Friday, July 25, 2008

The Big Battle of the Mages

I don’t know if you non-mage readers of The Pink Pigtail Inn have noticed, but there’s actually a Big Battle of the Mages going on right now.

Yeah, you have probably seen them, the strange lights and sparkles in the distance. It’s just like when Gandalf and Saruman had that major fight in the tower. Different schools of magic are once for all determining which one’s the best: arcane, frost or fire.

The participating fighters are currently:

Gnomeageddon.
A wellknown fire mage, so committed that he’s actually tattooed the fire balls into the subtitle of his blog: “It’s the end of the world as you know it - brought to you by a Gnome Mage with big balls of fire

Then we have Zupa from Automagica.
Also committed to his element, “Good frost is hard to find...” as it says on the blog… Or wait… Is he REALLY that committed? Recently he’s been exploring the dark side, doing experiments as fire… Hmm… What’s happening here?

Then we have Krizzlybear from Frost is the New Black. There you could expected a purist frost mage, couldn’t you? But actually he’s the one talking about that someone should be defending the mixed elemental builds.

I found myself being the one who’s been appointed as the defender of the Arcanists. Which is rather unfair since I’m such a crap theorycrafter. On the other hand the arcane spec is so good that it doesn’t really need much of sophisticated arguments to prove it’s superiority. It speaks for itself, doesn’t it?

The whole discussion seems to have started when I shared my experiences from going from fire to arcane.

That clearly brought Gnomeageddon out of balance and he started to rethink.

Then he threw a glance at his tattoo, remembering his passion for napalm, loaded and threw his first bolt, challenging the other of us to reply.

The replies must have made him even more scared, considering the amount of theorycrafting he had put into his second charge, that came the other day.

But little did he know what was upcoming… The frost mage Automagica shattered him into pieces with this attack, loaded with the most frightening curves.

And Krizzlybear didn’t make it easier to defend a fire spec, after his preview from what’s expecting us around the corner with the upcoming expansion. Another frostbolt that critted Gnomeaggeddon pretty hard.

So what’s up next? Obviously I need to do something to make those little guys playing around with snowballs and matches to realize that Real Magic is Arcane by default.

Hm. Another look into the talent tree perhaps? My eyes fall on…Wand specialization! Increases your damage from wands with 13 percent… Isn’t that talent just perfect?

Seriously, I’ve never EVER seen a mage taking it. Do you ever wand by the way? I don’t. I fight desperately not to go out of mana, so there’s no need for it…. Or… Well I may have been poking around with that stick a little in the third phase of Zul’jin. But that's it.

Still it’s so wonderful, they’ve given it to us, since you know you can skip it without losing anything at all. It’s a no-brain talent (not to pick) and that makes me so happy. Picking the right talents takes so much of thinking anyway. Thanks to this utterly useless talent I can use my intellectual resources to ponder upon other things. Thank you Blizzard for making life easier for Arcane mages!

The war goes on. I see a flash of light in the distance… I wonder what Gnomeageddon, Automagica and Frost is the New black are up to now? Will some other mages take the step and join the battle? Let's wait and see...

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sound much like BRK vs. BBB? Sounds fun. =)

Anonymous said...

/clap
/bow
You nearly had me scared of Wand Spec for a second there....

I think I will stay out of range for another round or two... my guess is you are going to come up with some sort of Improved do-dad... and I don't want to be around to see it.

Anonymous said...

@35yards: Fun? You think this is for fun? This is the Final War. Armageddon's coming.

You see I've heard from some people with inside information that Blizzard's realized there's more money in casual players. Having three trees is way to complicated You know, most newbie players won't see the two tabs that are behind anyway, it's really just a waste.

So this is it. It's now it all will be settled. There can only be one winner. The surviving spec, which will go all the way into the Lich King. The other ones will be trashed.

This is not for fun. It's a fight for life and death, way more serious than the skirmishes you've seen at EJ.

I'm sharpening my weapons...

Captain The First said...

See if you can draw in that chap from critical QQ (http://criticalqq.wordpress.com/)

He's a fairly outspoken mage, I am sure he'll be able to contribute something interesting.

Meanwhile I'll just sit here, absorb the information and see if I can find anything that'll make me want to play my mage again.

Do you need a qualified arms dealer for this one? I happen to have a large stock of ice cubes, napalm and a few thousand bottles of mana for the arcane mages :P

Spicytuna said...

@Captain: Euripedes is a madman. If he were to join into this battle, there would be no war, it would be mindless slaughter.

As for the Mage War, I gonna try and take the Sweden approach and stay neutral.I can see the strengths and weakeness of each tree, but I'm a bit bias towards one :)

You might see me chime in every once in a while though. Who knows when I might get involved in this war.

@larisa: I actually just wrote up something for Arcane Mages. Maybe it can some fir... I mean arcane power to your arsenal.

Knurd said...

My mage is reserved for doing dailies and occasionally sheeping things in ZA ... He generally doesn't even rate time on the blog ... wait ... I don't think ... oh I said his name today.

Good things tend to come from wars .. purhaps through all of this I will find the error in ways and be converted to using him for more than making gold and porting people around.

krizzlybear said...

Come on Lar! You're not giving Arcane enough love! Sure, wand specialization is great (and for sure I'll be making an interesting post about it in the future), but the insane support talents that it provides is just so juicy.

Keep at it! There's a lot of frost mages as is, so you better represent the arc-side! *does rapper-like arcane hand sign thingy* SAY WUT SAY WUT

Anonymous said...

Hum, you have been a busy little gnome. Thought you had quit WoW after my searches for Larisa on Armory did no longer bring up any gnomes, except a lvl 16 rogue.

Anyone, good to see you keeping busy and having fun.

Anonymous said...

Grim!!!
The grumpiest and friendliest gnomehating dwarf ever! Thought you'd left the game... Please stop by and say hi!

Anonymous said...

@Krizzlybear I will, I will... I was just hoping to get a little bit of support from some insanely good arcane theorycrafter out there.

I'll be off now for some vacation, but I'll be back into the battle soon enough. The war has just begun.

Anonymous said...

Ended my hiatus a few months back but when I came back, you had already moved and I couldn't find Arisol either (or whatever your alt was named). As I said, I tried searching for you on WoW Armory, but I couldn't get any hits and the posts I found listed you at Kul Tiras, so I thought you had done the sensible thing we all long to do and given up on WoW. ;)

And Grim gnomehating? Never. Grim was condecending, mocking and usually indifferent towards gnomes, and not above using them as bait, but he never hated the little anclebiters. That was reserved for the pointy eared tree huggers. Suffering their company was something he could never do well, even if they made excellent field provision should the need araise. The tales of bloodshed and the creation of the Desolace after Grim setting fire to an elven forrst is stuff of legends, but all he wanted in the end was to enjoy some peace in a world rid f the flea infested buggers.

However, the elves, demostrating their usually narrowmindedness would not even let a dwarf be druid, even if he was a which lead to the unholy creation of Borvo, the gnome loving druid. Quite gnome loving. Usually fried or cooked.

As such, Borvo have become my new main, as being a huntard was getting old and tanking have proven itself to be quite fun. The only problem have been my pesky guild loyalty, making me stick to guilds even when it was painfully obvious that the guild would not go anywhere, but I have finally gotten into a more raid serious guild by joining A99, and is having fun tanking everywhere from Gruul to Mount Hyal. That said, I won't mind you refering to me as Grim, as I guess I will always be that in a way.

Oh, and hey. :D

Anonymous said...

Aha, you added an ´ to your name, no wonder I could track you down.

Tricksy hobbitses, trying to escape, but I will get them, oh yes, I will get my preciouses.

Darkhorse said...

wand specialization.

why does it exist?

A question plaguing mages across the globe since time immemorial!

I'm pretty sure I had this talent once when I was in my teens and didn't know anything yet :P