My new PvP spec

I mentioned in my last post that I was looking to start PvP. With that in mind, and also noting that I am terrible at playing Frost PvP, I put together my own Arcane PvP build. Been winning a lot of duels with it, but I haven’t seen how it stands up in arenas yet. Read on for details.

New spec: 3.1, and progression on mage.

The top three raid specs pre- and post-patch are exactly the same. That said, their raid utility and DPS order has changed. Which spec is now on top, you ask? Read on to find out more.

A post born from frustration…

I invite any opposing viewpoints to comment on my blog. Please remain semi-respectful, and I’ll do the same in my responses. I invite open discussion on this post, and would love to take the time to talk with anyone about WoW and how it affects people’s lives.

I’ve been surfing the blogosphere recently, and have been reading posts from various bloggers related to WoW…and what really, truly amazes me is the sheer amount of NEGATIVITY directed at the game…from people who haven’t even played it. In addition, these articles usually contain pretty significant factual errors.

Click on through for my take on these blogs.

Leveling another alt; arcane magery.

Well, I’ve done DPS and healing in a raid environment, but have never experienced tanking. To that end, I’ve been leveling a paladin as Prot – I got her to 68 today, so I’m pretty excited to finish up the last 12 levels and move on to at least heroics, if not actual raids.

On another note, I’m not sure what to think of arcane right now. It’s still a nice DPS tree and I absolutely love it, but it has NO mana-efficiency. I’m thinking, however, that I may keep it and switch my Frostfire spec to a deep Fireball spec. I hear the DPS from that spec is just silly now.

As an actual question, though, I would ask whether Student of the Mind is worth picking up now that Spirit scales (albeit badly) with spell crit. Any thoughts?

3.1: how I specced

With 3.1 yesterday taking so long to come up, I had plenty of time to think about what I’d do with my spec – whether to do PvP/PvE specs (I wrote my own PvP spec which I’ll post sometime) or whether to spec into 2 different PvE specs for raid utility. Eventually I decided to spec 57/3/11 and 0/58/13 for my two specs. I recommend this approach for any raiding mages – having an Arcane (non-Scorch) and a Frostfire/Fireball (pick one depending on gear =D) spec so that you can provide the Scorch debuff if there are no other mages available (or if there are only mages that have specced Arcane PvE and another PvP build), while still being able to do great DPS with Arcane if it’s needed – perhaps if you have mages that can trade around doing Arcane or a Scorch spec or something, so that you don’t have mages getting stuck into one role.

I suppose it might be best to mention here that PvE speccing hasn’t changed much for mages, to my knowedge. I’m still putting out about the same DPS numbers that I was before – with the same gear.

Ventured into Ulduar last night – post coming soon.

Update on Molten Armor

Since this seems to be currently the most popular search topic on the site, I’ll put out a slight update.

Some of the theorycraft in the last post was a bit off as compared to the final changes. Now, Molten Armor increases crit scaling on 35% of spirit rather than 25% – making this a confirmed buff for Arcane mages that use Molten Armor, and a possible buff for Fireball or Frostfire mages, especially as Spirit starts getting put on hit gear too.

Certainly not a nerf, though. =) That said, the rest of the post still applies.

Vegeta, what does the scouter say about his page views?

THEY’RE OVER NINE THOUUUUUUUUSAND!

(Sorry, it had to be done. Gotta allow a silly mage his silly Internet in-jokes sometime, right?)

Fireball Spam just hit 10,000 page views. Thanks, everyone, for helping to make this blog a success.

3.0.9: Arcane 57/3/11 rotation; Sartharion; 4 Horsemen 7-man strat

I posted a while back on top 3.0.9 specs. However, the rotation I posted for Arcane was a little off, in that it’s SLIGHTLY less DPS by being slightly easier to use. For those hardcore enthusiasts (like me) who enjoy the extra DPS possibility, the actual top-DPS rotation is Arcane Blast x3 -> (Arcane Missiles, if Missile Barrage has procced)(Arcane Barrage, if Missile Barrage hasn’t procced). The only problem is, of course, that you should be casting nonstop, so you might miss a Missile Barrage proc if it procs off the last Blast in your rotation.

Over the last couple days, I’ve been a 10-man group that’s been attempting 10-Sarth+3, the hardest encounter in the game. So far our best attempt has been 20% on Sarth, a feat that we’ve duplicated 5 times now. I’m hoping we can kill Sarth before the patch comes out! I’ve been Frapsing, so expect a nice, quality video when we down him.

Bosskillers.com now lists Cloudy Day as tops in “Fewest killed with” for Four Horsemen 10-man, with 7 people. We did it first, so no secret now as to how we did it! Basically, we had 1 afflict lock and 1 holy paladin in the back, swapping at two marks. The holy paladin beaconed himself and healed the lock. In front, we had 1 tank and 1 healer on each side, with an extra DPS so healers wouldn’t have mana troubles, and also wouldn’t be in there for so long.

VIDEO IS UP!!
http://tinyurl.com/d4ntc5

1. Click on the URL.
2. If the video fails to load, wait 3-5 minutes and try again.
3. Save the video to your hard drive somewhere. Streaming doesn’t work well usually.

My recent hiatus…again

Had spring break this past week, so I’ve been separated from my good computer. While I was away, CD got 2D Sarth – so we really only have one fight left. Exciting business! I’m pretty happy to be getting back on WoW – having a week away from the guild has really just not been fun at all. With Ulduar coming soon, I’ll have to be on top of my game, too.

Next couple months will likely be busy for me – I’m hoping I can find time for WoW, but I may find myself cutting back…which might not be a terrible thing. Guess I’ll just wait and see how it goes.