Coming Soon: Changes for mages

[Xame]

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.h...968115908&sid=1
I'm not too up on mage mechanics, but is the gem change enough to make mages less dependent on shadow priests? Combined with what looks like Frost raid viability I think it's possible that this is enough.

Does this drive the nail that the Mystical Skyfire Diamond cooldown put into the raiding arcane build's coffin even deeper?

The gem thing is just a drop in the bucket that didn't scale well when they put TBC out. In PvE or PvP its always a choice between heathstone and mana gem for that cool down. On our last Void Reaver I went through ~36k mana (12k base + 12k VE + 6k Evo + 6k other w/ includes gems). The priest is still a huge part of my mana pool. Every mage has a macro to eat the gems in order. Its just a simplification to give us one gem and add a little bit more to it to make it tempting to eat (requires a more fight aware decision of risking your health bar or push dps).

As far as the Ice Block / Ice Veins move, that is an absolutely huge mage change. Ideally Blizzard should have added new spells for mages in TBC to counter the Stamina changes. Mages and Priest have been in the #$%& hopper of TBC with the original design spec not being to Blizzard's liking. Mages pre-TBC could kill anyone in a 1/2shot and could be killed by any class equally fast if jumped. This high level of one-shotting was even made fun of in many mage videos. Priests when overgeared solo healing raid encounters I'm sure left a bad taste with Blizzard (also shown in several videos). Welcome to the TBC nerf bat Stamina changes. Both classes turned into buff classes with better choices for raids.

The effect of IB / Ice Veins is that Mages now have a cookie cutter PvE build that removes any real room for choice. Ice Veins is just too good not to pick up and that removes much if any debate about the Arcane/Fire blend. Now its Fire with crafted gear + Ice Veins. The IB + shield were two big reasons for frost in raids. With IB trainable, I'm not sure the shield is the value item for a frost PvE build (frost still rules PvP but not as much as it once did).

Are Arcane mages dead? No. The IB + Arcane PoM/Pyro mages will now be very scary in Arena. The greatest weakness of an Arcane mage in PvP was they had no defense. It is an all offense spec. Add in the IB as a free PvP "aggro wipe" and you have a lot of dps with a very good defensive move. No more focus killing any mage in Arena. Absolutely game changing.

In PvE, Arcane was on life support and is now dead. 2.3 and Ice Veins as the killer talent at 11pts (unless they hit it with a huge nerf bat before release) have just removed any hope of building a reasonable Arcane build.

For the Terenas Lurkers, just FYI: I've done fire, frost, and now arcane. Its time to go back to fire :angry: and have the dipping bird peck my fireball key. Goodbye complex (and fun) Arcane spell rotations. I'll test on the PTR when its available.