Blue poster Crygil became the bearer of bad news to the mage community as he posted the announcement of the hotfix to change a Hot Streak mechanic concerning Living Bomb. Hot Streak will only proc off non periodic damage
and only off Fireball, Fire Blast, Scorch, Living Bomb, or Frostfire Bolt.
Blizzard hit two birds with one stone here, the first being solving the bug concerning the periodic damage from Frostfire Bolt and Fireball being counted towards breaking the Hot Streak. As you know you need two consecutive crits from the spells above to trigeer it. The second is that since …read more

Not too long ago, Blizzard released a Q&A feature on the shaman class to give players an idea about how the development team views the direction of the class. Now it’s time to join Ghostcrawler once again to do the same thing for the mage class. Below are the most important points but I still recommend you read the whole thing here.
First of all the development team is going to look at all three mage trees and gear so that as much as possible a single stat isn’t valued over another for a certain spec and worthless for another (like …read more

Just the other day, Ghostcrawler hinted at giving mages some more use for all that spirit that was quite plentiful in a lot of mage gear out there, even the ones coming in Ulduar. Warlocks get a bonus from spirit for their life tap and fel armor abilities but Ghostcrawler wanted mages to get a non-damage modifying bonus. Well according to MMO Champion, the new PTR build 9704 actually changes the spell Molten Armor to do just that. the crit bonus of both Molten Armor and the Glyph of Molten Armor now gives the crit bonus based on spirit, instead …read more

It’s really funny that I was thinking about this issue just a while ago. A few patches ago, we saw the change that more Intellect would increase the effect of Spirit. If you look at Warlocks, they have a few more uses for Spirit such as more spell power from Fel armor and more mana from Lifetap. As for mages, there really isn’t anything else that makes mages want to get some spirit aside from the mana regen they give. Apparently Blizzard knows this and might do something about it as suggested by Ghostcrawler in his statement below.
Mage gear has …read more

MMO Champion tells of a patch 3.09 that could be coming out this week. Since I haven’t tried checking the PTR or even if it’s up at all and the PTR forum is currently out for me, I can’t really check if this is really true. There isn’t even a patch 3.09 PTR notes so that makes the situation a bit worse. In any case, there’s something out there and it’s going to change a few things, even glyphs. Some of the change entries I’ve seen before as legit changes for the future so that might lend some credence to …read more

The last installment of the class changes for patch 3.1 are here and like the first two parts, this one didn’t disappoint. In fact this final edition has some pleasant surprises that should be making a lot of people rejoice by now. In this final edition, we get to see the changes for paladins, mages, death knights and hunters. You can find the previous editions in the following links: Part 1 | Part 2
MAGE
# Improved Water Elemental – this talent has been removed and replaced with a new talent that grants Replenishment (similar to Shadow priests).
# We are also working …read more

One of the things being talked about now in the WoW community is the feat done by a gnome mage who soloed the Military Quarter of Naxxramas. It sounds like such an impossible feat as it is but then it’s actually even more amazing since this wasn’t 10 man Naxx but the 25 man one!
Apparently, the mage the talents Incanter’s Absorption and Burning Determination together with some buffs that were stolen using Spell Steal to do the job. Using that technique, the mage was able to avoid getting silenced too often and also have the DPS to down the …read more

Unless you’re really really new to Storm Peaks, you’ve most probably seen these tall blue skinned ladies called the Hyldnir. When you’re in their area called the Brunnhildar Village, you take on their appearance and do quests for them. Since I’m a frost mage, I use my ice barrier spell a lot and what I found out while using it as a Hyldnir either sucks or is hilarious depending on how you view the situation. Baically what happens is ice barrier uses my normal model even while tall and blue skinned, leaving my ice barrier only reaching my waist. I …read more

Mages rock! I’ve been saying this ever since I started playing one in 2005 and stuck to it ever since. Some of you may agree and others may not. But whatever you might think about mages, I’m sure a lot of you will agree that the Wrath of the Lich King expansion gives mages some pretty special treatment. This treatment is the reason why I say that it’s a great expansion to be a mage.
I noticed a few things so far that make mages feel quite special. The most obvious is the neutral city of Dalaran which is where some …read more

The frost mage community (myself included) is clearly disappointed, shocked and angry at the latest change to the 51 point frost talent Deep Freeze that came with the Wrath beta build 9014. The current version of Deep Freeze no longer deals damage, pretty much reverting the spell back to the piece of sh*t it was when the talent trees first came out.
One of the reasons why I had some reservations about playing my mage in the expansion especially as frost spec was because of Deep Freeze. The fact that it was a 51 point talent and did nothing but …read more