official World of Warcraft

[treemonster]

i'm trying to decide wether to go with frost for leveling from 80-85 in cata or just stick with arcane since it puts out so much dps and has slow stuck to AB anyway. it's like they took out all the reasons to go frost since even it's survivability seems to be nerfed since tbc still(since iirc ice barrier gave like 3.3k absorption at 70 and now gives ~4k at 80, not sure if it scales with gear or not, but its a fair amount lower as a fraction of my total hp, since i'm breaking 20k now with crap gear). extra damage in frost is dependent on targets being frozen as well, vs arcane which just needs more mana to give higher damage(mastery), and arcane barrage does alot more dps with conditions vs ice lance which requires frozen targets to give decent damage and still only crits for ~2k.

i might try leveling with frostbolt though to see how often it procs frozen, but it just seems that arcane is so much more OP in every way that frost is toothless now. an extra ranged frost nova from the water elemental isn;'t so great to make up for frost's shortcomings when AB is hitting for at least twice as much as frostfire on normal hits and critting for several times more with shorter cast times, just for more mana, considering how fast mana seems to regen now out of combat with out food, let alone 2 min evocation CD.

i think frost might be slightly better maybe for soloing 2-5 player groups, at first glance at least, but again, it's got basically all the same cc as frost with alot more dps, just without the icebarrier(though there is mana shield).

either way as far as pvp goes i'm starting out more or less fresh because playing frost is no longer mostly reflex like it was for me when i quit in tbc. i'm going to have to relearn all teh counters and escapes and timings and how to manage multiple targets and cc and target priority again.

[SMELTN]

I tell ya my frost procs are insane. It procs at least every 2-3 casts. I use the water ele frostnova every cooldown and it makes for some pretty nasty crits. Its all about how you wanta play though. I mean leveling wise I love Frost over Fire, but I have been using fire since I hit 70 and thats mainly because I queue for instances the entire time I am leveling.

[+SOOPRcow MVC]

Frost mages are totally insane right now. It won't be long into the xpac before they are nerfed. (And yes, they were just as insane on beta at 85... in fact more insane pvp wise)

[treemonster]

I tell ya my frost procs are insane. It procs at least every 2-3 casts. I use the water ele frostnova every cooldown and it makes for some pretty nasty crits. Its all about how you wanta play though. I mean leveling wise I love Frost over Fire, but I have been using fire since I hit 70 and thats mainly because I queue for instances the entire time I am leveling.

which procs exactly?i mean sure lots of procs show up like brain freeze or w/e that makes the next frost fire spell instant or the other one that treats the target likes it frozen.

but i mean i'm getting crits on AB for like 13-16k fairly often and normal hits from 5k-9k on 2.1-1.7s casts without my arcane spec damage buffs

Frost mages are totally insane right now. It won't be long into the xpac before they are nerfed. (And yes, they were just as insane on beta at 85... in fact more insane pvp wise)

how so are they insane? i was gettting 4k crits and ~2k normal hits on a 2.4s cast with frostfire, about 200-400 less with frostbolt on a 1.9s first cast cast time, 2k crits with ice lance on frozen targets. ice barrier only absorbed 4k damage

i'll have to log in and test my damage again with this new gear i have on some dummies,

but it's basically nothing compared to arcane with 3-6k(normal-crit) instant every 4 seconds , and the above stated AB dps.

keep in mind that when i switched from frost to arcane even with a gimpy arcane rotation i saw an immediate increase in dps and damage per spell with my crap gear.

[LittleNeutrino Veteran]

I level my mage as frost. However, I have not played it much since the patch being that they took my potals, and water, food creation away.

[SMELTN]

I level my mage as frost. However, I have not played it much since the patch being that they took my potals, and water, food creation away.

What do you mean?

[LittleNeutrino Veteran]

My mage is only level 22. At that level you no longer have portals, and you cannot conjure water or food. You do not get it until later.

[treemonster]

I level my mage as frost. However, I have not played it much since the patch being that they took my potals, and water, food creation away.

yeah what do you mean. conjure food makes food that restores both hp and mana now instead of doing it twice as much, i still have my mage table, and reagents for portals and ports are cheaper than ever and people keep asking me for portals to x city randomly.

i barely use food anymore so far anyway, as mana regen is so fast now it seems. i run out of mana in a boss fight and by the time i've run to the next group of trash i am near full again. and you can get a glyph for evocation that restore hp when you cast it.

it seems like the number of spells overall has been reduced or maybe it's my imagination since they took out spell ranks, and choosing a tree opens up tree specific spells like ice barrier and water elemental for frost.

[+SOOPRcow MVC]

how so are they insane? i was gettting 4k crits and ~2k normal hits on a 2.4s cast with frostfire, about 200-400 less with frostbolt on a 1.9s first cast cast time, 2k crits with ice lance on frozen targets. ice barrier only absorbed 4k damage

i'll have to log in and test my damage again with this new gear i have on some dummies,

but it's basically nothing compared to arcane with 3-6k(normal-crit) instant every 4 seconds , and the above stated AB dps.

keep in mind that when i switched from frost to arcane even with a gimpy arcane rotation i saw an immediate increase in dps and damage per spell with my crap gear.

To quote a member of my guild on the arcane vs frost as I think he put it best:

Arcane has to sit there and hardcast anything that qualifies as stupid damage.

Frost can 100-0 you while controlling your entire team without having to hardcast. It does this while having untouchable melee control (lol @ frost mages having access to blazing speed at 85), mage armor + ice barrier to shut down dot classes, and df + barrier + rof (at 85) on top of their longest-lockout-in-the-game to shut down those silly nuking classes that "still" have to hardcast their damage.

4.0 mages are f**king stupid but it's not a lot different at 85. They take longer to kill you but have been given even more ridiculous new ways to prevent you from playing your class for the added duration it takes them to do it.

[game_over]

I received an e-mail from Blizzard saying I can upgrade my account to WOTLK for ?8, i'm seriously tempted. Have they made any changes to leveling? I'd like to see a bit of end game content but I got bored of the grind at lvl 40 last time.

it's much better now, as mentioned when you get out of TBC land it gets better, the random dungeon finder breaks up the quests nicely and gives u plenty of xp, gold and rewards.

I'm half way through 77, trying to play as much as possible to hit 80 by next week... getting a bit bored of the quests in Grizzly Hills, it's never ending

[treemonster]

My mage is only level 22. At that level you no longer have portals, and you cannot conjure water or food. You do not get it until later.

i didn't know mages got portals at that level anyway? besides mana/hp regen is so fast at that level you don't need food anyway.

do you still have teleport at that level? that would be kinda handy to have, but realistically you're probably 15 minutes away from UC at most until like 30 when you go to stv until 40. and basic ground mount at 20 now too makes travel fairly quick. i guess it depends on what zones you level in though. i usually do the zones around UC until i am high enough for stv and then i get my pvp fix while i do quests(at least more so than running away from max levels in hillsbrad)

[LaP]

hit ~4.7k dps on a couple bosses today. starting to not come in last place which is nice. only have one green and one tbc trinket to replace. up to almost 1k gold as well. started spending my justice points for some more epics from dalaran, not sure which tier they fall into though.

i've noticed alot of these tanks seem to have problems holding aggro on trash pulls in heroics. i mentioned it to my bro and he said something about since the changes tanks complaining they have been having problems with aggro but feel stronger in pvp or something. it seems like they are losing aggro right at the start of fights and even later even if we're just AOEing or healing slowly or w/e, maybe just one mob though.

Tank not able to hold agro to 4.7k dps ouch ...

You are just unlucky and got bad or new tanks. I can hit up to close to 11k dps on heroic boss fight here and there with my hunter and i almost never need to FD. Just gives 1 or 2 sec for the tank to build threat if you don't have a rogue or hunter in your group.

[treemonster]

To quote a member of my guild on the arcane vs frost as I think he put it best:

that video is pretty crazy but what kind of gear does he have and what kind of dps would he do with arcane?

whiel in frost in pvp i do mostly use instants and rarely hard cast spells, the cc is more or less the same, in some cases increased for arcane vs frost, except as i said an extra frost nova and deepfreeze in frost, vs a improved polymorph in arcane(assuming you have improved cs in both).

for going 1v2-3 yeah you can control the enemy group pretty decently in my experience back in tbc, but i see no changes to indicate you can control a full 5man for a whole fight any better now than back in tbc. i beat almost every spec in every class 1v1 or 1v2 back then in world pvp as well. toughest specs to fight were feral druids(cat) and disc priests(my few losses or stalemates were against these)

now back in tbc yeah i could go toe to toe with 4-5man pve groups sitting outside instances in epic pve gear after i had most of my s1/s2 arena set and kill them all. but in arenas i had absolutely no teeth and if the opposite team had a resto druid or a half decently played warlock i it was game over for me usually pretty quickly. locks just kept me shutdown and resto druids ran around outhealing my instant damage just out of range of of my frost nova while also keeping their team healed agains the rest of my team's dps while taking me out of the fight almost completely.

not saying it hasn't changed, but meh, i can't see getting those kinds of numbers in that video without top gear, and he seems to be in bg's where people tend to start out with quest greens and grind honour for starter arena gear. sure you can pretty much lock out all melee from dpsing you in a 1v2-5 fight with frost novas and other frozen procs plus slow, but what the are the chance of going against a mostly melee party? or even a party with more than 2 melee max?

anyways interesting points nonetheless. i'll probably level 81-85 as frost just to see how much the numbers change in both leveling pve and world pvp.

[treemonster]

Tank not able to hold agro to 4.7k dps ouch ...

You are just unlucky and got bad or new tanks. I can hit up to close to 11k dps on heroic boss fight here and there with my hunter and i almost never need to FD. Just gives 1 or 2 sec for the tank to build threat if you don't have a rogue or hunter in your group.

4.7k dps is on teh boss fights, which is fine for aggro, i avg ~2k dps on aoe trash fights and get aggro from a single mob after giving the tank time to build aggro(i tend to eb the last oen to start dpsing) my bro who plays healers has been getting aggro instantly without seeming to cast.

probably new tanks though. seems to be a lot of people just hitting 80 and getting into heroics for justice points before cata.

[Bryan R.]

Not to be a jerk or anything, but you have mentioned a couple of times other people telling you things along the lines of "blizz screwed tank aggro" and "i pull aggro without doing anything". While those things may sound like bugs, I can assure you that no such bugs exist now. The game is fundamentally fine, and any of these odd occurrences should be looked at inward first or projected to other players in your party. One does not pull aggro by "doing nothing". Most likely it was caused by some proc or even hot before the tank did a single thing to said mob. That falls on the tank. Chances are there is a reason to the madness and you just have to analyze the situation. Quickly dismissing quirks like this without learning from them is how bad players play.

Again I'm not being a jerk. I know you are just verbalizing what others have told you. I'm just saying those other people are wrong.

[LittleNeutrino Veteran]

i didn't know mages got portals at that level anyway? besides mana/hp regen is so fast at that level you don't need food anyway.

do you still have teleport at that level? that would be kinda handy to have, but realistically you're probably 15 minutes away from UC at most until like 30 when you go to stv until 40. and basic ground mount at 20 now too makes travel fairly quick. i guess it depends on what zones you level in though. i usually do the zones around UC until i am high enough for stv and then i get my pvp fix while i do quests(at least more so than running away from max levels in hillsbrad)

You used to get the first Teleport at level 10 and a second at level 20 however now I am not certain when you get them. The mana, and health regen are much higher than most other characters however, still leaves me wanting to purchase food. for quicker healing while questing. Also it seams as though since they culled the spells that you have two spells to fight with frost bolt and arcane missile. everything else is rather useless :p

[treemonster]

Not to be a jerk or anything, but you have mentioned a couple of times other people telling you things along the lines of "blizz screwed tank aggro" and "i pull aggro without doing anything". While those things may sound like bugs, I can assure you that no such bugs exist now. The game is fundamentally fine, and any of these odd occurrences should be looked at inward first or projected to other players in your party. One does not pull aggro by "doing nothing". Most likely it was caused by some proc or even hot before the tank did a single thing to said mob. That falls on the tank. Chances are there is a reason to the madness and you just have to analyze the situation. Quickly dismissing quirks like this without learning from them is how bad players play.

Again I'm not being a jerk. I know you are just verbalizing what others have told you. I'm just saying those other people are wrong.

the reason i brought it up in teh first place was to get second opinions on it.

i'm seeing some tanks have no problems holding aggro even when people start dpsing before he even gets to teh mobs(or so it seeems) and other tanks losing aggro on a mob or two either pretty quickly or later on in the fight.

keep in mind some of these tanks will move the mobs out of our(dps) aoe or not group the melee mobs with the ranged mobs, again outside of our aoe.

i'm obviously not dismissing anything if i am bringing it up for discussion here. my bro didn't say definitely that aggro is messed up, but that alot of tanks were complaining about it after the patch.

You used to get the first Teleport at level 10 and a second at level 20 however now I am not certain when you get them. The mana, and health regen are much higher than most other characters however, still leaves me wanting to purchase food. for quicker healing while questing. Also it seams as though since they culled the spells that you have two spells to fight with frost bolt and arcane missile. everything else is rather useless :p

yeah having fewer spells at first makes leveling more boring, but generally speaking for leveling 1-80 you mostly use your main nuke(frostbolt then frostfire) almost exclusively anyway.

but yeah mages should never have to buy food imho. it's one of the things that make us mages, that we never pay for food ourselves.

although i did see a level 3x toon(?) with a water elemental which would be nice for leveling and leveling world pvp.

[LittleNeutrino Veteran]

yeah i am not sure when you get the water elemental when i logged in i just had it. However, it is almost useless, I hoped it would be like the void walker and you could kinda let it tank while you DPSed from the back however, it wont take aggro and deals very little damage, or at least at level 22 that is what I see.

[Bryan R.]

the reason i brought it up in teh first place was to get second opinions on it.

i'm seeing some tanks have no problems holding aggro even when people start dpsing before he even gets to teh mobs(or so it seeems) and other tanks losing aggro on a mob or two either pretty quickly or later on in the fight.

keep in mind some of these tanks will move the mobs out of our(dps) aoe or not group the melee mobs with the ranged mobs, again outside of our aoe.

i'm obviously not dismissing anything if i am bringing it up for discussion here. my bro didn't say definitely that aggro is messed up, but that alot of tanks were complaining about it after the patch.

I see where you are coming from and I understand your objective. It does come down to technique and the priorities of the tank's abilities. Hell, I was healing a random Nexus just yesterday and this stupid death knight tank was going through the instance without using DnD; mobs were being pulled off the tank as a result. Now what reason in hell is there to not use DnD on multi-mob pulls. le sigh.

Just wanted to make sure you weren't taking those incorrect statements from your buddies to heart. The parts about looking inward before outward were directed at your buddies; they won't ever get better if they continue with that logic.

[Art3x]

AoE tanking is more difficult now, but single target is roughly the same.

The issue is that lots of tanks cut their teeth on AoE tanking when it was so easy, and now don't know how to properly use all their abilities.

My dk regularly tanks 2 or 3 mobs out of a pack, as dps, even if I hold back initially.

[0trunk]

Does anyone know of a list of all the major things that were removed from the game? I've read all the patch notes but unfortunately I can't remember any major removals... :cry:

[LaP]

the reason i brought it up in teh first place was to get second opinions on it.

i'm seeing some tanks have no problems holding aggro even when people start dpsing before he even gets to teh mobs(or so it seeems) and other tanks losing aggro on a mob or two either pretty quickly or later on in the fight.

The group often can make a difference. I do very good dps with my hunter (Granule on Mugt'hol). I'm almost fully 264 and i had almost BIS 264 before the patch (i was missing sauf heroic ring and DBW had 1350 armor pen). LIke i said i do on a regular basis 10+k dps in heroic. I do around 8k aoe dps. I have a little talent called Misdirection ;) For 4 secondes i give my threat to the tank. And an hunter is one of the class generating to more threat in the game. So of course if you have an hunter pulling 9-10k dps single target and 7-8k dps multi traget in your group you WONT pull agro since you generate less threat than the hunter and for the first 4 secondes the tank get the hunter threat added to his own threat.

keep in mind some of these tanks will move the mobs out of our(dps) aoe or not group the melee mobs with the ranged mobs, again outside of our aoe.

i'm obviously not dismissing anything if i am bringing it up for discussion here. my bro didn't say definitely that aggro is messed up, but that alot of tanks were complaining about it after the patch.

There's was a lot of change for paladin tank. Paladin tanks will get some time to get used to the change. Before the change they had a fixed 6-9 rotation (easy to do). Now they have a Crusader Strike (single target), Hammer of Right (muti-target) focused rotation and for the other skills it's a priority rotation (still easy but you got to know which talents generate more threat and should be used first). Some paladin probably now wrongly do a fcfs rotation which reduce their threat initially. Also tanks need to re-gem and some tanks probably decided to skip this part since cata will be released soon.

yeah having fewer spells at first makes leveling more boring, but generally speaking for leveling 1-80 you mostly use your main nuke(frostbolt then frostfire) almost exclusively anyway.

but yeah mages should never have to buy food imho. it's one of the things that make us mages, that we never pay for food ourselves.

although i did see a level 3x toon(?) with a water elemental which would be nice for leveling and leveling world pvp.

The best leveling spec is by far Frost imo. With the 2 boa trinkets giving 4% total mana back when you kill a mobs mana is not an issue.

Does anyone know of a list of all the major things that were removed from the game? I've read all the patch notes but unfortunately I can't remember any major removals... :cry:

Shouthshore was removed. Oh my bad sorry yeah it was not removed just given free to the horde ...

[treemonster]

what happened to southshore? it was my favourite rp pvp spot. i'd go in kill all the NPCs including the flightmaster then emote rp with the lowbies there before AE instagibbing them, and talk about how great the steak was at the inn in zone chat.

plus max level alliance would actually show up to pvp there unlike pretty much everywhere else in the entire world.

and 60+ alliance would routinely raid tarren mill in large groups and i'd run in and out killing one or two at a time until they posted what a mean and bad person i was irl on the forums, and go back to raiding vanilla content.

[treemonster]

i was just looking at the that oblivinati frost mage ice lance crit video again and realized two things:

every oblvinati named mage on the armoury has way way better gear than i do.

and this is before they reduced/restructured base damage and healing in the very last(?) patch like last week or the week before. i don';t know if it ends up being the same at 80 or not though. probably is still the same.

[LaP]

i was just looking at the that oblivinati frost mage ice lance crit video again and realized two things:

every oblvinati named mage on the armoury has way way better gear than i do.

and this is before they reduced/restructured base damage and healing in the very last(?) patch like last week or the week before. i don';t know if it ends up being the same at 80 or not though. probably is still the same.

geared frost mage are crazy right now and will definately be nerfed if this is the case at 85.

I've seen 8k crit lolance on frozen target with 1k res on a regular basis. We are talking about something the forst mage can spam and move a the same time. This is ridiculous considering Hammer of wrath wont do much more on traget having 1k res and has a 6 sec cooldown and can be used for 18 secondes every 2 minutes (if the target can't dispel or spell steal) when the target is over 20% health.

One on one a skilled wrathful frost mage is a threat and can't be killed by many class in the game like ret paladin or hunter since the patch.