It's time for some...

...mage QQ! Been a while. So the new pre-Cata patch just hit. For mages, very underwhelming changes.

Frost basically became the #1 raid viable spec now, with an interesting rotation and a pet you don't have to glyph to get permanently and it can still Freeze, which also interacts with your rotation. This is shit they could have solved two years ago but nooooooo.

Fire became the AoE spec that is all about lighting shit on fire. 10% haste when three or more targets have your DoTs on them means they will need to either balance boss fights around it always being up or never being up and it does have some interesting implications for PvP. Nevertheless, looks to have similar gameplay as before. The new HS is weirdly split into two different talents for no apparent reason but the new Combustion, Blast Wave and Flame Strike are all rather interesting, at least at a glance.

Arcane is the big problem here. Arcane was always about burning mana to get extra damage. That still applies, AB only synergizes with itself now and AM is a proc but that is practically how it was before too. But the mastery gives extra damage the more mana is in your pool, which completely counteracts the whole idea of having intense burn phases heavy on going through the mana pool in record time. Instead, the most beneficial way to play should be to use a conservative cycle that will let you mana gem back up to 100% and then start a burn cycle that will last until you evocate back up to 100% again and then start the conservative cycle again. 98% extra damage for 700% extra mana at 4xAB is just by no means fun and the burn cycles are super slow and not that spectacular, which was some of the arcane allure. The absolutely worst bit about the entire thing is that the rotation is going to be pretty much exactly what it always was.

About the new spells, the frost one is underwhelming and heavily situational/PvP oriented, the fire one is just another mindless thing you shoot on cooldown for Fire and Frost but ignore as Arcane, and the arcane one is, hold on to your seats if you managed to miss all pre-Cata spoilers: Mage Bloodlust. Yeah. It's an exact clone of Bloodlust so that your ten man raiding team (which will probably start being a rather big part of raiding with the new changes) can get by without a shammy. It also gives the mage some extra soloing/PvP oomph which is nice I guess, but fact of the matter remains, they copypastad a very uniquely shammylicious spell that has been part of their lore since Warcraft 2 (although the unit casting it then was called Ogre Magi...) onto mages just for the sake of balance - the lore justifications are weak at best.

Cataclysm Beta

So yeah. We won ten invites in the screenshot competition.

First impressions: WOW! :D

Second impressions: Meh. :|

2010 in foresight

First: Midway through this post is a big-ass red spoiler warning. You have been warned of the warning. Below that, there be dragons. And spoilers.

Next: Having had a look of all the fights in the new Icecrown wings except the end bosses, I can say that Blizzard have once again topped themselves with a great raid instance. The trash is varied, fun and engaging. These are reviews, not guides.

Festergut is Patchwerk 2.0 and quite possibly my favorite fight so far due to it's plannability. Very unengaging to tank, since all you do is taunt off at nine stacks and when the 3rd inhale is up, you pop your pally wall. When it's down, you pop any trinkets and pray. Then you drop Righteous Fury and DPS until nine stacks is back. Very engaging to DPS, you are constantly churning out your max DPS (evocate? ARE YOU CRAZY?) and have to balance CD poppage with survivability (as a mage I could ignore a whole inhale cycle by iceblocking Pungent blight but it's more fun doing it proper and I am afraid I would forget to get Innoculated once or twice if I get too used to it) and running to the right spot, at the right time. Split-second decision making during a high octane fight makes it very rewarding to kill.

Rotface in the same wing is Grobbulus 2.0 and a bit of a pain, but we got him down to 10% our best try (whereas we've been hitting a bit of a brick wall at 30% and dying off at 20% previously) and I am confident that he will bite the grass next week. Dynamic fights are always more fun that static, but it's so much going on and it's so easy to lose a person due to bad luck or a very short moments unattentiveness. With one DPS down you are going to struggle to get the last ounces of health off this boss, so even a single death will probably usually mean a wipe even in the foreseeable future.

Blood Princes is a very chaotic fight as well, but we didn't get too many tries before we had to call it. I hope we go back there next week and that I can be on my main for once - I think it will be right up my valley with the target switches and empowered mechanics.

Valithria Dreamwalker has been pushed as the innovative, rules reversed type of fight but I wasn't that impressed after cooling down. Frankly, I am a bit surprised nobody over at Blizzard cracked the idea earlier while they were brainstorming new fight mechanics. We have DPS races, why not a TPS race (Hodir is as close as it gets if you have the likes of me in your party) or, like now, a HPS race... The add waves are good at least, there's a priority list and some potentially heavy raid damage to keep the healers busy and lose focus of healing the boss, equivalent of forcing DPS to move out of the fire to lessen their DPS time on the boss in a tank and spank.

I haven't more than vaguely researched the rest of the fights (I did watch the video of the world first Arthas-10 kill) so I won't comment on them further.

SPOILER WARNING. IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW HOW WRATH OF THE LICH KING ENDS, DO NOT READ ON.

It starts now. Don't keep reading. Honestly.

Blizzard, wtf? is what I like to say the most. This isn't fucking Star Wars. There doesn't always have to be a Lich King. I appreciate that there is a difference between in-game concepts and their abstractions, and that armies didn't wade through swaths of Scourge soldiers to reach the Lich King but rather snuck in, sorry, KNOCKED HIS FRONT DOOR DOWN, and that the Scourge supposedly is a force of so large numbers that it will still pose a problem to conventional warfare, but if a set of heroes can kill the biggest baddie of them all with the help of Fordring, they should be able to take on at least some of the lesser drone-like Scourge soldiers. Because, if the Scourge is so dangerous if they go on the attack (assuming this is what they will do when the become disorganized and not under control), why didn't Arthas release them on the world earlier? People speculate that this is becuase he wanted to be killed and released, but that is also a kind of lame justification. But seriously, we are in Northrend, a place where most presence is military. Sure, it would kind of suck for the Taunka and Kaluak, but without a Lich King, the Scourge would slowly die out.

Kill the queen and the ant hill will eventually crumble and die. Arthas death would mark the beginning of a period of hard work and strife for Azeroth, which would fit well in with the pre-cataclysmic changes. With the main work done, the cleanup is sure to make brittle alliances shatter and force desperate measures.

This is just the first bit of how bad the writing behind this scenario is. Won't people expect the Scourge to go bananas when the Lich King is dead? How was Fordring going to explain all the troops still kept in check? Aside from Chas who very accurately pointed out that the only info we have on this "always be a Lich King" thing comes from souls that have been trapped in Frostmourne and could say anything, let's assume that Terenas, Uther and Bolvar are legit. We still have ZERO anchoring of this in pre 3.3 lore which makes it a lame dick move. The first time I ran Halls of Reflection I instantly knew how WotLK would end, and I hated it even though I didn't have Bolvar in mind.

Even though there were some options still (redemption of Arthas by love, exorcism, purification, shattering of Frostmourne or something) rather than the outright killing of Arthas and then being done with it, this is by far the most cheesed out variant of it. I honestly would rather have an atoned Arthas appear, as much as I think that he had to die for the crimes he commited (although it would have been awesome if Azeroth could forget and forgive making Arthas a key character in the future lore - at least it would add some complexity to the damn thing and show that Blizzard can still mix things up), if that would have made the Bolvar bullshit disappear. Seriously, the Lich King is a created entity, it, or he, just is. There doesn't have to be a cool Sith-like mythos behind, and it irks me to hell that Blizzard would again copy their previous works - Sylvanas is a Kerrigan carbon copy (although getting her own faction and seeking revenge rather than world domination) Arthas is a (rather more willing) Kerrigan carbon copy, "the Scourge" even sound a bit like "the Zerg", must we have the Lich King transferring to the force that defeated him (broad strikes, people) just like the end boss of Diablo 1? Couldn't he and the Scourge just get defeated? What's with all the humans anyway, what of the Night elf hot shots? Are they content now that the world was saved at Mt. Hyjal? Bloody Malfurion already fucked up the destruction of the Frozen throne, where's his participation?

There are so many things that I dislike about the whole deal, but now I at least have touched upon a few of them.