combat log.

Last but no least, you can cast Living Bomb on multiple targets. This will be a huge DPS increase for Fire Mages during trash, and a few Boss encounters. I couldn’t believe it when I was able to do this on the PTR, and thought it was a bug. I then did a bit of searching on the WoW Forums and found a thread with Blue Confirmation. So far it is working as intended.

I would loved to see bigger buffs to PvE Frost, but it is all good. We’ll take any small buffs whenever we can. Baby steps.Related Posts:

Giant Wolf Mage!?

Tuna — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 17:35:35 +0000

The new patch came with a new transformation! You can now turn into a giant wolf, anywhere! Time for me to finally turn in my quest in Howling Fjord and get rid of my [Worg Disguise].

For this you will need the help of an Inscriptionist. The recipe they need is the [Technique: Rituals of the New Moon], which is Bind on Pickup. This recipe drops off the inhabitants of Silverbrook in Grizzly Hills. It took me about 15 minutes for it to drop for me. I know someone who have been farming there for over 2 hours, and it hasn’t dropped yet (haha!).

When you create the [Rituals of the New Moon] off-hand, it randomly makes one which will turn you into 1 of 4 different color wolf: Grey, Red, White, or Black. The transformation lasts for 2 minutes, and has a 10 minute cooldown. You need to keep the off-hand equipped or else you’ll lose the buff. It is a decent off-hand, but there are many that are better, and I only use it for the transformation.

The wolf form is exactly like the Shaman’s ghost wolf form, and have the dance emote. You can’t cast any Spells while in this form except Ice Block.

If you are an Inscriptionist, it can also yield you some good cash too. The off-hand is Bind on Equip, so many players will be looking to get it just for the transformation. I threw up two of them on the Auction House for 250g each to see if they would sell, and they both sold by the end of the day. It cost about 75g worth of mats to make. If this keeps up, I can pay back the gold I borrowed to learn Dual Spec soon!

A new transformation to add to the List of Mage Transformations.Related Posts:

My Dual Specs

Tuna — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 04:42:38 +0000

Patch 3.1.0 is finally here and we now have our Dual Specs. All the Hybrid classes are all excited to be able to swap between Tank/Healer/DPS specs with ease. Just because we can only DPS, doesn’t mean Dual Spec isn’t worth it for us. Now we can bring two different PvE specs to a raid, or even have a PvE and a PvP spec. After messing around with the talent calculators a bit, I came up with two specs I will stick with.

Primary Specialization: PvE/PvP Frost
18/0/53

In the Arcane Tree, the main talent you want to pick up is [Torment the Weak] which gives you a 12% damage increase to your Frostbolts on snared targets.

In the 3rd Tier of the Arcane Tree, I chose 3 points of [Student of the Mind] over [Spell Impact] because I will be using the the Molten Armor Glyph over the Ice Lance Glyph. Blizzard still needs to buff Ice Lance more in PvE for me to use it in my rotation.

For the Frost Tree, instead of 3 points into [Frost Channeling] I chose 3 points into [Frostbite] instead. For PvP, Frostbite will come in handy, and threat doesn’t matter.

As for PvE, I was having zero mana problems, and aggro wasn’t a factor when I use my Mirror Images and Invisibility correctly. Plus for trash and some bosses, my 1 point [Improved Blizzard] combined with Frostbite made it very easy. This especially came in handy for the trash during the Razorscale and the XT-002 Deconstructor fights.

I also picked up Deep Freeze for good measure. This spec is more PvE oriented, but is vary capable for PvP. For Arena, I would stick with this spec still but swap out some Glyphs. You know you DON’T have to be at a Lexicon to use your Glyphs anymore right? I love this patch!

Minor Glyphs:

Major Glyphs:

Secondary Specialization: Pure PvE Fire
18/53/0

For the Arcane Tree, I went pretty much the same route as my Primary Spec, but this time instead, I have 3 points [Spell Impact] and 1 point [Student of the Mind] since it will also affect Fireballs.

In the Fire Tree, it is pretty much cookie cutter Fireball. I still picked up 3 points [Improved Scorch] even though I won’t be using the Glyph that goes with it. Because even though I might not have to stack the debuff anymore, I still get the passive 3% Spell Crit to my Fireballs.

This spec is just for raiding purposes for when extra DPS is required. I tried PvPing with this spec pre-3.1.0, and it just makes me angry. I’m thinking about switching to PvE Arcane, or back to PvE Frostfire, but I’m not sure yet. I pretty much picked this spec because it was doing good damage, and it was the last raiding spec I had.

Minor Glyphs:

Major Glyphs:

So far I’m enjoy the Dual Spec feature a lot. The DPS as Frost is decent, but still lacks behind Fire, Frostfire, and Arcane by a good margin. I sometimes surprise myself though with this spec and top the meters.

Right now I’m running with exactly 600 Haste, and my Frostbolts are at around 2.05 second casts. With a Ret Pally or Boomkin, I am at sub 2.0 second casts, with 1.8 second casts when my [Embrace of the Spider] procs. My DPS skyrockets whenever Heroism or Icy Veins is popped, and I’m enjoying ~1.5 second casts.

I needs more Haste!Related Posts:

How to be an Asshat Mage

Tuna — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 18:35:29 +0000

You can’t deny it, every Mage has some douchebaggery in him/her. It comes with the Mage class. Some just have more of it than others. Then there are some of you, just waiting to unleash your inner-asshat. It has either happen already, or will eventually happen. Either way, you might as well do it the right way.

Portal Roulette

The oldest Mage trick in the book. The basic idea is to stack all Mage portals on top of each other so that players will end up taking the wrong portal and get sent to somewhere random. The best time for this is usually at the end of any normal/heroic instance, or raid.

Step 1: Stand Still

After selecting a nice spot to start creating portals, make sure you don’t move after casting each portal to ensure that they all stack exactly on top of each other. This step is crucial for any Portal Roulette attempts.

Step 2: Spell Rotations

Make sure you start off with a bad portal, followed by a good one. If you start with a good portal, all the smart players will take it before you finish casting the next one. Each portal takes 10 seconds to cast, and lasts for 1 minute.

Follow each good portal with another bad one. Players have been adapting to Portal Roulette and have been patiently waiting for the first bad portal to disappear before taking the good one. This will make sure that won’t happen.

I like to use 6 portals total, 3 good ones (good/better/best), 3 bad ones (bad/badder/worst). I exclude Shattrath since it defeats the purpose (since you can portal to any of the major cities from there).

Here is my Spell Rotation: bad > better > badder > best > better > worst

For Alliance that would be: Darnassus > Stormwind > Exodar > Dalaran > Ironforge > Theramore

If you have a [Direbrew's Remote] or [Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian], tack that at the end for more fun.

Step 3: Leave

Teleport yourself, or play Portal Roulette to leave the instance. If you’re not there, the players can’t ask you to portal again, and they will be forced to play Portal Roulette, or use their Hearthstone.

Best is when you end up in Theramore from Portal Roulette, along with 3 other players, then proceed to teleport yourself to the city of your choice, while they just watch you leave.

Can I Haz Food/Water Plx?

You’re going around Ironforge or whatever city, doing your own thing. You’re checking auctions, checking mail, or crafting, then someone suddenly opens trade with you. You stand there for a bit wondering what they want. 10 seconds pass, and you type to them, “?”. Their response is a few random words, with the word “food” thrown in there somewhere, followed by some sort of smiley face.

What I normally do in this situation, is to conjure up some rank 1 Food or Water (depending on their class), and send them off on their way. They usually don’t realize it until it is too late.

I dunno about you but when random players just open up trade with you and expect something without saying anything pisses me off. Maybe if they just ask before, I would be happy to. Maybe…

Fake AFK

I normally don’t have a problem when someone asks for a portal. It’s only a few seconds of my time, and I usually get 5 gold or so out of it. Then there are sometimes I just don’t feel like it. Maybe I had a bad raid earlier, or whatever. I don’t know why, I just don’t.

For when that situation arises, I rely on my handy dandy macro:

/afk
/sit

If you just /afk, and you’re still standing there, they can tell you’re just faking it. You gotta take that extra step to sit at the same time to make it look real.

Extra Asshat points for when they actually see you jumping around Ironforge like 5 seconds before being asked, then suddenly sit down with the /afk tag popping up.

Amplify Magic

I believe this started for me back in Blackwing Lair, during the Firemaw fight, where he has an aura that does fire damage every 5 seconds or so. The Mages would randomly put Amplify Magic on Warlocks, and other players they didn’t like, so that they would take extra damage.

Pretty easy to pull off, especially with all the buffs you get nowadays during raids. This would most likely piss off the healers, so use at your own risk.

Wintergrasp Portal

There is a few Asshat Mages a day that does this. They open up a random Mage portal right before the Wintergrasp portal opens, tricking players into taking them, and those players end up missing Wintergrasp as a result.

You’ve seen it done before, and thought it was funny. You’ve also been tempted to do it every time too. It’s okay, those urges are normal as a Mage. Even I’m guilty of doing this.

Only once though, and it was with a [Direbrew's Remote], and was a way from where the Wintergrasp Portal appears, and it was also 5 minutes before the battle for Wintergrasp started. So to those 8 players who took it that day, sorry, but how do you click that by accident?

Can you run me thru Stockades?

I’ve never actually done this, but the idea popped up in my head while writing this. It is a total waste of time, but I guess you could do this if you are bored and someone asks you to run them through something.

You run through and gather up all the mobs like normal, while the other player follows behind. Once you get to a point where there is enough mobs on you, pop Mirror Image, Ice Block, then use Invisibility.

The mobs will kill your images, then run after the poor guy following you. You will be out of combat, so find a nice place to come out of Invis, then you can teleport yourself out safely.

Bonus Asshat points if you come out of Invis after the other player dies, and then kill all the mobs right afterwards.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you happen to pull off all these Asshat Mage tricks including the last one, then congratulations, you’re a bigger Asshat than me!

There is probably more ways to be an Asshat Mage out there, so if I missed any, feel free to add to the list of tricks.Related Posts:

Primary Professions for Mages

Tuna — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 09:37:35 +0000

This is for any Mage looking to maximize their class by selecting the best possible professions available. It isn’t as easy as it seems though, since there are ten possible professions available, and can only select two of them. When maximizing your character, you would sacrifice the convenience and profit of selecting a gathering profession, and select another crafting profession.

Either you select your profession for personal reasons, or for the sake of others like the guild, each profession comes with something that gives a boost only to yourself that you can’t share with others. This is usually the main factor in selecting a profession. Let’s take a look at what each of these professions can bring.

Alchemy

“The Alchemist mixes herbs in order to generate potions with a variety of effects. A player can create healing, invisibility, elemental resistance, and mana potions; oils to coat weapons; and much more.”

Mixology is the biggest reason to select Alchemy as one of your primary professions. Not only does it increase the buff you receive from the Elixirs and Flasks you take, it also doubles the duration of the effect.
For example: [Flask of the Frost Wyrm] will give you 162 Spell Power, and last 4 hours currently with Mixology.
[Mercurial Alchemist Stone] is an “Alchemy Only” trinket you can make that has decent stats, and also increases the effectiveness of your health/mana potions by 40%.
[Crazy Alchemist's Potion] is an “Alchemy Only” potion you can take which will give you a random potion buff as well as health and mana.
[Endless Mana Potion] is a mana potion that you can use in Arena, and has unlimited uses. Since Mages already have mana gems they can use, you can use the next potion instead.
[Endless Health Potion] is a heath potion that you can use in Arena. Currently only Alchemist can use potions in Arena, and they both benefit from the Alchemist’s Stone potion bonus.

Alchemy is not only a good profession to help others, but a great profession that gives the Alchemist some personal gain too. With future patches, new trinkets will be released, as well as new potions, elixirs, and flasks as well.

Blacksmithing

“Blacksmiths take bars of metal from miners and work them into finely crafted arms and armor. There are many unique weapons and other armaments that cannot be found on any of the vendors or monsters in the game, but can only be created by blacksmiths.”

[Eternal Belt Buckle] is something that Blacksmiths can make, but can be used by anyone, and gives your belt an extra gem socket. The next two however, are only for Blacksmiths.
[Socket Bracer] adds another gem socket to any of your own bracers.
[Socket Gloves] adds another gem socket to any of your own gloves.

Currently the advantage of being a Blacksmith over another profession is the extra 2 gem sockets, and essentially +38 Spell Power if you use 2x [Runed Scarlet Ruby].

Enchanting

“Enchanters use their magical formulae to grant permanent augmentation to weapons, armor and other equipment. Enchanting requires the use of special ingredients that can only be gathered by disenchanting magical items. Using these ingredients enchanters can make items more powerful.”

[Enchant Ring - Greater Spellpower] is a self-only enchant which you can only use on your own rings add a +19 Spell Power enchant to them.

Currently the advantage of being a Enchanter over another profession is the extra 2 ring enchants, and essentially +38 Spell Power if you use it on your two rings.

Engineering

“Engineering is a very fun and creative Profession. You can create all kinds of wacky things that are fun to use and also entertain and amaze other players. Engineering is used to assemble metal and stones into parts needed to make explosives, guns, scopes, bullets, mechanical dragons, aquatic helmets, and much more.”

[Visage Liquification Goggles] are bind on pick-up googles that can be made for yourself to use.
[Gnomish Lightning Generator] is a bind on pick-up trinket you can make for yourself that can do a good amount of burst damage if needed in PvP.
[Hyperspeed Accelerators] are self-only enchants you can put on your own gloves. They DO NOT stack with normal glove enchants.
[Nitro Boosts] are self-only enchants you can put on your own boots. They DO NOT stack with normal boot enchants.

Engineering is very situational, is mainly picked up as a “fun” profession. The majority of the perks of being an engineer is PvP based, there are some PvE uses as well. In the last expansion, the best helm to have for a Mage was engineer-only, it may be the same in Wrath as well.

Inscription

“the Inscription profession allows its practitioners, called “scribes,” to enhance the spells and abilities of players’ characters, such as enhancing a rogue’s Backstab ability to deal more damage to stunned targets, or allowing a priest’s Circle of Healing to heal one more target.”

[Master's Inscription of the Storm] is a self-only shoulder enchant which can be cast on any of your own shoulders.

Currently the advantage of being an Inscriptionist over another profession is the shoulder enchant that has +37 Spell Power over using [Greater Inscription of the Storm], which requires exalted status with Sons of Hodir.

Jewelcrafting

“Jewelcrafters learn the art of creating beautiful jewelry and trinkets from metals and rare gems.”

[Figurine - Twilight Serpent] is a bind on pick-up trinket you can make for yourself.
[Runed Dragon's Eye] is a bind on pick-up gem you can create for yourself, but is unique so that you can only have 3 equipped at a time.

Currently the advantage of being a Jewelcrafter over another profession is +39 Spell Power if you use 3x [Runed Dragon's Eye] over 3x [Runed Scarlet Ruby].

Of course there are other Jewelcrafter only gems such as Haste, Hit, and Crit gems you can use. As well as Stamina, and Resilience gems for PvP.

Also being able to use these prismatic gems count towards the two Blue Gem requirement of the [Chaotic Skyflare Diamond].

Leatherworking

“Leatherworking is a crafting profession that goes hand-in-hand with the gathering profession of Skinning. You can also create armor kits, which are single-use items that give a permanent armor or statistic boost to any type of hand, leg, chest, and foot armor.”

[Fur Lining - Spell Power] a self-only bracer enchant for Leatherworkers.

Currently the advantage of being a Leatherworker over any other profession is the bracer enchant that gives you +37 Spell Power over the normal bracer enchant you can get.

Tailoring

“Tailoring allows players to cut and weave various pieces of cloth into armor, bags, shirts, and other cloth items. They can learn powerful rare recipes as the highest levels which allow them to create powerful gear useful in raiding.”

[Lightweave Embroidery] is a self-only cloak enchant that you can enchant on your own cloaks.
[Sanctified Spellthread] is a spellthread that you can only put on your own pants.

Currently the benefits of being a Tailor versus the other professions, it is the weakest. [Sanctified Spellthread] is just cheaper to make than [Brilliant Spellthread]. Lightweave Embroidery will be getting a buff next patch though, so that it is worth taking over [Enchant Cloak - Greater Speed].Related Posts: