Shade of Akama Sheep Macro

image by TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³

Today's post is just a quick one, inspired by a search query in my Google Analytics. This one goes out to all the mages currently working their way through Black Temple or getting ready to enter BT in patch 2.4.

In the Akama fight, groups of adds are periodically entering the room from either side and have to be systematically CC'd and killed. This is a great fight for a sheep macro because the adds spawn instantly at the doors and will take off running immediately. Here's the macro I use to target, sheep, and re-sheep the dps caster in each group:

/stopcasting
/tar Ashtongue Elementalist
/focus
/cast [target=focus] Polymorph

We tend to kill the spirit binder first, then the rogue, then the elementalist. If your dps is fast enough to kill Akama, it's unlikely you'll need to re-sheep unless something goes wrong.

Icy Veins and the Raiding Mage

2.3.2 hit the World of Warcraft today, bringing several changes for mages. Mana gems have been buffed to have multiple charges, and the former staple of the frost tree, Ice Block, is now trainable for all mages, replaced by the talent Cold Snap, which has been moved down in the tree. Taking the place formerly occupied by Cold Snap is Icy Veins, a new frost talent much anticipated by the raiding mage community. How will Icy Veins affect raiding mages? Let's take a look.

The Basics
Icy Veins is an instant cast spell that lasts 20 seconds on a 3 minute cooldown, and is located 11 points into the frost tree. Its tooltip says that it "Decreases casting time of all spells by 20% and increases the chance your chilling effects will freeze the target by 10% for 20 seconds." The "decreases casting" part is a tad misleading; instead of directly reducing your cast time, IV increases your spell haste by 20%*.

What Spells Does Icy Veins Affect?
Icy Veins works on all three schools of magic that mages use. If you have the talent Frostbite, any frost spells you cast while IV is up will also gain the 10% bonus to freezing procs. If you don't have points in Frostbite, you'll only get the haste benefit (which is still nice on its own).

Will Icy Veins Stack With My Arcane Power/Heroism/Combustion/Quagmirran's Eye/Troll Bezerking/Mystical Skyfire Diamond/Bloodlust/Spellstrike proc/etc?
Yes. (Math-happy theorycrafters out there, please note stacked haste effect math gets a little tricky here.)

So Icy Veins is a Good Talent for All Mages?
Icy Veins has great potential for deep frost mages, PvP mages with points in frost already (that should be all of you, right?), and progression PvE mages who aren't hurting for mana and can afford to put 11 points into the frost tree. In PvE, your particular mileage may vary depending on your gear, group composition, the encounter in question, and your playstyle, but some of the initial number-crunching from the PTRs suggests that 10/48/3 fire mages who drop clearcasting to pick up Icy Veins will see their dps go up by ~2.5%.

A 2.5% DPS Increase! Wow!
I agree, but here's an important caveat: the only thing Icy Veins (and haste in general) does for a fire mage is let you burn through your mana bar faster. If you're OOM by the end of the fight anyway, this talent is virtually worthless to you.

Wait, Why Would Anyone Give Up Clearcasting? That's a Lot of Mana!
The general thought process is that the changes to mana gems in 2.3.2 should offset the loss of clearcasting procs. Plus, fire dps is pretty efficient these days anyway.

GMW, Tell Us! Are You Changing Your Spec Again?
I am indeed.

So, Tell Us How You're Speccing Firkin in 2.3.2.
With pleasure, my capital letter overusing friends. Here's my thought process.
Before 2.2, arcane was the name of the game. I switched back to the classic 10/47/3+1 build in 2.3, as it once again offered the best dps and mana efficiency for progression raiding (and vastly decreased my weekly mana potion budget).

In 2.3.2, I'm thinking the best raiding mage builds will be 0/47/11+3. I'll keep all the old fire talents from the classic build, along with 3/3 Elemental Precision. To that, I'm adding 5/5 Improved Frostbolt and 2/2 Improved Frost Nova to pick up Icy Veins in Cold Snap's old spot.

The three remaining points will be heavily debated on forums and blogs. The major options I see for them are:

• 2/2 Arcane Subtlety and _______ - The conservative choice, this lets you keep your 40% threat reduction in arcane for AE spamming on AOE packs.
• 3/5 Impact - For a Blackout-like stun effect. Fun in PvP, sometimes handy in PvE, but I won't be doing it because I date a tank, and he gets grouchy about random stun procs.
• 2/2 Blazing Speed and _______ - A talent I've wanted to play around with but never gotten around to, but the proc is probably a bit random to provide a significant benefit. On the other hand, there are a ton of endgame raiders walking around with [Boar's Speed] on their PvE boots, on the premise that every little increase helps in fights with lots of maneuvering.
• 3/3 Improved Frostbite - For the PvE/PvP player, there's a certain logic here. Icy Veins provides a direct boost to Frostbite's freezing effect, which is something that you almost never want to happen in the controlled environment of PvE raiding, but is great fun in PvP. But since a fire mage won't be casting frost spells in PvE (at least not 97% of the time, and 2% of the remainder will be on Frostbite-immune bosses), this combo lets you have your cake and eat it too.
• 3/3 Improved Flamestrike - I'm leaning towards this one. I'm not sure how dangerous skipping Arcane Subtlety will be on trash, but a 15% crit bonus on Flamestrike means that I could default to spamming that instead of AM if I need to.
• 3/3 Improved Blizzard - As with Imp Flamestrike, the idea is to come up with something to replace AE spam on AOE packs. Used correctly, Imp Blizzard is actually a really excellent utility tool for AOE pack control, but for a fire mage it won't compare in terms of damage.

I Have More Questions About Icy Veins! Where Can I Turn?
Lhivera posted this great Q&A on the talent on the official WoW boards. In addition, the Elitist Jerks forums are always a good source, but you may have to dig around a little (or a lot).

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*Math-happy theorycrafters should note that +20% spell haste is not the same as -20% cast time; it works out to more like -17% cast time.

AOE Farming On Your Mage: The Lazer Chicken Method

Have you ever been questing along when all of a sudden a frost mage comes around the corner on his mount, aggros a dozen mobs, freezes them in place, and then AOEs them all to death?

If so, you've witnessed AOE farming, one of the more unique tactics used by mages for leveling or grinding.

AOE farming has never really clicked with me (and with the buffs to quest XP in 2.3, using it to level seems counterintuitive), but there are many people who swear by it. You can even go on Wowwiki and find a list of good locations for AOE grinding by level, if you're looking for the perfect spot to farm.

On the other hand, maybe you'd really like some details on how to get started. If so, friendly boomkin (and sometime mage) Delos of Lazer Chicken has the goods on the best talent points, gear, and strategies in his guide to AOE farming as a mage.

A lot of great points are covered, including the slightly tricky detail of transitioning from gathering up mobs while mounted to dismounting and freezing them in place. Says Delos:

When I have them reasonably tight together, I run through the center of them once more and simultaneously jump (on my mount) and cast Frost Nova. This is an important step because it does three things. One, the mobs move tighter together because they are mindlessly moving inwards towards you. Two, you frost nova them in place when they are in this close bunching. Three, because you jump you make it so that you are out of rage of their melee, at least by a couple of yards and can begin your Blizzard immediately.

If you're looking to try out AOE farming, I can't think of a better place to start than this post.

Mages, We Have a Mascot

So I was talking with The Boy last week about upcoming changes to the frost tree in 2.3.2, trying to figure out if dropping clearcasting for icy veins will be worth it for our mages.

"I guess stacking the extra haste might be fine if you're already riding high on the mana hog," he eventually conceded.

"Right," said I. "That's what I've been saying."

"You realize now that there must be a mana hog, don't you?"

I did.

And so there was.

Post-Patch Planning

Real life and WoW have conspired against blogging in the past 48 hours, but that doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about you all. I've also been thinking about what I'm going to do first once patch 2.3 hits. I'm sure I'm not the only one compiling a list, but here's mine:

Update my mods.
Let's face it: even with the Ace Updater, mod tweaking could take up most of Tuesday night.

Respec my mage from arcane to fire.
Arcane's been fun, but the nerfs to the Lightning Capacitor and the Mystic Skyfire Diamond have put at least a temporary nail in the coffin on its viability for PvE raiding. It looks like we may see significant mage changes down the road, but for now, I'm looking to scrounge up 146 spell hit rating by a combination of regemming my current gear and swapping out some of my current pieces for +hit gear I've kept in my bank.

Buy some new gear with Badges of Justice.
I'll need 60 to purchase a Voodoo-woven Belt, which should help with the spell hit.

Buy my shadow priest her heroic keys.
She's made a lot of trips to Karazhan and even to SSC, but getting revered with all the factions was just too much of a time sink. I will have to remember to actually go buy the keys themselves, though. Thankfully they're cheap.

Go talk to The Rokk in Lower City and start the cooking daily quests.
Rogues are really going to need the Spicy Hot Talbuk recipe, which gives 20 hit rating, and hunters will be all over the new pet food Kibler's Bits. Skullfish Soup isn't bad either, and Stormchops will finally give us a use for Lightning Eels.

Take my shaman to Dustwallow Marsh.
With a bunch of new quests in the zone, I'll want to pick up the flight point at Mudsprocket, then head out to Tabetha's once-remote shack. All the XP changes should make leveling him much faster, and the new content out there looks fun.

Go fishing.
Crates and trunks you fish up in 2.3 will have a chance to contain a Weather-Beaten Journal, which will let us track fishing nodes on the minimap.

Head out to Zul'Aman.
My 25-man raid is still struggling to take down Vashj, but the 10-man Karazhan raid I ran back in the spring is reforming for our usual Saturday runs. The only question now is whether we'll try and squeeze a second day in to take advantage of ZA's 3.5 day reset. I'll also need to remember to stop and talk to Budd Nedreck outside the instance to get the quest for my Tattered Hexcloth Sack. (Free 20-slot bag? Yes and thank you.)

So there you have it: a compulsive raider and altoholic's to-do list. But why stop there when I can survey the GMW readers?

What's on your list of things to do as soon as the patch hits?

2.3 Hypothermia Nerf Recalled

With another build up on the PTR (is this the last before the patch goes live in a week?), there's another last-minute bit of good news for frost mages, especially those who play arena. The patch change for hypothermia has been recalled in the latest build, restoring the duration to 30 seconds between ice blocks instead of the previously proposed 45 seconds.

World of Raids has the info on this and other changes as they're being discovered up in this thread. With any luck, we'll soon have news on whether the /stopcasting "fix" is still triggering the GCD all the time with imperfectly timed casts, as well. If not, I'll test it myself in the morning. I'd really like to start getting my new spec playstyle all ready for next week.

Spec For Success - Mage Leveling Builds

Patch 2.3 is more than just Zul'Aman, easier to acquire heroic keys, ret pally buffs, or the disappearance of the hunter dead zone. It's a chance to take advantage of all the Azerothian leveling changes by breaking out that sporadically-played alt and finally making the push to 58. But wait! Before you drop everything and head to Dustwallow Marsh, have you looked at your talents lately? Did you know what you were doing when you put that spec together, or were you just filling in points haphazardly? Now's the perfect time for a tune-up, so if you've got a mage alt in the wings, let's talk pre-Outlands talent trees.

Keep reading for my rationale on what talents to take when for each spec, or just use the links below to hop straight to a talent calculator for my recommendations for arcane, arcane/fire, fire, or frost leveling specs.



Arcane

Ten points in arcane has long been a favorite start for fire and arcane builds alike, but it's only since the Before the Storm patch that arcane has become more than just a support tree. You can actually put together a really solid leveling build of arcane talents, but after 45 points, I strongly recommend you take a look at expanding into the fire tree. Here are my thoughts:

Your first five points should go into Improved Arcane Missiles, and your second five into Arcane Concentration for clearcasting. From there, pick up 2/2 Magic Attunement (and remember to keep Dampen Magic up while you're soloing) and 3/3 Arcane Impact, which will give you enough points to fill out 3/3 Arcane Meditation (after patch 2.3, this will give 30% mana regeneration in combat instead of just 15%). Put two points in Improved Counterspell, and you'll have opened up Presence of Mind. Snag it (and start using it for insta-fireballs), and you should now have your talents set through level 30.

If you're continuing straight down the arcane tree, your next stop is to max out Arcane Mind for a 15% intellect increase. Put your next three points into Arcane Instability, then one point into Arcane Potency, which lets you take Arcane Power. At this point you're level 40 with a lot of great talents at hand, but the very first thing you should be dumping points into is 3/3 Empowered Arcane Missiles — this talent is critical to real arcane dps, so take it first, and then stick your two points into Spell Power. From there you can put 4/5 into Mind Mastery, pick up Slow, and then hop back up to finish the 5/5.

You're now level 51, and you've got some choices to make. Find yourself fighting mobs a good bit higher level than you? The first tier talent Arcane Focus can increase your +hit with spells by up to 10%, but in my mind, it has marginal returns for leveling mages after 3/5 points due to the nature of the spell hit mechanic. Grouping more often, and finding yourself with uncomfortable amounts of aggro? 2/2 Arcane Subtlety will reduce your arcane spells' threat by a whopping 40%. If it were up to me though, I'd stick my last seven points into the fire tree if I hadn't gone arcane/fire already. 5/5 Improved Fireball followed by Ignite will increase your flexibility, and get you that much closer to the dreaded Arcane Power-POM-Pyroblast.



Arcane/Fire

Although I discuss dropping a few points into fire at the end of the pure arcane build, this build is aimed more at the mage who wants the mana regen benefits of arcane while casting a lot of fire spells. It's a solid combo for steady, efficient leveling, although in my mind there's a real advantage getting deep into a tree early on. Here's how it looks:

Put your first ten points into Improved Arcane Missiles and Arcane Concentration. Every time clearcasting procs, you should use it as an excuse to cast AM. Follow that up with five points in Improved Fireball and five points in Ignite, then swap back to arcane to pick up 2/2 Magic Attunement (again, keep Dampen Magic up while you're soloing), 3/3 Arcane Impact, 3/3 Arcane Meditation, and 2/2 Improved Counterspell. You're now specced through level 30, and your next two points will give you a powerful combo: Presence of Mind and Pyroblast. Use them together and use them often, but don't wait until your target is almost dead to use them -- most of the power of Pyroblast is in its DOT, after all.

You're now done with arcane and can go back to the fire tree. At this point I recommend increasing your range with 2/2 Flame Throwing, followed by 2/2 Incinerate and 3/3 Master of Elements. If you're experiencing a lot of pushbacks, you could take Burning Soul, but since you already have un-interruptable Improved Arcane Missiles, I suggest trying to change your playstyle instead of your build. Next, 2/3 Improved Scorch will open up Blast Wave, which is an awesome AOE talent. Drop your next three points into Critical Mass, and then finish out that last point in Scorch. Three points in Fire Power will take you to level 58, and from there it's on to Outlands.



Fire

Fire builds are all about raw damage — when you're playing a fire mage right, you should be able to kill your target in two or three shots, preferably before it even reaches you. The main challenge to doing this successfully in Azeroth is the lack of real +damage gear. (Fire scales extremely well with +dmg, which is part of why 10/48/3 is such a well-liked PvE spec.) That plus the fact that most pre-Outlands play is now soloing is why I tend to think frost is the strongest leveling build at the moment, but that doesn't mean fire can't be for you. If you don't mind drinking or dying a bit more often and enjoy lighting the furry creatures of the forest on fire, this spec can dish out a ton of damage and be a lot of fun to play. Here's how I'd build a fire mage:

Take 5/5 Improved Fireball and 5/5 Ignite, then snag an extra 6 yards of casting range with 2/2 Flame Throwing. Put your next two points into Incinerate, then pick up 2/2 Burning Soul to reduce pushbacks for when you can't quite kill a mob before it's beating you in the face. Improved Scorch and Master of Elements are the next talents to consider, and the order in which you take them is somewhat playstyle-dependent. Imp Scorch gives a lot of value for very little mana, but stacking scorch debuffs just isn't practical while soloing same-level regular mobs (it takes too long; they die too quickly). So it's a nice talent to have, but I'd put my first three points here into Master of Elements, then one point into Imp Scorch for now. This opens up Critical Mass at level 30.

Once you've taken 3/3 Critical Mass, I'd hop one more tier up and pick up Pyroblast so that you can take Blastwave next. (Yes, we could've taken Pyroblast earlier in this build, but it's a long, slow, mana inefficient spell that doesn't really shine while leveling unless you have Presence of Mind.) At this point you have two new talents open: Fire Power and Blazing Speed. Blazing Speed is fun, and a great PvP talent, but in my mind it's a distraction from the awesome dps talents we're working our way down towards. (Plus, you didn't roll a fire mage for the surviveability anyway, did you?) So take 5/5 Fire Power instead, and then pick up Combustion at level 40. From there I'd grab 3/3 Pyromaniac and put a first point into Molten Fury, which opens up the talent we've been working our way down to: Empowered Fireball. Max it out, and you can then pick up Dragon's Breath.

Finish up the bottom of the fire tree by putting your 42nd point into 2/2 Molten Fury, and now it's time to make some choices. Find yourself drinking a lot and/or fighting mobs a good bit higher level than you? You could hop over to the frost tree and put three points in Elemental Precision, an excellent talent that will increase your +hit with fire and frost spells by 3%, and reduce their mana cost by the same amount. Think you'd like a stun talent like the shadow priest's Blackout? 5/5 Impact is for you. Still want to play with Blazing Speed? Now's the time to pick it up.



Arcane/Frost

If you ask me (and you are reading my blog, after all), arcane/frost is a silly leveling spec. Frost is mana efficient enough on its own, so why go dumping ten points outside the tree? I'm told some people do it so that they can use AM on clearcasts, but the occasional free arcane missles just doesn't seem worth the cost to me. If you're determined to try it out, go ahead and put ten points into Imp Arcane Missles and Arcane Concentration, then use my frost spec to work your way down towards Ice Barrier, which you won't get for another ten levels because you decided you really wanted clearcasting, you fool!



Frost

I've never leveled as a frost mage, but when my boyfriend asked how he should spec his mage alt, I had no reservations telling him to go full frost. (He's level 69 now, and will be respeccing to fire at 70.) With Azeroth increasingly becoming a land of solo quest grinds, frost's control, survivability and mana efficiency make it a real winner for pre-Outlands leveling. Some talent guides out there are still focused on AOE grinding, but if you ask me that's 1) boring and 2) going to be much less XP efficient with the increase to quest XP in patch 2.3. So I'd spec a frost mage like this:

Five points in Improved Frostbolt gives you a primary source of dps. Next grab 2/2 Improved Frost Nova, and 5/5 Ice Shards. Three points in Piercing Ice opens up Shatter, and once you put five points in it you'll have a 50% chance to crit any frozen target. It's one of the critical talents in the frost tree, so pick this up as soon as possible. You're specced up to level 20, and have four excellent options to dump points into: the slowing talent Permafrost, the Frost Nova-like proc Frostbite, the mana/threat reduction talent Frost Channeling, and the increased range talent Arctic Reach. You'll want all four of these, but since I have to pick an order, well... take Arctic Reach first, then two points in Permafrost, then 2/3 Frostbite, then 3/3 Frost Channeling. We'll come back to finish off Permafrost and Frostbite, but before we do, at level 40 it's time to pick up the frost mage's favorite friend, Ice Barrier. Take Ice Block (fairly useless for solo grinding), then Ice Barrier. Add your new shield to your bar, and keep it up as much as possible.

Okay, got Ice Barrier going? Good. Hop back up the tree and stick those last two points into Frostbite and Permafrost. You could also pick up Cold Snap at this point, and to be honest, many frost mages seem to like it, but I just can't see a 10 minute cooldown being worth a whole talent point for a leveling mage, so I'd put your next two points in Ice Floes instead. This will open up Empowered Frostbolt; max it out. Level 50 gets a bit lonely grinding out in the Blasted Lands all alone, doesn't it? I thought so, which is why I'm having you put your next point into Summon Water Elemental, the frost mage pet. Aww, isn't he cute? He's on a three minute cooldown, so you can use him as an emergency tank or a damage boost.

We've worked our way down to the bottom of the tree, but there are still valuable talents aplenty in it. Elemental Precision is a good choice for your next three points, and I'd choose Arctic Winds for your final five.

Congratulations, you're 58! Go kill some hellboars.

Stopcasting in 2.3: A Return to Button-Mashing

New readers, please note! This post was based on theorycrafting from an old build of the patch 2.3 PTR. Button mashing is not viable in WoW 2.3. Instead, remove /stopcasting from your old macros, keep Quartz, and continue to try to start your next cast as soon as you enter latency phase. If you hit your button too early, it will not cause your current cast to fail (as it did in 2.2), but it may cause you to incur a global cooldown penalty.

GMW readers know I've talked about using /stopcasting macros with Quartz before, but with the PTRs up, it's time to take a look forward at how spell casts will be changing in patch 2.3. Here's the relevant portion of the patch notes:

"Client spell cast requests are now sent to the server even if your player is already casting another spell. This eliminates the need for /stopcasting in macros to compensate for latency."

How is this different from how casts in WoW work now?
Right now, casters who aren't using /stopcast macros lose cast time to lag on any spell which takes longer than the global cooldown to cast. Quartz is a cast bar mod with a built-in latency indicator which can currently be used to time when to hit a macro so that the client (your end) will let you force-stop your old spell and begin casting a spell before it heard back from the server saying that the spell was complete. Timed correctly, spell #1 would complete and spell #2 would start with minimal time lost due to your own lag or server latency. This requires a caster to carefully watch her cast bar and then hit her macro one time once the cast reaches the safe zone.

What does this mean for casters after the patch?
The change in 2.3 means that your client won't have to wait for a “go ahead” from the server in order for you to be able to start casting a new spell. The client will no longer lock you out of starting a new cast, which means that you'll be able to repeatedly hit your cast button until the server knows your last cast has finished. The first attempted cast which reaches the server after it registers your last cast as completed will go through. In essence, the effect will be like having v2.2 /stopcasts already macroed into all your spells. In practice, it means that we'll all get to go back to mashing our buttons instead of perfectly timing a single tap of our macros.

In spite of this change, Quartz will remain a useful tool, because it gives you a visual readout of when your spell should be finished. You can use the Quartz cast bar to spam your cast button just before the cast bar reaches the “safe zone.” Here's a look at the difference in the two approaches:

Summary
In 2.3, /stopcast macros will only be useful for interrupting spells (i.e., stopping your fireball cast to counterspell your target), and not for decreasing cast lag. Old macros which served the second function may now cancel your casts if used, so you should delete or alter them accordingly to remove /stopcast. To maximize your spell casts in 2.3 and beyond, get a cast bar with a latency indicator, and spam the button for your next spell when your cast bar approaches the latency phase.

Ritual of Refreshment Details

Last night I was finally able to get in some quality time with the PTR for patch 2.3, and picked up the new ritual of refreshment spell for my mage. That's a screenshot of the dispenser at left; a soulwell-like table which you can summon to dispense food and water to your raid. It cost me 10g 80s to learn, and is available to mages at level 70. Here's the spell text:

"Begins a ritual that creates a refreshment table. Raid members can click the table to acquire Conjured Manna Biscuits. The tables last for 2 min or 50 charges. Requires the caster and 2 additional party members to complete the ritual. In order to participate, all players must right-click the refreshment portal and not move until the ritual is complete."

I'm pretty pleased with this idea, even if the table does look a little silly. One rune of portals is an easy, cheap trade-off for five minutes of conjuring, evocating, conjuring, drinking, and conjuring more raid water. Plus, unlike with soulwell, ritual of refreshment actually has more charges than there are raid members. So even if you only have one mage in a 25-man, everyone gets two stacks of tasty, tasty manna biscuits.

Is Tailoring Dead?

Since the release of the Burning Crusade, tailoring has widely been considered the most overpowered profession, enough so that many hardcore raiding guilds have required their casters to be tailors. Mages, warlocks and spooky priests with 375 tailoring skill can enjoy the benefits of the Spellfire or Shadoweave sets, which for PvE raiding may be wearable from pre-Karazhan up until Tier 5 or Tier 6. Part of this has been due to some poor itemization on Blizzard's part on the tier pieces (a subject familiar to any shadow priest who's ever looked sadly at the spell crit on her T4 gloves), which has helped reinforce the need for an item to be really good in order for it to be worth breaking the tailoring set bonus.

With the advent of Patch 2.3, however, tailoring's pedestal is starting to look a little shaky. Some of the new gear purchasable with badges of justice is on par with loot from the Black Temple, and at least two pieces of dps cloth overlap with Spellfire and Shadoweave. Could tailors just starting Magtheridon or SSC soon be looking at breaking their sets? Let's run some numbers.

The Spellfire set consists of a robe, gloves, and belt, all with arcane and fire damage, while Shadoweave boasts frost and shadow damage in the form of a robe, gloves, and boots. For the sake of this example, let's look at just these four slots: chest, hands, waist, and feet. If we want to compare the two sets, we can pick out some decent drops a dps caster just starting SSC might have by patch 2.3. I've chosen the Boots of Blasting, a BoP crafted item from Serpentshrine trash that my mage happens to be wearing, and the Voodoo-woven Belt, which can be purchased for 60 badges of justice after the patch.

Of course, if we want to look at replacing Spellfire or Shadoweave entirely, we need a chest and a set of gloves, too. I'm going to assume that our hypothetical dps caster has gotten his T4 chestpiece from Magtheridon, and that he's got the badges to pick up the awesome new Studious Wraps. Any of these chest/hands/waist/feet combinations will result in 6 sockets. Since we usually end up ignoring socket bonuses on our raiding gear, I'm going to go ahead and skip those in my math, along with the set bonuses on the tailoring for now, but we'll want to consider those carefully at the end.

What do the stats look like for each combination? The chart below compares all five options, with separate columns players wearing Spellfire + Boots of Blasting, Shadoweave + Voodoo-woven Belt, and (Studious Wraps, Voodoo-woven Belt, Boots of Blasting) + the mage, shadow priest, or warlock Tier 4 chestpiece.


So, is breaking your tailoring set worth it? The average tailor will lose about 50 points of damage by swapping in the pieces I've suggested. On the other hand, you can pick up quite a bit in the way of stats and hit. For a mage, I'd still have a hard time dropping 36 crit and 43 damage if I was already hit-capped, but if you're not quite there or struggling with low HP, 2.3 could be the time to take the plunge. And for those of you soldiering on without, it looks like this patch is going to make the difference between tailors and non-tailors a little less severe.

The Zen of Mage Macros

My class leader has long advocated the use of macros "to simplify your life and give you inner peace." While inner peace isn't usually a concept I associate with WoW, I do consider macros one of the basic tools every mage should have in his arsenal. The farther you progress on your mage, the more complex you may find your job -- in a high end raid, you could be chain sheeping one target, dpsing another, and casting detect magic on a third. The combination of spells, targets, and buttons to click can get rather complicated, which is where macros come in.

A good macro can combine several separate actions into one, allowing you to automatically cast trinkets when their cooldown wears off, polymorph your sheep target without losing your dps target, or cast all of your buffs on yourself with a single button. This post is focused on some of my favorite macros as a primarily PvE mage, and is greatly indebted to Zarakaar's Mage Macro Guide on the WoW forums, as well as Cogwheel's Complete Macro Guide. Oh, and if you've totally new to macros and looking for a basic introduction, check out the official World of Warcraft Macro Guide for some basic pointers.

Toggleable Rank 1/Rank 14 Frostbolt
Rank 1 Frostbolt is a handy kiting tool in PvP or PvE, since it takes 1.5 seconds to cast, only costs 25 mana, and creates the same 40% movement slowdown as higher rank Frostbolts (albeit for 5 seconds instead of 9). This macro will cast your highest rank Frostbolt unless you're holding down the alt key, in which case it'll cast rank 1.

#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast [modifier:alt] Frostbolt(Rank 1); Frostbolt

Here, "#showtooltip" allows your button to gray out if you're out of range, and "/stopcasting" gives you built-in functionality for use with the Quartz add-on. (Note: the need for /stopcasting is supposed to be fixed in Patch 2.3, and macros may have to be updated accordingly.)

Stop Everything and Counterspell!
Interrupts usually need to happen fast. This macro will interrupt your current cast and immediately CS your target. You can add an optional line like "/s %t Counterspelled!" if you need to coordinate your interrupts with other raiders.

#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast Counterspell

Someone Has to Keep Up Scorch
But why should it take up a button slot? Use this macro to cast Fireball, or hold down alt to cast Scorch.

#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast [modifier:alt] Scorch; Fireball

Arcane Missile Spam
If you're a button masher, this macro lets you spam your AM button without breaking your Arcane Missles before they finish.

/cast [noChanneling:Arcane Missiles] Arcane Missiles

One-Button Thermostat
Toggleable Frost or Fire Ward.

/cast [modifier:alt] Frost Ward; Fire Ward

Eat and Drink
Since you have an unlimited supply of food and water, why not combine eating and drinking into a single button?

/use [nomodifier] Conjured Glacier Water
/use [nomodifier] Conjured Croissant

Self Buff in a Can
This macro creates a single button you can hit to apply all of your self buffs. Note that Molten Armor can be replaced with Ice Armor, according to your preferences.

/castsequence [target=player] reset=60 Dampen Magic, Arcane Intellect, Molten Armor;

Mana Gems in a Can
Hit this macro repeatedly to conjure all five mana gems. (If you don't carry around all five -- and I didn't until I got my Serpent-Coil Braid -- you can delete the ones you don't want. I recommend carrying three for most people.)

/castsequence reset=60 Conjure Mana Emerald, Conjure Mana Ruby, Conjure Mana Citrine, Conjure Mana Jade, Conjure Mana Agate

Ready, Focus, Polymorph
This is a one-button sheeping macro which sets your current target as your focus if you don't already have a focus. Clicking it again will resheep your focus without changing your target. To manually change poly targets before your old focus is dead, hold down alt while hitting the macro button.

#show Polymorph
/clearfocus [modifier:alt]
/focus [target=focus,noexists]; [target=focus,dead]
/clearfocus [target=focus,help]
/stopcasting
/cast [target=focus,exists,harm] Polymorph; Polymorph

Hoverable Decursing
When used with a raid frames set up to display curses, you can hover your mouse over a cursed player and hit this macro to decurse them. I was able to drop Decursive by using this with Grid.

/cast [target=mouseover,exists] Remove Lesser Curse

Use My Trinket Whenever It's Up
This macro will try to use whatever trinket you have in your bottom trinket slot every time you cast Fireball. To specify a specific trinket instead of a slot, just write out its name, like "/use Xi'ri's Gift".

#showtooltip Fireball
/use 14
/stopcasting
/cast Fireball

The PoM Pyro 'I Win' Macro
For arcane/fire mages, this is a one-button macro which pops Presence of Mind, Arcane Power, and whatever trinkets you have equipped, and then insta-Pyroblasts your target. A simple way to put your enemies in a world of pain.

#showtooltip Pyroblast
/cast Presence of Mind
/stopcasting
/cast Arcane Power
/stopcasting
/use 13
/stopcasting
/use 14
/stopcasting
/cast Pyroblast

More Macro Tips

• Macros are stored locally on your computer, so if you play on multiple computers, you'll need to copy them over from your account folder. (World of Warcraft\WTF\Account\Youraccountname\macros-cache.txt contains your general macros, and World of Warcraft\WTF\Account\Youraccountname\Yourrealmname\Yourcharactername\macros-cache.txt your character-specific macros.)
• If you want to cast a particular rank of a spell, you can either shift-click or drag it from your spell book, or include in in parentheses -- i.e., "Frost Nova(Rank 1)". Without a rank specified, your character will automatically cast the highest spell rank.
• I've used the Alt key as a modifier for all these, but you can replace that with other keys or with mouse buttons. For instance, "cast [button:2] Frostbolt; Fireball" would let you left click for Fireball and right click for Frostbolt.
• For a more comprehensive list of mage macros, including more trinket and cooldown macros and PvP-focused macros, try the list of useful mage macros at Wowwiki.

Have a question, suggestion, or another good macro to share? Leave a comment below!

Leggings of Tirisfal: World's Most Expensive Pants

This past weekend my raid took down Karathress for the first time, and I walked away with my tier 5 pants token. After a few days of putting my gear, gems, and talents in order, I've decided that moving to 2/5 Tirisfal Regalia (which pretty much demands an arcane spec, in my mind) makes this the most expensive epic I've ever looted. Here's how it all broke down:

Unlearning talents: 15g
Relearning talents: 5g
Ten primal manas for a Runic Spellthread: 94g
Gems for the new pants: 95g
Mystical Skyfire Diamond for T4 helm I pulled out of the bank since the pants broke my Spellstrike set: 160g
Additional gems to satisfy meta requirement & drop my +hit down to 16% again: 144g
Glyph of Power: 90g
-------------------------------------------------------
Total cost: 603 gold

Oh, and having POM-pyro again? Priceless.

Feel the Mage Love -- Patch 2.3

Okay, back to World of Warcraft. Can I tell you how excited I am about the reported changes for mages in patch 2.3? I mean, I was already psyched about Zul'Aman -- my old Karazhan 10-man will be putting the band back together, and I've really missed our Saturday morning raids. But the blue posts on mage changes in 2.3 have me squeaking with glee. A soulwell-like Ritual of Refreshment to dispense food and water? No more damage penalty on my improved fireballs? Increased mana regen for Arcane Meditation? Evocation will now restore a flat 15% of my mana every tick? Sweet cuppin' cakes!


For more detailed analysis of upcoming changes for mages, check out some more of my patch 2.3 coverage.