Mists of Pandaria Pre-Raid Gear List For Mages

Continuing a Manalicious tradition, I present to you the following: A list of gear to get your mage (or other cloth-wearing caster) ready for raiding! The conventions of the list are described in the following paragraphs.

I haven’t listed any gear from normal dungeons because normal and heroic dungeon gear has the same name and is just a lesser version of heroic gear. This is a ready for raiding list, so of course you’d prefer to have the heroic version. Use common sense; where normal dungeon gear is an upgrade for you, equip it!

In the past, I’ve included one quest item per slot just in case you really had trouble finding gear; unfortunately the database at Wowhead hasn’t had time to catch up with all that info yet. So there were many pieces of gear as I was searching that look like good gear, but I have no idea where it comes from. It could be a quest, it could be tailoring, I don’t know. I included quest rewards for the first few slots but eventually gave up. I assume everyone will quest their way to 90 to some extent, keep your eyes peeled for obvious quest rewards. You will likely replace them with gear from this list in any case.

This is not an absolutely comprehensive list although I’ve tried to make it as complete as possible. I still don’t know exactly what’s crafted from Tailoring or where there might be some juicy quest items. I have not included any PvP gear and this list is specifically for PvE purposes. The newest addition to gearing options is the Raid Finder, and Raid Finder items are listed under their own header. You still have to technically get a high enough ilevel to do Raid Finder, though – are you getting ready for pre-raiding raiding? Anyway, this is not a Best in Slot list, this is a list aimed at helping you to zero in on the best upgrades for your character from reputation, crafting, heroic dungeons and eventually RF. You can ignore the RF upgrades if you don’t intend to do it. I wouldn’t call it a reliable method of obtaining loot in any case because your odds of getting actual gear from it are pretty slim, at least in the Raid Finder’s current incarnation.

One major change worth noting to the gearing process is that items formerly purchased with Valor or Justice Points now also require reputation in Mists. So the heading “VP/JP” items also includes a reputation along with each item. The VP cost of items was available for some things on Wowhead, for the vast majority it was not, and so I used current conventions for items of that type. (i.e. a cloak is 1250, hands are 1650, pants/chest are 2200, and so on). These may be inaccurate but hopefully they are close. Blues are purchased with JP and epic purples with VP, as is expected.

Gear is organized first by slot. Each item has a Wowhead link, followed by the location or source (if known), and then the secondary stats. Int is assumed, none of the items have spirit (a pox on your spirit) and all weapons have spellpower etc. Items are coloured with their respective rarity; only blues and purples are listed. Trinkets have a brief description of their effect or use. This time around I’ve added a nifty Table of Contents so you can click any link to go straight to a particular section of interest! It’s beyond the scope of this list to provide appropriate enchants for each slot, I may do a post about gems/enchants a bit later on.

Table of Contents
Head
Neck
Shoulder
Back
Chest
Wrist
Hands
Waist
Legs
Feet
Fingers
Trinkets
Two-Hand Weapon
One-Hand Weapon
Off-Hand

Disclaimer: As I said above, I’ve endeavored to be as comprehensive as possible with this list but inevitably there may be items I’ve missed or that were added after the fact. This information is compiled for my personal use, and I share it with you so that you have an easy reference, but it’s not my fault if you buy pants when you should’ve bought a helm!

Head

Quest
Mistborne Hood – The Sha of Hatred, Townlong Steppes (Haste/Mastery)

Purchased/Crafted/BoE
Hood of Alchemical Vapors – BoE Zone Drop Vale of Eternal Blossoms (Haste/Mastery/Meta Socket)

Dungeon Drop
Barovian Ritual Hood – Jandice Barov, Scholomance (Hit/Mastery/Meta Socket)
Whitemane’s Embroidered Chapeau – Scarlet Monastery (Crit/Haste/Meta Socket)
Breezeswept Hood – Wing Leader Ner’onok, H Siege of Niuzao Temple (Haste/Mastery/Meta Socket)

Raid Finder
Hood of the Burning Scroll – Mogu’shan Vaults (Crit/Mastery/Tier Set)
Xaril’s Hood of Intoxicating Vapors – Garalon, Heart of Fear (Haste/Mastery/Meta Socket)

Neck

Quest
Burning Necklace of the Golden Lotus, The Final Power, Vale of Eternal Blossoms – (Hit/Crit)

Purchased/Crafted/BoE
Dorian’s Necklace of Burgeoning Dreams – BoE (Haste/Mastery)
Skymage Circle – Jewelcrafting (Haste/Mastery)

VP/JP
Wire of the Wakener – The Klaxxi, Revered, 1250 VP (Hit/Mastery)
Necklace of Jade Pearls – Golden Lotus, Honored, 1250 JP (Hit/Crit)

Dungeon Drop
Mindbreaker Pendant – Sha of Doubt, Temple of the Jade Serpent (Crit/Haste)
Temperature-Sensing Necklace – Flameweaver Koegler, Scarlet Monastery (Crit/Mastery)
Anarchist’s Pendant – Instructor Chillheart, Scholomance (Hit/Mastery)

Raid Finder
Worldwaker Cachobon – Will of the Emperor, Mogu’Shan Vaults (Crit/Haste)
Amulet of Seven Curses – Feng The Accursed, Mogu’Shan Vaults (Hit/Crit)

Shoulder

Quest
Dreadspinner Amice – On The Crab, Dread Wastes (Crit/Mastery)

VP/JP
Mantle of the Golden Sun – Golden Crane, Revered, 1750 VP (Hit/Crit)

Dungeon Drop
Whisperwind Spaulders – Wingleader Ner’onok, Siege of Niuzao Temple (Haste/Mastery)
Forgotten Bloodmage Mantle – Thal’nos the Soulrender, H Scarlet Monastery (Crit/Mastery)
Shoulders of Engulfing Winds – Raigonn, Scarlet Monastery (Crit/Haste)

Raid Finder
Mantle of the Burning Scroll – Raid Finder Bosses (Hit/Mastery/Tier Bonus)
Shadowsummoner Spaulders – Raid Finder Bosses (Crit/Haste)

Back

VP/JP
Cloak of Snow Blossoms - Shado-Pan, Revered, 1250 VP (Hit/Mastery)
Cloak of Ancient Curses – August Celestials, Honored, 1250 JP (Hit/Haste)

Dungeon Drop
Cloak of Cleansing Flame – Gekkan, Mogu’shan Palace (Crit/Mastery)

Raid Finder
Mindshard Drape – (Crit/Mastery)
Cloak of Overwhelming Corruption – (Haste/Mastery)
Stormwake Mistcloak – (Hit/Crit)

Chest

Purchased/Crafted/BoE
Spelltwister’s Grand Robe - Tailoring (Haste/Mastery)
Darkened Robe - BoE (Hit/Mastery)

VP/JP
Vestments of Thundering Skies – Golden Lotus, 2250 VP – Revered (Hit/Haste)
Robe of Eternal Dynasty – Shado-Pan, Honored – 2250 JP (Hit/Mastery)
Robe of Quiet Meditation – Shado-Pan, Honored – 2250 JP (Haste/Mastery)

Dungeon Drop
Robes of Koegler – Scarlet Halls (Hit/Crit, Yellow Socket)
Burning Robes of the Golden Lotus – Unknown, (Hit/Haste)
Robes of Fevered Dreams – Shado-Pan Monastery (Crit/Haste)

Raid Finder
Imperial Ghostbinder’s Robes – Mogu’shan Vaults (Crit/Mastery)
Robes of the Unknown Fear – Terrace of Endless Spring (Hit/Mastery)
Robes of the Burning Scroll (Tier) – Raid Finder Bosses (Crit/Haste)

Wrist

VP/JP
Minh’s Beaten Bracers – Shado-Pan, Revered, 1250 VP (Hit/Mastery)
Tranquility Bindings – Golden Lotus, Honored, 1250 JP (Crit/Haste)

Dungeon Drop
Bracers of Displaced Air – Ook-Ook, Stormstout Brewery (Haste/Mastery)
Deadwalker Bracers - Rattlegore, Scholomance (Hit/Crit)

Raid Finder
Attenuating Bracers – Imperial Vizier Zor’lok, Heart of Fear (Haste/Mastery)
Twisting Wind Bracers – Blade Lord Tay’ak, Heart of Fear (Hit/Haste)
Shining Cicada Bracers – Unknown (Hit/Crit)
Gleaming Moth Cuffs - Unknown (Crit/Haste)

Hands

Purchased/Crafted/BoE
Spelltwister’s Gloves – Tailoring (Hit/Mastery)

VP/JP
Sunspeaker’s Flared Gloves – The August Celestials, Revered, 1650 VP (Hit/Crit)
Krompf’s Fine-Tuning Gloves – The Klaxxi, Honored, 1650 JP (Hit/Haste)

Dungeon Drop
Conflagrating Gloves – Trial of the King, Mogu’shan Palace (Hit/Haste)
Bomber’s Precision Gloves - Striker Ga’Dok, Gate of the Setting Sun (Crit/Haste)
Gloves of Enraged Slaughter – Sha of Violence, Shado-Pan Monastery (Haste/Mastery)

Raid Finder
Gloves of the Burning Scroll (Tier) – (Hit/Haste)
Claws of Amethyst – Zone Drop, Mogu’shan Vaults (Crit/Mastery)
Undying Shadow Grips – The Spirit Kings, Mogu’shan Vaults (Haste/Mastery)

Waist

VP/JP
Klaxxi Lash of the Orator – The Klaxxi, Revered, 1650 VP (Hit/Crit)

Dungeon Drop
Girdle of Endemic Anger – Lorewalker Stonestep, Temple of the Jade Serpent (Hit/Crit)
Incineration Belt – Darkmaster Gandling, Scholomance (Hit/Mastery)

Raid Finder
Ruby-Linked Girdle – Mogu’shan Vaults (Hit/Mastery)
Orbital Belt – Elegon, Mogu’shan Vaults (Haste/Mastery)
Sorcerer’s Belt of Final Winter - Terrace of Endless Spring (Crit/Haste)
Invoker’s Belt of Final Winter – Terrace of Endless Spring (Hit/Mastery)
Belt of Malleable Amber - Heart of Fear (Hit/Haste)

Legs

Purchased/Crafted/BoE
Courinth Water-Strider’s Silken Finery – BoE drop from Courinth Waterstrider, Krasarang Wilds rare (Hit/Crit)

VP/JP
Leggings of the Poisoned Soul - The Klaxxi, Revered, 2200 VP (Hit/Crit)
Leggings of Unfinished Conquest – The August Celestials, Honored, 2200 JP – (Hit/Crit)

Dungeon Drop
Leggings of Unleashed Anguish – Lilian Voss, Scholomance (Crit/Haste)
Leggings of the Frenzy – Commander Ri’mok, Gate of the Setting Sun (Haste/Mastery)

Raid Finder
Leggings of Shadow Infestation – Heart of Fear (Crit/Mastery)
Leggings of the Burning Scroll (Tier) – Terrace of Endless Spring (Haste/Mastery)
Dreadwoven Leggings of Failure – Terrace of Endless Spring (Hit/Haste)

Feet

VP/JP
Void Flame Slippers – The August Celestials, Revered, 1650 JP (Hit/Crit)

Dungeon Drop
Scarlet Sandals – Armsmaster Harlan, Scarlet Halls (Hit/Crit)
Soulbinder Treads – Xin the Weaponmaster, Mogu’shan Palace (Crit/Haste)

Raid Finder
Sandals of the Unbidden – Garalon, Heart of Fear (Hit/Mastery)
Sandals of the Blackest Night – Tsulong, Terrace of Endless Spring (Haste/Mastery)

Fingers

Purchased/Crafted/BoE
Lionsfall Ring – Jewelcrafting (Hit/Crit)

VP/JP
Simple Harmonius Ring – 1250 VP, Golden Lotus – Revered (Hit/Haste)

Dungeon Drop
Alemental Seal – Yan-Zhu the Uncasked, Stormstout Brewery (Crit/Haste)
Eye of the Tornado – Master Snowdrift, Shado-Pan Monastery (Hit/Mastery)
Ring of Malice – Taran Zhu, Shado-Pan Monastery (Haste/Mastery)
Signet of the Hidden Door – Thalnos the Soulrender, Scarlet Monastery (Hit/Haste)
Triune Signet - High Inquisitor Whitemane, Scarlet Monastery (Crit/Mastery)

Raid Finder
Fragment of Fear Made Flesh – Imperial Vizier Zor’lok, Heart of Fear (Hit/Crit)

Trinkets

Trinkets

Purchased/Crafted/BoE
Relic of Yu’lon - Reward from Darkmoon Serpent Deck (Int with an Int proc on spell damage)
Zen Alchemist Stone – ALCHEMIST ONLY (Mastery with an Int Proc)
Ghost Iron Dragonling – Crafted by Engineers but not limited to Engineers (Three empty cogwheel sockets for +1800 in the secondary state of your choice, e.g. 1800 Crit or 1800 Haste)

VP/JP
Blossom of Pure Snow – Shado-Pan, Revered, 1650 VP (Int with Increased Crit on use)
Mogu Rune of Paralysis – Golden Lotus, Honored, 1650 JP (Mastery and a placed paralysis effect on a 1 min CD)

Dungeon Drop
Flashfrozen Resin Globule – Vizier Jin’Bak, Siege of Niuzao Temple (Hit with Int on use effect)
Vision of the Predator - Striker Gadok, Gate of the Setting Sun (Int with a Crit proc)
Mithril Wristwatch – Coren Direbrew, Brewfest only (Critical strike with a Spellpower proc)

Raid Finder
Jade Magistrate Figurine – [Unknown] (Int with Crit on use effect)
Light of the Cosmos – Elegon, Mogu’shan Vaults (Haste with an Int proc on periodic damage)
Essence of Terror – Sha of Fear, Terrace of Endless Spring (Int with Haste proc on spell hit)

Two-Hand Weapon

Quest
Liuyang’s Lovely Staff – The Arena of Annihilation, (Scenario)

Purchased/Crafted/BoE
Inscribed Serpent Staff – Inscription crafted BoA staff, some BoP materials involved so may not be feasible to have lower level scribes craft for your main. Cannot be traded or sold on the AH.

VP/JP
Amber Scythe of Klaxxi’vess – The Klaxxi, Exalted, (Cost Unknown) (Haste/Mastery)

Dungeon Drop
Greatstaff of Righteousness – High Inquisitor Whitemane, Scarlet Monastery (Crit/Mastery)
Wort Stirring Rod – Yan’zhu the Uncasked, Stormstout Brewery (Hit/Mastery)
Staff of Trembling Will – Sha of Doubt, Temple of the Jade Serpent (Crit/Haste)
Headmaster’s Will - Darkmaster Gandling, Scholomance (Hit/Crit)

Raid Finder
Jin’ya, Orb of the Waterspeaker – Lei Shi, Terrace of Endless Spring (Crit/Haste)* Special: Can be socketed with a legendary gem

One-Hand Weapon

Purchased/Crafted/BoE
Blade of the Poisoned Mind – Unknown (Crit/Mastery)

VP/JP
Amber Saber of Klaxi’vess – The Klaxxi, Exalted (Haste/Mastery)

Dungeon Drop
Melted Hypnotic Blade – Flameweaver Koegler, Scarlet Halls (Crit/Mastery)
Necromantic Wand – Rattlegore, Scholomance (Haste/Mastery)
Firescribe Dagger – Xin the Weaponmaster, Mogu’shan Palace (Crit/Haste)

Raid Finder
Torch of the Celestial Spark - Elegon, Mogu’shan Vaults (Crit/Haste)
Regail’s Crackling Dagger – Terrace of Endless Spring (Crit/Mastery)
Loshan, Terror Incarnate – Tsulong, Terrace of Endless Spring (Crit/Haste)* Special: Can be socketed with a legendary gem

Off-Hand

Purchased/Crafted/BoE
Umbrella of Chi-Ji – Archaeology, Pandaren (Haste/Mastery)
Inscribed Jade Fan – Inscription (Hit/Mastery)

Dungeon Drop
Bottle of Potent Potables – Hopotallus, Stormstout Brewery (Haste/Mastery)

Raid Finder
Tornado-Summoning Censer – Blade Lord Ta’yak, Heart of Fear (Hit/Crit)

Conclusion

I hope that this list helps you to locate some worthy upgrades as we dive into a new expansion. If you have any additions, corrections, or comments, please feel free to post them here! I’ve gone over this thing until my eyes bleed checking for formatting or other errors. I hope nothing has escaped my notice but it’s possible it has. If you see anything, I’d appreciate your letting me know.

Tides of War (with spoilers galore!)

Technology has not been kind to me today. I waited patiently for the patch to deploy (these things take time) but some weird glitch prevented Vosskah’s install from patching correctly and so I spent a lot of time fretting about that. I wrote an entire blog entry that WordPress then ate. (This isn’t that post, that post is gone forever and you only get this post). I had just enough time to mess around with addons a bit before a guest arrived. I spent some precious moments with the target dummies after; long enough to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that FIRE MAGES ARE AWESOME. More about that later.

Meantime, the technology that worked most unfailingly for me today was my Kindle, as it happily delivered the new Christie Golden book, Tides of War, while I slept. I read it in bits and pieces throughout the day and then in one big gulp at the very end. What follows is part review, part synopsis, part reflection on the events in the book – and most importantly, it is chock full of spoilers.

Do not read any further if you don’t want spoilers for the new Tides of War book about Jaina Proudmoore.

I can’t say this more plainly.

Come back after you’ve read the book if you intend to, and you don’t want anything spoiled for you. If you are someone who is subscribed by e-mail, delete this e-mail before reading it!

If you 1) don’t care about spoilers or 2) have no intention of reading the book but want to know what happens in it anyway, then read on. I’ll put a big image here to keep people from seeing spoilers they may not want to see. If you scroll past the image and have things spoiled for you, I claim no responsibility.

Jaina Proudmoore art from the WoW TCG.

Okay. Are those folks gone? Now let’s talk about the book.

I’ve found the Warcraft books in general to be somewhat hit and miss. Arthas was a big miss with me (and I bought that one in hardcover). I like Rise of the Horde because it is the most information about draenei ever put in one place. This book continues more in the vein of the pre-Cataclysm book in that it’s closely tied with in-game events as well as published concurrently. The book itself opens about a week to a week and a half before the destruction of Theramore. The way it’s structured actually worked extremely well for me, lulling me into a false sense of security. In a way, even though I knew events would somehow lead to Theramore’s destruction, I was still deceived by the beginning parts of the book. Jaina is in Theramore, Jaina is generally happy, you get to meet Jaina’s new apprentice and all of her friends and staff in Theramore. They joke about conjuring cookies. I’m not even kidding.

So I started out really excited. This book is awesome! There are so many mages! They are my cookie-conjuring brethren.

Then things start to get real.

The initial conflict of the story begins with the blue dragonflight losing control of the Focusing Iris. You’ll remember it from such events as making it possible to use the surge needles in Northrend and channel the arcane power from the ley lines while under Malygos’ control. It also helped to animate Chromatus (in the Thrall: Twilight of the Aspects) book. This is an artifact of truly awesome power, and you’d think they’d keep a better eye on it. The Iris is stolen while the blue flight is attempting to relocate it – no word on how the Horde knew where and when to find it, incidentally. They were going to disguise and then hide it in the ocean but that didn’t pan out.

Things escalate from there, with Garrosh announcing plans to move against North Watch and subsequently Theramore and ultimately all of Kalimdor; he wants to use a victory against Kalimdor to isolate and eliminate all Alliance presence from it while helping himself to the resources and lands contained therein. Not everyone in the Horde is too happy about that, and it’s a subplot throughout the book that Garrosh’s methods and his Kor’krons grow increasingly violent. Orgrimmar is for all intents and purposes under martial law. Though this is understated, it’s understood that if someone isn’t cheering loudly enough for the warchief or if they dare to voice any discontent, they’re going to either quietly disappear or show up with a few more bruises than they had before. Baine and Vol’jin aren’t excepted from this, though Baine is the more outspoken of the two. Unfortunately for the trolls, their weaker position with the Horde makes it so that openly defying Garrosh is tantamount to suicide and Vol’jin’s hands are tied.

Baine is also victim to what happens here, because the Tauren need the Horde but Baine violently disagrees with Garrosh’s motives, methods and leadership. It’s made clear from the start that he feels ambivalent about what is happening but is caught up in events. Yet I think even Baine doesn’t immediately understand the depths to which Garrosh will sink.

This is actually worth mentioning here, before I forget, and it was Voss who asked me – do I think that Garrosh’s actions in ToW are out of character or forced? All along, people have been saying that Garrosh will need to do something truly horrific before it can be justified that he be the end-boss of an expansion. Heck, Rades and I did a comic about this very thing. Many people seemed to say “Yes, Garrosh is warlike, but he hasn’t really done much to warrant being especially targeted.” Well, the events in Tides of War sure change that in a shocking way.

Back to the actual synopsis of the book – so the blue dragonflight loses control of the Focusing Iris. It’s not known who has it, merely that it’s gone. Kalecgos is able to trace it somewhat but then his sense of it disappears. He’s lost and frantic about how the artifact could be used, and so he seeks aid which is how he winds up in Theramore and meets Jaina. (I believe this is the first time they meet). Jaina, Kalec and a crack force of mages try to discover how to uncover the artifact so that he can trace it. How they do so doesn’t really matter – the crux of it is that Kalecgos is eventually able to sense the Iris and it is zigzagging all over Kalimdor. This should have been their first hint that it’s somehow airborne, but this doesn’t seem to occur to anyone. It’s not being borne on a dragon’s back, so how is it doing that? Anyway, Kalec realizes he will just be exhausted chasing it all over the place so he goes back to Theramore.

Here’s where the romance part comes in. If you’ve read the interview WoW Insider did with Christie Golden, this romance is alluded to. I have some feelings about it. First, Jaina and Kalecgos as a pair isn’t too far-fetched, I suppose. He fell in love with Anveena, after all, and she was human(oid) and ended up being the Sunwell. So his romantic indiscretions with the ‘younger’ races are documented; he obviously doesn’t always have a thing for other dragons. It’s a joke in the book itself that Jaina isn’t exactly known for choosing the best romantic interests – Kael’thas (though they were barely involved, and Arthas…we all know how that one ended. Anyway, I don’t think Kalec is actually a bad choice for her. He’s a blue dragon so they have magic in common, and they’re both obviously powerful magic-users. In short, I like the romance but I think it was constrained quite a bit by the nature and length of the book. This is often my feeling about “one-book romances.” If you have a trilogy of books telling a story, you have time to do the more leisurely “maybe they’re starting to have feelings for each other” followed by the “something happens to keep them apart” that ultimately culminates with the satisfying “they’re finally together” feeling. In a book of this scope with this much story to tell, it’s tough to write a convincing romance but I think Golden did the best she could. You could also argue that in desperate times people will often turn to one another with feelings that are more quickly realized than would otherwise occur.

Personally, looking at him makes my heart go “pitter-patter” but maybe not for the same reasons. Mostly because: whoa big blue dragon teeth, scary.

Still, I tend to think of dragons as being less impulsive than regular people. They seem to love each other awfully quickly, which makes it less believable, but again – you work with what you have. So Kalecgos and Jaina are together by the end of the book, and throughout it he seems to flit back and forth a bit as he’s torn between his desire to recover the incredibly powerful artifact his people lost (whoops) and his twitterpated feelings towards Jaina. It’s rough, though. I feel for him. The guy only got to be a dragon Aspect for no time at all (to a dragon) and now he’s mortal again and his dragon buddies are all “Whelp, see you later” and he’s left holding the bag for having lost the Focusing Iris. So perhaps it’s natural that his attentions would turn strongly towards an engaging young woman – a powerful mage and extremely intelligent and powerful lady in her own right.

I feel like I’m dancing around the immediate facts of the book: the destruction of Theramore. It’s almost something I don’t want to put into words. I don’t want to talk about it, I’d rather talk about blue dragon courtship rituals. It was disgusting, and awful. Completely reprehensible and the opposite of honorable combat. This is how it happens: Jaina and Theramore have word of the coming attack thanks to Baine. North Watch falls easily as Thrall’s shaman harness the power of extremely dangerous molten giants (a power that could lead to another Cataclysm, according to the book). Theramore has time to prepare. Jaina calls upon the Kirin Tor, who send aid somewhat reluctantly and with the caveat that they will only defend and not be the aggressors. Stormwind sends a fleet of ships along with a number of great generals. One of them is a draenei! Rhonin is here too. Kalecgos himself comes to Theramore’s aid so that when the Horde come knocking, they’re ready for them. They’re able to repel the attack even though one of the Kirin Tor mages (a blood elf, naturally) is a traitor and was weakening the gates instead of strengthening them.

So it seems as if they’ve won at least the initial skirmish, although they’ve suffered losses – including all of their aerial defenses, down to the last gryphon. This is where the other shoe drops. Kalecgos suddenly becomes aware of the Focusing Iris again. It’s nearby, because it’s on a goblin ship. And underneath that ship is the biggest mana bomb anyone has ever seen. Kalecgos tries to detonate it in the air (where it won’t harm the city) but is repelled by the defenses on the zeppelin. In a last-ditch suicide effort, Rhonin draws the power of the bomb towards himself while sending Jaina through a portal to safety. The mana bomb explodes in Theramore, killing everyone in a really large radius. Jaina is teleported to one of the rocky islands surrounding Theramore, where she still feels a significant impact from the blast but isn’t killed.

I repeat: She’s not killed horrifically like every single other person, including Rhonin.

I’m afraid I can’t really do justice to the emotional impact of this part of the book, at least for me. Jaina’s sassy gnome apprentice, Kinndy, is killed. Everyone. It’s established earlier in the book that Kinndy is the only daughter of the gnome in Dalaran who lights the lights, Windle Sparkshine. I LOVE this gnome. I can’t remember how many times I have followed him around Dalaran, and gone out to help light the lights myself. Just giving this character a tie to an existing in-game character meant that when she was cruelly snuffed out I sobbed. I didn’t want Kinndy to die, or for her parents to lose their only daughter. I didn’t even want Rhonin to die, and goodness knows I’m no Rhonin fan. (Although now that he’s dead, maybe we can stop hearing about what a mage he is, a damn good one.) But for him to die like this, in such an atrocity, through such an act of treachery… it’s unconscionable. Going back into the wreckage afterwards drives Jaina to the brink of sanity, as I think it would for anyone. It’s not just that people died, it’s that they died in a way that is so fundamentally wrong. Grief-stricken, Jaina goes to touch Kinndy’s body and it dissipates into purple sand. The infusion of arcane magic fueled by the Focusing Iris has wrought awful changes on everyone it worked on. Bodies are floating, there are rips and tears in the sky itself.

Meantime, Garrosh is celebrating his flawless victory. It’s clear that he feels no remorse whatsoever for the manner of this massacre, and here incredulity and hatred for him begin to set in. Baine and other Horde-members with a conscience are sickened by what has been done. Whatever the Horde has become with this madman at its helm, they feel no connection to him or his further conquests. Without going into a tiresome conquest, the rest of the book plays out fairly predictably. Jaina takes the Focusing Iris with the intention of using it to level Orgrimmar in the ultimate act of vengeance. Anduin and Varian are both appalled by the change in her, and ultimately Kalecgos and Thrall manage to talk her out of making what would have been a mistake that would change her personally even as she achieved her revenge. There are a few other good moments – Anduin blessing the Alliance troops as they leave for Kalimdor, while reflecting on the necessity of war even when you love peace – and the fact that draenei were actually mentioned in this book a few times besides as “awe inducing shaman.” It seems the people of Azeroth have grown more used to draenei, or else the writers are sincerely trying to integrate them into the ongoing story. I would have only wished that one of the mages sent from the Kirin Tor had been a draenei (they had one of nearly every other race!) but we can’t have everything. Draenei are always shaman and paladins and that is just the way it is (brb, rerolling).

Tides of War was a good book. I appreciated as well the subtle integration of the in-game scenario, although I missed it at the time and had to go back looking for it. At some point, there is mention of “five people” helping Jaina and Rhonin. I can see where the scenario will fit, although I honestly have no idea how that’ll work for Horde players because it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever for them to help Jaina or Rhonin at that part of the book. Even friendly Horde aren’t going to be very welcome in Theramore at that time.

I’m also regretful that today’s From Draenor With Love won’t necessarily make sense in the context of actual events, although it could happen during the initial assault on Theramore! Anyway, we conceived and created it at a time when we didn’t have all of the information. I think it’s still a useful reflection on the horrors of war in general, especially when you have mixed allegiances and your feelings don’t lie with factions but with people. For this reason, Baine is one of the most sympathetic characters in ToW for me. What an untenable position he’s in. Jaina is the more obvious and sympathetic character because she’s just been through truly horrific things. Baine also lost his father at the hand of the orc he’s now duty bound to serve as he leads the Horde to ruin. I’m glad that by the end of the book he basically says, look buddy, eff you and don’t come around to Mulgore either.

This all paints Pandaria in a completely different light for me. I am happy to explore the new land and to see the wonders it has to offer, but there’s a sombre feeling. Where will all these struggles end? What more harm can Garrosh do to our people (and his own) before he’s finally taken down?

Another thought: wouldn’t it be awesome if the Let’s Kill Garrosh raid was the only raid that you could accomplish cross-faction, with both Alliance and Horde in your party? It makes sense, doesn’t it? You guys will want him dead, we’ll want him dead, why can’t we work together to do it?

Randomly: nice touch that when the Earthen Ring heard about what had happened with Theramore, a draenei starts to cry and she’s comforted by her troll friend. I like any emphasis that our races don’t necessarily determine who or what we stand for, and the Earthen Ring is one of those truly neutral groups wherein faction divisions cease to matter. See, draenei can be friends with trolls and orcs, too.

So, that is my huge ramble about Tides of War. If you made it to the end, you deserve a conjured cookie. Please feel free to say all that you need to about the book or the events in it or whatever you want in the comments. This is a spoiler-rife zone, so you don’t have to hold back. Everyone was forewarned!

The Arcanes (Guest Post)

The following was written by a friend of mine, a fellow conjurer of cakes, also blue and shoeless! Her name is Jibbi, and you can find her on Twitter as @Relysh (although her tweets are private). She wrote this originally as a way to help out Narci of Flavor Text Lore with her mage. It is irreverent, hilarious and also quite helpful! I tend to be more of a fire than an arcane mage, so I relished (har) the idea of having a proper Arcane guide at Manalicious and she kindly agreed to let me host it here. Comment and let her know if it helped you out, she went to a lot of trouble to format and add pictures! –Vid

Note: This guide is intended for someone brand new to Arcane (and relatively new at being a Mage) at level 85! I do not go into things like fight-specific tips, tier bonuses or any sort of serious minmaxing. It was also originally an email so the tone is casual and I may or may not abuse smileys. WITNESS MY SMILEYS. 

ARCANE: WHAT IT DO.

The entire point of arcane:
To blow your cooldowns and spam Arcane Blast until you’re at 35% mana, then evocate, mini burn to 80%, and then “hover” back up to 100% mana until 2 minutes go by and your CDs are up again.

WHY?

Mastery – it works, bitches. The more mana we have, the more damage we do depending on our mastery rating. Each point of mastery increases damage done depending on how much mana you have left.

Stat weighing?

Int > Hit to cap (17% for raiding, i forget for heroics) > Mastery > Crit > Haste (has a cap – some people argue this is better than crit – ymmv)

So how do I keep track of this mastery? Stare at my mana bar?

Kinda. Your actual mana bar, though, with enchants proc’n all over the place (like lightweave, power torrent, int-increasing trinket procs/usages) that mana bar on your default interface or xperl/shadowed/whathaveyou is wrong, wrong, wrongity wrong. They’ll artificially inflate your mana pool. What you want is the mana pool you’ve got without all that bullshit.

You use this:

MageManaBar

Hurrrrrrr!

It’s important It tells you what your ACTUAL mana is despite all that other garbage. It also tells you when to do things like pop your mana gem, evocate, throw your orb, etc.

So what talents/glyphs do I want?

This is the build I use. I’ve left you 2 points of wiggle room – you can put them in the Improved Arcane Explosion talent if you do a lot of AOE,  in Invocation if you interrupt a lot, or anywhere you’d like. If you have a Beast Mastery Hunter or a Retribution Paladin around you can also take your point out of Arcane Tactics and move it elsewhere – they replicate it – make them do all the work!

Prime Glyphs: Arcane Blast / Mage Armor / Arcane Missiles

Major Glyphs: You can play w/these, but I prefer: Invisibility / Arcane Power / Evocation <—will save your squishy butt so many times. SO MANY TIMES.

Minor Glyphs: Again, you can play around, but I like: Mirror Image / Slow Fall / Monkey <— because.  MONKEYS.

What should be on my bars?

I mean, that's what we're really here for, right?

DPS buttons:

Main nukes:
Arcane Blast – puts a debuff on you that stacks up to 4 times. Every time it stacks, it hits harder but costs more mana. You clear your stacks by casting another arcane single target spell, like arcane barrage or missiles.
Arcane Barrage – all the mage guides are like “just take this shit off your bars” because it is pretty useless, but it drives me nuts not having an instant on the 3 button, so XD
Arcane Missiles – you probably remember this proc from leveling as those annoying parenthesis that pop up even though you’re not arcane.

Pew pew!

AoE:
Arcane Explosion (I don’t aoe very much) – this is affected by your AB stacks now and doesn’t clear them, which is nice. You can take the talent if you want, but I don’t.  It reduces your threat from this spell .(threat no longer an issue really) and reduces the GCD so you can spam more of them, which is nice. So the way you AE is: target highest health mob (that is tanked >.<) nuke it a few times, AE, AE, AE, until it’s 2 seconds until AB’s gonna fall off, then cast AB again to refresh AB debuff. Repeat until everything is dead or you are.

DPS cooldowns:
Arcane Power – “When activated, you deal 20% more spell damage and damaging spells cost 10% more mana to cast. This effect lasts 15 sec.”
Mana Gem – an arcane talent gives you a spellpower boost from using it – always start a fight w/3 charges!
Time Warp (bloodlust, heroism, whatever) – use when the situation calls for it. Pretend you’re a shaman with a lamer casting noise.

Arcane specific utility:
Mage Ward – for Incanter’s Absorption talent – pop when taking frost, fire, or arcane damage for a dps boost!
Mana Shield – ugh, I never use this. It wastes mana. If you’re going to DIE I guess it’s a better alternative, and at least you get some spellpower for your troubles from the aforementioned incanter’s absorption, but. bleh.

but...mah mana D:

Presence of Mind – makes your next spell with a cast of less than 10 seconds instant. Can be used for casting Arcane Blast on the move to keep stacks up, to sheep while running (i do this quite often >.<) to remake your mana gem because …whups, you forgot to refill it …or any other good reason you can think of. (Note: You can’t cast this while Arcane Power is active! It’ll be unusable while that is up.)

Oh Shit:
Ice Block – makes you invulnerable. If you have threat and use this, the monster will go find something vulnerable to attack. Press ice block again to cancel it. If you do this and the mob isnt tanked yet, it’ll come back to you. THIS IS IMPORTANT TO KNOW D:
Invisibility -(spec into instant invis, glyph into fast running while invis. BEST THING EVER) – takes you out of combat and removes all threat. You can even invis out of a wipe and mass res, like a hunter, only awesome.
Mirror Image – “Jibbi, this is not an oh shit!” …yes it is. Your mirrors will take your threat for you until they die, and then your threat is yours again. Luckily, they last 30 seconds (er, if they’re not being hit). I use this to HURR off the bat on a boss, hoping the tank has created more threat than me by the time they die. It’s also nice for “1%! tank is dead! Shit, it’s on me!” situation. Hit these guys and blink away, let them take it in the face for you. Pretend every fight is Chimaeron and see if you’re next to die on the threat meter.

Important on bars:
Flame Orb (will explain in a bit)

This stupid thing gets caught on every tiny lip in the game.

Other utility things:
Blink – best spell ever A++ would cast again
Frost Nova – cast this and blink out when you’ve made a terrible mistake XD
Ring of Frost – is pretty useless but it’s nice in a “oh crap someone butt pulled trash” moment.
Remove Curse – I use the Decursive mod so I don’t suck at decursing – if you use this, you don’t need it on your bars.
Slow Fall – “Shit, cliff!” – I actually bind this to shift-right click in Clique so save friends quickly as well.
Counterspell – I use a macro with /stopcasting in it so i can interrupt in a pinch. We have a shitty 24 second cooldown on it, though, so I try to save it for emergencies. Of all the classes that bitch about their interrupt cooldown, only Druids have anything on you XD
Polymorph –  I use a macro that focuses my sheep target and then does /targetlasttarget to go back to whatever I was nuking. That way you can watch the sheep debuff on your focus window to re-sheep.

Your buffs:
Arcane Brilliance
Focus Magic (to the highest bidder caster who benefits from crit the most)
Mage Armor

Other things:
Warlock Cookies
Volcanic Pots

Macros:

-Above mentioned stopcasting/interrupt macro

#showtooltip Counterspell
/stopcasting
/cast Counterspell

-Above mentioned sheep macro:

#showtooltip Polymorph
/focus
/cast Polymorph
/targetlasttarget

-Nochannelling macros on your Arcane Blast and Arcane Missiles. This is so you can spam your abilities while doing arcane missiles and not interrupt yourself, but still be spamming like crazy. Same with evocate – you can be Evocating and spamming the hell out of arcane blast and it’ll queue that right up when you’re done with the evo.

#showtooltip Arcane Missiles
/cast [nochanneling]Arcane Missiles

#showtooltip Arcane Blast
/cast [nochanneling]Arcane Blast

-HURRRR button!!!!

/cast Arcane Power
/use 13
/use 14
/cast Arcane Blast

I’m sure there are a billion more useful macros, but those are the ones I use the most.

Ok, I’m ready to HURRR. What do I do?

HURR!

Slow down there bucko! You got focus magic out on a hard hitting caster or healer? Mage armor on and glyphed? 3 charges of mana gem ready? Badass. Let’s go.

Tank has pulled! give him a second – maybe cast an AB. Threat look good? You don’t have to move right away? Good.

1. Pop Mirrors
2. HURRR button
3. Arcane blast like crazy to 35% (after a few your mana bar mod will tell you to pop your mana gem – do it! then keep burning.)
4. 35% reached? MageManaBar is red and angry? Evocate. do not do this before a silence or if you’ll have to move for the next 5 seconds >.< don’t interrupt evo if you can help it.
5. Mini burn – ABlast spam down to 80%. MageManaBar will say “Orb Phase” and “Orb now!” – throw out flame orb at the boss.
6. While flame orb is out, arcane missiles will proc like crazy. They’re mana free, and your mage armor is ticking. This should bring you back up to 100%.
7. Cast 3 or 4xABlast (whatever feels comfortable for your mana pool) and arcane missiles to clear it and “hover” until your CDs are up again. MMB mod will tell you when you’re getting close – essentially it’s waiting for evocate and mana gem to come back up.
8. Repeat until boss is dead.

That’s it for the basic “rotation” – there are a few other things to think about.

1.Are you taking unavoidable frost, fire, or arcane damage? Pop mage ward. This shit is everywhere! It’s really useful, and it’ll help you live. This is always useful for any mage spec, but with Incanter’s Absorption, you’re doing more damage too. MAOR HURRR.

2. Do you have to move? Blink if it’s that far. If not, just walk, don’t clear your stacks if it’s going to take you less than 2 seconds to get there. If it is, Presence of Mind + Arcane Blast for that long walk – stacks gonna drop? Fine, whatever, just give up on life and arcane barrage. >.<

3. Did you pull threat? Instant Invis. Iceblock if Invis is down down. Mirrors if that’s down. All 3 of those things down? blink to the tank. That didn’t work? Enjoy the floor XD

4. Is MMB yelling at you about “overflow” and “wasted mana“? ah, yes. sometimes your mage armor ticks up and you fill up that “fake” mana you have from your procs – you better spam AB until it’s back in the “Real” mana or it just goes to waste!!

And that’s it! It’s a lot more than people make it out to be, but it’s still not as complicated as some. It’s going to be frustrating until you have a bit of gear – arcane wasn’t very viable to a fresh 85 in early cata – the low mana pools but same mana costs made you get to 35% pretty damn fast >.< It’s way better now though

Happy HURRing!!

Mage Gear List – 4.3

With 4.3 nearly upon us, it’s time for discerning mages to ask themselves the eternal question: How do my robes look? (In my case, the answer is purple. Very bright purple).

Soon we’ll be swapping our gear out for the Dr. Who-inspired Time Lord’s Regalia (you can’t convince me it’s not Dr. Who inspired, sorry), but it won’t matter because you’ll be able to transmog your sets to whatever you like! Still, you want your underlying stats to be good, and that’s where this gear list comes in.

I’ve combed the PTR info from Wowhead to try to find all of the new gear. This list also includes all of the relevant VP gear that will be purchase with Justice Points after the patch. These items are listed at the end of each list and are the lowest ilevel I’ve taken the time to list (378). If you haven’t been able to obtain better via Firelands, there’s no reason not to get some of these pieces to fill any odd slots, as you want your gear to be as close to average ilevel 378 as possible. I’ve kept price conversion the same, I don’t know if it will be but it’s a fairly safe assumption at this point.

I’ve included gear from the three new 5-man instances (Well of Eternity, End Time, and Hour of Twilight). There may be gear missing that is in these instances, but I tried to be as comprehensive as I could. A few items are quest rewards well worth getting from those 5-mans, so take note of those!

It’s also worth noting that tier gear, unlike previous tiers, will not be purchasable from vendors. Consequently, it’s listed under the “drop” category, and I hope that RNG is good to you in that regard. If it isn’t, it seems that there are usually off-set options.

Disclaimer: As I said above, I’ve endeavored to be as comprehensive as possible with this list but inevitably there may be items I’ve missed or that were added after the fact. I don’t yet have a list of which boss in Dragon Soul drops items that are raid drop items, but I will add it once the patch goes live and information is a bit more comprehensive. This information is compiled for my personal use, and I share it with you so that you have an easy reference, but it’s not my fault if you buy pants when you should’ve bought a helm.

Head

Purchased/Crafted
Hood of Hidden Flesh – 2,200 VP (Hit/Crit)

Drop
Time Lord’s Hood (Crit/Haste)

Neck

Purchased/Crafted
Opal of the Secret Order – 1,250 VP (Hit/Haste)
Amulet of Burning Brilliance -  1,250 JP (Hit/Crit)

Shoulder

Purchased/Crafted
Mosswrought Shoulderguards (Crit/Haste)

Drop
Time Lord’s Mantle (Crit/Mastery)
Mantle of False Virtue – Archbishop Benedictus, Hour of Twilight (Hit/Mastery)

Back

Purchased/Crafted
Nanoprecise Cape – 1,250 VP (Hit/Mastery)

Chest

Purchased/Crafted
Robes of Searing Shadow – 2,200 VP (Hit/Crit)
Firehawk Robes – 2,200 JP (Hit/Haste)

Drop
Time Lord’s Robes – (Hit/Haste)
Robes of Fate – End Time, Murozond’s Temporal Cache (Hit/Crit)

Wrist

Purchased/Crafted
Chronoboost Bracers – 1,250 VP (Hit/Mastery)
Bracers of Unconquered Power – Tailoring (Haste/Mastery)
Emberflame Bracers – 1,250 JP (BoE, Hit/Mastery)

Drop
Bracers of the Banished (Haste/Mastery)

Hands

Purchased/Crafted
Clockwinder’s Immaculate Gloves - 1,650 VP (Hit/Crit)
Firehawk Gloves – 1,650 JP (Hit/Haste)

Drop
Time Lord’s Gloves (Hit/Mastery)
Gloves of Liquid Smoke (Crit/Haste)

Quest
Archivist’s Gloves – Reward from Archival Purposes (Hit/Mastery)

Waist

Purchased/Crafted
Tentacular Belt – 1,650 VP (Crit/Mastery)

Drop
Sash of Relentless Truth – (Haste/Mastery)
Cord of the Slain Champion – (Crit/Haste)
Chillbane Belt – Arcurion, Hour of Twilight (Hit/Mastery)

Legs

Purchased/Crafted
Lavaquake Legwraps – Tailoring (Hit/Haste)
Firehawk Leggings – 2,200 JP (Crit/Mastery)

Drop
Time Lord’s Leggings – (Haste/Mastery)
Time Traveler’s Leggings – End Time, Echo of Baine/Jaina/Tyrande (Crit/Haste)

Feet

Purchased/Crafted
Kavan’s Forsaken Treads – 1,650 VP (BoE, Hit/Haste)

Drop
Janglespur Jackboots (Crit/Haste)

Fingers

Purchased/Crafted
Seal of the Grand Architect – 1,250 VP (Hit/Haste)
Crystalline Brimstone Ring – 1,250 JP (Hit/Mastery)

Drop
Ring of the Riven – (Haste/Mastery)
Infinite Loop – (Hit/Crit)
Horned Band – Peroth’arn, Well of Eternity (Crit/Haste)

Quest
Ring of the Loyal Companion – Reward from To Wyrmrest! (Hit/Haste)

Trinkets

Purchased/Crafted
Bottled Wishes- 1,650 VP (Haste + Spellpower proc)

Drop
Insignia of the Corrupted Mind (Int + Haste proc)
Cunning of the Cruel (Int + Shadowbolt volley proc)
Will of Unbinding (Increasing Int bonus)

Wand

Purchased/Crafted
Hungermouth Wand – 600 VP (Hit/Mastery)
Trail of Embers – 700 JP (Hit/Haste)

Drop
Finger of Zon’ozz – Dragon Soul (Haste/Mastery)

Two-Hand Weapon

Drop
Lightning Rod – Dragon Soul (Hit/Haste)
Ti’tahk, The Steps of Time – Dragon Soul (Haste + Haste Proc for self and allies)
Stalk of Corruption – Archbishop Benedictus, Hour of Twilight (Haste/Mastery)

One-Hand Weapon

Drop
Rathrak, the Poisonous Mind – Dragon Soul (Proc AoE poison on target of spell)
Fanged Tentacle – Archbishop Benedictus, Hour of Twilight (Hit/Crit)

Off-Hand

Drop
Dragonfire Orb – Dragon Soul (Haste/Mastery)
Orb of the First Satyrs – Peroth’arn, Well of Eternity (Hit/Haste)

Conclusion

I’m going to be identifying my weak slots and aiming to update those with VP gear first (probably a helm, because I’m still using a 359 helm). Because tier gear is not purchasable from vendors, in a way you have more freedom with your VP gear. Usually, if set bonuses are worth it (and I believe T13′s are) you would want to chase the obtainable pieces of tier from vendors as quickly as possible, eschewing slots like rings and necklaces until later. Because of this change, you can find your weakest slot and upgrade it, rather than tying up your VP for weeks while you seek to snag some tier gear.

If, like me, you were a bit late in this tier and still had “regular” VP upgrades, make sure to have a supply of Justice Points laid in to pick those up quickly and easily. Although it’s not the focus of this guide, it should be relatively simple for a new 85 mage to pick up a mix of T12 tier gear, off-set VP pieces, and items from the three new instances.

If you have questions or reference to a specific item you’ve found that I may have missed, feel free to leave it in the comments!

Mages, Don’t Let Your Brethren Grow Up To Be Sheep

This isn’t a problem specific to mages. As new patches hit, abilities, damage and specs are tweaked. Gear scales, and different encounters favour different classes or types of damage or roles. Shadow priest DPS is the new hotness. Shadowpriest DPS is too low. Mages are too low, buff mages (yes, always!) And it’s true – the game isn’t always perfectly balanced. We have so many tools to track this in-game and out-of-game. Damage meters let us know where we are. Things like Spec Score analyze all available World of Logs parses, and they can paint a grim picture. But there’s also a story they aren’t telling.

Imagine this.

1. Joe plays a mage! He enjoys playing his mage. He hits 85 and runs dungeons as a frost mage to get some gear from heroics and have fun. Joe’s friends tell him that Frost is “no good,” and he should spec Fire or Arcane instead. Joe takes his friends’ advice and becomes an Arcane mage. He begins to raid with his friends and does well! Everyone tells him, “See, we told you, frost mages are no good.”(He had really poor gear when he first started out anyway, so who is to say how he would have done as a frost mage in 5-mans?)

2. Joe plays a mage! He leveled up as Frost and he really enjoys it, but when he wants to get into raiding he starts reading some different sources. Elitist Jerks and all mage sources he can find say that Arcane is the top spec, so reluctantly he gives up on Frost. After all, Frost mages don’t even appear on the list of ranked DPS specs! Joe wants to do well.

The problem with both of these scenarios is that they keep Frost mages out of the pool of Mage specs being considered for evaluation at all. It’s not even a question of “Is Frost good relative to the other specs,” or “Is Frost viable?” because all of the info is peer pressure, hearsay, or purely anecdotal. Fewer (or no) raiding frost mages lowers the sample size. Let’s say in a fictional world, there are one hundred mages. 90 of the mages play Arcane, 9 play Fire, and only one plays Frost. The “highest ranked” DPS spec is always going to be the Arcane mages, simply because there’s a greater chance that more skilled players will be playing Arcane. The lone Frost mage could be an average player, or he could be awesome, but his representation is so low that nobody even considers him. (I’m ignoring the fire mages for the moment).

This isn’t to say that some specs don’t do better than others. Simcraft and other tools are able to math out these things to ‘prove’ superiority of one spec over another (in an ideal situation with the best buffs, gear, and choosing to ignore movement or player error). I haven’t done theorycraft for mages in awhile, so take this with a grain of salt. In those ideal conditions, given equally skilled players, Arcane is probably ahead. It scales so incredibly well with gear. But by how much of a percentage is it ahead of an equally geared Frost mage? Basically, you have a playerbase that looks and says, “Well, arcane is whatever percentage ahead, so I guess Fire and Frost are bad.” No! Blizzard has said themselves that PvE Frost is much more viable than we give it credit for. The real struggle here is against player stigma and popularity.

The fact is, Arcane is an easier spec to play than Frost. It is. It has a much higher margin for error. I’m going to avoid the “two-button” joke because that’s not what I’m saying. The nuances of Arcane aren’t necessarily easy, mana and Mastery management takes forethought, planning and understanding, but by and large – an average Arcane mage can still do pretty well for him or herself without knowing all the nuances of the spec. Not so the Frost mage, who needs to carefully manage a series of procs and buffs to maximize damage. Is one “easier” or “harder?” It’s not really my place to say, but they require different things. More importantly, playing Frost requires a willingness to overcome a massive and pervasive prejudice that I’ve been hearing pretty much since I started playing this game.

Frost mages are for PvP and are bad for PvE. 

The problem with this statement is that it’s completely false. Yes, at one time it was true. Deep Freeze didn’t used to be usable on immune targets (read: bosses). Many Frost changes have been rolled out over the years with intent to make them completely PvE viable. Blizzard themselves has said that through their own internal testing, they are absolutely viable in PvE.

I didn’t need Blizzard’s internal testing, because I raid with an amazing Frost mage. He could frost any mage up one side and down the other, any time, any day. I am confident in saying that he is the best mage I have ever played with, and he plays Frost. Back in Wrath, he raided for the last part of Wrath entirely as Arcane because it was clearly superior at the time. (He also hated it, which is neither here nor there). He relegated his love for Frost to a secondary mage alt that would come on ICC runs with us (and I’m pretty sure he still did top DPS in those alt runs). With the changes to Frost that came with Cataclysm, he went Frost full-time. As I’ve said, he is consistently our highest DPS. Some might say, “lol get better DPS noobs if ur Frost mage is highest you are all BADS!”

Well, he’s too polite to say it, so I’m going to say it for him: Everyone who knocks on someone for playing a spec that they are too myopic to recognize is a strong spec can go to hell. This includes all the “hurr hurr” types that you meet in 5-mans who start ribbing on you before they’ve even seen you play, just because you have a water elemental by your side. It especially includes the mages who happened to be in an ICC 25 run the other week along with our mage.

It’s actually a pretty ludicrous scenario, when you think about it. Five mages were there – four of whom were Arcane, naturally – and the mage ‘in charge’ starts handing out Focus Magic assignments, which I imagine is something like a self-congratulatory circle. “You FM her, she’ll FM you, I’ll FM him and he’ll FM me,” he said, “And Fsob, you need to learn how to spec your mage.”

I wasn’t here for this personally, which is probably good because my head would’ve exploded on the spot. Again, because he’s classy, he didn’t say anything beyond a simple sad faced emoticon. I would’ve had a lot more to say to this guy, especially after Fsob beat ALL of their DPS on the heroic Lich King fight. This is what I wish I could have said.

Just because someone chooses to play an “unpopular” spec doesn’t make them wrong. It doesn’t make them bad. It’s bad enough that other people like to shit on individuals playing an uncommon spec without mages jumping on board to do it too. You’re not in Vodka. The day that we wipe because Fsob’s DPS is too low is a day I will eat my hat, and he could out DPS you any day of the week.

And he did! (Colour me unsurprised). Being someone who thinks for yourself isn’t anything to be ashamed of. Being someone who refuses to bow to the spec of the month, or play something because that’s what everyone says they should do is someone you should admire, not give a hard time. If Frost were truly not viable in PvE content, I’m confident that Fsob wouldn’t play it. He, too, wants what is best for the team as well as himself. But I’m happy that he does, because I know it’s his favourite spec.

You can take this and apply it to any of the “unpopular” DPS specs, or any class or spec at all that people say “isn’t worth playing.” Right now, for me that’s Fire. I went to the Fire EJ page and it basically says “Nobody is interested in this spec right now.” Fire is receiving massive buffs on the PTR so I know that Blizzard is aware that Fire mages are behind. They don’t usually leave something unbalanced for too long, and I have faith in them. I have the good fortune to be playing a class that usually has three viable PvE specs, which is not something every class can say. It makes me happy. I’m playing Arcane right now because we don’t need two Frost mages, Fire is a bit hurting, and I don’t actually mind Arcane. I am not knocking on Arcane mages, either. If you love playing Arcane, more power to you! Keep on keeping on. Just please don’t be the kind of Arcane mage who is going to put on some kind of superiority dance because you happen to run into someone who has their Squirtle by their side and is freezing things in place. Worry about your own game. More importantly, play what you want to play unless it truly matters. I said Fire is “a bit behind,” which for my purposes (heroic raiding) is a bit too far. That doesn’t mean you “can’t” be a Fire mage either. It’s up to you to judge the requirements of your group. Buffs for Fire are coming soon. Meantime, remember: we turn people into sheep, we don’t seek to emulate them. Millions of Arcane mages CAN be wrong, if they take their spec’s numerical superiority as an excuse to try and bring other people down. The “best” spec is all relative, and I think the best spec for a mage to be is whatever he or she wants.

p.s. There are resources out there for those of you who’d like to take a walk on the Frosty side. You can also always ask a question here; if I don’t know the answer I have access to a Frost mage who definitely will, for either PvE or PvP.

Mage Revival

I don’t know if anyone else’s guild works like this, but ours seems to go in phases of popularity. I swear, for awhile there all I saw when I logged in was druids. Or paladins, druids, and warriors, which actually gave rise to the phrase “warrior warrior,” later adapted into “mage mage.” Anyway, I think it starts when someone has a lot of fun playing a class. Other people see the fun happening and think, “Wow, look at the fun they are having! I’ve never tried that class/I haven’t played my character of that class in awhile,” and suddenly the guild roster is positively awash in blue mage names.

I love it. People talk about leveling specs on the forums, gear levels, pugs giving us a hard time about when to use Time Warp (seriously, what IS it with this? When I am in a pug I’m just happy if all my fellow group members generally know where their keyboard is and are pressing buttons. I don’t ever give people crap about when they are going to use something like Time Warp, I’m just happy they know where that key is located and opted to press it. These people who get all bent out of shape because I used TW at the start of Jin’do must spend their lives angry because their expectations are pretty high. P.S. You don’t usually get TW at all on that fight because I’ll use it on Zanzil but absentmindedly forgot. WAY TO GO, MAGE). Anyway, I digressed a bit there, because my original point was:

1) Mages are awesome

2) Mages are contagious.

I’ve now been raiding as a mage again for several weeks, an endeavour that has not been without its minor mishaps but by and large has been awesome. Last night we beat our Baleroc record by a whopping one second so I feel that I contributed positively to that. Groups being held back don’t beat records, do they now?! There has definitely been a learning curve as I realized that I know very little about what DPSers are doing in most of these fights after healing them for months. It’s a good thing I’m not giving the fight explanations.

“So, um, on this one you’ve got to… I’ll be – Look, I’ll level with you, all I do is take a feather. I know that’s very important. And then I chase Voss around in circles. I look at the fire and make sure not to get hit by it. But mostly I see this green bar. It looks pretty much the same as it does on the other fights. So why don’t you just – I’ll be over here. The green bar and I.”

No, I’m not slighting healers. It’s just that I had to re-learn my role for DPSing, while at the same time growing accustomed to a new spec. Initially, gear was definitely holding me back because I was unwilling to relinquish my T11 4-set until I was able to get 4-set T12. Well, last night I got it, and raided for the first time! It was awesome. I’m almost at the same gear level now with Millya as I was with Vid; actually better because I got both a weapon and an off-hand last night. Three piece heroic tier gear in the amount of time I’ve been raiding is a bit ridiculous. Vid had one piece of heroic tier! I’m actually glad she didn’t have more and that I kept passing on stuff in favour of the other healer (I knew I’d be DPSing for H Rag anyway) so that when I switched it hardly mattered or affected anyone else’s gear level at all. But yea, verily did the loot gods look down upon Millya and smile, beam and begin to throw mage gear in her general direction. I know that doesn’t necessarily matter, but it is pretty nice. I’ve been fortunate.

Another story from the mage front; actually it requires some backstory first: One of our former raiders invited a work friend of his to play WoW, and so he joined our guild a few months back. He was completely new to the game, I think he’d played LoTRO or something but had never played WoW before. I seriously love him. He will ask questions like “I’m dueling this guy and he disappeared, how do I kill a guy like that?” (Freaking rogues, right?) Or he’ll say, “Hey, this Argent Tournament thing is pretty fun! Have you guys ever tried this?” (Oh, if only he knew). There’s something pretty awesome about knowing a person as they experience this game for the first time. We’re all so embroiled in the nuances, or jaded by the long grinds and hours we’ve poured into it, that sometimes I think it’s easy to lose sight of that magic – these “worlds we inhabit together,” as Metzen put it.

This guildie is level 84. It’s taken him a good long while to get there, and there’s no “end” in sight soon because he got distracted doing Loremaster (first of Outland, now I think he’s going back to do Kalimdor/Eastern Kingdoms). He’s not in any rush to “finish.” He’s just enjoying the journey and seeing what the world has to offer. He’s also the only one who laughed when I got the “My Sack is Gigantique” achievement the other day, so I love him for that too. (Come on, I spent 1000 G on that joke!) Anyway, so that’s to introduce you to my guildie, that’s the back story. The actual story is that I logged in yesterday and was running a dungeon as Millya (needed to get the last VP for those tier gloves!)

He said, “What are you up to?” and I told him, “Killing some trolls, taking their stuff,” (he laughed, how can I not love this guy?) and then he said, “You know I didn’t know that was an alt of yours.”

“Oh no? Actually, she is my MAIN!” I replied with great glee.

“Oh yeah,” he said, “I thought you were different people when you were playing Vid and Millya.” (Pause) “I always thought Millya was friendlier.”

I laughed and said I was sorry if I’d been a jerk when playing Vid, and he said no, you were nice, just Millya was friendlier. He’d clued into the connection between my characters when I asked Voss to make Millya the guild leader again the other day (so annoying not being able to do guild leader things on the appropriate character). So he had gone to work to ask our mutual friend if I was the same person. I had a good laugh relating this story to Voss, who just shrugged.

“Playing Millya makes you happy, so you’re friendlier.”

I don’t want to harp on about this, but Shintar mentioned that I had been a bit negative about Millya before switching. I tried to think back and remember this and I couldn’t (I know I could read blog entries, but I didn’t). What’s interesting about keeping a blog like this is that it’s highly filtered information. You only know as much about me as I choose to tell you, and also, I only tell you what I believe to be true. In other words, it’s possible for me to hide things from myself, convince myself something is true, or try very hard to convince anyone reading that something is true. What’s funny is that I’d written about “how playing my alt was hurting my raiding” only a few short weeks before I switched, and I’d been playing Millya non-stop (and loving it, honestly). I tried to spin it around and say “Oh well, I guess I was playing my alt for a reason!” but I’m afraid I lied – mostly to me, but by extension, to you guys.

We had an interesting thread on our private guild forums the other day where we talked about /played time and tallied up our totals for all to see. I liked it because it was interesting to see how much people have played (and which characters), but also because the inevitable, “I don’t know how I should feel about this number,” came up and there was no shaming, only agreement that we enjoy this game and have enjoyed those hours, too. I don’t tally up the time I spend reading or doing other hobbies and I don’t feel any guilt about those – why should I? As with WoW. So what was interesting about my numbers was that they were completely skewed. I’ve played 141 days as a mage. My next closest character doesn’t even come close, clocking in at a mere 50 (my druid) and poor Vid way behind at only 39 days played. I have played more as a mage than my other characters combined! My next closest character is almost 1/3 the time. I think that’s eloquent in itself.

The truth is, when we needed another healer, I sincerely felt I could help in that regard. I didn’t dislike playing a mage at all. The other other truth is, though, that I have sometimes been frustrated as a mage because I always feel I’m not as good as our other Super Mage, and that everyone is always comparing me to him (to my detriment). It’s tough to be in the shadow of someone you truly respect and you know is an exceptional player. I think that I’m a pretty good player, but not like he is. So there’s that. At the time, we also had our ridiculously good warlock and I was having a hard time keeping up with the two of them. It stung. I guess it was an ego thing. And I’ll be completely honest with you – I wanted to avoid the issue of The Legendary.

Fortunately, Dramawrath didn’t really cause any in our guild. At the time, I felt like an argument could have been made for either myself or our awesome mage, (who is indisputably an amazing DPS and also does a lot for the guild). Our shaman is also stupendous and ended up being second-in-line by virtue of guild seniority and steadiness. I hope we’re able to make one for him, too. He’s almost done with the cinders portion of the chain. I think I am no slouch of a DPS and I also do a lot for the guild. But I think it meant more to our other mage. (And I know he’s going to read this and if he’s reading it I want him to know this has nothing to do with you and everything to do with me. I wanted you to have this, and I still do. You deserve it.) He said to me when we talked about it that he would rather not have it, if it was going to cause drama. I couldn’t agree more. I have the kind of personality that unfortunately can be avoidant. Especially as a leader I have to consciously push myself to confront issues sometimes when I’d rather pretend they don’t exist – or maybe, when I’d rather just duck out of the way altogether, as I did when I switched to my paladin for one very specific tier.

I will admit, privately on the internet in front of everyone, there’s a part of me that’s a bit sad about the Dragonwrath. Caster legendaries don’t come along all the time, it’s a pretty neat thing to have, etc. etc. I was watching at Blizzcon when they announced that they would do a legendary staff, and I cheered so loudly. I see other folks getting theirs or read about their progress on blogs and I feel a slight pang. But I don’t regret my decision because I think having me as a healing paladin did help us in this tier. Yes, I missed playing my mage, and I am happy to play her again. Perhaps sometime during the next expansion I’ll see if I can solo any of Firelands and get an outdated Dragonwrath. The more essential thing, to me, though, is not Dragonwrath itself, and I’d actually like to invite you to think about that for a moment.

There are many Dragonwraths. Yes, it’s an “orange” item, but every raid group is making one (or more). Some raid groups will have several. It’s not Dragonwrath that matters at all. That staff is a visual representation of the teamwork and devotion of ten to thirty people. They painstakingly gathered all of those cinders, those embers, those shards, to put that together. I’m deliberately leaving out the “and then gave it to you” part here. Because in a way, that almost doesn’t matter. It’s an achievement that everyone can be proud of. That team work, that drive, it’s humbling and awesome. Braving the challenges of the Firelands night after night, through tension and tedium, elation and success, that is what’s truly legendary. I’m proud of the guild for doing it (we’re about one week away from completing it) and I couldn’t think of a better wielder of that honour. I’m really glad he will have it, and I’m also really glad to be a mage again (although it’s not like playing a paladin was bad). After all, I’m friendlier, which is probably a good thing!

Mage Class Talent Changes From Blizzcon 2011

I spent the whole day liveblogging and hardly had time to stop and consider changes (until now) but I’d really like to talk about the most drastic change proposed for the upcoming expansion: all new Class Talent systems. (I’m not even going to touch the Panda controversy for the time being).

Talent trees as we know them are going away, to be replaced by a single choice of talent point every fifteen levels. What’s especially relevant about these is that they aren’t specific to any one spec of mage. So for example, you could be a Fire mage with Slow, or a Frost mage with Blast Wave. Transcribed below are a few quotes from Ghostcrawler during the Mage portion of the Class Talent panel. Apparently we are the poster children for this new system, because traditionally many of our utility spells were located in the Frost tree. The only thing I really have misgivings about is that none of these talents are DPS increasing talents at all. Don’t freak out about that, because they said specifically that in most cases, talents you know and love are simply going baseline for a spec. Or hopefully, we’ll be balanced so that our damage is just part of being a mage, and the choices are fun utility things. I say “hopefully” because it seems to me as if some of the “choices” warlocks and other classes get to make aren’t just fun utility things, but rather are specific DPS increases (a more powerful warlock pet? The opportunity to have a second pet out for a certain length of time?)

Most of the spells represented here are things we’ve already seen or have, and the major change is that we’ll be able to choose them. The other big thing is that not only will we be able to choose them, but they’ll be “as easy” to swap as Glyphs currently are. What does this mean for the modern mage? Well, suppose you need to slow Shannox’s dogs. No problem – choose Slow as your T6 talent for a given fight. On the next fight, you would like to have an AoE slow – okay, take Blast Wave. (Presently Blast Wave also lays down a Flamestrike for a Fire mage – I can only hope that will persist but it’s tough to say at this point).

I’m going to come down firmly on the side of “cautiously optimistic,” as I usually am. I’m not entirely sure how this will all look at the other end, but at the moment I’m intrigued. Here’s what Ghost Crawler had to say about us.

“Mage is a great example of a class that worked really well with this talent system because historically we had a lot of the most fun abilities for crowd control, survivability, and utility in Frost and then we always had trouble increasing their damage because they had so much utility here. So we figured it would be a lot of fun just to take the utility, put it throughout the talent tree and then let Frost do different types of damage (because obviously you’re doing Frost here) than Arcane and Fire.

In this brave new world, Arcane Blast is Arcane only, Fireball is Fire only, and Frostbolt is Frost only. I know, it’s crazy.

…As we were mentioning with the warlock, we really wanted the mage to feel slippery and glass-cannon-ey and we wanted the warlock to be more of the tank of the casters. These are ways that mages survive and get away. (Re: Tier 2)

Re: (Tier 3) I should also mention here, we are going to make sure that Scorch isn’t the no-brainer spell for Fire mages. You know, Fire mages buff all their Fire spells, so I have to take Scorch. We want these to be attractive to any of the three specs.”

If you’d like a closer look at any of these talents, MMO-Champion has images taken from the presentation screens for you to see here.

Tier 1 (Level 15)

Ring of Frost
Summons a Ring of Frost, taking 3 sec to coalesce. Enemies entering the fully-formed ring will become frozen for 10 sec. Lasts 12 sec. 10 yd radius.

Cone of Cold
Targets in a cone in front of the caster take 802 Frost damage and are frozen in place for 3 sec and slowed by 60% for 6 sec.

Frostjaw (1.5 sec cast, 20 sec CD, 30 yd range)
Silences and Freezes the target in place for 8 sec. Lasts half as long versus Player targets.

So this tier gives us an initial choice of control options. Do you want to have an AoE freeze on a long-ish cooldown, a shorter CD freeze that breaks more quickly (this is the only Cone of Cold that will be available, and functions as the current ‘Improved’ version) or do you want to use the new spell, Frostjaw, to both silence and freeze something in place? The option of a secondary interrupt to back up Counterspell is a nice one in my mind, and I could see it being situationally useful in five-mans and naturally quite nice for PvP. Note that it will have reduced efficacy in PvP, however.

Tier 2 (Level 30)

Greater Invisibility
Instantly makes the caster invisible, reducing all threat and removing two damage over time effects. The effect is cancelled if you perform any actions. Lasts 20 sec.

Cauterize
An attack which would otherwise kill you will instead bring you to 60% of your maximum health. However, you will burn for 10% of your maximum health every 1.50 sec for the next 6 sec. This effect cannot occur more than once per minute.

Cold Snap
When activated, this spell finishes the cooldown of your Ice Block, Frost Nova, and Water Elemental spells.

I assume that class Invis will continue to be baseline, and this new improved version is an option you have for survivability. Cauterize is as it always was, except now is available to any mage and not just those of us who are wont to blow ourselves up. The only outlier here seems to be Cold Snap; in a tree based primarily around survivability talents, it feels like they just stuck Cold Snap in because it had to go somewhere. Also, I don’t really see how that’s a potential utility talent for any tree. Who would take it but a Frost mage? Now, if they’d made Icy Veins an option…

Tier 3 (Level 45)

Presence of Mind (Instant)
When activated, your next mage spell with a casting time less than 10 sec becomes an instant cast spell.

Scorch
Scorch the enemy for 809 Fire damage. Can be cast while moving.

Arcane Flows (Instant, 45 sec CD)
Invoke the flow of Arcane magic, allowing the next two non-instant Mage spells to be cast while moving. Lasts until cancelled.

Presence of Mind, same old same old, except now available for any mage. PoM Pyro makes a startling comeback, you heard it here first! GC mentioned specifically how they do not want us to feel that we have to take Scorch if we’re Fire, which is fair. Whether this talent becomes a no-brainer for Fire mages is going to depend on the movement requirements of the upcoming content and perhaps even specific fights. Scorch will not be baseline and you will need to take this talent if you want it.

Arcane Flows is pretty interesting, and seems aimed at addressing the movement issues of turret specs like Arcane. ABs on the move would be pretty nice. Right now only having ABarr to cast while you dodge around can get old pretty quickly. Having two “cast and move” options in this tier will be nice to tailor to what is needed.

Tier 4 (Level 60)

Mana Shield
Absorbs 1597 damage, draining mana instead. Drains 1.0 mana per damage absorbed. When your Mana Shield is destroyed, all enemies within 6 yards are knocked back 12 yards. Lasts 1 min.

Blazing Speed
Suppresses movement impairing effects and increases your movement speed by 50% for 4 sec. May only be activated after being affected by a movement impairing effect.

Ice Barrier
Instantly shields you, absorbing 7960 damage. Lasts 1 min. While the shield holds, spellcasting will not be delayed by damage.

GC mentioned how this new and improved Mana Shield has Incanter’s Absorption baked in, but I don’t see the spellpower increasing component. If this is gone, I am a Sad Panda (will that joke get old quickly?) because I really like using Mage  Ward for that. We also have the option of the zippy Blazing Speed, which still seems pretty PvP-based, or Ice Barrier – it’ll be nice to borrow that from Frost mages if the mood strikes.

Tier 5 (Level 75)

Sickly Polymorph
Your polymorphed targets regenerate life at 10% of the normal speed.

Heavy Polymorph
When a target you’ve polymorphed is damaged, that target is stunned for 3 sec. This effect cannot occur more than once every 10 sec.

Double Polymorph
You may polymorph an additional target for half the normal duration.

It’s clear that they wanted to take our signature CC and pump it up. Sheeping is after all the iconic mage ability. The options here are fairly solid – giving us the ability to chain a polymorph with a stun and burst damage will be very powerful in PvP, likewise sheeping someone without guaranteeing their health comes back will be dead handy. I don’t see that having much use in PvE beyond the usual – if someone breaks your sheep it won’t immediately eat your face, and if you polymorph an already damaged target it won’t regenerate its health as much.

For PvE, Double Polymorph will be pretty great depending on how the dungeons are tuned, but at this point I can hardly get a tank to let me sheep one thing, never mind two! The biggest attraction in my mind will be using different polymorphs to create my own animal menagerie. (Turtle + Pig? Turtle + Sheep? Turtle + Penguin? How will I choose?!)

Tier 6 (Level 90)

Blast Wave
A wave of flame radiates outward from the target location, damaging all enemies caught within the blast for 923 Fire damage and are slowed by 70% for 3 sec.

Dragon’s Breath
Targets in a cone in front of the caster take 1285 Fire damage and are disoriented for 5 sec. Any direct damaging attack will revive targets.

Slow
Reduces target’s movement speed by 50%, increases the cast time between ranged attacks by 30% and increases casting time by 15%. Lasts 15 sec. Slow can only affect one target at a time.

I have to admit, I find this tier the most underwhelming and am a little jealous of classes that seemed to get something new especially in their “last” tier. These are all existing abilities that, granted, are currently tied to a specific spec but it’s nothing huge. DB and Blast Wave have fairly situational use in PvE content (I used them a ton on Heroic Maloriak). The de facto choice for most fights would be Slow, currently limited only to Arcane mages – we’ll be able to use it whenever. Use of Blast Wave is more needed for a Fire mage in any AoE situation, but we’ll have to wait and see whether Fire mages still have things that interact with this particular talent. (Alas, free Flamestrike, I hardly knew ye).

What are your thoughts on the proposed changes? Remember, nothing here is set in stone and may well change before the expansion ever comes out! For now, that’s enough writing in one day for me. If you tuned into the liveblogging over at Twisted Nether, thanks for your commentary and support. I tried to keep up with the comments coming in as best I could, but at some point it just became a whirlwind of frenzied typing!

Revelations (That Are Not Actually About Cookies)

Just over a week ago now, Canadians were preparing for our version of stuffing ourselves silly and being thankful about it. Thanksgiving! (Yes, it’s the same holiday as in the U.S. pretty much, except ours is a little earlier). We’d acquired a turkey, friends were due to arrive, and as with any major holiday – I happily took a welcome excuse to do some baking. The centerpiece of my endeavour was to be pumpkin cupcakes. Voss, who doesn’t especially like pumpkin, asked if I could perhaps bake something else on the side for him. Some cookies, maybe? (Insert big pleading eyes here.) Chocolate chip cookies, maybe? It doesn’t usually take much to get me to do more baking, so of course I agreed.

And here I paused. For years now, I’ve been experimenting with lower fat baking. It’s possible to do and still have recipes taste good. My low-fat chocolate chip cookies are pretty decent – but they tend to be a bit harder, definitely “dippers.” You have to be so careful with the dough not to overmix it. I hesitated. Did I want to make the “healthy” recipe – or did I want to go back to my tried-and-true?

I haven’t made this recipe in years. It was faithfully copied from my Mom’s recipes when I first moved away from home a decade ago. I looked at that recipe, carefully written out. It has twice as much butter as the other recipe. I know they aren’t as “healthy” (if any cookies can be considered healthy). The thing is, butter serves a specific role in baking, just like all the other ingredients do. It helps with texture, establishing both moisture and crispness. It’s possible to make things with much less of it (I hardly use it at all in “regular” cooking) but in baking it’s a tough thing to do away with.

I made my Mom’s recipe. They weren’t as pretty to behold as their low-fat counterparts. I watched them cooling on the rack a bit uncertainly – they’d flattened out more than I’d expected. I wasn’t sure how they were going to be.

I took one bite of that first cookie and the taste of it exploded in my mouth. It tasted of a hundred happy moments mixing with my Mom, adding vanilla, adding eggs. It tasted of licking the beaters of the electric mixer (raw egg be damned! I came through childhood just fine). It tasted of the time that our old, long-departed cocker spaniel opened a container of cookies and helped himself (one by one, at his leisure!) It tasted of home. It just tasted right, and in that moment I didn’t care that the cookies had twice as much butter as the other kind. They were perfect.

I have to admit, I’d been having a tough time getting into the Thanksgiving mood. For awhile now, I’ve been labouring under an indecisive funk. I wrote all about how I felt playing retribution all the time. I’d even planned to write a “Thanksgiving” Warcraft post that never materialized because I just felt like I was going through the motions. The thing is, I have a lot to be thankful for (both in and out of game) but I wasn’t feeling up to expressing it. I’d begun playing my paladin at the start of this tier because I felt that it was how I could best help the guild. I felt that it was best for the guild. What I didn’t consider deeply enough was whether it was what would be best for me.

For years, I’ve been making chocolate chip cookies as a treat that are “better for me,” but they aren’t RIGHT. I’d rather eat them half as often but enjoy them twice as much. Or actually, what I’m trying to say – in an extremely roundabout and cookie-based way – is that last week, I took Millya into Firelands for the first time. (It’s appropriate if mage metaphors include baking, you know).

The first raid, I was really nervous and I definitely didn’t play my best. There’s an element of wanting to “prove I’ve still got it,” and focusing on that led to a few bonehead maneuvers. But it was okay. The second raid, I was feeling more comfortable, and I really let myself exult in the feeling. I love being a mage. I love everything about it. I love blink, I love firing spells off like a deadly turret, I love conjuring cakes for everyone and seeing my mirror images sprinting all over the place and even my stupid flame orb wandering off on its own to explode and attack, seemingly, nothing. I love my serious little goat woman and her wild hair and earnest horns. I love wearing a dress. I’m crazy about it. I always have been. I missed it when I was a priest, and a druid, and now a paladin. I missed it because it was the right thing for me to be and I never should have lost sight of that.

“You always preferred your mage,” a few guildies have told me gently. I’ve received more than one whisper from people saying they’re happy to see my mage again, and that it feels “good” to have me be a mage. It does feel damn good. I am still feeling pangs of guilt, as our discussions about two versus three healing came to an uneasy commitment, and I know that me leaving that team leaves us one healer down and bloats the DPS roster. If we need to, we’ll have to recruit another healer in the next tier. It is selfish of me – I’ve admitted I was wrong to switch characters. Not because I can’t do it. I think I was a pretty good paladin, and a pretty good healer. But it’s not what I love the most, not like my esteemed paladin friends – who live and die on paladin news and are really, some of the best folks I know. I was proud to be among them, and it has nothing to do with the class. I don’t want to attribute too much meaning to a video game, or a virtual persona, but there is a thin line between what you play and who you are.

I don’t want to have to write another entry like this in one tier, or two. No matter how much I think “I could help out” as a healer, I shouldn’t do it. When I stepped into that second raid, my eyes actually momentarily stung, I was so happy. The familiar sensation rolled over my finger tips as I spammed two like my life depended on it. This character is home. I regret the inconvenience it causes my guild and my guildies, but I need to be selfish about this. It was silly of me to think I could be as happy playing anything else. Every time I’ve switched has been to try and fill a niche or role we’re lacking, but I’m no good to anyone if I’m playing something but secretly and sadly miserable. Thursday’s raid was an absolute blast, and I don’t know if it’s because good moods are infectious or what but it felt like everyone had a better time. We have a secret paladin turned warlock going back to his paladin and I think he’s as happy as I am to trade his robes for plate. (He probably didn’t tear up about it because he’s far too stalwart for that, but I’ll bet he sang a song). I remember that this is the right thing to do every time I wonder what reputation grind I need to be working on (re-doing) now and then I remember, I don’t need to be re-doing any of them because I’ve already done them. This is my main we’re talking about. I’m baaaaack.

Oh, and P.S. – The cookies are going to be a rare and occasional treat, but when I make them, you better believe I’m going to make my Mom’s version.

P.P.S. – I used eight images in this blog post, but I probably had twice that many I could have used. More evidence.

Still Excited To Play World of Dresscraft

Last year, for the first time I paid for the Blizzcon “virtual ticket” so that I could follow along with the Blizzcon action as my Twitter feed was filled with excited attendees meeting up and having drinks. I really enjoyed the opportunity to see some behind the scenes stuff (the art and cinematics panels were my favourites!) and listen to the devs answer some questions.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t entirely fun to watch because some of the flippant replies earned my ire at the time. A woman who asked if we could have female characters that didn’t look like they’d stepped from the pages of a lingerie catalog was asked, “Well, what kind of catalog do you want them to have stepped out of?” You could see her face mirroring the feelings I had as this line of men mocked her question. Disbelief, followed by embarrassment, followed by resignation and a shrug as she stepped away from the microphone. By that time, the “answer” had degenerated into tasteless jokes about female Tauren coming from an agriculture magazine or catalog. It was disappointing to see that a serious question was not taken at all seriously. There are entire blogs devoted to the way female characters in games are portrayed. Women that actually play games? We’d like to know that our important organs are protected when we step into battle. Even gamers that are not women don’t necessarily like their characters to have exposed midriff for no real reason.

I’m digressing, though, because my post isn’t actually about this question, but another reply that made me roll my eyes.

The question and answer I’m referring to happen at around 9:39, so you’ll have to do a bit of scrolling to get there. For those who can’t be bothered, here’s a transcript: (also, big thanks to Wolfshead who wrote about this at the time of the last Blizzcon; the commentary on this entry helped me to relocate the question and answer once I knew exactly which developers were involved).

Woman asking question: I would like to ask for a closet. Something similar to a keychain. We’ve got all these wonderful festival items, and midsummer night, and all that stuff, and no place to put ‘em!

Tom Chilton: Yeah, that’s actually something that we had hoped to get in with Cataclysm. It’s really more a question of resolving data storage, and exactly what the interface is, and all that kinda stuff. But it is something we’d like to do at some point.

J. Allen Brack: What I’m interested in, is how excited are you guys to play “World of Dresscraft”?

At the time I was watching this, I tweeted: “Why yes, I AM excited to play World of Dresscraft, thank you very much!“

Now, almost a year later, as the next Blizzcon looms, much has changed. Lo and behold, we’re getting a virtual closet. We’re also getting the ability to modify our gear. I don’t know about you guys, but the reactions I’ve been seeing to this have been uproarious. My guild has been furiously running old content to get specific set pieces – and we’re not talking about RPers here. We’re a raiding guild. I’ve been saving tier gear all this time out of long abandoned RP pursuits, but also because I just like doing it. My bank is all dresses. Tom Chilton gave a really respectful and honest reply to a valid question. Bank limitations are a problem for pretty much everyone, I’d imagine. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much enthusiasm for an upcoming change before!

So I’d say: I’ll let the community’s response answer your question, Mr. Brack.

Right after I watched this Q & A, I started working on a small side-project for fun. Naturally, it could have only one name: World of Dresscraft. This is the result.

SO EXCITED. CAN'T EVEN TELL YOU.

Patch 4.3 not coming quickly enough for you? Help shorten the wait by taking your love of World of Dresscraft into the third dimension with a fully functional paper Millya doll (and assorted outfits!).

Millya is never without an outfit for every occasion. She has fancy dresses, spring dresses, Kirin Tor robes, Draenic Silk Robes (lovingly crafted for Modoru by his grandmother, they’re an heirloom, you know) and even an odd outfit she borrowed from another wizard she met once. There are outfits for fishing and baking, killing Horde, and of course some pyjamas with mage cakes and pink elekk slippers.

You can download the full-sized version here: Millya Doll (Colour)

and if, like me, you don’t have a colour printer, here’s a black and white version that you can colour yourself: Millya Doll (Black & White)

Both of these images should be suitable for output on standard (8.5″ x 11″) paper. I’d recommend printing them on matte photo paper, cardstock, or some other heftier paper. If you don’t have that option, you can always print out and glue them onto something sturdier. Speaking from experience, it is possible to assemble them using plain old’ printer paper, but she won’t stand up really well. If you have any questions or comments I’d love to hear them! The cutting is pretty fiddly, especially Millya’s hair, but it’s just the way her hair is. If you have access to an x-acto knife you might have an easier time using that for the cutting, although it is doable with scissors. I’d never made anything like this before so constructive feedback will be helpful. If I end up doing any more, I can make sure my next one incorporates any suggestions! After all, World of Dresscraft is a vast universe full of many possibilities!

How Playing My Alt Was Hurting My Raiding

I once wrote about how I think that playing alts can actually make you a better player. I still believe that to be true. If you’ve played a class, you’ll often better understand the cooldowns and abilities available. This helps with leading raids and organizing rosters. In PvP, it helps you understand how to counter another class because you know what to expect. I am a staunch advocate of alts! I love getting inside another class and seeing what makes it tick – or in the case of my paladin, making a list of spells with various iterations of Hand, Blessing, and Divine to try to keep any of them straight.

There’s just one possible pitfall, and I’m afraid it blindsided me. I think it’s a fairly common scenario. If you’re a raider, your raiding main is decked out in great gear. You take your main to raids, but other than raids, they don’t “need” anything. So… If you’re like me, you play an alt. That’s not necessarily a bad thing and of course, it all depends. There’s no right or wrong way to play a game, there’s only deciding what’s right for you. But if you are a progression raider looking to maximize your play, I’m going to suggest something radical: playing too many alts might be hurting you, as it was me.

On the surface, there wasn’t a problem. I mean, I wasn’t routinely at the bottom of the meters in raids. I think my performance was solid. I continued to enjoy raiding as a mage. I was just playing Vidyala, my paladin, constantly outside of raids. She was the one who needed Valor Points to upgrade her gear! She was the one who needed gear. I get a bit obsessed with upgrading gear, because it’s such a tangible improvement. I’ve geared alts to the teeth only to completely abandon them once they no longer “needed” anything, having hardly used the gear at all. I just like the completeness of it. It also happens that I enjoy healing, and I enjoy five-mans, and so I didn’t see any detriment to this alting – except when I started to take a hard look at my own performance. With the kind of gear I have, I felt I should be performing better. I’d grown complacent. I wasn’t pushing myself to excel and find ways to maximize my damage output, due in large part to the fact that I wasn’t playing Millya as much as I could be.

I decided that I wasn’t satisfied with the state of my DPS or my play. I wrote a whiny blog post (and deleted it, unpublished). I asked myself, “Do you want to put energy into complaining that your numbers aren’t where you’d like them to be, or do you want to put that energy into figuring out how to improve your numbers?” I checked up on mage resources to make sure that my theorycraft was current. I asked our guild’s other mage, Fsob, to look at my World of Logs. He is both my respected colleague and a wizard (har) when it comes to reading WoL. He gave me some valuable feedback that I used to plan my improvement, but the grunt work would have to come from me. I needed to play Millya as much as possible. One of my problems was not casting enough. Especially when a fight is new, it’s easy to get caught up in the mechanics and movement and not nuke as often as you should. To improve this, I was going to have to really focus on it.

I resolved that when I wanted to run a pug, I’d do it as a mage (thirty minute wait be damned). When I ran a BG, I’d do it as a mage. I ran dailies constantly. Tol Barad fears my name. The Argent Tournament is tired of seeing me. I was all mage, all the time – and I got results. Really and truly. Partly through a combination of research and practice, I improved my damage on heroic Valiona and Theralion by 1000 in just one week. I nearly doubled my number of “main nuke” casts, while keeping Scorch casts at the same amount. If you’d asked me before, I would have answered that I was “always casting” on the first V&T fight I looked at. But to see such a marked improvement in such a short time the following week floored me. I hadn’t received any significant gear upgrades in that time. I was just playing better.

"Thanks for killing my worthless minions!"

What Alts Can Do For You

(Doesn’t) Stand In Bad
If your goal is to maximize your raiding performance, in some ways alts can help you with that. Some things are completely universal – situational awareness, for example. High survivability is something I’ve always prided myself on, and that tends to be true no matter what I’m playing. As a healer, I can usually dance out of something oozey and painful very quickly. As a tank, I can neatly sidestep something coming my way. I believe situational awareness is a skill that can be learned, or at least honed – and you can practice that no matter what you’re playing.

You know the big spider forest in Tol Barad, and how those spiders will spit a big puddle of green goo at you? Did you know that you can usually start to move before the goo hits the ground so that it never hurts you? Half of situational awareness is anticipation. The same thing is true of the dark oozes that play a huge part in the heroic version of Maloriak (and it used to be the case for Trial of the Crusader and countless other raids). You can see the ooze flying at you and actually move before it hits the ground. Forget about getting out of bad – how about never getting in it? Of course, this isn’t possible for everything. There are some things that will hit you no matter what you do, and you really do have to move out of them. That’s something you can practice no matter what you’re playing!

At What Level Did I Get That Ability Again?
Another thing that you can do if you love alts and don’t always want to be playing at end-game is to level an alt of the same class as your main. I know tons of people who have done this! Vosskah has something like four warriors. I have two level 85 mages, as does Fsob. I know that Kurn just finished leveling another paladin. Leveling your “own” class can give you insights into it. The game has probably changed since you leveled up for the first time. Even if you don’t level as the same spec, it can be a valuable experience (and still scratch that alt itch).

I’ve had folks laugh at me for having two mages at maximum level. It’s kind of a running gag for people who wonder why you’d ever want more than one character of the same class, but it’s actually more common than you might think. If you’re playing a class at 85, it’s probably because you enjoy it. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that many of the best players I know have “multiples.” They are so passionate about their class that it’s no chore to make a second one. I sometimes wish I could “unlevel” Millya just to do some quests again and revisit zones that I liked. That’s not possible, but leveling another mage alt might be the next best thing.

Playing alts (especially in pugs) definitely accustoms you to the controlled chaos of a raid. Or at least, it accustoms you to chaos!

What Alts Can’t Do For You

I’m Sure Iceblock Is Around Here Somewhere
My pugging has honed my emergency button reflexes. My instincts have me reaching for Hand of Sacrifice so quickly; it’s like lightning! Unfortunately, that doesn’t help me whatsoever when I’m in a raid, because I don’t raid as a paladin. You might have lightning reflexes that are completely useless if your muscle memory isn’t remembering the right thing. (I also happen to have a lightning-fast Iceblock reflex, but that’s neither here nor there). Experienced alters often mimic a “basic” keybind set-up between all of their characters. So if you’re playing a druid tank or a warrior tank, your taunt is the same button (no matter what it’s called). This can help ease the transition between different characters when you do play them. I think there’s no substitute for playing your own character, though.

In a raiding situation, you can’t look down at your buttons and try to remember where you keybound your emergency heal or health potion. Well, you can – but you might be dead first. The faster you can instinctively reach for your key abilities and cooldowns without even thinking about it, the better you’ll do. You also learn a rhythm for when things are available. It’s weird for me to play my second-string mage, Tazya, because she has less haste than Millya and she feels sluggish. I think the effective difference is only a fraction of a second, but it makes a big difference when I’m playing her.

Being attuned to the nuances of your own class takes time, and here’s the thing… the time we all have to spend on WoW is finite. We all have other obligations, families, lives outside of WoW (hopefully!) It can be a fun diversion to level an alt for awhile, but if you aren’t 100% satisfied with your performance and your main, that’s time that you don’t spend improving and learning it.

Practice Makes…Probably Not Perfect, But Closer

I feel that I need to add a huge, honking caveat here. I’m not saying that “You shouldn’t play alts,” or “Playing alts makes you a bad player.” No. All that I am saying, from my own, highly subjective and biased personal experience is that I wasn’t playing as well as I wanted to, and I think part of the reason was because I was playing too many alts. That’s a decision that only you can make for yourself. If I was in a guild where I could casually top the DPS meters in a raid, I’d probably never have worried about it. It’s only when I thought, “I could be doing better,” and started to seek out reasons why that I hit upon this conclusion.

I’m a big proponent of doing what makes you happy; in life, in WoW, wherever. If hitting the fifty character limit is something that’s fun for you, why not do it? Cynwise wrote a great post about making a low-level PvP character just for kicks. If you get tired of them and want to delete them, no harm, no foul! (I’ve been thinking of doing this…with a mage, naturally). For me, what’s fun is progression hardmode raiding. That is my passion, and it’s one that is shared by the people in my guild. If I’m not doing the best I can, then I’m not just hurting myself, I’m letting them down too.

So lately, if you’re looking for me, it’s a pretty sure bet I’m flinging fireballs at trolls, or freezing Horde to the ground in a BG, or running around a grim island off the coast of the Eastern Kingdoms stealing fish from villagers. I’ve been digging through WoL to figure out ways to increase my DPS, and usually when I’m in-game I’m practicing. Diversions like learning PvE Frost as my raid off-spec have kept me occupied. Far from being bored, I keep finding out things I hadn’t thought of before. Besides, playing a mage is never a chore! It’s my favourite WoW thing to do. It’s been nice to see tangible results, too. I’m sure I will always have plenty of room for improvement.

What do you think? Are you a one-character sort of person, or do you wish Blizzard would increase the ten-character per server limit? Has playing an alt helped you improve your main character’s play in an unexpected way? Zinn over at Jinxed Thoughts wrote some great tips for dedicated alters while I was still working on this draft, and the irony wasn’t lost on me! I’ll admit, I still have and love playing a bunch of different alts, I just intend to temper my playtime with equal dedication to my main!