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.

mage casting frostfire bolt

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 stacking crit over haste or vice versa). All the more this is an issue because some mages are actually finding that for this reason, some items in naxx are superior to some items in Ulduar.

In the issue of mana recovery, the devs are more inclined to just lower the cost of the main nuke spells (fireball, frostbolt, frostfire bolt and arcane blast) rather than do something to mana gems and evocation.

The devs are also thinking of changing Spellsteal because it’s sort of become just a regular dispell rather than something cool. They’re thinking of changing it so that the mage can only steal buffs that are beneficial to him/her. This could be a buff in the sense that you’ll steal something useful instead of say an attack power buff that doesn’t benefit you at all. But this could also be a nerf in that if you wanted to steal that attack power buff to weaken the enemy, you won’t be able to. They’re also considering a glyph that allows the mage to steal two buffs at once.

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 of a fixed number. Below are the details:

Molten Armor now causes 170 Fire damage when hit for all ranks (Up from 75/130/170) and also increases your critical strike rating by 25% of your spirit.

Glyph of Molten Armor — Your Molten Armor grants an additional 15% of your spirit as critical strike rating. (Old - Your Molten Armor spell grants an additional 2% critical strike chance.)

mage casts molten armor

So while mages finally have use for some of that spirit that comes with their gear, it’s probably not the kind of change they wanted. The most obviously affected are those people who don’t really stack spirit since their crit chance will go down when using Molten Armor compared to what it currently is in live. This includes those people who do a lot of PvP since PvP gear doesn’t have a lot of spirirt and crit is pretty important in PvP. In PvE, it seems like this is also a problem since mages will be forced to stack a lot of spirit just to match the crit they currently have.

I think this would have been a nice idea if spirit just added to the existing 3% crit chance molten armor gives, not replace it. After all the idea was just supposed to give a bonus for having the spirit and not to force mages to stack it.

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 a lot of Spirit on it that doesn’t help them much at the moment. We want to improve that. We are not going to turn mages into a class that stacks Spirit at the expense of all else, and we’re not going to let Spirit provide “free” dps to mages that elevates them above the average dps of warlocks — unless they are far below warlocks now, which does not seem to be the case. If you think it *is* the case, please provide some data or math so we know where you’re coming from. source

If you could help them think about other uses for Spirit, what do you think you can come up with? here are my suggestions. Of course not all of them are meant to be implemented, only hopefully the most promising and reasonable ones.

1. Modify our mana gems so that they give extra mana equal to X% of the mage’s spirit (maybe 10%?)

2. Spirit benefiting Icy Veins somehow (maybe more haste or a longer duration based on a % of the mage’s spirit)

3. Maybe spirit could increase the damage done by mirror image.

4. Maybe spirit give mana shield some extra absorption.

5. Maybe increased effects from mage armor based on spirit

These are just some ideas I came up with and they sound pretty strong or strange or unecessary but it could probably kickstart some kind of discussion about the possibilites for the use of spirit for mages.

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 this. As always, you can find the latest PTR notes here so you can check it out if it eventually shows up.

Druid

* Ferocious Bite: This ability now only uses up to 30 energy in addition to its base cost.

Hunter

* Kindred Spirits (Beast Mastery): This talent now grants 20% pet damage at max rank.
* Serpent’s Swiftness (Beast Mastery): This talent now grants 20% pet attack speed at max rank.

Pets

* Lava Breath now reduces the target’s casting speed by 25%, down from 50%.
* Poison Spit now reduces the target’s casting speed by 25%, down from 50%.
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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 on a way to give frost mages Ice Lance “Shatter combos” in PvE.
# We are also working on more survivability for Fire spec in PvP.
# We are also working on making Spirit a more useful and interesting stat for all mages.

PALADIN

# Blessing of Kings – this spell is now a base ability trainable by all paladins.
# Exorcism – this spell now causes damage to all types of enemy targets. However, it always critical strikes undead or demon targets. This change should make sure paladin damage doesn’t drop when going from Naxxramas to later tiers of content.
# Shield of the Templar now causes your Avenger’s Shield and Shield of the Righteousness to silence targets for 3 sec. The old damage bonus of this talent has been folded into Holy Shield, Avenger’s Shield, and Shield of the Righteousness.
# Ardent Defender, Improved Hammer of Justice, One-Handed Weapon Specialization and more have had their ranks reduced.
# Guarded by the Light – no longer reduces the mana cost of shield spells, but now has a 50/100% chance to refresh Divine Plea duration.
# Judgements of the Just – now also reduces the cooldown of Hammer of Justice by 10/20 seconds and increases the duration of the Seal of Justice stun effect by 0.5/1 second.

HUNTER

# Consumable ammunition has been removed from the game. Arrows and bullets no longer stack, but are not consumed. Ranged attack speed bonus gained from quivers and ammo bags will be preserved in a different capacity.
# A new tier of hunter pet talents have been added. In particular, this allows Beastmaster hunters to improve their damage per second (DPS) with their 51 point talent.
# Hunting Party – this talent has been reduced to 3 ranks and also grants a passive bonus to the hunter.
# Piercing Shots – this talent has been changed. Your Aimed, Steady and Chimera Shots cause the target to bleed for 10/20/30% of damage dealt for 8 sec.
# Sniper Training – this talent has been changed. After standing still for 6 sec, you gain a 2/4/6% damage bonus to Steady, Aimed and Explosive Shot.
# We are also looking to add additional trap functionality to Survival.

DEATH KNIGHT

# Gargoyle and Unholy Blight have swapped talent positions. Gargoyle’s damage has increased and runic power cost per time has decreased.
# Pestilence – this spell no longer causes damage but just spreads diseases. Blood Boil is intended to be the general area attack, and has been changed to be castable on targets with no diseases on them, but does extra damage if diseases are present.
# Unbreakable Armor now absorbs a flat amount of damage that increases as your armor increases. It no longer boosts armor.
# The Frost tree has been shuffled. Among other things, PvP talents such as Endless Winter are closer to the top of the tree where Blood and Unholy death knights can access them.
# Sudden Doom – this talent now procs a Death Coil rather than requiring an additional button click. It works similarly to shamans’ Lightning Overload.
# Magic Suppression and Blood of the North have been reduced to 3 ranks for the same benefit.
# Blood Gorged now grants armor penetration instead of expertise.
source

Probably the most surprising change of all is removal of consumable ammo, because while this affects hunters the most, this also affects rogues and warriors since they use ranged weapons too, but especially warriors since they use ranged weapons to pull. I have a warrior friend who uses a throwing weapon since he didn’t like carrying ammo. In the next patch, he won’t need to worry about it. The removal of consumable ammo and the fact that they’re preserving the haste bonus quivers and ammo bags will give means that they’ll finally have space for another bag. This makes locks the only class that still won’t be able to have all their bags assuming they use a shard bag.

Paladins also get some surprising good news with the change to blessing of kings finally being made a baseline spell. There’s still no word about what talent will replace it but I’m quite confident it’s going to be something cool even if it might not be something as amazing. I’m thinking it’s going to be like when they replaced the mage iceblock with icy veins. Another surprising but needed change is the one to Exorcism (I wonder if it’s the same for the AoE version, Holy Wrath). Making this spell affect all enemy types with a special 100% crit chance to demons and undead is something that’s really going to make grinding easier and will help their dps.

we saw destruction locks will be a replenishment spec in the next patch and now frost mages will too. I think that they’ve really defended their stance stance that replenishment is mandatory quite well now. instead of just getting a replenishment like effect while the water elemental is up, now they get it even while it’s not up. It looks like death knights are going to get quite a mess of talent shuffling but it seems like it’s all for the best. The changes seems to be all buffs and will allow for more versatility in spec building.

There it is! Your chnages for the next patch have been unveiled and we now have a lot of reason to be happy in anticipation. This should make your game time a bit more pleasant while waiting for the patch to come.

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 bosses.

Screenshot or it didn’t happen? Well the people behind this project did much better. They provided a video! Here’s the video below. This makes me really proud to play a mage!

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 assume gnome frost mages who get turned into Hyldnir will see their ice barrier even lower.

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 of the greatest mages around like Jaina Proudmoore went to study magic. It feels quite awesome as a mage that the “guards” you talk to to ask for directions are fellow mages, the citizens of the magical city. This association with Dalaran makes it great to be a mage. First of all, while others have to wait until level 74 to enter the magical city using the regular way (which I still currently am not familiar with since I just port in or use the flight path), mages get a quest at level 71 to learn to teleport there. Another benefit of being a mage is that you start out Friendly with the Kirin’tor, which is the faction of mages in Dalaran led by Rhonin. While others have to grind out some rep, mages can purchase the Kirin’tor tabard the moment they get there.

Another thing I was surprised with is the fact that the Mage is the only class in the whole game that has a trainer in Dalaran. It makes sense since it’s where people study to learn magic but that really makes things more convenient while leveling. While other classes will have to go back to their trainers in Azeroth, mages can stay in Northrend even to train. Perhaps another cool thing about being a mage in the expansion is the fact that at level 75, they get their new conjured refreshment - something makes things even more convenient for them. Basically it’s an item like the manna biscuits from the Ritual of Refreshment, a combined food and water item. Sucks though that we only get the new rank of Ritual of refreshment at level 80 still.

For these reasons, my mage feels quite special this expansion so it’s a great time to be a mage!

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 stun targets for a few seconds didn’t sit well with me. It didn’t make things any better that the target had to be frozen to even be able to use Deep Freeze. Wow it’s a glorified hammer of justice! But when the devs finally added a decent damage component to the talent, I felt that it was finally ok by me.

Now that Deep Freeze doesn’t deal damage again, I feel like saying good bye to my plans for using a deep frost build in the expansion and probably saying hello to that arcane build I was looking at when I first thought about abandoning frost. But I really hope that the devs put the damage back to Deep Freeze since I really was looking forward to using it and I just love frost. I don’t know what they were thinking by making this change and it really just makes me sad that they make such stupid decisions so close to when Patch 3.02 might come out.

Down with the no damage Deep Freeze!

At level 80, mages get a cool new spell called Mirror Image. It basically makes 3 copies of you and starts attacking enemies for 30 seconds with lower damage attacks. It seems like at this point, all the copies cast frostbolts and nothing else.

This is a cool spell for mages to have since it’s almost like having another Water elemental at your disposal. For mages who aren’t frost, they will definitely get that feel of having a water elemental. I can already see Frost mages using this together with the water elemental to up their damage output in raids as well as having another “oh crap” button to use when you need extra damage to take down something you can’t by yourself.

If only your copies can do some more of the things you have in your arsenal like fireball, fireblast, arcane missiles and maybe even a few talents that you have can also affect them.