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:

• PTR Patch 3.2 – Frost Mages Get Mortal Strike and More Haste
• PTR Patch 3.2 Testing: Living Bomb
• Patch 3.0.9 – Arcane Changes Again
• PTR Patch 3.1.0 – New Mage Glyphs
• PTR Patch 3.1.0 – Frost Mage Replenishment