Yep, the advantage that Frost Mages had over Fire Mages in the Spell Hit column will be gone with the release of Wrath of the Lich King or possibly the next patch coming this Tuesday. The Ghost Hit was the extra Spell Hit Frost Mages recieved, which gave them an extra 3% Spell Hit from Elemental Precision. Soon, it will be gone.

I haven’t gotten the chance myself to test out the Ghost Hit with a level 80 Mage and a boss level target dummy, but there was someone who did. Credit goes to Tashire of (US) Baelgun for testing it out for the Mage Community. We thank you.

The weapon of choice for this test was a level 80 Gnome named Gnova. She has 106 Spell Hit Rating, which is around 4% Spell Hit in WotLK. Also in WotLK, you can reach 100% Spell Hit, not like current WoW with 99% Spell Hit. So for a boss level target (+3 levels) you will need 17% Spell Hit to reach the cap in WotLK.

So with 4% Spell Hit from gear, and with Elemental Precision, we should see a 7% Resist rate if Ghost Hit still exist, or a 10% Resist rate if the Ghost Hit is gone.

As you can see, Gnova cast 1000 Frostbolts to test out the resist rate, a nice big number of spell casting to work with. Gnova ended up with having a 10% resist rate, which shows us that Frostbolt isn’t receiving an extra 3% Spell Hit from Elemental Precision.

It was also stated by the guys at ElitistJerks that the Ghost Hit is gone.Related Posts:

• Frost Mage PvP: 102 – Spell Penetration and Resilience
• Frost Mage PvE: Gunship Battle
• Frost Mage PvP: 101

More tweaking and tinkering done by Blizzard, and they have come up with another build, the WotLK Beta Build 9014. This time from a mix from WorldofRaids.com and MMO-Champion.com, I have come up with a revised list of changes from this new beta build. Here is a look at the new changes for our Mage class.

Here is also a link to the new Mage Talent Tree for Build 9014.

Arcane

• Evocation – Cooldown reduced to 5 minutes.
• Sound Effect Spell – Polymorph Penguin and Polymorph Sheep added.
• Missile Barrage – Now affects Arcane Barrage. Now has a 3/6/9/12/20% chance to proc.

Fire

• Empowered Fireball – Renamed Empowered Fire. Now affects Frostfire Bolt.
• Living Bomb – No longer knocks targets into the air.
• Hot Streak – Now works with Fire Blast as well.

Frost

• Deep Freeze – Now does no damage.
• Frost Warding – Moved from Tier 1 to Tier 2
• Frostbite – Moved from Tier 2 to Tier 1

Still no new changes to Arcane Blast yet. It is still at an increase of 200% Mana cost. Looks like Blizzard is trying to make us try out various Spell rotations, instead of having a pre-set one. With the change to Missile Barrage, your rotations will be based on procs, and your own reactions.

For Fire Mages, throwing in a Fire Blast every so often will help out your DPS, especially when it procs Hot Streak, and you get an instant Pyroblast out of it. The loss of a knock up on Living Bomb was a pretty big hit in the PvP game. Living Bomb could have been used strategically to interrupt Spell casting when players get knocked into the air.

Frost Mages also took a hit in the PvP category. The damage on Deep Freeze was decreased in the last build, and now in this build, it has been completely dropped. Although it is still a very good control mechanic for a Frost Mage, we are now lacking even more in the damage department.

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.

Barber Shop:

The easiest way to change your character, and now there are even more styles to choose from. If you are an Undead, not only can you change to another Undead hair style, but you can also choose hair styles from other races. Want your Undead Mage to have Gnome Pigtails? Now you can!

These Barber Shops are located in the Major Cities, and each makeover will put a dent in your wallet. It cost me around 40g just for a the Pigtails!.

New Titles:

A little bit more difficult to obtain if you want a specific title. With the expansion, you can obtain new titles through achievements other than PvE quest lines or topping the Arena rankings. Some are pretty easy to obtain like exploring all of Azeroth and Outland to get the title of “Explorer”. Then there are some which requires a lot of time or grinding such as 100,000 Honorable Kills for the titles “of the Alliance” or “of the Horde”.

New Mounts:

Tired of being the 50th person on your server to have the [Amani War Bear]? Well in the expansion, there should be a large variety of mounts to choose from. Flying Carpets for Tailorers, Motorcycles for Engineers, or the many others listed on MMO-Champion.com.

Next up, Aesthetic Change for Mages!

9/10/2008

When cast, the Focus Magic buff is applied to EVERY raid member, pet, and minions. For Mages, that will also include Water Elementals, and Mirror Images. Rank 1 gives 50 Spell Power, Rank 2 gives 100 Spell Power, and Rank 3 gives 150 Spell Power.

This makes it extremely useful since Spell Power ALSO affects Healers as well as other DPS Casters. The buff lasts for 1 minute or 50 charges. Is it 50 charges per person or 50 total? I was unable to test that since none of the charges were being used up on Beta, but I still got the Spell Power bonus.

There is no cooldown on the spell, and can be re-applied whenever it wears off. The cost of applying the buff however is pretty high (close to 1k mana), so I see this being used during raids whenever they “need” extra dps (enrage timers, < 20%, etc…).

9/18/2008

Focus Magic has been totally redone, and is no longer a party/raid buff. The description of the spell is a little confusing, and doesn’t state any limitations on the spell. It is now a 30 minute buff.

You CAN’T cast this on yourself. You can only cast this on another player. The player you cast it on will get a +3% Spell Critical Strike chance. Whenever THAT player gets a critical strike, YOU get a 10 second buff which grants YOU +3% Spell Critical Strike chance.

You CANNOT cast it on more than one person. The buff will be removed on any previous player when you cast it on a new player.

First player I tested this on was a Death Knight. The party consisted of three Paladins, a Death Knight, and me, so I didn’t have much of a choice. Sure enough, every time he crit with a spell, I got the buff. I then tested it on the healing Paladin, and every crit heal he got, I too got the buff.

What I haven’t tested yet was casting it on another Mage who also has Focus Magic to cast on me. I would assume that it would work, and each Mage would have a +6% Spell Crit chance whenever the other Mage would crit.

9/24/2008

Does NOT work on Crit Heals if casted on a healer. Thanks to Euripedes for pointing this out.

So what are the new changes for Mages? They haven’t seem to find any changes, but I found two big changes already to the Frost Tree. It will change the way I will spec for when the pre-release patch is out, and when I hit level 80.

Ice Shards:

Ice Shards is now only 3 talent points instead of 5 to, “Increase the critical strike damage bonus of your Frost spells by 33/66/100%.” This change frees up 2 talent points for Frost Mages to use elsewhere.

Shatter:

Shatter is now also only 3 talent points instead of 5 to, “Increase the critical strike chance of all your spells against frozen targets by 17/34/50%.” This change also frees up another 2 talent points for Frost Mages.

Now that I have 4 extra talent points, where shall I put them? This now opens up a lot of different options for me. The Frost talent tree has many many useful talents that I want to pick up, but never could find enough talent points to grab them all.

For me, I will use those extra points and invest them into Brain Freeze. Before I didn’t think it was worth the points over some of the other Frost talents. Well now I can afford the points. When the pre-release patch comes out, I shall be using this talent build: Level 70 PvE/PvP Frost

When the WotLK expansion hits, as I level up, I will start filling in the Arcane tree until I get Focus Magic. When I hit 80 and start raiding again, the talent build that I will most likely be using is this: 80 PvE/PvP Frost

As you may know by now, in the WotLK Beta, Blizzard ticks can now critically strike. Untalented, it will critically hit at the rate of your Frost Crit %. Blizzard is affected by many talents which will increase the crit rate even further.

Download to better video version HERE. (4.6mb)

9/13/2008

Blizzard with Fingers of Frost Proc’d

After testing the critical strike percentage using Recount, when I cast Blizzard while having the Fingers of Frost buff, I got around 45-55% critical strike % on the Blizzard ticks. My passive spell crit % with gear is 26%. Download to better video version HERE. (6.5mb)

3/3 Improved Blizzard with 3/3 Frostbite and 2/2 Fingers of Frost (not proc’d)

As you can see here, with Improved Blizzard and Frostbite, it substantially increases the critical strike % of the Blizzard ticks. The reason for this? For some reason, possibly unintended, the Frostbite procs seemed to have also proc’d or refreshed Fingers of Frost. The pushed my critical strike % up to 75-80%. Without Frostbite and Improved Blizzard, I haven’t had any success getting Blizzard ticks to proc Fingers of Frost. Download to better video version HERE. (27.2mb)

I also played around with the new Impact, which has a chance to proc off of ANY spells, and Blizzard is one of them. Right now, Blizzard seems very powerful on the Beta. Maybe a little too powerful. A fully talented Blizzard with all the bells and whistles, you have one heck of a spell.

Your Blizzard will slow down your targets by 85%, with a 15% chance to Freeze, 10% chance to Stun on each tick. All that on top of the 50+ Crit % of the Blizzard ticks. I tested it out on a group of mobs, and they never left the first Blizzard circle.

Mirror Image has been confirmed to be the new level 80 Mage spell for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. After Blizzard removed Shatter Shield as our level 80 spell, we were without a new spell for quite some time. Mirror Image is the new spell, and it is pretty good.

The images work very similar to the [Tiny Voodoo Mask] trinket. If you use Mirror Image in a middle of combat, they will automatically fight whoever you are fighting. If you use MI while out of combat, they will just follow you around until you initiate combat, or an enemy starts attacking you.

9/10/2008

You CAN summon Water Elemental at the same time as the Mirror Images, and having the Water Elemental out actually returns enough mana to the Images so that they will not run out of mana and start melee combat.

If you cast Focus Magic AFTER Water Elemental and Images are up, they all will receive the 150 Spell Power bonus.

The Spells that the Images cast are: Frostbolt, Fireblast, and Polymorph: Chicken. Polymorph: Chicken worked like the Shaman’s Hex, and does not break on damage.

The damage for the Images were… overpowered. Frostbolts were hitting for ~1000, crits for ~1500. Fireblast was hitting for ~2000, crits for ~4000. Yea, ouch.

You also get a Mirror Image buff which randomly switches your Mage with one of the Images. Sounds cool because it can switch you before your enemy’s cast lands. But at the same time it messes you up because when you switch, it also interrupts your current cast. You CAN click off the buff to prevent getting switch around.

9/12/2008

Mirror Images’ damage has been toned down quite a bit. Frostbolts hitting for ~500, crits for ~800. Fireblast hitting for ~600, critting for ~1200. Pretty sure everyone was expecting this one, they were doing way too much random damage. Not sure why Fireblast is doing more damage than the Frostbolts though.

You CANNOT click off the Mirror Image buff to prevent getting switched around anymore. The switching still interrupts your casting.

9/30/2008

Mirror Images’ damage has been dropped even more, but now, their damage scales with yours. Also the placement swaping has been taken away.

[Quote from Lhivera on Beta Forums]

Nice find. I believe these Frostbolts are 2.5 second casts, right? In that case, I think what you’ll find is that each Mirror Image is gaining 1.5 / 3.5 / 3 = 0.142857 ~= 14.29% of your spell power.

Prediction with 540 Spell Power:
- Mirror Image gains 1.5 / 3.5 / 3 * 540 = 77 spell power
- Frostbolt damage increases by 2.5 / 3.5 * 77 = 55
- Your result: increase = 55

Prediction with 946 Spell Power:
- Mirror Image gains 1.5 / 3.5 / 3 * 946 = 135 spell power
- Frostbolt damage increases by 2.5 / 3.5 * 135 = 96
- Your result: increase = 97

Prediction with 1508 Spell Power:
- Mirror Image gains 1.5 / 3.5 / 3 * 1508 = 215 spell power
- Frostbolt damage increases by 2.5 / 3.5 * 215 = 154
- Your result: increase = 154

So basically, each Mirror Image gains 1/3 the normal bonus of an instant-cast spell, but it then gets to use that bonus on every spell it casts; its Frostbolts get a 2.5-sec coefficient with no snare penalty. We could double-check this if you could provide a damage range on Fire Blast (since it should get less benefit from the spell power).

Now that I am in the WotLK Beta, I can test out all the new spells and their mechanics for all to see. So far I’ve only got an hour of testing in before fatigue kicked in, and servers are down. I will make a post for each individual spell, and update each post as the spell changes. So check back every so often as the spell evolves.

9/9/2008

At the time of this testing, Finger of Frost (rank 2) has a 10% chance to proc a BUFF on the caster, making his/her next two Frost Damage spells cast on the target to be considered “Frozen”. Again, Fingers of Frost is a BUFF proc and not a DEBUFF proc. YOU will gain the buff, and it is a Magic Buff which can be dispelled. You can proc the buff while dpsing one target, and use the buff (next 2 frost spells) on another target.

FoF CAN proc again while the buff is still active. Sadly it will simply refresh the current buff instead of adding to it. Just like Clearcasting with a 10% chance, it wasn’t uncommon to see strings of FoF procs.

You CANNOT squeeze off an Ice Lance right after the 2nd Frostbolt to get a 3rd Spell out of the FoF proc. If it was a debuff on the target, it may have worked, but not with FoF as a buff on you.

You can however use the FoF proc on another Frost Damage Spell: Blizzard. That’s right, the entire duration of the “next 2 Frost spell cast on the target as if the target were frozen” works with Blizzard. With Blizzard ticks now being able to critically strike, when you cast Blizzard with the FoF buff, you will start seeing ticks of ~1400.

The reason the left target dummy is taking more damage than the right target dummy, is because other players are debuffing it.

I also put one point into Improved Blizzard, giving the spell a chill effect, making it able to proc Frostbite. When it does proc Frostbite, you will see more ticks critically striking.

9/10/2008

Tooltip for Fingers of Frost has been changed to: “Gives your Frost damage spells a 5/10% chance to grant you the Fingers of Frost effect, which treats your next 2 Frost spells cast as if the target were Frozen. Lasts 15 sec.” (old version: Gives your Frost damage spells a 5/10% chance to apply the Fingers of Frost effect…) New tooltip is to clarify that it is a self buff and no longer a debuff.

Ice Lance DOES NOT proc Fingers of Frost anymore in the beta build 8926. I actually wasn’t too surprised when I saw that my Ice Lances weren’t procing FoF anymore. You would have been able to Ice Lance players to death.

9/12/2008

After the lag fest that is the Dalaran training area, I logged onto my copied Mage on the Northrend server to do some more testing. There is a lot less latency issues here, and my Frostbolts don’t take 5 seconds to cast.

When I got FoF to proc, I tried the Frostbolt -> Frostbolt + Ice Lance again and was still unable to pull off getting three charges out of the proc, well sort of. My Ice Lance would crit and get the triple damage bonus from the frozen target, but the 2nd Frostbolt would normally be a hit.

However if I got the FoF proc and tried Frostbolt -> Frostbolt + Deep Freeze. The Deep Freeze will land (and usually crits), and the 2nd Frostbolt would also crit. This is most likely due to the debuff that Deep Freeze gives, which is a stun and freeze effect. Still this is a very viable combo to pull off if the mob is Deep Freeze-able.

9/18/2008

Fingers of Frost has been changed to have a 7/15% chance to proc off of any Frost Spells with a Chill effect. This confirms that Ice Lance will no longer proc FoF.

If there is something you would like me to test out, feel free to ask away. I will do my best to test it out and record the data. I will most likely be testing out the Frost Talents first on my 70 Mage, then test it out again on my premade 80 Mage. Then I would move on to Arcane, then Fire, the tree I have the least experience on.

The Beta Client itself is a whopping 1.87 gig download, then the install will take up another 7.3 gigs of my precious hard drive space. I had to delete some very important pr0… jects in order to be able to install the beta. It took me about 4hrs to download the client using the Blizzard downloader. I am sure there are direct downloads of the client elsewhere on the net, but I’d rather trust the real deal.

I copied my Mage over on the PvE server (Alliance Side) and the premades I chose Horde Side. If you happen to also be on beta, let me know and we can group up!