|
Arcane Brilliance: 5 abilities that keep me playing my mage
Joystiq by Josh Myers Apr 28th 2012 at 6:00PM Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. Christian Belt is the normal archmage, but rumor has it that he's currently trapped in one of many hell dimensions. |
|
Arcane Brilliance: What the MoP beta means for arcane mages
Joystiq This column is usually brought to you by archmage and former Hogwarts headmaster Christian Belt, but rumor has it he's still stuck in an alternate dimension where playing World of Warcraft is state-mandated but only offers you 10 different classes of … |
|
Arcane Brilliance: Top 5 things my mage is looking forward to in Mists of Pandaria
Joystiq So with the world coming to an end, what else do we have to look forward to other than a new World of Warcraft expansion? Well, Diablo 3, I guess, but we all know that's not going to release before Armageddon (they're claiming Q2, which we all know is … |
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we leave 2011 behind and look toward 2012, which I predict will be the magiest year ever!
A new year is upon us, my wizardly cohorts. It is a time for reflection, a refractory period when we bask in the afterglow of the year that was and then take a quick shower to rinse off the stink of it. But most importantly, it’s a time to look forward, to set new goals, to examine ourselves and determine how best to progress, to improve, and to somehow avoid ending the world in a fiery apocalypse that only John Cusack can save us from.
In that spirit, I thought this eve of the new year might be a good time to take an honest look at the mage class, examine our weak points, and conjure up some ways to shore them up in 2012. I figure we still have a at least a few months before Armageddon, and I can think of no better way to spend those last few moments of our existence than by killing as many warlocks as possible.
I’ll do a full column on gearing up in 4.3 in the coming weeks, but for the time being, suffice it to say there is some phat, epic mage loot out there right now, and all you need to do is take it. Preferably from a warlock’s smoking corpse, but we’ll take it however it comes. We’re at the point now in this expansion where the epics are flowing with almost ridiculous ease. If you’ve been waiting to level a mage, it has never been easier to get that mage fully kitted out in purples than it is right now. And if, for some reason, you’ve been neglecting your mage, now is the time to get him up to speed.
Continue reading Arcane Brilliance: New Year’s resolutions for mages
Filed under: Mage, Analysis / Opinion, (Mage) Arcane Brilliance
Arcane Brilliance: New Year’s resolutions for mages originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 31 Dec 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we leave 2011 behind and look toward 2012, which I predict will be the magiest year ever!
A new year is upon us, my wizardly cohorts. It is a time for reflection, a refractory period when we bask in the afterglow of the year that was and then take a quick shower to rinse off the stink of it. But most importantly, it’s a time to look forward, to set new goals, to examine ourselves and determine how best to progress, to improve, and to somehow avoid ending the world in a fiery apocalypse that only John Cusack can save us from.
In that spirit, I thought this eve of the new year might be a good time to take an honest look at the mage class, examine our weak points, and conjure up some ways to shore them up in 2012. I figure we still have a at least a few months before Armageddon, and I can think of no better way to spend those last few moments of our existence than by killing as many warlocks as possible.
I’ll do a full column on gearing up in 4.3 in the coming weeks, but for the time being, suffice it to say there is some phat, epic mage loot out there right now, and all you need to do is take it. Preferably from a warlock’s smoking corpse, but we’ll take it however it comes. We’re at the point now in this expansion where the epics are flowing with almost ridiculous ease. If you’ve been waiting to level a mage, it has never been easier to get that mage fully kitted out in purples than it is right now. And if, for some reason, you’ve been neglecting your mage, now is the time to get him up to speed.
Continue reading Arcane Brilliance: New Year’s resolutions for mages
Filed under: Mage, Analysis / Opinion, (Mage) Arcane Brilliance
Arcane Brilliance: New Year’s resolutions for mages originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 31 Dec 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. this week, we seek to aid those of you who have made or will make the noble decision to level a mage in the coming months.
In the past, we’ve done our leveling guides here at WoW Insider as sprawling, multi-post epics, spanning ten or twenty levels a week over the course of a month, covering every aspect of every facet of everything you could ever want to know about leveling each class in the game. The problem with that approach is that you could probably just go in blind and level your mage from 1 to 85 faster than I could tell you how to do it. The simple fact of the matter is that the leveling game just isn’t terribly difficult. The process has been streamlined over the years to the point that I don’t believe such detailed leveling guides are really necessary anymore. Most of this game is intuitive and user friendly now, and the part of the game that really requires in-depth strategy doesn’t really start until after the experience-gaining part of it has stopped.
Knowing this, I won’t be filling this guide with talent analysis, ways to optimize your level 45 boss fight rotation, or a detailed travelogue of every quest hub you’ll be traipsing through along the way. This will be a more stripped-down endeavor, focusing on the parts of leveling that I think are important: not the spell coefficients and spreadsheets, but the basic concepts your mage needs to learn while leveling, not only to make the process easier and more enjoyable, but also to help them step from mage adolescence into mage adulthood so they can shoot Deathwing in the face with a Fireball of wisdom and maturity.
Continue reading Arcane Brilliance: Guide to leveling a mage in Cataclysm
Filed under: Mage, Analysis / Opinion, (Mage) Arcane Brilliance
Arcane Brilliance: Guide to leveling a mage in Cataclysm originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 17 Dec 2011 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we finish our conversation about things that may or may not ever happen, and even if they do, they won’t for a very long time. Man, I love wild speculation.
This week, because they hate me, and because I actually had something written in advance for once, Blizzard went and stealth-updated the MoP talent calculator with no warning whatsoever. I submit that from here on out, Blizzard needs to give me at least a week’s notice before they make significant changes to the game or any of its future versions. I think it’s only fair, since mages are getting the ability to Alter Time, that we get just a little bit of a jump on the future. I have deadlines to meet, people! Work with me here.
The good news is that the majority of the changes appear to have been made to the part of the talent calculator we haven’t discussed yet: the actual talents. If you missed them, here are the first two parts of this discussion:
And now, if you click the link below, you’ll magically teleport to part three. No, I won’t port you to Org. Stop asking.
Filed under: Mage, Analysis / Opinion, (Mage) Arcane Brilliance, Mists of Pandaria
Arcane Brilliance: Blinking into the Mists of Pandaria talent calculator, the epic conclusion originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 10 Dec 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we teleport ourselves back into the thick of the newly revealed MoP talent calculator, and this time, we aren’t teleporting out until we get that calculator down and it drops phat loot.
I trust you’re all knee-deep in patch 4.3 by now, snatching up sparkly new gear from the new dungeons, raid, and Darkmoon Faires and such, and then promptly transmogrifying that gear to look like something you wore five years ago.
Last week, we talked about the baseline abilities that all mages will be learning. If you skipped it for some reason, kill a warlock as penance (I’m not sure how that could be considered a punishment, but just stay with me here), go read part one, then come back and resume the conversation with us this week.
Continue reading Arcane Brilliance: Blinking into the Mists of Pandaria talent calculator, part deux
Filed under: Mage, Analysis / Opinion, (Mage) Arcane Brilliance
Arcane Brilliance: Blinking into the Mists of Pandaria talent calculator, part deux originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 03 Dec 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we have all kinds of talents to talk about. New talents, old talents, old talents with new talent scent, talents that look new but smell old, old talents that kill warlocks in new ways, cupcakes that taste like cranberry sauce, skillets that cook pastries that look like this … I may or may not have eaten too much pie this week.
Ok, we’d better get started. Lots to talk about and not much time or space with which to discuss it. I assume you’ve all had a chance to fiddle with the Mists of Pandaria talent calculator Blizzard just put on the official site? If not, go look, then come back.
It’s interesting stuff. It’s important, I think, that I stress that even though this is an official, Blizzard-sponsored reveal, all of this information is pre-pre-pre-alpha stuff, and it absolutely will change substantially before any of it goes live. So don’t get married to the mechanics of any of these talents and skills as they’re presented here. Don’t squint too hard at the specific numbers, either. This is being presented so we can mull it over and give constructive feedback, and so that we can get a more detailed sense of the direction MoP’s major talent overhaul will be taking our beloved mage class.
So let’s get busy mulling.
Continue reading Arcane Brilliance: Blinking into the Mists of Pandaria talent calculator, part 1
Filed under: Mage, Analysis / Opinion, (Mage) Arcane Brilliance
Arcane Brilliance: Blinking into the Mists of Pandaria talent calculator, part 1 originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 26 Nov 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week we look at a few mage-related questions, and the answers to those questions, which end up raising even more questions, which then get answers that only provoke even more questions … it’s like an episode of Lost, only one in which the smoke monster was made of frostfire. I’m 99% sure Desmond was a mage, anyway.
So just a heads up in case you haven’t seen it somewhere else: The latest build on the PTR is tagged as a release candidate, which means patch 4.3 is imminent. I’m expecting it some time in the next few weeks. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to be eating turkey and pie while queuing for the Raid Finder. Although, disclaimer: I eat turkey and pie for every meal. In other news, my heart just stopped. No worries, though. That also happens every meal. It’s nothing a good chest compression or two can’t fix. Look for a mage patch prep column right here next week.
Now, on to the business at hand. On Wednesday, the developers allowed us to pick their brains with all of our most burning questions about our classes. The mage community asked some good ones, and some of them even got answered. And though the answers given are perhaps not as definitive as you or I may have preferred, there’s still a great deal of enlightening information to be gleaned from what the developers did share. And no, my own question — “If I turn a warlock into a sheep, then hit him with a Pyroblast, then add a bit of mint and some red potatoes, what should I serve for dessert?” — wasn’t answered. Though I think we all know the answer to that question is “pie.”
Continue reading Arcane Brilliance: The Class Balance Q&A — more Q’s than A’s for mages
Filed under: Mage, Analysis / Opinion, (Mage) Arcane Brilliance
Arcane Brilliance: The Class Balance Q&A — more Q’s than A’s for mages originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 12 Nov 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments