Gnomey and Larisa - time to chill out. Relax, have a drink.
You may call me cold hearted, but there is actually a war going on here... you know, an epic battle and all that? A fight to the death, several times over?
Fighting is srs business right, and there's a whole lotta hurt going on, every hour of every day, so excuse me if I don't get all romantic and emotional about my talent choices like Gnomeaggedon!
Seriously Gnomey, Look at you. Armed to the teeth with the biggest weapons you can get your little 3 fingered hands on! What's romantic about burning your enemies to a crisp anyway?
I have to agree on one thing though, Fireblast is pure win. Even untaltented, you can basically add an extra kick to any other spell you happen to be casting by adding a fireblast as the first spell leaves your two stubby fingertips.
The fireblast will connect a split second -before- your main spell, adding a nice bit of extra damage when you want it. It will, of course, trigger the global cooldown, and for this reason I tend to mainly use it for killing blows - certainly not frequently enough to warrant spending talent points on it, of course.
But thats just me ;)
Larisa, on the other hand, appears to disagree!
Fire blast is best used out of battle, because of it’s lack of mana efficiency.How typical of the Arcane mage to bring up mana efficiency! On your mind is it? Of course it is, unlike the rest of us you have mana issues. Small price to pay to be just a little bit smarter than the rest of us right?
Even with your Arcane Mind and you are still first to go out of mana I'll wager. Fine for small insignificant fights I suppose, but what happens when it really counts? What happens on a long boss fight?
Arcane mages watch their mana, while Fire and Frost mages are watch their aggro and dps.
Unless, of course, the Arcane mage has a Shadow priest or Shaman in their group. Even then, going out of mana is something an arcane mage has to acutely aware of, in particular if they are sporting the mandatory two pieces of tier 5 gear, yielding the 20% increase in both damage and mana cost for arcane blast.
Lets be honest with ourselves, how much of the time are we actually in a raid? How often do we have a shadow priest and a shaman around to support us?
Ok maybe for Larissa this fortunate set of circumstances may occur quite a lot now that shes the rookie of the year in a new hotshot guild, raiding BT and Hyjal and wiping on Archimonde all night.
Does that apply to other mages?
A few perhaps.
Does it apply to a lot of other mages?
Hell no!
While it's impossible to quote figures, I think it's fair to say that the vast and I do mean VAST majority of mages don't have the luxury of a shadow priest or a shaman to help them with mana regen....
An even LARGER slice of the mage population simply doesn't have the two pieces of T5 that are required to make an arcane spec viable. Yes required. Haven't got em? Don't even bother with arcane until you do!
Enough about elitist arcane know it all mages, lets talk about...
Frost:
The talent tree of the people.
The talent tree of the people.
Every mage needs some Frosty lovin' no matter how they might deny it. Take a look, the evidence is right there on the armory.
Gnomeaggedon has clearly been paying attention to this magebattle, and has taken heed of my very first talent chioce, elemental precision, and no doubt he is doing more DPS as a result...
Even the one and only Larisa herself has 21 talent points in frost these days, allowing her to take advantage of the All Powerful and Awesome Frost tree. Lets take a look at one of the talents chosen by Larisa, and many other arcane mages, not to mention a whole bunch of fire mages too!
Icy Veins
How super amazing do you want a tier 3 talent to be?!
No wonder any raiding spec worth it's salt uses icy veins, not to mention The Arena Build. No spell pushback due to damage in arena anyone?
Too good. Got cold snap? Do it again! Pop those trinkets! Pwn. It only lasts for 20** seconds, but thats still a huge amount of DPS in anyones language.
Icy Veins. Get it. Use it.
Win the game! *
*well u know. you dont win the game but you might win something.
** somehow I managed to put 10 seconds down in the original post. Thanks for pointing that one out Spicy
4 comments:
I must admit that Icy veins is a winner. For some reason I can't help thinking of it as a piece of the arcane tree. It's such an obvious choice. Even though it sometimes makes me a little bit nervous, I must admit. It doesn't only speed up the damage you do but also the mana consumption...
You ARE right about the challenge we're facing. But I actually find mana conservation far more managable than the constant threat issues you have as fire mage. Or wait... that wasn't meant for you but for Gnome.
Anyway: thanks for the drink, I'll enjoy it for a while, chill down a bit see what my superior intellect will come up with. To be continued.
Icy Veins lasts 20 seconds not 10 :) No Mage can deny that this talent is very powerful, and is almost a must have in all specs.
With Arcane Mages getting Magic Focus as an 11 point talent, and Frost Mages already having Icy Veins, I think it's time for the Fire Tree to give us a useful 11 point talent which other specs could use. Well, I guess Pyroblast is useful for Arcane Mages, but not for Frost.
@spicytuna
Amen! I already spec 5 points in Impact for PvP, and I'd love a reason to crawl a little further into the fire tree.
Aggedon, Gnome-aggedon, shaken but not stirred by your Icy Veins!
Love the post, and I really must get around to respecing for this one.
Post a Comment