A taste of the server lag we should be expecting when we all march on over to Northrend that is, and it does not look too good for us. The event was cool and everything, but the lag was awful. And this was with about 40-50 players at the event.

For those who are not familiar with the event, this event will give us an introduction to the upcoming expansion, Wrath of the Lich King.

If you are Alliance, there is an event which takes place at the Stormwind Harbors, where the King Varian Wrynn and company defends the harbors from forces of Arthas. If you are Horde, you will witness a duel between Thrall and Garrosh Hellscream. Eventually Orgrimmar is attacked by the forces of Arthas, leaving Thrall, Garrosh Hellscream, High Overlord Saurfang, and Lady Sylvanas Windrunner to defend the city. In both instances, the attackers are defeated, and the event will reset and start again every hour or so.

It is nice that Blizzard is giving us a small event to prepare us for the upcoming expansion, but they really need to work on their server stability a bit. If this lag was what I was experiencing with amount of players equivalent to say, Ironforge AH/Bank area, then I fear of what we will be seeing at the starting areas in Northrend. It is going to be a repeat of the opening night of the Burning Crusade.

“But there will be TWO starting areas for Northrend!” Yea I understand the argument but think of it this way. Right before the Burning Crusade hit, the number of subscribers was at 4.5 million. We’re looking at more than double the number of subscribers when Wrath of the Lich King. If the two starting areas in Northrend effectively splits the population in half, we’re still looking at a repeat of the opening of the Burning Crusade. Now it is going to happen in two areas instead of one.

Hopefully the very lengthy server maintenance we experienced yesterday was to fix some of that problem. We’ll find out tomorrow night (Thursday morning) at midnight. Goodbye Outland, it was a fun ride. Hello Northrend!

The first two areas of Northrend is Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord, both are starting areas which are for players levels 68-72. These zones are the “Hellfire Peninsula” of Northrend, split into two areas to reduce the amount of clutter of players making their way into Northrend when the expansion is released. Here is a look of potential Mage gear replacements in these zones:

• Activist’s Signet of Blasting
• Shoulders of the Northern Lights
• Chain of Vigilant Thought
• Tower of the Infinite Mind
• Horn of the Herald

The next zone you will head to is Dragonblight, which is catered to players from levels 71-74. This zone will also be home to the new Naxxramas. Here are some of the Mage gear you can get with quest rewards in this zone:

• Bindings of the Forceful Vanquisher
• Sandals of Chaos Resolution
• Wrap of Vigorous Destruction

Grizzly Hills is the next zone after Dragonblight. The recommended level for this zone is levels 73-75. This zone is home of the Grizzlemaw, the tribal Furbolgs. Notable quest rewards for Mages:

• Furred Worgslayer Spaulders
• Grips of Torrential Power
• Kilt of Deific Torment

The next zones is Crystalsong Forest and Zul’Drak. Crystalsong Forest is recommended at levels 74-76 and Zul’Drak is recommended at level 74-77. Just like all the “Zul” areas we’ve had before, Zul’Drak will give us another zone populated with Trolls. Some more notable quest rewards for Mages:

• Chilly Slobberknocker
• Choker of Betrayal
• Grips of the Giant-Rider
• Leggings of Fastidious Decapitation
• Robe of the Conquered Prophet

Sholazar Basin is the next zone which is catered to players from levels 75-78. The zone reminds me of a mix of Stranglethorn Vale and Un’goro Crater put together. It will be a big area for you to explore. The notable quest rewards for Mages in this zone are:

• Artruis’s Focus Stone
• Gaze of the Punishing Construct
• Nesingwary Brush Burner
• Polished Protodrake Cloak

The last two areas will be Icecrown and The Storm Peaks. I suspect The Icecrown Citadel will be added later in a patch much like Black Temple was added in the Burning Crusade. This will allow players to fight the Lich King himself, Arthas. The level requirements for these two zones is levels 76-80 for The Storm Peaks, and levels 77-80 for Icecrown. Some more notable quest rewards for these zones:

• Gloves of the Servant
• Iceshrieker’s Touch
• Ring of the Northern Winds
• Snowdrift Pantaloons
• Bonecaster’s Endgame

It will be different for every player, but this will give you a good idea of what kind of gear you will be seeing in each zone in Northrend, and how well your current gear will last as you level up.

Fear not, your Purples won’t be replaced with quest Greens right away when you step into Northrend. Depending on how far into progression you are now, your current gear has potential to even last you all the way to level 80. Your non-set slots will most likely be the first gear to be replaced. That would mean your Neck, Rings, Cloak, and maybe Weapons, and Trinkets depending how far progressed you are.

With a quick search through the quest rewards for the areas in Northrend, you will be able to keep S1/T4 until they will be slowly be replaced by levels 72 – 74 Blues. S2/T5 gear will be able to last you start replacing them at around levels 74 – 76. Your S3/T6 gear will last you til around levels 76 – 78, and your S4/Sunwell gear will last you until levels 78 – 80.

This is just a rough estimate based on quest rewards. You have to also factor in new crafted gear, and gear decision based on “DPS increase vs Set Bonuses”. Your new gloves might have 5 more Spell Power, but is it worth giving up uninterrupted Spell Casting?

Quote by Bornakk:

“Players and items will have an increase in their stats/items that goes along with leveling to 80, it will just be a little more consistent when compared to The Burning Crusade. What I mean by this is the way items are working right now will be closer to the new items you get in Wrath of the Lich King and it isn’t like you will see an item with double the usual amount of stamina from your first quest. “

If you have been playing WoW before TBC, you won’t be seeing that huge jump in gear that you had experienced when the Burning Crusade expansion was released. Even then, if you were a raider, your epics weren’t replaced by quest rewards anytime soon.

From personal experience, when the Burning Crusade expansion was released, I leveled from 60 to 70 and kept my 8 piece Netherwind set (Tier 2). Sure I could have replaced a few of them for an increase of 15 Spell Damage, but it wasn’t worth losing my Netherwind Procs at the time. I only remember my Weapons, Cloak, Neck, and Trinkets being replaced before level 68.

Just taking a look back at some of the gear that were available before the expansion, and comparing them to some of the gear we have now, they are still very good.

[Neltharion's Tear] is still one of the best trinkets in the game. It has very nice passive Spell Damage, and also gives you Spell Hit, the most important stat for a Mage.

[Ring of the Fallen God] can still compete with the current rings we see today. It even has more Spell Damage than the [Band of Eternity] which is the first ring you get when you step into Tier 6 territory.

Those weren’t even end game gear either! That was still Tier 2 – Tier 2.5 level gear.

I’m not afraid of my current gear being replaced anytime soon, and the thought of Wrath gear replacing your current gear shouldn’t prevent you from continuing to raid. From doing some of the group instances on beta, I have yet to replace any of my gear with any of the drops I’ve seen.

Also if you have been following BRK, his Tier 5 gear has lasted him well past level 75, and wasn’t replaced totally until level 78.

So go for Tier 5 or Tier 6 gear! They will last you for quite some time. If anything, they will help you level up even faster.

This might also mean that Hunter’s Pets will also be benefiting from their Master’s Hit.

I probably can’t answer all of these. It’s a very long list. But I can pick and choose a few.

Q u o t e:
- Will mages continue to have mana issues as much as they do currently, or is something planned to help?

Yes, we are working on mage mana issues. They seem to run out too fast.

Q u o t e:
- Will mages be expected to be dominant AoE DPS? Or is AoE DPS also being flattened across the board?

Great AE damage isn’t a good niche in a game with so many single-target fights. Your AE will be good, but so will that of warlocks and moonkin. We won’t keep your single target dps down in order to justify high AE dps.

Q u o t e:
- Will Frost be able to dps as strongly if not more strongly than Arc/Fire in PvE? Or is that still the PvP spec?

We would like to see similar dps from all 3 trees. However, if you go for a heavy PvP build (in any tree), you will probably sacrifice some dps to get there.

Q u o t e:
- Will Arcane Blast be modified so it can be used as a main nuke? Or is that ship sunk?

We want Arcane Blast to be used a lot. It’s not Pyro.

Q u o t e:
- Scaling plagued mages throughout BC, will this be closely examined so it doesn’t repeat in WOTLK?

Yes. We aren’t happy with what happened to mages in BT and Sunwell.

Q u o t e:
- Mages from BC have a stigma attached (see top guild interviews regarding least useful class), will we be given something to help justify bringing us to raids?

We’ll make your dps competitive. We’re trying not to give *anyone* the one ability that gets them invited to raids.

Q u o t e:
- Will Evocation ever be updated? Lowered Cooldown? Made like Innervate instead of channeled?

I don’t know the answer to that yet. I think Evo is fine if mages don’t run out of mana in 5 seconds. Evo could be part of that solution or not.

Q u o t e:
- Will Frostfire bolt be given a purpose, now that double dipping is gone. Is it simply an “immunity” fight fallback?

No, we want it to be the kind of spell you can use all the time. But we want to get Frost, Fire and Arcane feeling good first.

Q u o t e:
- Will ignite ever be fixed (ignite “munching”)?

We are aware of the problem (of course). It’s just not easy to fix.

Q u o t e:
- Will the Water Elemental get more survivability? More resist? More +hit? More scaling?

All pets should inherit the hit of the master now.

Q u o t e:
- Will mages have purpose other than dps in raids so that so called “hybrid” classes won’t fill in the mage spots after the single obligatory Winters Chill/Food/Scorch mage has been invited?

Just be better / do more dps than those other classes and you’ll earn a spot. We’re not going to give you a reason other than that that someone HAS to take you.

Q u o t e:
- Is the numbers pass starting soon? We’re worried that you may be running short (5 weeks) on time to properly see data regarding the dps passes.

We’ve been in the middle of it for weeks. Don’t worry about the time. We don’t. If we looked at the ship date as a deadline, then we’d get sloppy and do dumb things. The truth is that in an MMO, game balance is a process not a destination. Even after the patch goes live, we’ll have opporunities to make changes before you can head to Northrend. With all the changes we’ve made, there are going to have to be some quick patches to fix things we missed. And overall we’d like to address balance problems that do erupt in a more timely fashion – consider, before we could always say “Eh, they’ll still take the X for his Y buff even if his dps is low.” We can’t say that anymore. Now we just have to get stuff fixed.

Some good news for Mages, and very good news for Squirtle. Hurray for Blue Posts!

Woops! I forgot to give credit to MMO-Champion for this quick up to date news. They also provided us with an updated Talent Calculator to reflect the changes in the WotLK Beta Build 8820: Talent Calculator

Glyphs:

• Glyph of Fireball – Increases the initial damage dealt by Fireball by 5%, but removes the damage over time effect.
• Glyph of Fireblast – Increases the critical strike chance of Fireblast by 50% when the target is stunned or incapacitated.
• Glyph of Frost Nova – Your Frost Nova targets can take an additional 20% damage before the Frost Nova effect automatically breaks.
• Glyph of Frostbolt – Increases the damage dealt by Frostbolt by 5%, but removes the slowing effect.
• Glyph of Ice Armor – Your Ice Armor and Frost Armor spells grant an additional 20% armor and resistance.
• Glyph of Ice Block – Your Frost Nova cooldown is now reset every time you use Ice Block.
• Glyph of Ice Lance – Increases the range of your Ice Lance by 5 yards.
• Glyph of Icy Veins – Your Icy Veins ability also removes all movement slowing and cast time slowing effects.
• Glyph of Improved Scorch – The Improved Scorch talent now generates 5 applications of the Improved Scorch effect each time Scorch is cast.
• Glyph of Invisibility – Increases the duration of the Invisibility effect by 5 sec.
• Glyph of Mage Armor – Your Mage Armor spell grants an additional 20% mana regeneration while casting.
• Glyph of Mana Gem – Increases the mana recieved from using a mana gem by 10%.
• Glyph of Molten Armor – Your Molten Armor spell grants an additional 2% critical strike chance.
• Glyph of Polymorph – Your Polymorph spell also removes all damage over time effects from the target.
• Glyph of Remove Curse – Your Remove Curse spell also makes the target immune to all Curses for 6 sec.
• Glyph of Water Elemental – Reduces the cooldown of your Summon Water Elemental spell by 30 sec.
• Glyph of the Penguin – Empowers a Minor Glyph to cause your Polymorph: Sheep spell to turn the target into a baby penguin.

Thoughts:

Now we get a chance to look at what Inscriptions will give to Mages in WotLK, and they all look pretty good at first glance. There are some which give a boost in PvE and some good for PvP and some are just good all around.

For PvE, a plus +5% bonus to Frostbolt and Fireball at the cost of losing the slowing effect and dot. For Frost Mages this is a big plus in raiding where bosses aren’t slowable by Frost Spells anyways. An extra 20% Mana regen from Mage Armor to help out the Arcane Mages, and an extra 2% Spell Crit on Molten Armor for Frost and Fire Mages. Cooldown reduction on Water Elemental by 30 seconds, and Improved Scorch stacking 5 at once are both good too. Polymorph removing dots! No more broken sheeps in raids due to mis-dotting Priests and Warlocks.

For PvP, an extra 5 yard range on Ice Lance gives it a 41 yard range with talents. Ice Armor gives an extra 20% armor. Icy Veins removes slowing effects on you will also help a lot in PvP.

Then there are Glyphs that are just good all around. Extra mana return on Mana Gems, immunity to curses after a decurse, and of course Polymorph: Penguin, can’t forget that one!

Arcane

• Arcane Shielding (Tier 4) now decreases the mana lost per point of damage taken when Mana Shield is active by 17/33%. (Previously was 10/20%)
• Improved Counterspell (Tier 4) now has a 100% chance to silence the target for 2/4 secs. (Previously was a 50/100% chance to silence the target for 4 secs.)
• Torment the Weak (Tier 4) is a new 3 point talent. It increases damage done to slowed targets by 2/4/6%.
• Incanter’s Absorption moved to Tier 7.
• Spell Power moved to Tier 10.

Fire

• Impact (Tier 3) has been changed to give your damaging spells a 4/7/10% chance to stun the target for 2 secs. (Previously was a 5 point talent 2/4/6/8/10% and only worked on fire spells)
• Molten Shields (Tier 4) now includes both Fire Ward and Frost Ward, and now increases chance to reflect the incoming spell by 15/30%. (Previously only worked on Fire Ward and was 10/20%)
• Fiery Payback (Tier 8 ) changed to include all damage, and now increases the cooldown of pyroblast by 2.5/5 secs when below 35% health. (Previously only worked on physical and fire damage, and did not increase cooldown time)
• Firestarter (Tier 9) is now a 2 point talent and was changed to 50/100% chance to make your next Flamestrike instant cast. (Previously was 15/30/45% and a 3 point talent)
• Burnout (Tier 10) has been increased to 10/20/30/40/50% critical damage bonus to all fire spells. (Previously 5/10/15/20/25%)
• Living Bomb (Tier 11) has been completely changed and now the target becomes a Living Bomb, taking 612 Fire damage over 12 seconds.  After 12 seconds or when the spell is dispelled, the target explodes dealing 306 Fire damage to all enemies within 10 yards and knocking all targets up in the air.  This spell can only affect one target at a time.

Frost

• Frost Warding (Tier 1) has been changed and now increases the armor and resistances given by your Frost Armor and Ice Armor spells by 25/50%.  In addition, gives your Frost Ward and Fire Ward a 15/30% chance to negate the warded damage spell and restore mana equal to the damage caused. (Previously was 15/30% increase to resistances)
• Improved Frost Nova (Tier 2) has been replaced with Ice Floes (Was Tier 6) and reduces the cooldown of your Frost Nova, Cone of Cold, Ice Block and Icy Veins spells by 7/14/20%.
• Arctic Reach (Tier 4) now includes the spell Deep Freeze.
• Frost Channeling (Tier 4) now reduces the mana cost of all spells by 4/7/10%. (Previously only affected frost spells and was 5/10/15%)
• Cold as Ice (Tier 6) is a 2 point talent and replaces Ice Floes. It reduces the cooldown of your Cold Snap, Ice Barrier, Deep Freeze and Summon Water Elemental spells by 10/20%. Requires Cold Snap.
• Winter’s Chill (Tier 6) is now a 3 point talent and gives your frost spells a 33/66/100% chance to apply the winter’s chill effect. increases the chance Arcane, Fire and Frost spells will critically hit the target by 2% for 15 seconds. Stacks up to 5 times.
• Shattered Barrier (Tier 7) now gives your Ice Barrier spell a 50/100% chance to freeze all enemies within 10 yds for 8 seconds when it is destroyed. Requires Ice Barrier.
• Empowered Frostbolt (Tier 8 ) changed to a 2 point talent and now increases the damage of your Frostbolt spell by an amount equal to 5/10% of your spell power and increases the critical strike chance by an additional 2/4%.
• Fingers of Frost (Tier 8 ) now works on 2 frost spells. (Previously only affected the first one)
• Improved Water Elemental (Tier 9) changed to restore mana to all party or raid members an amount equal to 1/2/3% of their total mana every 5 secs. (Previously health was restored)
• Deep Freeze (Tier 11) is now Instant Cast. (Previously had a 1.5sec cast time)

Again there is also an upgraded version of the Mage Talent Tree here. It is up to date with the current WotLK 8770 Beta Build.

Thoughts

Finally Arcane Mages get an actual use for Slow. It is a nice boost for PvP, but for PvE, I’m not too sure on how many bosses are affected by Slow. If bosses can be affected by Slow, then this would be a nice boost for Arcane Mages in PvE, though it would cost quite a bit to put up the Slow debuff over and over again.

For Fire Mages, they will get an increase in AoE damage with the change in Firestarter. With a 100% chance to get an instant cast Flamestrike whenever you cast Blast Wave or Dragon’s Breath, that is a lot of potential damage. DB > FS > BW > FS all in less than 6 seconds. Burnout also gets another buff, increasing a Fire Mages damage even more. Also the new Living Bomb design has taken a page out of the book of skills from Baron Geddon in Molten Core.

For Frosties, we get buffs all around. Fingers of Frost, now affects the next two frost spells instead of one. This would up our DPS a lot, pretty much giving us a guaranteed crits on the next two frost spells with Shatter. Improved Water Elemental now returns mana instead of health would be a huge benefit for the entire raid. 3% mana every 5 seconds, for 60 seconds. That would return 36% of your mana if the Water Elemental were to stay alive for the entire duration, and you could Cold Snap and resummon again for another 36%. Deep Freeze being an instant cast is a huge PvP buff, especially with the damage still on it. This makes frost still the spec to be for PvP.

Let’s not forget about the Elementalists out there now, especially with the buffs they are getting in WotLK. Most of all the talents in all three trees now effect all school of Mage magic. I haven’t looked too much into an Elementalist spec yet, but I could see Frostfire Bolt being a very powerful spell given all the right talents. It could have a 10% chance to stun AND 15% chance to freeze the target. And I haven’t even mention the talents further down the trees yet… Too good.

There has been a Blue Post on the WoW WotLK Beta Forums which states:

“We plan to give all pets the master’s +hit%.” [source]

Now this was posted in the Warlock’s Forum, so we aren’t too sure if this was aim specifically towards Warlocks, or to all classes with a pet. If so, not only is this a huge buff to Warlocks, but to Hunters and Frost Mages too.

BRK has gone over how it would help out Hunters, let’s see how much it would help out us Frost Mages.

As of right now, your Water Elemental receives no Spell Hit bonus from you, but will receive any party auras or totems from your group. Which means the Water Elemental has an 17% chance to have his spells resisted. With an Elemental Shaman, it is cut down to a 13% chance to resist. That is a huge amount of DPS loss. Here is a screenshot of a WWS parse from awhile ago:

As you can see, without any Spell Hit bonuses given to your Water Elemental, he will have a good amount of his Waterbolts resisted. As a result, will lose a huge chunk of potential damage. Here is a more recent WWS, this time with an Elemental Shaman:

Even with an Elemental Shaman, the Water Elemental still have a high resist rate. Anything above 2-3% resist I consider to be high. With the extra 4% from the Elemental Shaman (1% Inspiration, 3% totem), my Water Elemental was able to do more damage.

Just like for Mages, + Spell Hit will provide more DPS increase for your Water Elemental than any other stat until Spell Hit Capped (16%). By having your Water Elemental receive your Spell Hit, it would make a huge difference in the amount of damage he can do.

As I stated before, your Water Elemental will provide a good 10-13% of your total DPS (single target) if used correctly. If they gave our Water Elemental our Spell Hit, it could easily do 12-15% or more of our total DPS.

Please Blizzard, make it so.

New waves of Beta Keys were given out recently, so check your emails to see if you were lucky enough to get one! Sadly I still haven’t gotten one yet. Also be careful of fake emails or scam mails. There is a nice post on the EU WoW Forums that will help you tell the difference between a real and fake email.

Also Blizzard has updated their WotLK Talent Calculator. As of right now, the calculator is up to date with the WotLK Beta Build 8719. You can find the talent calculators here at: WotLK Beta Talent Calculators

PvE Frost: 11/0/60

Right now my new Talent Build for WotLK would be something like THIS. 11 Points into Arcane for Focus Magic, and the rest into Frost.

Video Games:

I’m still tearing it up on Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection Online on the PS3. I rose up in ranks, and currently at rank 4th Dan. I am surprised there are still many players out there who still play. A lot of really good players too!

Ling Xiaoyu is still my character of choice

I am hovering just above 55% for my win to loss ratio. It is getting more and more difficult as I start playing higher ranked players. I hate Eddy and Christie players.

I took a break from Person 3: FES and started playing Final Fantasy IV on the Nintendo DS. Great game too! The upgraded graphics and added voice made this old NES classic even better.

I kinda wished that my characters would let me know ahead of time when they feel like sacrificing themselves for the greater good. The advance warnings would be nice so I know to unequip some of the good pieces of armor they were wearing.

I also purchased Geometry Wars 2 when it came out a couple of days ago. It is a huge upgrade from the previous version, and it is even more chaotic. The game pushes my concentration and reaction time to the limit, and I find myself not even blinking for long periods of time.

So much stuff going on the screen, it gets difficult to survive.

Real Life:

Spicytunas.com has hit a great milestone in its blog life. We’ve reached to 100,000 marker on the number of hits (according to sitemeter) for the blog. It’s a pretty big step from when I made this blog public and moved it over to a self hosting service back in February of this year. Thanks to magi for pointing it out for me that it was approaching the mark.

Some other bloggers who also hit this milestone recently too. Ratshag of Need More Rage, and Megan of Out of Mana both hit their 100,000 mark just two weeks ago. Hrmm… on the same day, and their blog names are similar too, what a coincidence! Anyways, grats to the both of them.

Thanks again for visiting. It gives me more reason to keep doing what I enjoy doing, and hopefully you will still stick around for more.

According to MMO-Champion.com the WotLK Beta has be changed again to a new build on August 1st, and the main changes are Mages and Shamans. As always, here are our Mage changes:

Mage Talent Changes:

• Arcane Fortitude moved to tier 2, increased to 3 ranks, now increases armor equal to 50/100/150% of Intellect.
• Arcane Subtlety now reduces the chance your spells will be dispelled by 15/35%, and no longer reduces the resistance of targets.
• Arctic Reach now also affects Deep Freeze.
• Blast Wave now knocks all affected targets back.
• Elemental Precision moved to tier 2.
• Empowered Fireball reduced to 3 ranks, now increases damage by 5/10/15% of spell power.
• Empowered Frostbolt reduced to 2 ranks, increases damage by 5/10% of spell power and increases critical hit chance by 2/4%.
• Flame Throwing moved to tier 3.
• Frost Channeling now reduces mana cost of all spells by 4/7/10%.
• Frost Warding now increases armor and resistances of Frost/Ice Armor by 25/50%, now gives Frost Ward and Fire Ward a 15/30/5 chance to negate damage caused and restore mana equal to damage caused by the warded spell.
• Ice Floes renamed Cold as Ice, now reduces cooldown of Cold Snap, Ice Barrier, Summon Water Elemental, and Deep Freeze by 10/20%.
• Improved Counterspell now always silences the target for 2/4 seconds.
• Improved Fire Blast moved to tier 1, reduced to 2 ranks, reduces the cooldown by 1/2 seconds.
• Improved Flamestrike moved to tier 2, renamed World in Flames, now increases the critical hit chance of Flamestrike, Blast Wave, Dragon’s Breath, Living Bomb, Blizzard, and Arcane Explosion by 2/4/6%.
• Improved Frost Nova renamed Ice Floes, moved to tier 1, increased to 3 ranks, now reduces cooldown of Frost Nova, Cone of Cold, Ice Block, and Icy Veins by 7/14/20%.
• Magic Absorption reduced to 2 ranks, increases resistances by .5/1 point per level, and restores 1/3% of total mana on a resist.
• Master of Elements now affects all spell criticals.
• Mind Mastery reduced to 3/6/9/12/15%.
• Molten Shields now gives Fire Ward and Frost Ward spells a 15/30% chance to reflect the warded spell.
• Prismatic Cloak (Arcane)increased to 3 ranks for 1/2/3% and now also reduces the fade time of Invisibility by 1/2/3 seconds.
• Pyroblast cast time has been reduced to 5 seconds.
• Shatter no longer has a prerequisite.
• Winter’s Chill now gives 33/66/100% chance to increase the critical strike chance to Frost, Fire and Arcane spells by 2%. Lasts 15 seconds, and stacks 5 times.

Thoughts:

For PvPing as a Mage, the new Arcane Subtlety now reduces the chance your spells to be dispelled by 15/35%. Making it harder for your opponents to dispel your Sheeps and Nova’s will be a great buff for PvP Mages. Plus it makes it harder to dispel Winter’s Chill and Frostbolt chill debuffs which served as your Sheep protection before, making it a whole lot harder to dispel Sheep.

Improved Counterspell now gives you 100% chance to silence your opponent for 2/4 seconds. No real big change here. If you point two talent points here before, you’ll still do it again.

Mind Master gets nerfed down to 3/6/9/12/15%, down from 5/10/15/20/25% of your Intellect converted to Spell Damage.

For Fire Mages, 2 less talent points needed for Empowered Fireball for the same affect is nice. Some of the other talents gets moved around on the tree, making it easier to access some talents earlier. Molten Shields gets a buff, making it even better for PvP.

There were many changes to the Frost talents. Ice Floes and Cold as Ice, together will give the following spells these reduced cooldowns:

• Cold Snap – 6 minutes 24 seconds
• Ice Block – 4 minutes
• Ice Barrier – 24 seconds
• Summon Water Elemental – 2 minutes 24 seconds
• Frost Nova – 20 seconds
• Cone of Cold – 8 seconds
• Icy Veins – 2 minutes 24 seconds
• Deep Freeze – 24 seconds

The reduced cooldowns on pet and Icy Veins now makes it possible to be in used in conjunction with your damage trinkets (2 minute cooldowns) at all times, if you can wait 24 seconds longer to use trinkets.

Arctic Reach affecting Deep Freeze now gives it a 36 yard range. Another nice buff for Deep Freeze.

Frost Channeling gets a nerf, down to 10% reduced mana cost of Frost Spells. Empowered Frostbolt is reduced to 2 talents points, but we lose 1% spell critical strike rating from this change.

New changes to Winter’s Chill is a huge buff to all raiding Mages. With the new Improved Scorch, Magic Focus and Winter’s Chill, you would now WANT to bring on of each Mage.

Arcane

• Arcane Subtley – Lower your target’s resistances by 5/10 changed to 15/30% dispel resist
• Wand Specialization – Removed
• Arcane Fortitude – Moved to Wand Specialization’s spot, changed to 3 ranks, now provides 50/100/150% of your Intellect into armor.
• Magic Absorption – Changed to 2 ranks, increases resistances by .5/1 per level, now only restores 1/2% of mana on full resist.
• Arcane Impact – Renamed Spell Impact. Now increases the damage of your Arcane Explosion, Arcane Blast, Blast Wave, Fire Blast, Ice Lance, and Cone of Cold by 2/4/6%.
• Student of the Mind – Moved to Tier 3
• Focus Magic – New Tier 3 talent, increases magic damage taken by the target by 150, lasts 1 min or 50 charges.
• Improved Mana Shield – Renamed Arcane Shielding, now increases the armor and resistances gained by the mage by 25/50%.
• Improved Blink – Now reduces the mana cost of Blink by 25/50%, and chance to be hit for 4 sec after Blink by 15/30%.
• Prismatic Cloak – Now reduces damage taken by 2/4/6% and Invisibility fade time by 1/2/3 sec
• Arcane Potency – Reduced to 2 ranks, connected to Presence of Mind instead of Clearcasting, Increases critical strike chance of any spell by 30% when Presence of Mind or Clearcasting is active.
• Empowered Arcane Missiles – Renamed Arcane Empowerment, now Increases the damage of your Arcane Missiles spell by an amount equal to 15/30/45% of your spell power and the damage of your Arcane Blast by 3/6/9% of your spell power.
• Potent Spirit – Removed, replaced by Arcane Flows. Reduces the cooldown of your Presence of Mind, Arcane Power and Invisibility spells by 30/60 secs.
• Netherwind Presence – Reduced to 3 ranks and moved up a tier, now increases your spell haste by 2/4/6%.
• Missile Barrage – Added in place of Netherwind Presence. Gives your Arcane Blast, Fireball, Frostbolt and Frostfire Bolt spells a 15% chance to reduce the channeled duration of the next Arcane Missiles spell by 2.5 secs and fire missiles every .5 secs.

Fire

• Improved Fire Blast – Moved to Tier 1, now 2 ranks, Reduces the cooldown of your Fire Blast spell by 1/2 sec.
• Incineration – Moved to tier 1, now 3 ranks, Increases the critical strike chance of your Fire Blast, Scorch, Arcane Blast and Cone of Cold spells by 2/4/6%.
• Burning Determination – New Tier 2 talent, When Interrupted or Silenced you have a 50/100% chance to become immune to both mechanics for 10 seconds.
• World in Flames – Moved to Tier 2, Increases the critical strike chance of your Flamestrike, Blast Wave, Dragon’s Breath, Living Bomb, Blizzard and Arcane Explosion spells by 2/4/6%.
• Flame Throwing – Moved to Tier 3
• Impact – Moved to Tier 3
• Pyroblast – Cast time reduced to 5 seconds
• Improved Scorch – More damage types added, now your Scorch spells have a 33/66/100% chance to cause your target to be vulnerable to Fire, Frost and Arcane damage, increasing damage taken by 2/4/6/6/10% and lasts 30 seconds. Stacks up to 5 times.
• Master of Elements – Fire and frost wording removed, now your spell criticals will refund 10% of their base mana cost.
• Blast Wave – Knockback added, now a wave of flame radiates outward from the caster, damaging all enemies caught within the blast for 154 to 186 Fire damage, knocking them back and Dazing them for 6 seconds.
• Fiery Payback – Changed to, When below 35% health all Physical and Fire damage taken is reduced by 10/20% and your Pyroblast spell’s cast time is reduced by 1.75/3.5 secs.
• Empowered Fireball – Changed to 3 ranks, Increases the damage of your Fireball spell by an amount equal to 5/10/15% of your spell power.
• Firestarter – New talent added, Your Blast Wave and Dragon’s Breath spells have a 15/30/45% chance to make your next Flamestrike spell instant cast. Lasts 10 seconds.
• Dragon’s Breath – Disorient changed from 3 sec to 5 sec
• Burnout  – Talent changed to read, Increases your spell critical damage bonus with all Fire spells by 5/10/15/20/25% but your spell criticals cost an additional 1/2/3/4/5% of the spell’s cost.
• Living Bomb – Mana drain added, The caster becomes a living bomb, causing 51 Fire damage to all enemies within 10 yards every 2 sec. After 6 seconds, a fiery explosion occurs causing 212 Fire damage to all enemies within 10 yards and burning 106 mana, dealing damage equal to the amount drained.

Frost

• Shattered Barrier – New Tier 6 talent that gives your Ice Barrier spell a 50/100% chance to trigger a Frost Nova when it is destroyed.
• Winter’s Grasp – Renamed to Fingers of Frost, which gives your Frost damage spells a 5/10% chance to apply the Fingers of Frost effect, which treats your next Frost spell cast on the target as if the target were Frozen. Lasts 10 seconds.
• Brain Freeze – Changed to give your Frost damage spells have a 5/10/15% chance to cause your next Fireball spell to be instant cast and cost no mana.
• Improved Water Elemental – Changed to increase the duration of your Summon Water Elemental spell by 5/10/1515 sec and your Water Elemental heals all party or raid members 1/2/3% of their total health every 5 secs.
• Chilled to the Bone – Changed to increase the damage caused by your Frostbolt, Frostfire Bolt and Ice Lance spells by 1/2/3/4/5% and reduces the movement speed of all chilled targets by an additional 2/4/6/8/10%.
• Deep Freeze – Damage added, causes 694 to 806 Frost damage and stuns the target for 5 seconds. Only usable on Frozen targets.

MMO-Champion.com also made an updated Talent Calculator to reflect the new changes. You can see the new Talent Tree HERE.

Thoughts

Whew… lots of changes. Blizzard continues to make changes in hopes to make things “balanced” and not overpowered. Every time there is a change, every class holds their breathe in hopes that the new overpowered spell doesn’t get nerfed, and some of the useless talents gets taken away or changed. The Mage talents sees a little bit of both.

Arcane:

I see they finally got rid of Wand Specialization. Yay! Looks like they made Arcane more viable for PvP with some of the talents. Arcane Fortitude is now Tier 2, and increases armor by 50/100/150% of your Intellect. Improved Blink gets buffed to 15/30% chance to dodge all attacks.

There is also a few buffs to PvE also. Prismatic Cloak is now makes your Invisibility spell instant with 3 points (also good for PvP), and the new Arcane Empowerment now effects Arcane Blast and doesn’t increase mana cost of Arcane Missles.

A new big buff is Focus Magic. I can see Mages putting 11 points into Arcane just for this spell. It is a debuff that all spell casters will benefit from, and depending on the cooldown for the spell, Mages will be working out a Focus Magic rotation to make sure the debuff is up at crucial times.

Arcane Potency, from what I read from it now can be made to make an Arcane Missile spec possible. Technically you can activate Presence of Mind, and spam only Arcane Missiles, and keep the +30% spell critical strike rating the entire time (since Arcane Missiles doesn’t consume the Presence of Mind charge). Grab the 4 piece Tier 6 bonus, your favorite Shadow Priest, and a ton of Mana pots, and this spec can do some serious DPS.

New Arcane spell rotation?: Arcane Missiles -> Arcane Barrage -> Repeat

Fire:

Fire gets a serious buff to PvP, and it was much needed too. The biggest buff is the knockback added to Blastwave, giving Fire Mages another way to put some distance from Melee, or even to interrupt enemy spell casting. Fiery Payback giving Fire Mages 1.5 second Pyroblasts at when they are at under 35% Health can make almost dead Mages very deadly. Living Bomb also gets a buff, and now burns Mana.

Burning Determination looks weird to me. For 2 points, it gives you a 100% chance when Interrupted or Silenced to be immune to Interrupts or Silences for 10 seconds. Say you get the Fire tree locked out for 8 seconds. When you can cast Fire Spells again, you only have 2 seconds of uninterrupted casting left? Ooh you Kicked my Fireball, now you can’t stop my Frostbolts! I dunno… sounds a little weak to me.

For PvE, the biggest buff I see is Improved Scorch also effecting Frost and Arcane spells, to buff other Mages in the raid. Burnout now doesn’t burn too much of your mana now, and having 5 points into the talent pretty much increases your spell critical strike bonus by 25%, for the cost of cutting the mana efficiency of Master of Elements by half. Pretty good trade off.

I can see Fire Mages going with some 11/49/11 spec now.

Frost:

Not too many changes to the Frost Talents, but we do see one nerf to one of the new powerful talents in the Frost tree.

For PvP, Ice Barrier gets a buff through a new talent Shatter Barrier, which gives you a 50/100% chance for Frost Nova to cast when your Ice Barrier breaks. By doing this, Shatter Shield (which was a trainable spell, but not anymore) will now only be for Frost Mages.

Deep Freeze gets a buff, and now does damage to go along with that stun. Since it is still only castable on “frozen” targets, that damage is most likely going to crit too (you DID get Shatter right?!). So Shatter Combo 2.0 is now: Frost Nova (or Freeze) -> Deep Freeze + Ice Lance -> Stun -> Frostbolt -> Frostbolt + Ice Lance.

Brain Freeze no longer makes players that are Frostbitten or Frost Nova’d to miss anymore, now gives your Frost Spells a 5/10/15% chance to give you a free and instant Fireball. Meh… maybe good for the burst damage for PvP, but still not worth the 3 talent points imo.

Winter’s Grasp has been nerfed (we all saw it coming) and has been renamed Fingers of Frost. It no longer provides a raid wide buff, and no longer gives other Mages a shared buff. It will only affect your next Frost Spell. Ouch…

Improved Water Elemental no longer gets the 30% increased in health and mana, but now gives a raid wide buff of healing 3% of their health every 5 seconds for 1 minute with 3 points into the talent. A decent trade off I guess. Now it is necessary to have a Shadow Priest in your group now or Squirtle will run out of mana (he already runs out of mana in ~35 seconds without one). I think I would like it more if they made it return mana instead of health though.

New PvE spec for me now with Focus Magic: 11/0/60