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[WoW] Mages: Spreadsheets and macros are for warlocks.
Henroid
Mexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered User regular
Mexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered User regular
Informative Mage OP!
Last Update: July 2nd, 2010
A while ago I decided to take the responsibility of keeping up the mage (and shaman) thread here, noting any patch notes coming down the line, and more importantly and advice repeated often by the community (talent builds and such). Since having quit the game, I've done a super bad job at that. I'll try to work on keeping things up to date but I need you guys to PM me whatever info / links are relevant.
As of April 9th, 2010, everything should be considered out of date unless it has a date mark next to it.
Cataclysm Info and Previews: (updated July 2nd)
The NDA has been lifted on Cataclysm now that the expansion has gone from Alpha to Closed Beta. While I could keep up a log here on things as they come, I'm going to save myself - and you! - the trouble and give you two very useful links. WoWTal is MMO Champion's new Talent Calculator site, and the second link is a compilation of all Cataclysm info for the Mage, including the preview from this past April.
FAQ: (touched up May 28th)
Recommended Talent Builds: (reset button pushed May 28th)
Resources For Mages: (recommended UI mod links, websites with info, etc) (updated May 30th)
Latest News / Patch Notes: (out of date)
This will only track news regarding upcoming or recently implemented patches / changes.
Nobody here but us chickens!
Last Update: July 2nd, 2010
A while ago I decided to take the responsibility of keeping up the mage (and shaman) thread here, noting any patch notes coming down the line, and more importantly and advice repeated often by the community (talent builds and such). Since having quit the game, I've done a super bad job at that. I'll try to work on keeping things up to date but I need you guys to PM me whatever info / links are relevant.
As of April 9th, 2010, everything should be considered out of date unless it has a date mark next to it.
Cataclysm Info and Previews: (updated July 2nd)
The NDA has been lifted on Cataclysm now that the expansion has gone from Alpha to Closed Beta. While I could keep up a log here on things as they come, I'm going to save myself - and you! - the trouble and give you two very useful links. WoWTal is MMO Champion's new Talent Calculator site, and the second link is a compilation of all Cataclysm info for the Mage, including the preview from this past April.
FAQ: (touched up May 28th)
Q: "What should I spec for leveling?"
A: Frost seems to edge out as a favorite, with fire close behind. Both work well. This is likely to change to all specs being viable in Cataclysm.
Q: "Why is Arcane spec good starting at 64?"
A: At level 64 Arcane Blast is learned, and it is a staple of arcane spell casting. It can be argued that even prior to the spell, the spec is good to level on. That would require nullifying channeling loss through talents, since arcane missiles will be your life for a while.
Q: "Why should I play a mage?"
A: Because it's fun to either kill things before they get near you or fun to AoE a group of mobs with little consequence. Take your pick.
Q: "What about the mana issues?"
A: There's no such thing as mana issues really. Mages have access to mana gems, conjuring their own drinks, and evocate (which has significantly improved over the course of the game's history) to regenerate their mana. Downtime may be a 'problem' at lower levels, but as you level higher it will go away (unless you blow your load mana-wise in some PvP shit). In groups, replenishment?
Q: "OMG we can polymorph things into bear cubs and penguins?"
A: Yeah, but those are for bitches. Real men polymorph things into turtles.
A: Frost seems to edge out as a favorite, with fire close behind. Both work well. This is likely to change to all specs being viable in Cataclysm.
Q: "Why is Arcane spec good starting at 64?"
A: At level 64 Arcane Blast is learned, and it is a staple of arcane spell casting. It can be argued that even prior to the spell, the spec is good to level on. That would require nullifying channeling loss through talents, since arcane missiles will be your life for a while.
Q: "Why should I play a mage?"
A: Because it's fun to either kill things before they get near you or fun to AoE a group of mobs with little consequence. Take your pick.
Q: "What about the mana issues?"
A: There's no such thing as mana issues really. Mages have access to mana gems, conjuring their own drinks, and evocate (which has significantly improved over the course of the game's history) to regenerate their mana. Downtime may be a 'problem' at lower levels, but as you level higher it will go away (unless you blow your load mana-wise in some PvP shit). In groups, replenishment?
Q: "OMG we can polymorph things into bear cubs and penguins?"
A: Yeah, but those are for bitches. Real men polymorph things into turtles.
Recommended Talent Builds: (reset button pushed May 28th)
recommended builds forthcoming
Resources For Mages: (recommended UI mod links, websites with info, etc) (updated May 30th)
Scorchio 2
It gives you timers for many mage buffs and debuffs. It tracks improved scorch, living bomb, winters chill, mirror images, hot streaks, and brain freezes. Allows you to easily see if improved shadowbolt is active in place of the improved scorch debuff. And also allows you to make sure there is a slowing debuff up on your target for your torment the weak talent.
Power Auras
Very flexible mod which you can set up to alert you visibly and audibly when certain buffs or debuffs are on you or your target. Many mages find this mod useful in alerting them when hot streak or brain freeze procs. It can also be set up in various ways to track AB stacks.
LivingBombTracker
Cool little mod for mages who cast living bomb with a mouseover macro. Displays a timer for the living bomb currently on the target you are mousing over.
Recount UI Mod
This UI mod tracks damage and your DPS rating, good at measuring and testing your spell casting order.
Omen Threat Meter UI Mod
This UI mod tracks threat. OP has not used this himself since he knows yellow around your portrait in the base UI means "stop!"
Elitist Jerks Mage PvE Info
If you want to know details regarding mage specs and stats associated with end-game raiding, crunched down with theorycrafting like a motherfucker, go here.
MMO Champion
Not mage specific, but if you want to get the latest news yourself on the game, go here. Their talent tool is quickest to be updated on new patch info, and includes glyph positions.
WoWHead
A very clean index of all WoW information possible, including quests, spells, talents, tradeskills, etc. They have a talent tool, which updates slowly to patch info, but probably loads faster and looks purdier than anything else. Also fuck Thottbot.
Latest News / Patch Notes: (out of date)
This will only track news regarding upcoming or recently implemented patches / changes.
Nobody here but us chickens!
Henroid on
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A question, would taking the two points out of the 6yd range talent in this Arcane spec and putting one point in the hit talent, the other in the pushback talent, be that bad of an idea? Having to gear for a little less hit sounds nice and I don't want to have to rely on the presence of a Paladin with conc aura to prevent pushback, but I can't find anywhere else to get those talent points from.
Frostfire Raid Spec: 0/53/18
Built around Frostfire Bolt and it's stupendously cool talented crit coefficient, Frostfire is the most mana-efficient of the current Mage specs. If you've got Replenishment in the raid, you'll never have to pop a mana gem or evocate. The rotation is relatively basic, as long as the Scorch debuff is maintained, all you have to do is keep your Living Bomb rotation and fire of FFBs, with intermissions to spend those sweet, sweet Hot Strike Procs. Recommended Glyphs: Glyph of Frostfire, Glyph of Molten Armor, Glyph of Improved Scorch.
Fire Raid Spec: 18/53/0
As always, Fireball continues to be a good spec for Raiders, with its high base damage making up for it's lower-than-FFB crits. The build also provides Focus Magic, a great crit buff in general, but especially cool for helping out fellow Mages in the raid who are FFB. More mana intensive than FFB, but if you've got Replenishment, it eases the trouble. Recommended Glyphs: Glyph of Fireball, Glyph of Molten Armor, Glyph of Improved Scorch.
Arcane Raid Spec: 57/3/11
Arcane Blast just won't quit, even with some major changes, and some serious mana-intensiveness, Arcane has shown itself to be excellent. There's just something about super fast Arcane Missiles that's a lot of fun. AB is a huge mana sucker, so be prepared to take full advantage of your mana gems/pots, as well as that 2 minute Evo. Recommended Glyphs: *I don't know, someone more in the know with Arcane could say*
I'd link the builds, but Wowhead's currently down, so I can't put them together, and I prefer to use their calculator.
As far as numbers go, I don't know about Haste, Crit, or Spellpower mininums, but the hit numbers for the specs are 263 for raidbuffed FFB, 340 for raidbuffed Fireball, and 185 (if I did my math right) for raidbuffed Arcane. That's assuming you have all pertinent hit talents.
Battle.net
But for an arcane mage, glyph of arcane missles (25% crit damage), glyph of arcane power (3 seconds longer), and glyph of arcane blast (3%) more arcane damage added are the main ones. Some of the generic mage glyphs are good for all specs, though (molten armor, for example).
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
I've got no respect for people who buy it. I had to earn that shit on my mage. I've run into the occasional person who doesn't realize it's been in the game all this time.
I'm taking a shot at the dark in what you intend each spec to be:
Frostfire: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=oZfVc0RhIuVubhstbIccoc
Fire / Arcane: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=of0Vck0cZ0Ec0RhIuVubhst
Arcane: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=ofxVcz0IzxGu0tedcZbhcbo
Also, if nobody objects to those builds, I'll add them up into the OP.
They really should have just removed it from the game and made it a feat of strength.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
A thousand times yes. They do it for other cosmetic shit, why not this? But they need to not announce it in the patch notes or else every motherfucker is gonna make a dive for it.
however, if you have a lot of classes that can aid in mana regen (say for example you have replenishment, BoW, and a mana stream totem) then its utility goes down.
EDIT: also, yeah, i'd probably take a point out of Arcane Stability and the point out of slow. Arcane Flows is too good to pass up. not to mention on the frost side you should have the two second tier points in ice shards and not permafrost.
300 gold? I have not seen it ever go for cheaper than 2k even in Vanilla wow
Are there any new glyphs for mages in 3.1?
As for enchanting if it's your mats it's free and if you tip me cool
Man, it sucks not having an enchanter in the guild. I mean, we can't even DE stuff in raids and whatnot.
For me, I allways thought of getting enchants as a bunch of Busywork, and thought it only really mattered for your Weapon. getting Gems isn't an issue, as our JCs are cool guys, and we actually have JCs in the guild, so I can just grab mats and have em cut away for me.
My Main problem with the Arcanum, is, my Hat iosn't that great, and there might be a lot of headpieces dropping soon, as we got down Thaddius and Sapphiron, and We are gonna be killing KT before too long. and I don't want to have to dump gold on that Arcanum, only to get a COwl of Winged Fear, and eventually my t7 head.
Now a lot of classes can solo the boss. I hear people having a hard time selling them even for triple digits.
As for enchanting cartels. Yes, a thousand times yes. It's one of the contributors to me ending my subscription. There's a guy in my guild who pretty much owns the dust market. He actually stopped because he ran out of things to buy. We're talking 6 figure gold.
And 50 pages of one dust auctions.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
It's more than just busywork. It makes up a HUGE chunk of damage. No excuses on the helm, man. Get the WG helm or something, get the Arcanum in it, then get the Crit gem instead of run speed. The shoulders could stand to be enchanted too, and there aren't really any upgrades there.
If it's cheaper to buy the singles. buy them that way. Skipping out on enchants for gear that might possibly maybe drop isn't being frugal, it's cheap.
It's a lot of DPS (the head one is less than the weapon, but not by much) It's a big upgrade and you don't know the difference because you just wave it off as 'too much effort'.
On my server, a single Infinite dust fluctuates from 15-25g. a Greater COsmic Essence is sitting at 50-60 g a piece Dream shards are more like 120g a piece, and I'm downright scared to look at Abyss Crystals.
More like 5g/10g/20g/150-160g.
Scrolls to boot, if you didn't feel like paying "extortionist" enchanters.
Xbox Live: Kunohara
No shit, i know what you said. It's a 5 minute run from Deathknell to the UC. I got those prices as I posted them. Log in now while they are 1/5 the prices you posted, hurry!
How could they not be as cheap? They are the live prices on your server. And they aren't some brave undercutter cartel busting. Not one item is listed at any of the prices you posted right now.
Edit: or anywhere close for that matter.
(seriously I have been on here like 10 minutes this is not the grim world you promised me)
I rarely, if ever buy things during the dead of night. because I know I won't find an enchanter to do them this late usually.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
S-so... hold onto them.
You are just fucking with me, right?
www.wowhead.com
I'm jealous of Plate-wearers, sure, they have worse repair costs, but dammit, they can make $texas with mining. and I'm a Tailo9r/Alchemist for RP reasons. Plate-Wearers however can just mine stuff up and make a killing, especially if they JC.
Any class can be a miner/JC.
Also, I could rattle off that shit from memory.
Infinite Dust - 24
Greater Cosmic - 2
Lesser Cosmic - 1
Crystallized Water - 1
That's boots, bracers, chest, and gloves.
that's just for the cheap-o enchants. the high end would run more, but shit, something is better than nothing.
Plus Arcanum and Shoulders.
Fine, don't upgrade them. Still no excuse to not enchant and gem correctly, especially if you are gonna bitch about other peoples' gear.
Then drop your stupid "RP" skills and make a gatherer. If you are not going to gather, quest, or do dailies, I really have no idea how you can make the kind of money you need to be anything more than a leech in your raids.
(unless that is what you are RPing as)