Awesome Spell Idea for Wrath

On the mage forum, Adiema suggested a sweet new mage spell idea.

While an enemy player is casting a spell, "Intercept Magic" steals the current spell being cast and kicks the pool for 2 seconds, once the spell has been stolen you have 2 minutes to cast it. Casting speed for the stolen spell remains the same as it was for the player it was stolen from. 3-5 min cooldown.

That would be freakin' awesome. :-)

Mage Arena Weapons

When looking at arena weapons, you are confronted with a choice between getting a two-handed weapon or getting a one-handed weapon plus and offhand. Here is a breakdown, for each of the three seasons.

Season 1:

	2 Handed	1 Handed + Offhand
Stamina	48	49
Intellect	35	32
Spell Hit	21	0
Spell Crit	36	0
Resilience	25	33
Damage	199	218
Cost	27,000 Honor + 40 AV	34,200 + 40EotS

Season 2:

	2 Handed	1 Handed + Offhand
Stamina	55	54
Intellect	42	37
Spell Hit	24	15
Spell Crit	42	0
Resilience	29	45
Damage	225	258
Cost	3,261 Arena Points	3,717 Arena Points

Season 3:

	2 Handed	1 Handed + Offhand
Stamina	62	61
Intellect	46	41
Spell Hit	0	17
Spell Crit	46	0
Resilience	29	44
Damage	247	282
Spell Penetration	35	0
Cost	3,750 Arena Points	4,275 Arena Points

Hopefully this helps in your decision making.

Proximo Doesn't Show Up

For the longest time, I've had trouble with the addon Proximo. One day, it just completely stopped showing up.



I searched and searched, completely unable to find out how to fix it. Finally, today, I emailed the addon's creator, Grayhoof. Here's what he said:

When not in the game, delete the Proximo.lua file from your saved variables folder. It should be in:

C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\WTF\Account\ACCOUNT_NAME\SavedVariables

I tried it, and it worked! Special thanks to Grayhoof for personally responding to my inquiry. The world needs more people like you. :-)

For those of you who don't know, Proximo is an addon that helps you in arenas. It gives you a frame (shown above), that gets populated with your opponents. Whenever you, or anyone on your team with Proximo installed, hovers over or targets an enemy in an arena, that enemy gets added to the list. You can then select any enemy by clicking on his/her name in the Proximo window.

Resistance?

So the other day I was running Heroic Botanica. We downed one of the early bosses, and an epic gem dropped that had something like +4 resist all, or +6 resist all, something like that.

Four out of the five of us in the group uttered their own variation of "/sigh, crap lootz" etc.

And then a mage in the party said, "I'm rolling need on that. I'm resist specced."

I lol'ed at first, and then all of a sudden, he rolled /need! I thought to myslef, "Is this guy serious?" So I inspected his gear, he had all sorts of resist gear, and all his sockets were filled with resistance gems!

Everybody else in the party was thinking the same thing: wtf is resist spec? The mage went on to say that he resists lots of spells, and gets mana back every time he does (Magic Absorption talent).

Has anybody seen or heard about that before? There's no way that build has any kind of success!

Is there?!

Another Change to Gems

Mages' mana gems are receiving another change in the next patch. The range of the mana returned will be narrowed, giving us a more consistent boost. On live realms, the best gem gives 1136-1364 mana. The PTR previously showed a change: it was increased 1800-3000. Now it has been changed again to 2340-2460.

I think this is a buff. Consistency is almost always a good thing in general. Right now, when raiding, we mages (and other mana-using classes) will wait until our mana pool is 3000 away from the maximum before using a [Super Mana Potion]. That way, even if the pot gives its maximum return of 3000 mana, we receive the full benefit.

With the upcoming changes, we can use these gems when we are 2500 (2460 to be exact) away from maximum mana. Couple that with the other mana gem change (each gem having three charges), we will be potting earlier in boss fights, but I think we'll be potting about the same number of times.

Overall, I think we are only getting consistency, which will serve to make us better raiders.

How to Begin PVP

Over on WowInsider, David Bowers presents an interesting conundrum. The gist of the article is that characters who hit 70 usually have greens and blues. If they want to PVP, it can take a very long time before they stand a chance against other characters who have been PVPing for a long time because these veterans generally have multiple epics. He goes on to ask, "How would you advise a new level 70 to get into PvP?"

I think there are a few solid ways that fresh level-70 characters can jump into the PVP game.

1. Do battlegrounds. The team in a battleground is much bigger than an arena team, so the fact that you are personally undergeared doesn't have as large an effect. Also, be sure to do the daily battleground quest for additional honor.

2. Craft your own epics. Choose professions according to your class, and craft away.

3. Do arenas anyway. They don't care arena gear "welfare epics" for nothing. Get in the ring and battle with the big dogs. The points will come slowly at first, but they will add up. Your feelings might get hurt by how badly you'll do, but you definitely will not regret it.

4. Socket your gear with Stamina gems and Resilience gems. I highly recommend [Steady Talasite]. They sell for 20g+ on the Auction House though, so if you can't afford those, I suggest [Solid Azure Moonstone].

Other than that, you're on your own! Good luck, and don't give up!

Trainable Ice Block

For the longest time, we mages have been pigeon-holed into one spec depending on whether we wanted to excel at PVE or at PVP.

If we wanted to PVE, we needed to spec fire. Reason? Arcane had terrible mana efficiency and Frost had poor DPS.

If we wanted to PVP, we needed to spec frost. Reason? Frost had Ice Block, which gives us survivability so we can last longer than 3 seconds in an arena.

This will all change in a couple weeks when the 2.3.2 patch hits.

Eyonix writes:

There are a few nice improvements we're making to the mage class in patch 2.3.2 (a small patch that will be on the public test realms soon) and we wanted to share them with you. First, we'll start out with two changes affecting all mages. Ice block will become a core ability, trainable by all mages at level 30. Additionally, conjure mana (rank 6) will restore 1800-3000 mana and will now have three charges, meaning you can use it three times before having to create a new one.

To be sure we're clear here, yes, the same cooldown will still apply between usages. :P

Cold snap will be moved to Ice block's position in the talent tree and its cooldown will be reduced. As a side note, it will no longer reset the cooldown on fire ward. Moving in to Cold snap's spot will be a brand new ability called Icy Veins. This new ability will decrease casting time for all spells by 20% and increases the chance that chilling effects freeze the target by 25%. It's an active ability, lasting 20 seconds and has a 3 minute cooldown.

The 2.3.2 patch notes are up, further clarifying these imminent changes.

That's right. Trainable Ice Block. Pretty soon, fire will be a viable choice for arena PVP. This will be a HUGE change for non-frost mages everywhere.

And how about Icy Veins? The cast time bonus will give a much-needed boost to frost DPS for PVE. The freeze chance bonus will be amazing for PVP.

I have more on the mana gem improvements here.

What do you think about these mage changes?