09-18-2007, 01:04 PM
Bored, I'm playing alts. I have a Mage alt named Bolty (wow, so original) who back in pre-TBC days was frost. Having not played him in so long, he still didn't have talents selected since the last Mage talent reset. I decided to have some fun with a fire mage and spec'ed him thusly.
Fire mages are oodles of fun - lots of maneuverability, huge damage crits, and plenty of CC options with Blast Wave and Dragon's Breath make him what I'd expect from a Mage. Running around blasting the hell out of things. With crappy gear from quests only, he still 3-shots most mobs. Must be a sight to see an epic'ed out fire Mage blow things up.
Anyway, this guy's probably not ever going to raid, so he's just enjoying soloing talents. But I'm in a situation here where I can't see where else to spend my talent points (9 to go) that'll have significant benefit.
My options seem to be between:
1) Improved Scorch. I look at this talent and think, "pure raiding talent." No soloing mob lasts long enough for it to be worth me applying Scorches to it when I'd rather open with a Pyroblast. By the time I've stacked up enough Scorches to get the 15% benefit, the mob will be beating on me, and it's just not efficient. It's a group talent. In 5-mans, nothing but bosses live long enough for me to get that benefit, and depending on the length of the fight it may still be more worth it for me to straight up nuke.
2) Playing with Fire. Probably a good soloing talent. Most mobs when soloing don't use magic effects, so in the long run getting the 3% damage boost is a good tradeoff for taking 3% more damage occasionally. Counterspelling casters also helps mitigate that downside. Ok, so that's 3 points there.
3) Molten Fury. I look at this talent and think, "pure raiding talent." Raiding bosses at less than 20% health still live a long time, but nothing else really does. When you're 3-shotting mobs solo, you don't think "ooh boy, he's close to death, now I do 20% more damage!" It's more like "lol he's at 40% health, time to blow him away with a fireball keke." In other words, when a solo mob is at < 20% health, he's dying in one shot anyway.
4) Improved Flamestrike. Hmm, 15% more crit chance on a spell I don't use too often, but combined with Ignite it would be phat when I do. Little help?
5) Frost tree. Mmm, nothing really looks that great. I use Frostbolt when I'm facing a fire immune mob. I've already got the key Elemental Precision talent.
6) Arcane tree. Improved Arcane Missiles is tempting, as it would make AM my alternate spell when facing fire immunes instead of Frostbolt. It could also open up Arcane Concentration if I wanted to dump more points in Arcane to pick up Clearcasting.
So potentially I could dump 5 points into Arcane and then use 4 points into Playing with Fire, Improved Flamestrike, Molten Fury, and Improved Scorch. Else, I dump all remaining 9 points into fire talents only.
Either way, what do you think I should go with?
-Bolty
Fire mages are oodles of fun - lots of maneuverability, huge damage crits, and plenty of CC options with Blast Wave and Dragon's Breath make him what I'd expect from a Mage. Running around blasting the hell out of things. With crappy gear from quests only, he still 3-shots most mobs. Must be a sight to see an epic'ed out fire Mage blow things up.
Anyway, this guy's probably not ever going to raid, so he's just enjoying soloing talents. But I'm in a situation here where I can't see where else to spend my talent points (9 to go) that'll have significant benefit.
My options seem to be between:
1) Improved Scorch. I look at this talent and think, "pure raiding talent." No soloing mob lasts long enough for it to be worth me applying Scorches to it when I'd rather open with a Pyroblast. By the time I've stacked up enough Scorches to get the 15% benefit, the mob will be beating on me, and it's just not efficient. It's a group talent. In 5-mans, nothing but bosses live long enough for me to get that benefit, and depending on the length of the fight it may still be more worth it for me to straight up nuke.
2) Playing with Fire. Probably a good soloing talent. Most mobs when soloing don't use magic effects, so in the long run getting the 3% damage boost is a good tradeoff for taking 3% more damage occasionally. Counterspelling casters also helps mitigate that downside. Ok, so that's 3 points there.
3) Molten Fury. I look at this talent and think, "pure raiding talent." Raiding bosses at less than 20% health still live a long time, but nothing else really does. When you're 3-shotting mobs solo, you don't think "ooh boy, he's close to death, now I do 20% more damage!" It's more like "lol he's at 40% health, time to blow him away with a fireball keke." In other words, when a solo mob is at < 20% health, he's dying in one shot anyway.
4) Improved Flamestrike. Hmm, 15% more crit chance on a spell I don't use too often, but combined with Ignite it would be phat when I do. Little help?
5) Frost tree. Mmm, nothing really looks that great. I use Frostbolt when I'm facing a fire immune mob. I've already got the key Elemental Precision talent.
6) Arcane tree. Improved Arcane Missiles is tempting, as it would make AM my alternate spell when facing fire immunes instead of Frostbolt. It could also open up Arcane Concentration if I wanted to dump more points in Arcane to pick up Clearcasting.
So potentially I could dump 5 points into Arcane and then use 4 points into Playing with Fire, Improved Flamestrike, Molten Fury, and Improved Scorch. Else, I dump all remaining 9 points into fire talents only.
Either way, what do you think I should go with?
-Bolty
Quote:Considering the mods here are generally liberals who seem to have a soft spot for fascism and white supremacy (despite them saying otherwise), me being perma-banned at some point is probably not out of the question.