Thank you, Warcraft

It all started with a mage named Milya…

Anyone who knows me knows that I am the worst at secrets. If I have a secret present for someone, I’ll probably give it to them early. This, by the way, applies only to my own secrets. If someone else tells me something in confidence, that’s their thing and I cannot spill the beans. So over the summer I have been simply buzzing with keeping this secret to myself. Thanks to the time I spent writing at WoW Insider, I was asked to contribute to the official Warlords of Draenor strategy guide! The mage section is my work, and many of the class section writers are people you may know from Twitter or having written in other places.

But of course, since doing this involved access to secret information (or at least a general knowledge of the game’s release date before it was announced) we also had to sign an NDA as part of the process. So I kept it to myself even though I was really excited. It’s the first time I’ve ever written something for publication. I still can’t show you any images of the book itself or its contents (shh, secrets) but you can pick up a copy for yourself on November 13th if you’d like one. To tell you exactly how I feel about this whole process, first I have to tell you a story. Really, it’s the story of me and World of Warcraft.

I’ve told this story a few times, so bear with me if you’ve heard it before, but back in 2008 when Voss and I started playing WoW…it had been a really long time since either of us had played any kind of MMO. We’d met playing Ultima Online back in the ’90s but we both stopped playing that and had never picked up anything like it again. Neither of us had played the RTS Warcraft games so we didn’t have much of a tie to those, either. We were both peripherally aware of WoW, of course (who wasn’t?) but had never consider playing it because we knew how much you could get lost in a game like that. But a confluence of factors led us to change our minds. Voss’ dad had just been diagnosed with cancer. Things in my work life weren’t really going well. Actually, they weren’t going anywhere. I’d quit my clerk job working at a registry to focus on my art and try to have a career with that. But I didn’t really know where to start and honestly, I was floundering.

I don’t remember who suggested it. But we decided to try playing World of Warcraft. I think we were both looking for an escape. Because I believe in studying for anything important, we went to the store and bought the World of Warcraft guide. It had overviews of class information, dungeon maps and guides to quests. We pretty much read it cover to cover. It didn’t stop us from being complete noobs about some things, but I remember poring over that book (especially the maps) in preparation for our first dungeon run. We knew group content was serious business and we didn’t want to be terrible. I rolled a priest because of that guide. It said that if you enjoyed being helpful to your group, a priest was a good choice! Of course, as you know, I didn’t stay a priest. But I was one at first.

I look back on the version of myself from 2008 who bought that guide and I have to smile. If you’d told me then, that six years later I’d be writing a mage section of the most current guide, I wouldn’t have believed you. Those intervening years contain thousands of words written in blog posts (some of which I was paid for), hundreds of hours spent drawing and painting commissions for people I met through the World of Warcraft community and later working on From Draenor With Love with my friend Rades. I’ve made some of my closest friends thanks to WoW, re-imagined what my career could look like, and saw it develop in unexpected ways. I honestly owe so much to WoW. Now, another thing to add to that list is that a few weeks ago I got a cheque in the mail that marks the first time I’ve been paid for published writing. It hit me unexpectedly, but I held it and tears sprang to my eyes.

I haven’t yet received my copies of the actual physical thing. And I don’t mean to make too much of a big deal out of this, I mean, I didn’t write and publish a novel. But I wrote and it was published and they paid me, and it’s meaningful to me. If you asked me when I was a kid what did I want to be “when I grew up,” I would’ve told you I wanted to write and illustrate books. I meant children’s books (the only books I knew, at the time). I wouldn’t have expected this. But I’m learning that some of the best things are the ones you didn’t anticipate at all.

I’m just really grateful to have had the opportunity, and I’m grateful for everything this community has brought to me. That’s really what I want to say. Just a big thank you to everyone in this community who ever encouraged me or struck up a friendship with me, or helped me with their own work. Thank you to Anne Stickney who asked me to write for the guide. Thank you to Perculia, whose data wrangling helped me actually write it. I guarantee you that my section of this guide couldn’t have been written without Perculia and the other great folks at Wowhead. Now that I’ve met her in real life, I can’t check something on Wowhead without thinking of how hard Perculia works and appreciating that. It’s the passion of all the people involved in the WoW community that keeps me playing, writing, drawing, and putting so much of myself into this game even six years later.

I’m sad that I won’t have the chance to meet or visit with anyone at Blizzcon this year, but still really glad I was able to go at all. This Saturday we’ll have some local friends and guildies over – friends we never would’ve met if it hadn’t been for this blog. I can’t say anything more than that, really. Things happen in mysterious ways and I can’t be anything but ridiculously thankful for my good fortune. If you get your hands on a copy of this guide, flip through and appreciate all the work that went into it from many talented writers! I’m glad to count myself among them and I really appreciated the experience.

All good things

I can talk about this here now because the news is public: due to budget cuts, WoW Insider has had to let much of their feature and columnist staff go. That includes me and all of my columnist friends at the site. I’m glad that many people will still be writing there, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t sad on my own behalf.

Writing for WoW Insider has been a great experience for me. I was able to write for a much wider audience as well as having to be much more critical when it came to my writing in terms of both content and length. Voss says I’m long-winded, which is probably not untrue. I tend to get rambling and then before I know it I’ve written three essays instead of one. Staying within the word constraints (1000-1500) was a great exercise in restraint for me. It’s forced me to be more concise and also to make calls about what is really necessary and what isn’t.

I’ve also had to reconsider the rambling structure of what I write. Overall, I think it’s made me a stronger writer and I’m incredibly grateful for that experience. Of course, another effect of writing there was that Manalicious suffered in terms of updates and I do regret that. Between the pressures of updating a weekly comic, a personal blog and a bi-weekly article about mages, this place has collected a bit of dust.

The future

Now that I will not be spending the time writing for WI, I intend to redirect that passion back into this site. I’ll be posting much more regularly as well as possibly overhauling the layout and updating some things. (My least favourite part of maintaining a blog, if I’m being honest with you. I’m not very technical).

But the fact of the matter is that I still want a venue to talk about mages, my favourite class and the thing that really keeps me logging into World of Warcraft along with the awesome people in my guild. I will, of course, still write about the old standbys here too: whatever is going on with Business Time (still recruiting, by the way) as well as art and personal anecdotes where applicable. I also talk about baking things. This isn’t WI and it has a much smaller audience and is part personal blog as well. I may also post fiction from time to time, though I’ll be tagging it so people can skip it if they like. I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.

On a related note, as I’m losing a bit of my income I would like to step it up with the business side of art – commissions, etc. I’ll have more info about that for you soon. I’d love to do another set of Blizzcon badges for anyone who is planning to go this year. Those were so much fun and I loved doing them!

In terms of what am I going to actually be writing about: I have my third article about challenge modes more or less written. It didn’t fit well within the word limits and is mostly my personal notes about each CM, but I think it’ll fit very nicely here. I’m also eagerly awaiting news about our talent changes that is bound to drop anytime now. Celestalon’s hinting has me in great suspense!

So if this is your first time dropping by Manalicious, hello, welcome, have a cookie, pull up a chair. Things are a little more conversational here and I try to respond to comments when I can. I also have a strict “don’t be a jerk” comment policy and I will lay the ban down on someone really quickly if they come here and get out of line. Be polite and you are welcome. I’m Canadian, after all. To folks who’ve been reading here for years, even when content was a bit sparse, thank you. Without you I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to write for WI at all and I am so glad that I did.

Here is a picture of the cake I baked the day that I heard The News about the layoffs. It’s this yellow cake recipe that Sally (Sarah Pine from WI) gave me. What’s brilliant about it is that it’s an old-fashioned, one bowl affair. You sift the dry ingredients into the bowl and then just toss in the milk and butter and let it mix. I set a timer and let the stand mixer go to town on this bad boy. The end result was delicious, very flavorful and moist. I frosted it with a chocolate sour cream frosting from another recipe book I had. It was the perfect cake for a bad news day. Here’s hoping that things will start looking up from here on out, though, and best of luck to my former and current colleagues at WoW Insider. It was fun working with you. I wish we could have some cake and beverages in person. Instead, just know that I raise my glass to you all!

Draenei: A complete set

If you’ve read my blog pretty much at all, then you know how I feel about draenei. I have many reasons, though I feel that it was articulated best by my coworker Matthew Rossi. I just love them. I was joking with Rades the other day that I have a definite draenei bias. I feel a kinship with other people who identify with these strange, unique travelers. The past few months I’ve been on a leveling kick as I wanted to get the “five different classes at level 90” achievement. As more of my characters got to 90, I realized something.

I want a complete set of draenei. One of every available class at level 90. I’m already halfway there (and close on a few). This wasn’t necessarily by design, it’s just that every character I have that can be a draenei is one. Let me introduce you to my ladies.

Millya – 90 Mage

Pretty well-known around these parts. My tea drinking, fireball slinging scholar, Millya. She is my main-main. She’s also the best dressed. Because I’ve spent so much time gathering clothes for her. Heck, I made her a paperdoll. She’s been playing “World of Dresscraft” since I first created her. She is a conjurer of cakes and destroyer of bad guys. She’s already level 90, obviously.

Vidyala – 90 Paladin

If Millya is my primary main, Vid is a strong second. I don’t know what it is about people who like mages, but we also seem to like holy paladins. I don’t have any statistical proof here, except that many people I know who play either holy paladins or mages as their main characters often enjoy the opposite class as an alt. Vid of course is the character in From Draenor With Love. She’s a military brat with a strong interest in engineering, particularly things that fly. I’m currently working my way (slowly) through the legendary quest chain to get her a fancy cloak for no real reason since all she does is LFR. Okay, I admit it – I like the way the cloak proc looks for healers.

Jun – 90 Monk

My newest 90, a young upstart that stole my heart. I started leveling a monk for Business Time’s Stay Classy achievement and made her a Brewmaster on a friend’s suggestion. I didn’t know how much I was going to love Brewmaster. I have a rough idea in my head that Jun was an initiate of the Auchenai but was one of many young draenei that left when things started to get weird. She despaired of ever completing her training and led a quiet life thereafter, abandoning notions of being a monk. She was working on the Exodar when she heard of this new continent and the Pandaren monastic traditions. While being a brewmaster as such struck her as a bit unorthodox, she was determined to learn whatever the monks had to teach her and made it her mission to get to Pandaria. I tanked with her all the way along – even for pugs – and had a blast. Unfortunately she has stalled a bit at 90. I’m not sure what the future holds for her, as I don’t want to tank LFR or anything like that. I might go solo old content for transmog gear – leather wearing draenei! Just putting together a transmog for her as she leveled was a blast.

Sofira – 90 Priest

Sofira is the first of my draenei characters that doesn’t really have a story. The character itself used to be a night elf and it was the night elf who had all the background. When we moved to Moonrunner I “killed” my night elf and she was reborn as a draenei. She hasn’t really done much, though. She wears the best gear from her heyday – when I raided as a priest in Naxxramas. She’s my bank alt. The least I know about her is she’s a quiet personality, soft-spoken and more comfortable with inventories and numbers than she is with other people. Probably something bad happened in her past (sounds like a draenei story, right?)

Sarika – 85 Warrior

Sarika, much like the rest of my draenei at this point, doesn’t have much of a story to her. She’s level 85 and I’m dreading leveling her to 90 because I haven’t played a warrior in ages and really don’t know what I’m doing. I think she has a rough and tumble demeanor, though. She’s kind of a mercenary or sword-for-hire, without strong allegiance to any person or faction. I’ve got her on hold for a bit until I feel ready to quest through Pandaria again.

Corycia – 82 Shaman

Corycia was a character I did roleplay a little bit at one time with a friend. Her name was different then but it was the same character. She’s not very fleshed out, though. She was my Herald of the Titans character! She also has art of her. It’s funny, when I did the art it was because I thought it was the only way she’d ever get to “wear” the shaman set you see her wearing above (I think it’s T6?). Little did I know that after Wrath it would be easy to go back and farm it up for her, and transmog lets her wear it! I love that set. She is currently leveling through Cataclysm content.

Ziana – 59 Death Knight

Taking on this project meant that I had to actually bite the bullet and make a death knight for real. I have already documented here how terrible I was at being a death knight the first go around. The worst. I’m afraid to report that I haven’t gotten much better. I had to ask Voss to sit down and help me with what was going on with this. Like I told a guildie, I specced Blood and was pretty much just hitting “the red abilities.” (They’re blood-related, right?) He pointed out that I should hit the blue ones too because of draenei blood, which is a valid point…

Mairix – 23 Hunter

My little hunter and her moth, Grimnebulin. She doesn’t have any other pets yet. Playing a hunter is surprisingly fun, I benched her ages ago (before focus was a thing, that’s how long ago) and haven’t played her since until recently. She’s obviously got the longest way to go before she’s 90, but I’m told that hunters practically level themselves. She does seem to kill things pretty quickly.

So that’s all of my draenei – I have 4 level 90s, an 85, an 82, a 59, and a 23. My deadline for myself is I’d like to have them all at 90 before Warlords drops. I think that’s pretty doable, considering that two of the four that need leveling are already 80+. Death Knights thankfully start at 55 and hunters are pretty quick, so I think I can get it done! Maybe along the way I will try to think of more story for the characters that don’t really have one, or maybe not, I’m not sure.

It’s a fun little side-project, anyhow. I’ve known people who wanted all of the races of a particular class, or one of each class, etc. This seems like a fitting way to pay tribute to my favourite behooved race. Incidentally, Warlords fever has hit Azeroth. Ever since WoD was announced, when I’m leveling alts nine times out of ten the other characters I see are draenei. Everybody wants a draenei for heading back to Draenor!

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.

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 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.

The Hybrid’s Dilemma: Part II

Way back when, in the ICC days, I wrote about the troubles I faced as a hybrid player. At the time, I was playing a moonkin with a side of resto. You can read that post first if you like, I think a lot of it is still relevant to the problems that hybrids continue to face. It’s not entirely comprehensive, this is more of a personal viewpoint thing.

After my experiences as a hybrid moonkin, I swore that it wouldn’t happen again. When I switched to my mage, I was very “mage for life,” and I poured my efforts into her achievements and her mount and pet collecting. Unfortunately for me, even over nine thousand achievement points isn’t an effective deterrent when it comes to character switching (and it was a big reason why I knew I should never be a contender for something like a legendary weapon – I am too fickle). That is why, at this point in time, I find myself coming back to the same issue – only it’s as a paladin.

Tens and the Hybrid Dependency

It must be tough to design encounters effectively for a ten-person raid. Any raid has a set number of “required” tanks for an encounter, although it can be flexible. Some encounters can be tanked with one less tank or one more tank depending – For instance, we did Heroic Halfus with two tanks and three healers, but I’ve heard of guilds that preferred to do it with three tanks and two healers. It all comes down to what you have available to you. A raid team can only be made stronger by having flexible people willing to change roles when need be, but at what cost? At what point does asking players to switch roles become unreasonable, untenable, or even counter-productive?

The biggest obstacle to this is roster size. The majority of ten-person guilds are smaller (deliberately so). Some guilds will maintain multiple tens teams and perhaps a bigger bench, but by and large we don’t have the luxury of world first guilds that could just bring x number of available moonkins because their abilities trivialize an encounter. Sometimes we can have recourse to people’s alts, but for the most part we just make do with what we have.

The design of encounters in this tier has not been friendly for juggling the number of tanks and healers. As a friend of mine has complained, very often the second tank was expected to switch to DPS because a fight simply didn’t require another. Rhyolith is like this, as is Majordomo. An ongoing issue for us after the heroic nerfs was how many healers does a fight need? Historically, we’ve switched between three and two healers at different times and for different content. ICC was largely two healed up until the point where that wasn’t possible, and the roster was adjusted for three healing. We’ve stayed with the three healing model up to and through Firelands, when especially in later Firelands it becomes evident that three healers aren’t necessary or even possible for quite a few of the fights.

That leaves us with a problem – four active, main-spec healers on our roster and only two spots for healers on most nights (with the exception of Beth’tilac, and perhaps it will become more two healable for us but at the moment it’s more of a three healer thing). What this means is that on any given night, we either have a healer going off-spec DPS, or we bench a healer. I don’t think our healers signed up to raid for just one night a week. The other option is for a healer to switch roles entirely. All of these solutions hang on one question – what is the Dragon Soul going to be requiring in terms of healer and tank balance? We’re trying to plan our roster for the new tier of content but we aren’t sure what we should be aiming for.

The Unhappy Ret

We’re fortunate in that some of our players enjoy tanking and DPSing fairly equally. Our excellent druid is happy to boom it up with his laser beams for some fights, and our paladin tank plays ret without complaint. As a moonkin, I liked to heal (but I didn’t actually like to moonkin). Now I am a main spec healer, and I’ve been finding out that I don’t especially enjoy raiding as retribution. Actually, that’s an understatement. I’ve been doing it so much that I’m starting to loathe it. I’m not really great at it, so it’s stressful. I’ve chased heroic Rhyolith’s legs around for hours. Each week I’ve been Ret for Alysrazor – last week saw me dying to a fire sprinkler just before the fight ended. This week I didn’t die, but my DPS was the lowest by a great margin. When I’m DPSing as ret, I always have a niggling feeling in the back of my head that if I would step out for another (better) DPS, it would make fights easier, and I wouldn’t be holding the group back. I love DPSing. I don’t love ret DPSing. And as was my problem previously as a hybrid, I want to be the absolute best I can at what I’m doing. Off-speccing Ret and DPSing a fight doesn’t allow for that. The only solution would be to DPS even more as ret, which just pigeonholes me into a corner where last week I reached the breaking point and turned to Voss and said: I COULD get better at ret. But I really don’t WANT to.

I could practice art of warring until the cows come home, but ultimately it’s not why I’m playing a paladin. Now this is an entirely personal thing – nobody’s been “making” me play ret, but the fact is that we have all these nights with too many healers, and so somebody’s got to do it – or else healers sit to allow DPS to step in. I realized that I would rather sit than work on H Ragnaros as ret. It’s just that simple. I don’t learn the fight from a healing perspective as ret. I probably will hardly even see what’s going on in the fight itself, because I’m too busy hitting the buttons and hoping my Inquisition uptime is high enough and looking to see what’s procced and what hasn’t and what oh that’s fire it’s burning me ow.

I realize this probably sounds very “I’m taking my ball and going home,” and petulant, and I hope you’ll bear with me there (as I insist and reiterate that this isn’t a problem with my guild or anyone in it). I’ve come to the realization that doing most of the fights in a spec I don’t like instead of a spec I do like has been killing the fun for me. It’s not even, “Oh, I’m lukewarm about this,” I logged off last Wednesday and I was probably the closest I have ever been to saying: I am tired of raiding. It is the opposite of fun for me.

So nobody should have to play a spec or a class or a role they don’t like. I wouldn’t do that to someone else, why would I do it to myself? After taking the weekend while hardly logging into any of my main characters (and enjoying a lovely Thanksgiving, thank you) I realized that I had to make this known to both our other officers and my guild. They aren’t mind readers. It’s certainly not fair to them to stew quietly, getting frustrated with my position until one day I’ve just had enough and I don’t even want to raid any more.

The Hybrid Advantage

I still think that being a hybrid is awesome. Having them on a roster is even better! But you absolutely need to know that the people in the hybrid positions are willing and enjoy doing it. Some people are cut out to be hybrids in both aptitude and attitude. They genuinely have no spec preference. I guess, when it comes to my hybrid roles, I’m not really one of them. I’d rather be a holy paladin. But the way that encounters are designed, it leaves a great big question mark for ten person guilds in particular about each tier. Will their tanks be spending a lot of time DPSing? Will their healers be twiddling their thumbs, or will someone who is DPS need to swap to heals for a fight or two? We just don’t know, although the raid cooldown nature of the tank T13 bonuses seems to suggest that there will be a lot of damage going out. I will be happy to go into the next tier as either a healing paladin or a mage, but I don’t want to go as a ret paladin. Alts tend to slow raiding down so it’s not advantageous to swap from one alt to another depending on role needs. Our raid needs hybrids – the question is, who will they be? We never have been able to find an awesome moonkin; the biggest thing for us right now is that our roster is actually over-full. Only two of our healers are willing to DPS (out of four) and I know the others feel guilty about it. But really, why should they have to DPS? Is it a better model to just start sitting healers for a “real” DPS?

If I move to a DPS role it means fewer available DPS positions. We may be doing some more shuffling, with having someone else move to tank and our current tank move to DPS, which would open up a position for me to do that. Overall, though, it’s frustrating. Speaking as someone who loves playing a “pure” DPS, it’s unfortunate that we have nothing to recommend us but our DPS, when the smaller raid size is so favourable for hybrids. Our raid would probably be perfect if we had an ele/resto shaman, a boomkin/resto druid, and plate DPS that was willing and able to tank. We have a fabulous elemental shaman, and he just doesn’t like healing. I can’t blame him! I don’t like melee DPS. I can’t expect him to do something he doesn’t like and probably wouldn’t be good at, and therein lies the problem. Finding 10-15 people with the appropriate specs, personalities, skills and willingness to swap roles is an almost indescribable juggling act. We shouldn’t be unduly penalized for having two mages, or two paladin healers, or whatever. Except that we are. One of the big reasons I am thinking of switching is because two paladin healers for one ten man team is often not just less than ideal, it’s nearly impossible. Neither of us has the raid healing strength to fill that niche. The upcoming changes are working to address that, but it remains that our holy paladin would be better off healing with any of the other three types of healers by his side – not another holy paladin. That’s frustrating, and it’s disappointing to me personally because I love paladin healing.

That’s not really what this is about, though. What it comes down to is that it’s usually better to have a hybrid, but when you’re a hybrid that hates your other spec you aren’t much use as a hybrid, and then what do you do?

I hope you’ll forgive the somewhat ranty nature of the above post. I have put off writing about this because I didn’t want to be too much of a whiner (hence the radio silence for the past two weeks while I quietly seethed). I want to do the best thing for my raid team, but I also want to do the best thing for myself, because if I’m not having fun then my priorities are severely skewed.

Edited to add: Beru over at Falling Leaves and Wings wrote an excellent post this morning about this very problem, from a broader overview and 25s perspective. It behooves you (har) to go check it out!

100th Post: Paladins, Mages, and Something In-Between

So it’s been about three months now that I’ve been raiding as a paladin, and it happens that this is my one hundredth post at Manalicious! I’ve been waffling about what to write, considered doing a blogaversy style-retrospective of my favourite posts, but I think I’ll save that for my actual blog’s anniversary. I did also want to mention I have been horrible about replying to comments lately, and I’m going to try to get better about it. I do read and enjoy every single comment, and usually I try to always reply to them, too.

On Being A Paladin

This is a preview of a graphic I've been working on for ages with intention to put it on the blog. Secret unfinished image!

It’s ironic and sad for my husband, Voss, that he has such a rivalry going on with paladins. Every Friday when he is able to tweet more, he picks a fight with the paladins on Twitter. It’s actually hilarious to me that most of the people he talks to on Twitter are 1) Blood Elves and 2) Paladins. The cherry on the paladin sundae is that he’s married to someone who also plays a paladin. But, I don’t feel bad about it because being a paladin is fun. I am really starting to settle in to raiding as one. The healing style is in my fingertips, if you will. I have fixed some issues and bad habits and I think I’m doing a better job than ever before. So that aspect of being a paladin is going well.

I think I make better use of my toolbox. My gear has been steadily improving, although both Ragnaros and Domo have stubbornly refused to drop tier tokens while I’ve been in the raid – so now I’m at the point where I expect we’ll be getting heroic shoulder token upgrades and neither myself nor my priest friend will be able to upgrade them because we never got the normal ones. Naturally, I’m unhappy about this. I don’t really have a solution in mind, but four-set doesn’t look like it’s in my future anytime soon. I’ve heard that it’s really not “all that” anyway, so perhaps that’s fine. My fellow paladins may disagree.

Paladins have many neat things that I wind up missing when I am playing a mage (and vice versa). The two speed bursts make up for not having Blink, in my book, while in Retribution spec the Long Arm of the Law gap-closer makes me happy. Playing melee is interesting and it’s definitely been a change from the DPS I’ve been used to in the past. I find myself reaching for Crusader Aura when I am playing any character that does not have Crusader Aura. (Despite world-wide flying, there are still places like the Molten Front where it is incredibly useful).

On Having Divided Character Loyalties

I eased off on trying to re-complete achievements for Vid, realizing that I was burning myself out by trying to regain ALL THE THINGS that Millya already had. Instead of trying to rebuild a pet collection, I collected some more pets until Millya was able to get the Celestial Dragon. Right now I’m doing Brewfest stuff for both of them, but the only thing Millya needs to do is get drunk in Dalaran and then fall off something, so she just needs Brewfest clothing. Vid hasn’t done the achievements at all, but Brewfest is one of my favourite holidays so I don’t mind doing them all again. I also did just enough to get my druid (the original drunkard of my “crew”) a Brewfest Keg Pony.

FOR PONY.

I think I’ve come to the point where I am resigned to the fact that I’ll never have the one character with all of the achievements and things the way that some people do. (Voss, for instance, has all of his raid achievements on Vosskah because he never plays anything else). Me? I will have different achievements depending on the character, and I may go back and re-do some if I feel the urge but I can’t let it bug me too much because I’m too variable to only ever play one character. One of my guildies was teasing me because I said during the My Epic Heals podcast that I would probably play my mage again, and that she is my “true” main. What I really mean, but can’t explain, is that my strongest loyalty lies with her, raiding aside. Raiding is only one aspect of the game, after all. I’ve been playing Millya devotedly for three years, while Vid has only even existed (at max level) for about 1-1.5 years. But her name is also my online identity and I first started blogging while writing about her so… I guess, what it comes down to is that they’re just different. I’m sure I could never abandon either of them. I didn’t expect Vid to become my raiding main, but she has, and she is awesome.

On Being A Mage

My avatar on Twitter.

The Molten Front dailies suck. They really do. The second time around, they suck in a way I can’t even describe for fear of being sucked into a whirling vortex of suckitude. I’m doing them again with Millya because she likes achievements but seriously. 150 Marks to reveal more dailies. Then another 150 until you’ve done the same thing. Then 125…three times over? It just seems excessive. Even the first time, towards the end I was really losing steam with these dailies. And I am someone who really likes dailies. I did the Isle of WTF for weeks back in the day. Anyway, Millya will get some more pets and a mount, but I reserve the right to complain about it a bit at the same time. (I know, I do it to myself).

As far as maging goes I have delved into LFD a bit more with Millya as Vid routinely caps VP through raids primarily. I don’t actually mind the DPS wait too much. I do mind the way that groups often treat DPS, like expendable (and stupid) movable artillery. If you’re unclear about which Hatcher you want killed, you don’t get to yell at me when I kill the “wrong” one when you weren’t smart enough to go pick up the hatchlings, regardless of where they spawned! And the reason we wiped on the last boss is not because I “used Time Warp in the Lynx phase and should have saved it for Dragonhawk.” It’s because you are a terrible tank that wasn’t using your CDs, and the healer was a pretty undergeared and slow druid who let you die. Also, when one DPS does 40% of the damage in a run, you should stop giving him/her a hard time.

Most of my LFD runs go well, and are fun. After healing a lot of the time I find it’s nice to relax back into exploding things with fire in the face, fire on the ground, extra big fire, little fire…! By contrast, when I’m soloing and running around the world it will usually be as Frost. My water elemental and I, Speak, are an inseparable team. I actually did go Frost on the last boss in ZG when our group was struggling, though. The added control on the Spirits made a big difference, and I wish I had thought of doing it sooner!

By the way, my elemental’s name is Speak because of this video a friend inflicted on me years ago. Now, I pass it on to you. Don’t blame me if it gets stuck in your head, though. I dun wanna war. Yee, c’mon.