A view from the bottom of the learning curve

Two weeks away from WoW was all it took for me to tumble down all the way down the learning curve back to the sewer level, where I started four years ago.

This was obvious as I logged in last weekend after my holiday absence.

I stared in disbelief at the screen, getting more and more nauseous as the camera nervously flipped up and down. You were supposed to control this thing with your mouse, weren’t you?
Was something broken or was this how it worked? How was I supposed to move my toon? Had I ever even played this game at all?

So this was my character, Larísa. A mage apparently. Level 85, it said, whatever that could mean.

Catching up
Slowly I recalled what this was about. Oh yes. There had been this expansion coming right before my holidays. In the middle of packing and other preparations I had managed to press her up to end game level, but not much more than that.

And now I was back and within 72 hours our first 25 man raid was scheduled, and I needed not only to remember how to play WoW, but also to make Larísa raid ready. It wasn’t anyone else who had required me to be prepared to go in such a short time, but I wanted to. This would be the first 25 man raid since June last year, and you all know what it’s like to get back to school after the summer vacation. There’s something special in the air in the first raid of the season. I just didn’t want to miss it.

But where to start, what to do? I was lost, so lost. And also increasingly ill, not just because of the view of the screen, but because all those germs we escaped in India seem to have been assembling in Sweden to have a sneaky assault on me as soon as I came home.

It was a challenging task, but somehow I did it. Don’t ask me how though, because those first few days are a bit hazy in my memory, an equal mix of chain running heroics and chain running to the bathroom.

Enough to say: when Adrenaline stood at the top of Bastion of Twilight Tuesday night, ready to enter for the first time, I was there.

I was dressed up in mostly heroic gear and even a couple of epics thanks to a very wealthy and equally generous guildie. I had the reputation enchants I needed and I had even managed to level first aid to max, which was a bit of a pain, especially since I levelled my tailoring profession at the same time. (A tip to anyone in the same predicament – if the cloth is dirty expensive at your server, take a treasure finding potion that gives you extra loot and find a spot for aoe-farming. Even with a price of 200 g a pot, it pays off and it saved my day.)

Climbing the learning curve
Gearing up is one thing though, learning how to play is something completely different. You can be as raid ready as you like gear wise, but this doesn’t help much if you’ve lost the feeling for how to play WoW.

This has made me think of learning curves. I’m admittedly not the quickest of climbers, and I tend to start out horribly low as we’re learning new encounters. Eventually I will always “get it”, but not quite as fast as the quickest learners in our guild.

But if I think about this first week back in WoW, I don’t feel as if I’m just at the bottom of a learning curve I need to climb. It’s more as if I’ve fallen down into a dark pit hole, losing skills I believed I already mastered.

When you think of learning how to ride a bicycle, it’s a one-time-only. Once you’ve learned how to do it, it’s there. You won’t forget how you do it, either you practice or not. You can mount a bicycle 10 years later and you’ll still not fall.

Playing WoW is different. Apparently you can de-climb the curve and de-learn things you knew, leaving you with no choice but to start over again.

A headless chicken
Partly I figure it’s the result of the class changes. Mages have gotten a couple of new spells that need to be squeezed, not only into my action bars, but also into my mindset, habits and muscle memory. It’s not done overnight.

Another reason for my struggles is probably that the difficulty level has stepped up considerably since Wrath. Some of the heroic bosses feel more like raid bosses than anything else. This is basically something I welcome; it means that also non-raiders can get access to interesting and challenging content. So it’s not as if I’m asking for nerfs, not at all.

But the fact remains, more than once have I felt like a headless chicken – in heroics as well as in raids - and I can’t help feeling a bit let down by myself.

Why I can’t pull my gameplay together and climb the learning curves as quick and easily as my fellow guildies? What am I doing here, still crawling around in the sewer?

However, this isn’t going to be a post that ends in misery, despair and self-bashing. I refuse to give up! I’ve climbed hills like this before and damned me if I won’t be able to climb it again!
As a reminder I’ve changed my title from Merrymaker to The Patient. Even if I geared up in two days I can’t expect myself to re-learn my class with all the changes there have been to it in the same amount of time. All I can do is to keep going, spend some times at the dummies, read up, ask fellow mages for advice and then and practice, practice, practice, Eventually I’ll get it.

The juggling experience
If I have any doubts about it, I’ll just think back at what I did in India. I spent most of my days lazily drifting in the ocean or reading novels on the beach. But I had brought one project with me: a set of juggling balls. I had decided to once for all learn how to juggle, which was quite ambitious for someone who lacks any sense for ball handling whatsoever.

The balls came with a leaflet, where you were told you could learn three-ball juggling in seven steps. “Anyone can learn this within one hour”, assured the writer. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. For me it took one and a half week of daily practice before I got it. But that’s not the point.

The point is that I didn’t give up. And I didn’t care about the quizzing glares I got from other beach visitors as I publicly displayed my shortcomings in tossing as little as one or two balls.

I just kept going. Not for long periods, just ten minutes per hour, day after day. Sometimes I fell back on the learning curve, starting to fail at step five, which I previously had mastered. In those moments I went back a few steps and practiced more until I had them working properly, before taking it back to where I was.

I didn’t bash on myself, I didn’t ask why it took me hours and hours of juggle training when the leaflet said it would take just 60 minutes. I just did it anyway, my way, enjoying the learning process as such, not attempting to take shortcuts as I climbed the curve in my own pace.

I left India with a moment forever burned into my memory: the feeling of successfully doing three-ball juggling as the sun dived into the ocean at the peaceful beach in Goa. Twenty times in a row I cast the balls without dropping them once. I don’t think anyone noticed. But I’ll never forget how I felt inside.

And whenever I’ll find the view in the sewers at the bottom of the learning curve just too depressing, whenever I’ll start doubting that I can be a true asset to our raid team rather than a burden, I will think about my juggling experience.

If I could learn how to juggle, I can learn how to do anything.

Even how to play my mage properly in Cataclysm.

Cheers!

I dinged 85 and went straight to Naxx

So, I reached 85 the other night. The first thing I did was to train my new mage toy, the godsend Time Warp. Of course. But do you know what I did next?

I went straight to Naxxramas. Yes, the same old pyramid that has been hanging over Northrend the last two years. It hasn’t’ been tweaked or upgraded, there isn’t any new surprise boss in there. And yet, there I found myself at a date with Patchwerk.

How come? Well, it turned out that it was the weekly raid quest. And you might not be aware of it, but that quest gives a decent 138 justice points for just a couple of minutes of effort. Not bad for a point- and gear-thirsty freshly dinged 85. It felt weird to say the least, and in a couple of weeks I don’t think it would be worth it. But as it is now, it’s not bad. After all a normal LFD dungeon only gives you half of it.

Talking about patchwork, with an “o”, that is what this post will be: some random observations about Cataclysm that I wanted to share before I take a break from Azeroth for a couple of weeks.

Item level – the new Gearscore?
There have been a couple of things that have been bubbling around in my mind. One is the issue of Item level. I’ve never been obsessing over Gearscore before, but I find myself way more interested in the average item level number that Blizzard provides you with in game. I learned that I needed to reach 329 to be let into a heroic instance and suddenly that became a goal per se. I looked for whatever upgrade I could get – through justice points or at AH and then I equipped it and waited eagerly to see if my average level had raised enough to reach the magical number. “Oh, noes, only 328, bugger! I need something more”

I wouldn’t go as far as to equip a completely irrelevant, useless item just because it has a higher level number, in order to play tricks on the system. But can certainly see the temptation.

I wonder if this development is for the good. We’ve discussed the pros and cons of Gearscore to death, and I’ve heard several commenters saying that you certainly need a simple evaluation tool, but that Gearscore is too dumb to make the work properly. In its place they recommend more advanced addons such as Elitist group. However, with the arrival and emphasis on item level, Blizzard might take us in a different direction. It’s way dumber for sorting purposes than Gearscore, since it doesn’t say anything about the usefulness of the gear or whether you’ve done anything about it, using enchants or gems. However, I’ve already seen it in practice as someone was announcing in /2, looking for a group to make some dungeon achievements. The requirement to join the group was to have an average gear level of 340 or more. It remains to see if this was a unique event or a beginning of an unfortunate trend.

A Very Manly Staff
While we’re talking about gear I have to mention the Very Manly Staff that I got from the new ring of blood-quest in Twilight Highlands. I’ve had a lot of weapons over the years, and I don’t remember anything about most of them. They all look the same to me; there are only so many ways you can design a gnome dagger. But this weapon will no doubt become one of those that stick in my memory. It can’t be missed.

For one thing, it’s huge. Especially on a gnome. I’ve always thought that my mage has some kind of back problem, since she’s sort of crouching as she runs. Now I know why. I would have that too if I was supposed to carry around such a burden. Oversized? Yep, you bet.

The second feature is that it moves. It’s got some kind of mechanism with spikes that randomly are folded in and out for no apparent reason.

And then there’s this name. Very Manly Staff. I don’t know exactly what it is in it that makes it so manly, but I suspect that the devs just wanted to bring the e-peen measuring to a new level with a wry smile. So far I haven’t noticed any beard growth or other changes to Larísa. Well, apart from that bad back then.

Just looking at the staff makes me a little giddy. There’s something irresistible about a pink pigtailed gnome running around with a Very Manly Staff, as if she was showing the finger to players who think that only a Big Bad Guy can kill a Big Bad Monster. Or carry a Very Manly Staff.

Painful quest
If you think about getting it for yourself, I recommend you strongly to not try it at anywhere near peak time on your server. I’m on a PvE server myself, but the competition around the quest giver, buried under a mountain of mounted players, was so fierce that it felt more like PvP. Some players amused themselves (or was stupid enough to not know better) by snatching the target from other groups who just had started the event. This resulted in repeatedly failed quests and prolonged waiting times – for everyone. If people would just have queued up nicely and taken the quests in order, it would have gone ten times quicker. But WoW players just don’t do that, unless they’re technically forced into a queue like when they’re logging in.

So to put it shortly: this quest is currently a pain in the ass unless you do it at 6 am in the morning. And I think Blizzard should think it over, if they couldn’t put it up somehow differently, through phasing, instancing or some other solution.

Raiding 5-mans
And a final note: I’ve dipped my toe into my first heroic dungeon. It felt like a raid. A raid where I’m constantly active – sheeping, throwing orbs, putting up rings of frost, counterspelling, decursing, you name it.

It was long time since it was as fun to play a mage. I lost count on how many corpse runs I did. But I did them with a smile.

Edit: Tarnop pointed out in a comment that the Manly staff probably is named after a player in Elitist Jerks called - yes, you guessed it - Manly! If you check out his armory he's currently wearing it, even though I don't doubt that it soon will be upgraded. Thanks for the heads-up!

What makes a weapon look awesome?

Some of my guildies have this thing about weapons. Every once in a while they start drooling in the forums when they've spotted a new weapon that is about to be introduced to the game. It’s not necessarily about the stats – even though it might help. Every so often it seems to be purely a matter of esthetics.

It’s hard to understand exactly what they find so attractive in a certain model. I can’t rid myself of the suspicion that it’s mostly about the size. And possibly something else connected to this. Go figure.

Big is beautiful?
The latest object for their affection, which made those guys go “oooh” and “awww” and “me wants” and “I’m so going to use my dkp on this”, was the Reclaimed Ashkkandi Greatsword of the Brotherhood.

To me it looks just like another sword: broad, long, heavy and clumsy, a little bit like The Sun Eater from TBC.

What those weapons have in common is that they really don’t appear to be made for a melee fight the way I think of it. Mind you, I’m not any expert in martial arts, but aren’t they just way too big to make sense?

They certainly don’t make me think of sword dueling or fencing as we see it in the movies: quick and elegant as a dance, just a bit more violent. The swords look more like something you could use for making bread or pizza in an old fashioned stone oven. The best use you probably could make of them in a fight would be to treat them as a piece of wood to hit people hard in the head. Brutal, but not very cool.

I don't sign unconditionally on that “Big is beautiful”. There must be other criteria for what constitutes a good looking weapon. But then, what else are we looking for?

Of course this boils down to personal taste and I don’t claim to be any more enlightened in this area than anyone else. But nevertheless I’ll share a couple of features that I appreciate.

Visual identity
First, I want it to have a distinct visual identity, something that makes it different from all the others. The best looking weapons can be identified at a distance, without using the character inspection.

For instance I love Will of Arlokk, with its distinct snake head. It looks cool and sticks, but is still somehow discrete. Not at all like Nibelung, whose attached flying creatures I find pretty annoying. I don't think it ever will stuck with me that it's pointless to try to kill them.

And while we're into weapons that are easy to recognize I have to mention Cookie's Tenderizer, which is the cutest mace ever with its rolling pin shape, in case you've missed it. It's not what I'd call "good looking", but it makes me smile every time I see it, even if I never could figure out why the icon looks like a thread roll.

Class matching
Secondly, I want the weapon to naturally match to the class I’m playing. My mage for instance, uses her brain as she's fighting the monsters. She doesn't physically stick her dagger into the enemies; she attacks them with her intellect and her spells.

I like any feature in the weapon that associates to wizardry – such as powerful rune inscriptions, mystical light surrounding the weapon, or a hypnotizing moving part, like the good old Staff of Jordan.

In any case, it should go without any doubt that Larísa is neither a warrior, nor a rogue.

Well scaled
Next, I want the weapon to be well scaled adjusted to my chosen race. Daggers and swords cutting a hole in the flying carpet is an abomination, and so are other weapons that keep hitting the ground just because a gnome is wearing them. I think a weapon should look just as appropriate on a gnome as on a tauren.

A holster
Moving ahead, I’d give an extra bonus to any dagger or sword that came with a holster or some other carrying device. When you don't use your weapon you should be able to attach it to your armor, and preferably not using glue, magnetism or "magic". Why can't it hang properly in the belt for a change?

I read an article about this a while ago, where Anjin Anhut discusses the issue of human magnets as an example of details that matters for immersion reasons. Anjin compares how different games have approached it, and sadly enough WoW ends up in the category “The ugly”. (I should add though that in the end, the author decides to give WoW some break “for already being some years around and having a wide arrangement of weapons available.)

Invisible values
Finally I think there are other, invisible values that also will affect the way we perceive a weapon. Even if they belong to the category "silly big" weapons, I can't help thinking that someone who is dressed with a pair of Warglaives of Azzintoh or sports a Thunderfury looks badass.

The question is: do they really look that gorgeous, or could it be that I'm under influence of the circumstances around it - by the lore attached to it, the rarity of it and the effort I know it has taken to get it? Would those weapons look just as pretty if I know that any scrub could get them doing a level 20 quest in Wetlands? Maybe, maybe not. My views are filtered through a layer of knowledge that it's hard to think away. Iconic weapon is iconic.

More weapon talk
Talking about weapons - I hope you remembered to leave any of those you were wearing as you entered the inn in the wardrobe room by the entrance? I try to keep this place as a neutral zone, a sanctuary where we don't make any difference between allies and horde. You're basically a peaceful bunch of people, but we all know that discussions might get a bit heated after a couple of pints, so let's stay on the safe side.

However, just because you can't bring your weapons to the table, it doesn't mean you're not allowed to talk about them. What makes a weapon look good? Which weapons in the game would you put on a top 10 list? Have you ever owned a weapon that looked so well that you couldn't stop admiring your toon? Please go ahead and share with us!

Friday night toast
It's Friday night and I'll end this post accordingly, bringing out a toast.

This week I want to send a special nod to one of our regular visitors, Syrien, who recently sent me a gift in game: an Elwynn Lamb pet. Syrien doesn't even play on my server, but created an alt to make some business and be able to buy it for me as a gift. Apparently Syrien thought it seemed as if I needed a little bit of appreciation and encouragement. Needless to tell, I was surprised, humbled and touched by this kindness and generosity in equal proportions. Thank you! I will keep the ingame letter in one of my precious bank slots for the reminder of my days as a WoW player. That says something about how much it meant to me.

Another nod goes to my guildie Gurraberra, who once upon the time created the header of The Pink Pigtail Inn, you know - the image of the pink pigtailed gnome and the fire. He took the screenshot at one of my favorite spots in the game, the inn in Darkshire. Gurraberra is also one of the major actors at the AH at our server, and he made a fortune selling glyphs in the 4.01 craziness. When he found out that I didn't have any Traveler's Tundra Mammoth, he promptly gave me one. This will no doubt make my levelling in Cataclysm a bit easier, with a vendor and a repair guy never further than a click away. Thanks a ton, Gurraberra!

My third nod for the evening goes to the new website Eat sleep breathe wow, which makes short videos on WoW related topics, such as guides and commentary on the game. Steve, who is a blogger from the beginning, has high ambitions for those video procuctions and the ones we've seen so far look, if not perfect, at least promising. I think he deserves a bit of attention and a free drink in the bar. Keep it up Steve!

And now, ladies and gentlemen, it's time to raise our glasses. Here's to a wonderful weekend.

Cheers!

My Friday Pint of Ponderings for all of you who stayed at home

It’s Friday night, but the inn is somewhat quiet, like the rest of the blogosphere, as Blizzcon 2010 is at full swing and that’s the bar where everyone’s gathering at the moment.

I’m still here though, and maybe there are a few more poor fellows, especially Europeans, who couldn’t find a good enough reason to toss up thousands of Euros just to attend a marketing event.

So if you’re still around, please come closer to the fire, slip into your favourite armchair end let us end this week as we always do – sipping a pint of ponderings over the state of the game, sharing what’s up in our gaming lives.

Ponderings over Blizzcon
To be honest I’m not that heartbroken by not attending Blizzcon. Sure, it would have been great to meet up with some of my fellow bloggers, to see the faces and hear the voices of those people who I somehow feel that I know personally after sharing thoughts with them for so long.

But as far as the official convention is concerned, it’s probably too commercial and big scale to suit me; after attending SF fan driven conventions, I’m used to something completely different to what Blizzcon can offer. Earlier this year I wrote a post about why I wished I could go to Blizzcon, but some of the comments made me change my mind.

Besides, if you’re mostly interested in the news that will be presented at Blizzcon, I honestly believe that you’re better off following them from your home. You don’t even have to buy the broadcast stream from the panels to get access to the content. The opening ceremony will be streamed for free(!). MMO-Champion will be live blogging, and considering how quick they normally are with news, I doubt they will fail us. Íf you want to see the happenings from different points of view, there are a bunch of other blogs and podcasts, such as Twisted Nether and Wowhead, who also will be posting and broadcasting live during the weekend.

Those media will not only give you an excellent overview, they will also add commentary to it, and you’re guaranteed not to find yourself stuck in a queue somewhere as they’re closing the doors to a panel you had planned to attend. Actually I think you'll be more informed in your armchair than most of the participants on spot.

So don’t be sad if you’re sitting at home right now, enjoying your pint with this pigtailed gnome as your only company. You should rather congratulate yourself to all the money and effort you’ve saved. Enjoy the free reports online – or do like me: ignore them and wait a few hours until someone has made a good summary for you.

I can guarantee you one thing: you won’t miss out ANY important piece of information just because you didn’t attend Blizzcon. Every inch of the premises, every second of the event will be covered.

A buggy week
Apart from Blizzcon, what’s up in the game? Well, I say like Syl: Bugs, bugs and more bugs. They clearly outnumber the ones who dwell outside Putricide's laboratory.

I suppose we could expect and should accept a few issues with such a huge patch as 4.01, but isn't this a little bit too much, especially since the amount of bugs rather seems to have been increasing than decreasing after the release? At least the EU realms have been plagued with dc:s, and flying from the graveyard in slowmotion after wipes became painful after a while.

As we've seen before in this kind of situations, Blizzard hasn't been too impressive in terms of communications. I've said it before and I say it again: it takes so little to keep the players in a better mood. A blue acknowledgement that they've noticed what's going on, that they're working on a solution and estimation about how long this might take. If it isn't possible to say when you can expect things to be fixed - well, you can at least give a time for when you will update the information.

It's all very basic, it doesn't cost much and they should totally be able to do this - if nothing else because it would save them some work, dealing with multiple posts from costumers who all put the same questions over and over again. I don't know what prevents them from doing this. Shall we blame the upcoming Blizzcon, pulling their attention elsewhere?

Relearning how to play
Despite the situation, I’ve tried to learn to play my characters again with mixed, or to be honest, pretty bad results.

First out was my mage, of course, and I'm afraid that the new version of the arcane spec was a disappointment. It wasn't fun or interesting or exciting at all, only difficult, confusing and frustrating. I just don’t get it. The mana juggling is counter intuitive; beyond my comprehension and not enjoyable at all. But who enjoys sucking?

Currently I'm trying out the fiery side instead. While it feels rather unfamiliar for one who has played arcane for ages, it's still got potential as "fun", and who can resist a free instant pyroblast? So I reckon I'll give this a chance and do it some more, before I'll consider sending my mage to retirement.

An overall issue, regardless of spec, is the new system, where any button you push will make you put that cast in a queue, from where there is no return, as far as I know of. The only way to maintain control is to break the habit of spam smashing buttons. You're not supposed to push anything until you're ready to cast.

This has turned out to be a way bigger issue to me than I imagined as I read about it. You don't mess around with your muscle memories that easily. It will take time to adapt. I'm glad we have the entire levelling in Cataclysm for practice. As we reach end game the next time, I should have learned the new manners.

Loving the green
Apart from struggling with my mage, I’ve also sneaked away into instances and battlegrounds with my resto druid, which has been a way more pleasant experience. The new "good green" goo effect is fun, even if certainly is a challenge for us to learn to love it, embrace it, stand in it and inhale it, rather than run away from it. Kae provided a guide, but I’m afraid that backbone reactions are strong, and it will take some time to change this pattern.

It will also take me a while to learn to remember to turn into a tree once in a while. Most of the time, I'm oblivious of the fact that I can do it, which is odd considering that I most of all wants to stay in tree form all the time. You would expect me to use the cd as soon as it was up. Once again it’s about learning new patterns and habits.

I try not to be too harsh with myself though. We have to give ourselves a bit of slack and have some patience with our own shortcomings as we slowly let the new stuff sink in.

A blind Kingslayer
I'll end this week with sharing a story about someone who really knows how to overcome difficulties. I stumbled upon this story about Hexu, an enhancement shaman at Dreanor, EU who recently earned his Kingslayer title. What makes him different to many other Kingslayers is the fact that his blind, after being injured as he served in the military. Here's a quote from the forum post, written by one of his guildies:

"Hexu tonight just killed the final Icecrown Citadel boss tonight with the aid of various mods, excellent Ventrilo comunication and the lovely function of Auto-Follow. He made it through all 3 phases without dying, even out lasting one of the tanks (/hate ardent defender not being passive).

So i would like to congratulate Hexu on a remarkable achievement which would seem so out of reach even for people with functional eyes! (no offence to people with
functional eyes!)

Kudos Hexu, he did awsome! and i really mean that, he wasn't carried nor boosted, he did all the hard work himself! (well and 9 others)"

Of course there's no way for me to verify the story, but it sounds credible enough, so I'll join the Polaris guild in their celebrations. It's an impressive achievement, not only by Hexu, but by the entire raid group. It's something to take inspiration from next time we're about to feel sorry for ourselves over something insignificant.

So big congratulations from The Pink Pigtail Inn! This toast is for you.

Cheers!

Now if you excuse me I'll retire to my seat by the fireplace, finishing my drink and waiting for the gossip from Blizzcon to eventually reach our little corner of the world. Hopefully we'll have something to talk about next week too. See you then!

A horribly long post about the week that was: Patch confusion, Mage goodness, Paragon glimpses and Earthquakes

Have you settled in the new Post Patch Landscape? Is your gear re-forged and re-gemmed, have you re-familiarized yourself with your class and successfully restored your UI?

To be truthful I'll answer "no" on all questions. But it’s Friday night and I refuse to panic about anything. It’s time for a pint and some ponderings over the past week. So expect one of those posts where I defy the idea about a red thread, letting my thoughts wonder freely as they come.

Ups and downs
There have been downs and ups. Mostly ups, actually. For all the annoyances and frustrations it causes, a major patch tends to have a revitalizing effect on the game. It may be broken, but at least it's a change.

Take Dalaran for instance. It’s lagging again. And I salute you, lag! It means that the players are back, running around, apparently busy and slightly clueless, trying not to get too badly tricked by the goblins that automatically will appear on those occasions.

People are coming back and I’ve greeted guildies who I haven’t seen for months, since they’ve been away playing in the beta or dabbling with other games. It’s really heart-warming, like an appetizer for Cataclysm. If it’s like this now, can you imagine the crowds and the lag once we get the real expansion?

I must admit though that even if I’ve been online a couple of hours after the patch, I haven’t really played my characters very much, in the sense of killing stuff. And no, I haven't harvested anything at all in the terms of gold, since I'm a moron and a slacker when it comes to those things. Sue me.

I’ve had my hands full trying to bring some kind of order into my house that the torrent storm smashed into pieces. My to-do list appears to be endless.

The specs have to be settled – two for my mage and two for my druid (the rest of my alts are left in the dust for now being.) The new talent interface feels a bit unfamiliar, but I say: “yay!” for not having to pay 15 gold as a punishment fee if you happen to set one point in the wrong spot. It’s wonderful that you can mess up as much as you like before confirming your new spec.

I’ve been glyphing (thank you my wonderful guild, providing free glyphs for all mains!), switching gems and going on a desperate hunt for hit rating. In case you didn't notice: the new requirement of 17 percent for everyone is brutal, at least if you're a spoiled arcane mage until now.

I’ve tried to restore my action bars back to something that resembles a little bit to what they used to be – but I keep failing as I use them. My muscle memory won't comply with the new conditions. Like Tobold I have to relearn how to heal.

And then there’s the new mechanism for spells queuing up that confuses me completely. I keep telling my finger to stop spamming the buttons, but alas, it's in vain. Spells keep going off, and not necessarily the ones I wanted. And is there anyone else who keeps pressing “O” , wondering why there isn’t any guild list?

Another issue: what’s with this new thing that buttons suddenly will flash up and keep blinking angrily until you press them? I can’t help wondering what happens if I’ll disobey. Will the computer explode? Will the Blizzard Gods put a note in the records: “Noobish gnome that refuse to follow the UI advice. Beware!”?

A smooth patch
All in all, most things have worked as intended and it has been a very smooth patch.

Sure, there are some broken addons and it was frustrating to enter a battleground just to find that I didn’t have any raid frames at all. Kind of hard to heal then. Lucky for me, I have a personal UI builder, who has promised to help me out in my distress, so I have hope for the future.

On the whole, I’ve been OK. I didn’t experience any unexpected critical errors during the download. I didn't have to visit the technical forums begging the blues for their attention to my problem, expecting no help but the harsh standard reply "wipe it and reinstall the game from the beginning".

There have been a couple of weird things. Like the Polymorph Monkey glyph that appeared out of nothing. I’m completely certain I’ve never bought or installed it. And why do I suddenly every now and then find myself wearing our hideous guild tabard, which I never use voluntarily? I swear I didn’t put it on and yet it shows!

But isn’t that what’s so charming with those major patches? Expect to encounter the unexpected!

Talking about the unexpected I believe I’m not the only one to freak out every time I start the game. Zarhym does too, according to a blue post.

“I jumped out of my chair yesterday when I hit the Play button to check on something in the game. This isn't an intended heart-rate check and we're looking to get it fixed in an upcoming patch”

I look forward to that too. Even if I can see the benefit of being alert and awake once I start playing, I prefer to get my adrenaline rushes in other ways.

New mage dresses
Enough about the patch though. I’m sure I’ll come back to it in the next couple of months.

There has been some other stuff going on this week, worth a mentioning. MMO Champion presented the new tier 11 armor set for mages, and I just have to talk a little bit about it because with one exception it looks absolutely amazing.

What isn’t there to love with the fire themed dress with the glowing shoulders? The thought of wearing this if you’re fire specced is irresistible. There are two other versions as well, one purple and one blue, and it's still a little bit unclear what they represent. Maybe it's about heroic and non-heroic versions? Or could it be that they show how the dress will look in different specs, the blue one being the natural choice for a frost mage? Probably not, but I like the idea.

And now to the exception from the awesomeness. Of course I'm talking about the head, which displays a glowing skull mask. And I just don't get it. Do they think mages enjoy running around like some kids begging for Halloween candy - all year round? It could have been a fun seasonal trick where you temporarily could get your head turning into something more festive. Like the mounts at Christmas. But this?

Oh well. I know where to find the checkbox to not display the head. I’ve used it so many times before. There just isn’t such a thing as a good looking head for mages.

Paragon interview
This post is running awfully long, but it’s my Friday night when I’m talking about whatever comes to my mind and there’s no way you could stop me.

So now I’ll just mention something completely different that I stumbled upon this week, namely a podcast called Nordrassil Radio. They did a mega-long interview with Totalbiscuit, which was entertaining in the way you could expect. If you like his style of ranting, I suggest you listen to it.
They also did a 1,5 hour long interview with the Finnish guild Paragon, which currently is considered the best raiding guild in the world. They talked to four of their members and the conversation gives some interesting glimpses into a world of competitive raiding that is very different from what most of us ever experience in the game.

Did you know that it's a normal procedure for this kind of guilds to take fake screenshots from first kills with guild members who weren't even in the raid at all? The reason is that they don't want to give out information to their competitors about what setup they've used. And if you’re curious about what specs the players in Paragon use, maybe wanting to copy it, you shouldn’t trust what you see in Armory. In order to not reveal their tactics, players will deliberately switch to some random spec before logging out! Wow. That’s what I call a competitive mindset.

It was also intriguing to hear that they regularly use Meyers Briggs tests as they’re evaluating potential new players. They have found that one personality type was dominant within the guild, even though they didn’t say which one in this interview. However it might be worth keeping an eye on their website. Apparently they’re planning to give some more information about their testing, possibly also letting visitors test themselves.

The weekly toast
It’s time to wrap this up I think. This gnome has been babbling long enough.

Have you felt the earthquakes? Every time I do, I smile to myself, and my heart trembles a little in anticipation. The shivers tell me that we ain’t seen nothing yet. There’s more to come. Much, much more.

Let’s bring out a toast for the earthquakes and whatever adventures they’ll bring us.

Cheers!

Preparing for a brutal wake-up in Cataclysm: Time to suffer!

I had almost forgotten about how it used to be to level a mage a few years back in time.

Do you remember? I always spent half of my time online in a grey blur, trying to find the way to my body (and inevitably bumping into some wall you couldn’t climb).

If I was lucky enough to last longer than the mob I was attacking, I had to sit down to drink and eat before I could think of assaulting a new one. “One mob at a time”. That was my mantra.

And oh, the horror if two mobs turned out to be linked to each other, and they were of the unsheepable sort! You had only one option: Run away little girl, run away!

Survival strategies
As I grew more experienced I became better at avoiding those situations. Some quests required you to kill mobs that were annoyingly grouped up, three of them helping each other out, assembled around a little camp, like the gnolls in Redridge. I learned the hard way to not even think of attacking those. I was way more efficient to be patient and wait until one of the solo strollers respawned again, the one you knew you could bring down without any problem.

I also got the hang of some handy mage moves. Frost nova-blink-turn around. Throw a frostbolt to slow them down, run away, fireball, frostbolt again. It wasn’t fast, but at least I survived.

All this drinking. All this eating. It bored me to death but what was a gnome supposed to do when the self bandaging and evocation was on cool down?

It wasn’t until much later on that I realized that the mage experience was different from how the game appeared to almost everyone else.

Some classes had pets to tank for them! Some classes had armor that actually protected them against damage. I don’t say anything about frost mages, because they had their own ways. But as a fire mage you were utterly fragile. Call it unfair if you want to, but that’s how it was.

Turning into a killing machine
With the arrival of Wrath we entered a new era. Suddenly I could take out not only one, but several mobs, without hesitation, chain pulling as I was questing my way through Northrend.

You’ve probably forgotten it, but at least on my server, the frostweave cloth was insanely exclusive during the first few weeks. Unless you were dirty rich you couldn’t really afford to make bandages out of them, when you could sell them at AH at 40-50 g per stack. This meant that I had to level without having any powerful bandage available, but this turned out not to be such a big problem. In Wrath you didn’t bandage, even as a mage. You were a killing machine.

As time passed, I started to take this for granted. It was easy to play a mage and the harsh life of a cloth wearer turned into a distant memory. I don’t think I’m alone in this.

A brutal wake-up
To be honest we’ve run on auto pilot for an entire expansion. But now, my friends, it’s time to prepare for a wake-up that will be brutal.

Recently Blizzard increased the damage that the creatures do in the beta significantly. And with significantly I’m talking about doing four times the damage they used to do.

I’ve been following the reports about what this means for mages at The Mana Obscure with increasing anxiety. Here’s a little example of what Gazimoff has to say about it:

“The other big change is that creature damage has been heavily ramped up from level 65 onwards. Level 82 outdoor creatures now do four times as much damage as they used to, which is horrendous news for cloth classes with little to no damage mitigation.

Currently, solo questing involves constant use of mana shield, counterspell and frost nova. And that’s for every single pull, just to stay alive. Going toe to toe with mobs in Deepholm is an excruciating experience – you have to work hard to take down a single mob. If you have anything add to the fight, you’re toast. Don’t forget that Polymorph won’t help you there as almost everything you fight is an elemental of some description.”

Ouch.

Like anything in Cataclysm it isn’t set in stone yet. They developers are still asking for feedback. Apparently the increase of damage is intended, as expressed in this blue statement:

[...] The idea isn't for you to be in Godmode, mowing through everything in your path. The idea is - in fact - for you to have to stop to rest, bandage, heal, every once in awhile. If you are reckless you will absolutely die. This is intended.”

On the other hand they say that the intent not is to force players to rest after every single solo pull. Maybe it won’t turn out quite as bad as it looks now in the end. I trust on the beta testers to give developers adequate feedback in the discussion thread.

My views on it
So what’s my personal view on making the mobs more lethal? Am I actually complaining about it, arguing that things should stay as they were in Wrath?

No, definitely no. It’s a wake-up and it will be a bit of a shock, but I think it’s a good step.

Levelling becomes more fun and interesting if you’re required to use a few more of the tools you have in your mage arsenal. I’m looking forward to sheep one mob so I can take down the other one, to frost nova and blink away. This makes me feel like a mage and not just like a generic cast-damaging-ball-of-something machine.

However I think it’s important to balance it well and not go from one extreme to another The scenario that Gazimoff describes, where you barely can take down one single mob doesn’t sound much fun to me. Running abut in the mists of death gets old quickly. And I cringe at the thought of spending excessive amounts of time just sitting on my ass, drinking and eating – especially if other classes with self healing and defense mechanisms will be better off.

Having a meal together with the rest of your party is one thing; I can put up with that. But I hate it when everyone else have to wait for thast slow mage to finish her recovery. Like I don't appreciate when other classes can level up way quicker, taking down several mobs at a time when a squishy barely can take down one.

If I’m going to struggle and suffer as I'm levellinging in Cataclysm, it should be the same for everyone else. Give me a better protecting shield or let the mobs hit harder on classes that have more protection than cloth. Whatever that makes it even.

I'm mentally preparing myself for hard times, the brutal wake-up in Cataclysm. Are you ready?

The Post Where Larísa Tries to Mislead

"But Larísa, you're not a mage blogger"!

"Oh. I'm not? Well, now that you mention it..."

The comments on the post of yesterday was a bit of an awakening to me. Listening to the banter in the bar, it became clear to me that even if I'm thinking of myself as a mage blogger, I'm certainly not seen as one. One reader had even lived in the illusion that I was a paladin. Maybe it was my shields that had confused him?

I threw a glance at the labels of the posts, and realized that out of more than 500 posts published since the opening of the PPI, only 35 were remotely connected to mages. And this made me give in. I'm not a mage blogger anymore. I may have been it at some point, but nowadays I'm just a WoW blogger who happens to play a mage.

This hasn't prevented me from producing yet another misleading mage blog post though!

I think we agreed yesterday that Gnomeaggedon is The #1 Misleading Mage Blogger who deliberately plagues the blogosphere with his delusions just to confuse all those pesky, envious hunters and warlocks.

I've now joined his forces, giving him a hand in his efforts to spread false information over Azeroth. So if you want to get a chunk of Larísa writing today, you'd better head over to Gnomes place and read my guest post, titled: "Agility and Attack Power - the essentials of a mage".

Have I succeeded in my mission to mislead? Maybe, maybe not. It may not be exactly what it looks like from the heading. Judge for yourself.

BRK and the Assault on the Mage Blogs

So BRK is underwhelmed by the mage blogging community. That’s for sure. According to the show I just listened to, he and his fellow hunters think there are only two mage blogs out there. And of those two, one has the bad habit of publishing misleading information.

Don’t you believe me? Well, download episode 34 of Hunting Party, where BRK appeared as a special guest, and hear for yourself.

It was a bit of a shocker, I tell you! My hero is rejecting me and all of my fellow mage bloggers. Just like that!

I probably would do wise to remain silent about it. You don’t challenge the most outstanding icon of the blogging community (an icon I happen to like a lot myself). Especially not considering he’s wearing a gun.

But right should be right, so I’ll speak up, regardless of the consequences.

Admittedly BRK wasn’t the one who said that one of the two existing mage blogs is misleading. The host did. But BRK didn’t object at all – on the contrary, he seemed to agree and added that mage blogs didn’t hold much content except for “Hi, I play frost, it’s cold” or “I’m short and wear a dress”.

Of course this woke my curiosity. Ever since I heard it, I’ve been trying to figure out which blogs they had in mind in this conversation. The frost blog should be fairly easy to identify, since Euripedes sadly closed his door and Spicytuna hasn’t updated for very long. It leaves us with Frost is the New Black as the most profiled candidate.

But which mage blog contains the misinformation? Hm. That’s a bit tricky. It could be Krizzlybear of course, but he has backed up his weird love for the frost spec with some solid damage charts to prove his points. It’s probably more likely that they’re talking about Gnomeaggedon, known from the past to spread delusional ideas, such as fire being a better spec than arcane and BG:s being a fun way to spend your time online.

But on the other hand, who’s the short one in a dress? Could that be me? Or is it someone else of the approximately 70 mage blogs there are out there?

Yes, we’re actually that many according to the blog list kept by Gnome. A few of the blogs on the list have closed down, but even if only half of them are still around, it’s yet a big collective we’re talking about. More than two at least.

I admit that I don't know of any podcast entirely dedicated to the mage class, unless you count TotalBiscuit who never has played anything but mage, but makes a point out of not letting class specific information taking over the show.

And I too can get a little bit impressed as I look at the abundance of hunter blogs and druid blogs. For some reason those classes seem to slightly more chatty then others.

Nevertheless – don’t you agree that it’s to pull it slightly too far to claim that there aren’t any mage blogs at all around, and that one of the two there are contains misleading information?

Brothers and sisters in the mage blogging community! We’ve had our controversies over the year regarding what spec is the best to play. Now it’s time to unite our voices and speak up, so loud that even those hunters will hear us through the noise of their blasters.

Mage blogs exist! And we don’t mislead you any more than necessary to keep some of our secrets to ourselves. Just to maintain the class balance, you know.

Maybe an addon will fix it?

No. Arcane Brilliance doesn’t seem to cut it. Nor does the gnome racial increased intelligence.

No matter how much I try to expand my intellect, I’m simply not cleaver enough to understand the idea of Blizzard’s new “Mana Adept” concept for arcane mages, to be launched in Cataclysm.

Frankly I feel rather stupid. The only comfort I have is that I’m not alone in being clueless. Not even the gurus at Elitist Jerks seem to have figured out what to make of it yet, judging from the discussion.

Mana managing game
For all of you non-mages who may not have heard of it, the new idea is that arcane mages will deal damage based on how much mana the mage has. A mage at 100 percent mana will make more damage than at 50 percent.

Mind boggling, isn’t it?

But before I start this little piece of classic mage qq, I want to point out that I don’t have anything against Blizzard putting some more emphasis on the noble art of mana managing.

It’s always been a task for arcane mages to make good use of our limited sources. We squeeze out as much as we can of our pool, altering burn phases with conservation. We evocate at the proper moment and we strive to end up with a more or less empty mana bar as the boss dies. The mana game is a part of my arcane identity and I enjoy it.

The problem is that the mana game that is now presented to me looks more strange than fun. For instance: exactly at which point in a fight are you likely to be at 100 percent mana, and because of this enjoying your biggest damage output? Yeah, I thought so too. Right in the beginning. Personally I have yet to see a fight where you’re expected to go all out right from the start. At least I think the tanks will have objections.

In my world you’re normally expected to top off towards the end, sometimes fighting against an enrage timer. Now imagine spending the entire boss fight anxiously managing your mana bar to be absolutely sure that it’s filled to the top for that short period. That doesn’t sound challenging or interesting at all to me – only frustrating and counter intuitive.

When I think about it they might as well have done the opposite construction – adding more damage to the mage, the less mana he has left. It would probably have some backsides that I don't think of, non-game designer as I am, but at least it would make sense.

To be honest I wonder if the Blizzard devs really thought this over. Doesn’t it sound a bit like one of those ideas you may crack as you’re hanging around a coffee machine: “What if…”?

EJ thinkers or a new addon
For my own part I can’t see myself mastering the Mana Adept challenge, at least not based on the information we have for the moment.

If someone replaced my brain with a calculator I might be able to figure out when to keep nuking in spite of a shrinking damage output and when to stop for refill. Maybe. It would be a complicated equation with many factors tto consider though. There’s not only the mana pool to worry about, but also the cooldowns – my own and others. Has heroism been cast? But wait – it will just burn my mana quicker. I’ll soon hit the not-so-good-damage percentage… maybe rather evocate? What about arcane power? Adding more damage – yes, but at the cost of more mana. Use it or not? Maths, maths, maths.

But I tell you: I’m just a gnome with a normal pinkish soft brain. I’m not a borg. And my head gets all dizzy when I think about Mana Adept issues.

Hopefully the great EJ thinkers will figure something out during the summer and have a new shiny spellcasting cycle ready for us when Cataclysm launches.

If they fail, maybe someone will make up an addon that can come to my rescue, telling me what’s most beneficial for me at the moment – evocating or nuking. It doesn't sound like entirely fun to let an addon decide my actions, but what’s an un-mathematical arcane mage to do?

Or I could of course just give up and go back to the so-much buffed fire tree.

Meh.

I’m glad there’s a long time to go to Cataclysm. Hopefully they’ll have some time to sort this out better – or to even throw the whole thing in the trash bin.

Time Warp goes Swoosh!

So, in case you've missed it, mages will get a heroism equivalence in Cataclysm, called Time Warp.

This raises some questions. Like: exactly how many tears will the shaman community shred over this? Will it exceed the mage outcry when they got their frog spell?

Another matter of discussion is what will the time warp spell sound like? I would vouch for some sort of "Swoosh!". But it could as well come with a "Bang!", like a starship taking off at warp speed. Who knows? The truth is out there.

The sound effects
To make a slightly (but only slightly) more serious take on this: regardless of what the sound turn out to be, I know I will learn to love it, the same way I love the cheering crowd that accompanies our heroism sessions.

It's not the sound in itself I enjoy so much of course - some people even argue that the bloodlust sound, which is supposed to be in the line of "gar-gar-gar" is way cooler. But I love what it represents. I suppose this is a perfect example of Pavlovian conditioning at work. When I hear it I don't exactly salivate, but not far from it. It's not only my toon that gets a boost from it - I do as well. It calls me out: "Focus! Action! Go for it! Just do it! Now!".

For you who aren't into raiding, and might not have experienced it, I'll try to describe the feeling of it. You see, the moment when the heroism is cast in a raid encounter is like the tipping point at the top of a roller coaster, at least if you're playing a dps class (I have no idea about if it's the same for a tank or healer.). The sudden acceleration, the huge damage increase, the short but sweet period where you know you have to squeeze everything you can out of your character and push it to the edge. The thrill is fantastic.

Actually I dare say that the psychological effect of it - triggered by the sound - probably is more important than the spell itself. Or as the blue poster Eyonix put it in a discussion on the forums about heroism a couple of months ago:

"It certainly feels like a big boost when it happens, but part of that is because so many groups use the Bloodlust/Heroism moment as the time to blow all their cooldowns and go all out. While it is unarguably a buff (though for some specs more than others), it’s role as “blow everything!” is significant too."

Mage power at last
And who wouldn't like to be the guy or girl who pulls the trigger? Until now it's been the privilege of the shamans, adding to them a certain aura of exclusiveness and power. But finally - FINALLY - the turn has come to the mages to shine. God knows we've been waiting long for this, almost as long as the gnomes have waited for their glorious retake of our capital.

When was the last time anyone really took any notice of us? Honestly? Has anyone ever asked for a mage or bothered about what we were doing standing in the back in our sissy robes since we tanked HM in Gruul? Don't think so. We weren't even wanted for the world first kill of LK heroic. (sniff)

But we're approaching a new era, my friends! As I'm casting my first Time Warp, I will pay a thought to the short statement at in the header of Euripedes blog that I've always admired so much, because it has Attitude:

I am important.

And then I'll proudly and loudly make the announcement - the obvious callout to make when you're about to enter a Time Warp.

"Engage!"

Then there will be a Swoosh! Or a Bang. Whatever.

Edit: I think I need to add a little disclaimer. Like some other community members (for instance TB) I DO have doubts about how wise it is to make all the classes more or less similar, - the same stuff in different shells. The Bring-the-player-not-the-class concept can easily lead to a pretty boring game in the long run. If I'm truly honest.

Nevertheless: speaking from my strictly selfish Mage perspective, I can't but smile thinking about my new incoming power buff that will put me in the captain's chair. Cheers! It was about time that we got a little bit of love. Then there's some other stuff going on with the mages that is less promising. But I'll leave that to another day.

Wanted: a suicidal spell

Think about a mage. What is the first thing that comes to your mind? (Apart from our general awesomeness and brilliance of course.)

Probably you’ll say something about "squishy". You think of someone who for some strange reason thinks that a think silk gown is an appropriate way to dress when you’re about to face a big evil dragon. You imagine someone who is so vulnerable that he or she will die instantly if the monster as much as look in their direction.

We’re supposed to be fragile, not to say suicidal. If there’s anything in the game that we’re good at, it’s to die quickly. We’re the Masters of Corps Runs.

Now is the time to inform you that you’ve got the wrong picture. As a matter of fact I’ve recently become more and more annoyed with my inability to die.

While we've been struggling with Sartharion + 3d, it happens all the time that wipes are called for different reasons. We've lost a tank, we've lost too many healers and there's no point in continuing. It’s standard procedure that the RL will order us to die ASAP in order not to lose precious raiding time to a futile attempt.

And this is when my usually so weak mage for some reason suddenly becomes surrounded by some sort of magical shield, making her more or less impossible to kill. (And mind you, I’m not a frost mage!) I plunge into fire walls, I look all over the place for void zones, I wave at the add elements and dragon whelps, begging them to make the procedure short. No result. I end up chasing Sartharion himself, begging him to kill me out of pity. And as one of the last persons in the raid I’m finally allowed to release and run.

What kind of a joke isn’t that? Where is all that survivability when you actually need it?

Wouldn’t it be great if we could be given a suicidal spell to be able to finish our lives on short notice when needed? That wouldn’t really count as OP, would it? And if not, why not let the alchemists come up with something? Let us make a lethal potion for suicidal purposes. Honestly, I think there’s a market for it.

Serving some mage poetry

I’ve never ever in my blogging life seen so many memes going around. There are currently more meme posts than there are original one-and-only posts. I think many bloggers feel a bit stuck at the moment. Progress is slowing down, we seem to have reached a phase where guilds are farming the content they’re able to farm and giving up about the rest.

It’s not like the pre-expansion apathy last autumn, but not far from it. Bloggers lack content to write about; they're just waiting for the Patch to hit. So what do they do? They clinch into those memes as precious pearls, providing you a topic for one day.

The latest meme in the row was started by Fimlys at Asleep at the WoW. He revived an old topic of his, namely asking us to write haiku-inspired WoW poetry. This time it’s supposed to be class related. Critical QQ did this one last week and required his fellow mage bloggers to do the same.

Actually I’ve posted WoW haikus twice in the past. (Here and here if someone wants to read it all).

A few of the poems I wrote at that time had mage theme. Considering how few readers I had at that point I’ll reprint them here.

Mages were nuke kings

until warlocks took over

Blizzard must hate us

The sheep was broken

by a noobish elf hunter

Go invisible!

Nuking Attumen

the fire mage took aggro

Iceblock saved her life

I’m out of mana!

I can’t even hurt a rat

No one notices

I admit they are a little bit outdated. Aggro problems aren’t quite as common as they used to be in TBC; I think they’ve strengthened the aggro building abilities of the tanks a bit. Warlocks have been nerfed a bit. And we don’t have any reason to fear some crazy shooting from hunters breaking our sheep, since we don’t sheep in the first place.

Anyway: I don’t want to only serve the food of yesterday here, so I made up a few more, better adjusted to the current game:

Farewell to sheeping!
All we do is aoe,
portals and cookies.

We’re nerfed to the ground
- but will be compensated:
Polymorph rabbit!

Nuke, nuke, nuke, iceblock
Nuke, nuke, nuke, invisible
The fire mage song

Mid fight evocate
- giving me a leisure break
from main nuke spamming

What about the tagging then? Nope. Feel free to join if you want to.

Do I really miss sheeping?

Larísa obviously isn’t the brightest of mages. I don’t know it’s because of her age or her hair cut, but it has taken her over two years to complete her mage training. But finally she’s got it, the crown jewel in the spell arsenal of the wizards:

Polymorph Turtle.

It dropped for me a little while ago in ZG on a run to get the achievement. I don’t know if it was to put an end to my begging or just to prevent me from starting a mage QQ session, but finally the party agreed to spend a few extra minutes in there, taking down the fish boss. And it certainly paid off. Finally I had got hold of that annoying, missing puzzle piece.

Will I use it?
After rejoicing for a couple of minutes the thought struck me: when will I ever use this spell? Will this turtle ever see the light? I don’t remember the last time I sheeped anything. I think I cast it a couple of time in UK while levelling up. That last huge pull before the first boss, yeah, I definitely made a pig there, as long as the tank wasn’t a pallie. But that was ages ago.

The sheep spell (reinforced by a wonderful focus macro, oh I remember the joy when I found out about the existence of it, it certainly revolutionized my game play) has always occupied the 8 button on my keyboard. It still does, in theory, but since I move around the spells a bit before a boss fight, throwing in specialties that may be needed for that very fight, I often find the sheep moved away to a godforsaken corner where it dwells with the other useless stuff such as Cold of Cone and the Warlock HS (the later never used since it shares CD with the mana gems).

Looking at my action bars I can’t help wondering: will I ever see a turtle of my own, apart from Speedy?

Some QQ:ing
My dear fellow blogger Gnomeaggedon has recently written a couple of posts on the issue. In the first post he recalled all the spells and skills we used to practice, nowadays ditched since all that is asked from us is aoe. It tastes like cardboard, was his conclusion. He also did a wonderful, ironic rant on the history of polymorph development. While other classes get buffs, mages get new versions of sheep. It resembles somewhat to the clam obsession and it makes you wonder: is this REALLY the most urgent changes that mages need? Especially considering that sheep aren’t required anymore?

It’s easy to QQ over the lack of utility of mages nowadays, especially considering that the hybrid classes have been buffed so much that their dps specs are at least on par with us. I’ve done a bit of QQ:ing myself, wondering about our future market value.

But as I got the new turtle spell I asked myself: if you forget about the sexiness of the mage class and think about the sheeping as such: do I really miss it that much? And I found out that the answer was yes – and no.

Having the extra task to keep a mob sheeped during a fight, to keep an eye on it and to stay in range to resheep it, added variation and sometimes a little bit of a challenge to a fight. You had to stay alert and wouldn’t fall a sleep due to the boredom of casting the same single nuke spell over and over again until nausea. And sometimes you really felt useful, that the fact that you kept one mob sheeped actually made a huge difference to the outcome of the fight. (Priestess Delrissa in Magisters Terrace as the most evident example, if you had the MS Warrior and didn’t have a sheep, it would be quite challenging).

The drawback of sheeping
On the other hand – being on sheep duty in a raid wasn’t always something you were looking forward to. It could gimp your damage output immensely, and even though everyone in theory knew that you had been performing other duties than dps, it still didn’t look nice in the charts. I don’t recall that the chain sheeping required for some pulls in SSC was something I particularly enjoyed, an assignment I was hoping for, on the contrary. (For readers who weren’t there, chain sheeping didn’t mean renewing the sheep spell once every minute, it meant constantly spamming the polymorph spell, since it would break within seconds.)

So: Yes, I miss sheeping a little bit, especially in five man instances. But I don’t miss it to the extent that I hope for a huge amount of chain sheeping in Ulduar. In my heart and my soul I’m a damage dealer rather than an amusing clown like character, pulling rabbits out of hats, turning humanoids into silly shapes.

And even the awesome look of the turtle can’t change that fact.

The identity crises of the specialists

Dual specs. Hybrids getting buffed. Specialist dps:ers being marginalized. This seems to be the topic of the day and for some reason it stirs up a lot of emotions. There have been quite a few very thoughtful, eloquent posts, and a lot of equally interesting comments.

If someone missed it, Forever a noob wrote an angry rant, ending up I a list of demands, including a tanking spec for mages and a healing spec for rogues. Tobold’s take on this is milder, but he agrees that class balance is an issue with the changes. Big Bear Butt has also showed his understanding for the frustration that rogues and mages can feel.

Spinksville on the other hand harsher towards complaining mages and rogues, arguing that we should have thought about those issues before we rolled our toons. If we wanted to be able to heal we should have picked a hybrid class. I’ve heard this before and I must say that I don’t quite buy it. I had no clue at all about raiding when I rolled Larísa – I didn’t know such a thing existed. My interest and insight about the different roles and the demand for certain classes is something that has slowly evolved over time, and to be honest, with my limited gaming time it’s too late to change course now and roll something else. I’m as stuck as you can get. If Blizzard wants to get mages out of the game – well then I’m out of it too.

David at Alt Fanatic agrees with Spinksville, saying that mages and rogues should grow up and stop to want to feel special.

The probably best summary of the arguments comes from Aurik at /hug, who wrote an anti-rant. However he shows quite little understanding for the point of view of a mage.

Feeling cheated
I’ve been arguing with myself whether to comment on this or not. I do see that the pro-hybrid posts with the mages-grow-up-approach are right in many ways. I understand where you’re coming from. It must have been horrible to be a moonkin druid, not being able to get a raid spot. But at the same time I AM a mage and I can’t quite rid myself of my specialist glasses and my somewhat hurt feelings. I feel a bit cheated.

Even though I didn’t have much of a clue about the game when I started it, I do remember that I gave this aspect a thought. It was presented as that you had a choice: either to become a generalist, good at several things, and therefore handy and attractive in many situations. Or you could specialize into one thing and become really good at that and only that.

I saw it like athletes in the Olympic games. You can specialize for sprint or high jump or long jump. Or you can compete in the special class for those who do a little bit of everything, the multiple-athletes. They’re not as good in each separate class as a specialist, but they’re damned good sportsmen.

I chose to become a specialist, trading the loss of flexibility for being slightly better. That was how it was at that point in the game, but since then it has clearly changed. We don’t get rewarded any way for our focus. Does that really make sense?

The need to be special
Stop qq:ing, Alt Fanatic says, stop wanting to be special. It isn’t so easy. Everyone wants to be special. Everyone wants to feel needed, valued, appreciated. It’s quite basic needs we’re talking about. If you make a druid do the same dps as a mage, with the difference that the druid instantly in the raid instance can switch to becoming an additional healer or a tank when needed (and that is needed sometimes, as you know, it varies from boss to boss in multi-boss instances, which Ulduar with be), I seriously can’t see what the point is of bringing mages to a raid.

There would be a point if mages had more unique utilities – dps:ing isn’t all we do, after all – but the trend goes against that as well. Blizzard tried to equalize everything, smoothing it out, handing up buffs and utilities so that it isn’t unique for a class anymore.

Now, I’m not overly scared of the changes. I don’t expect myself to lose my raid spot and get kicked from the guild just because the hybrid classes will get another buff by the dual spec thing. I’m not in that kind of a guild. But in the long run, I can’t see anything but that the demand of mages in raiding guilds probably will go down. It will become harder and harder for mages and rogues to find a home, unless Blizzard comes up with something else to rebalance the game once again.

Gone are the days when we were the specialists of dps or the specialists of decursing or buffing intelligence. No one is asking for our sheep, and it doesn’t help that we turn them to cats, rabbits, turtles or pigs – cc isn’t needed. Even the demand for taxi services is going down with the free portals in the capitals and now the nerf of the cooldown of the HS.

I think that the mage class is in the middle of an identity crises. We’re not specialists any more. We're not doing better dps than any other class. Fine. But then, what are we? What's our reason for existens?

Mage spells – the ones I’ve forgotten and the ones I'd like to see

I don’t know how it is for other classes, but being a mage, I’ve got a huge spell book. And that is just as it should be in my opinion. Mages are spell casters, wizards by definition, with a superior intellect - of course we should be able to memorize an abundance of magic tricks.

As a newbie mage I found it a bit frightening. How was I supposed to understand and recall the use of all of those buttons? When you’re fighting a mob there really isn’t any time to read the tooltip and analyze whether to cast this spell or another one.

After two years of wizardry I’m not quite as confused. I’m rather a bit lazy, sticking to just a few spells and buffs that I use every raid. I guess more of them would come handy if I was into PvP, but with my raiding focus, I must admit that most of my spells currently are collecting dust, which really is a pity.

Spell wishes
When I was interviewed by Twisted Nether last week, they sent me some questions in advance, in order to give me the chance to think a bit about them. One of the questions never turned up in the show – I think I talked too much so there wasn’t any room for it. They were wondering: if I could make up a mage spell of my own, what would it be like?

I did what I think most other players would have done; I immediately started to think about awesome stuff that other classes do that I would like to do as well. Healing, managing other pets than a water element, tankinglike abilities… whatever. Don’t we all nourish a secret wish to become overpowered (preferably without anyone else noticing)?

But then I came to my senses. The idea of WoW is that we’re playing different roles. (Or at least it was, before they started to hand out class specialties to others, thus making the classes less distinct, under the slogan “Bring the player, not the class”). Deep inside I don’t want to make a mage into something else. If we were to be given new spells, it should rather be spells that fit into the mage concept and the role we already play.

The never used spells
My second thought pondering upon the subject was: do I really want another spell? When would I come around to use it? I’ve got tons of spells I rarely use, if ever. Wouldn’t it be great fun if the encounters were made in a way that you actually were rewarded if you looked deeper into your spell book than to just Arcane Blast and Arcane Missiles, occasionally broken up by Frost nova or Blizzard?

Gone are the days when I was required to sheep, spellsteal or counterspell. And I have yet to see an encounter in WotLK where Amplify or Dampen magic will come in handy. Actually from a RP perspective, Larísa should be required to go back to the mage trainer to learn those spells once again, she’s quite likely to have forgotten the formulas completely after not using them for so long.

Using my imagination
Finally I did what I suppose the intention of the question: I tried to use my imagination to think up something new, something not overpowered, something fitting a mage. I came to think of the new buff food that you can play around with, making you smaller or bigger. Wouldn’t it be fun if you could shrink or enlarge NPC:s as well as other players (PvP)? It doesn’t necessary have to affect their stats and abilities any way. The amusement and confusion it would make would be enough for me.

Then we have the ability to fly. It was first brought up by Gnomeaggedon when we were discussing our ideas of class specific mounts. He suggested that mages should be able to fly without using any mount at all, moving through the air by magic. I agree totally. It would suit us much better than this stupid carpet, which will crash any moment since it obviously isn’t intended for gnomish pilots – my sword is cutting a hole right through it.

Then there’s my love for pets and critters. You can make critters to your pets nowadays, but the cost of the critter food is horrendous considering the effect only lasts 2 minutes. I think mages should be able to do funny tricks with the little creatures. Perhaps we could get one at the time without using the buff food – or we could transform them into something else, just for the fun of it.

A last idea is that they could develop one of the latest additions to our spell books a bit further: Mirror. The idea is nice, they look awesome, but they lack any kind of intelligence and situational awareness. Even the slightest possibility to control the actions of our little helpers would be a great improvement.

Now fellow mages (and everyone else who shares our interest for the arcane teachings): how would you have answered the question? What spell would like to add to the repertoire of the mages?

Our fear for class changes

So we’ve got our first little taste of the 3.1 changes. A few statements by Blizzard, quite vague if you look at the mage class, will now be debated and interpreted, syllable for syllable in hundreds of blogposts in the weeks to come. Have we seen it before? Oh yes. Even the tiniest little adjustment in the mechanics of a class will always result in an outcry of “OP!” or “Nerfed to the ground!”, depending on the perspective. It’s a ritual. You’re sort of supposed to build up your rage, so you can defend the territory of your class with teeth and claws.

Honestly, I’ve never been able to produce any aggression in those situations. Maybe I would care more if I was into PvP, where it probably matters more. But as it is now, news like this leave me indifferent. Even when they made my TBC Arcane raid spec impossible to raid with, I just shrugged, respecced fire and silently bided my time. Eventually things would work out, I thought. And of course they did. I’m now back to arcane, happier than ever.

Seriously, does anyone think that Blizzard would let a class suffer so much that it became unplayable, thus displeasing about 10 percent of the customers? Probably not. Changes are a part of the game and all classes will shine in some aspect sooner or later.

What really matters
Sometimes when you hear the outcries you get the impression that it’s a matter of life or death. It isn’t. I don’t think the minor tweaking of a class will decide if a raid will be a failure or a success – at least not in the casual-friendly raids that are offered in WotLK. The changes that are suggested won’t make any more impact than a few wavelets in the middle of a sea storm.

“Bring the player, not the class”, is the Blizzard mantra for this expansion. And I believe them. If I was a recruiter for a raiding guild, the changes in the next patch is the last thing I would consider when picking my team. What really matters is something else. What really matters is performance.

First: It’s about doing your job properly. Does the player do what he/she’s supposed to do – healing, tanking, dps? Does he move himself around correctly while doing so - be it the Heigan Cha Cha Cha or the dragon dance around Malygos?

Second: It’s about being a team player who doesn’t only follow the written rules, but also have a good judgement and some basic social skills. Does this player fit in to the puzzle? No one wants to spend 15 hours a week in company with an extremely annoying person, no matter how often he tops the dps charts.

The classes change a bit. Player X will make 100 dps more doing the same spellrotation as he used to before and Player Y will make 100 less. So what? Who cares?

What we are afraid of
I think the ones who care most are the ones who deep inside lack self confidence. If you’ve based your raiding spot on the fact that your unique buff is a “must” to bring to the raid, but know that you’re not quite as good at Cha Cha Cha as you should be, you’ll feel threatened. When several classes can bring the same utility – mana, cc, intelligence, crit buffs – the one thing that differs will be our ability to dance.

It all goes back to our basic instincts. It’s about our fear of being left out, our fear of not belonging to the clan and our fear of ending up unwanted and lonely.

Mae at Electronic Escape wrote about those fears from the perspective of a shadow priest the other day. Since I often indulge myself to sessions of frustration over my own incompetence I can very well understand the emotions. But seriously, aren’t they pretty exaggerated?

To form a well working raiding team is a long term project, which requires passion, commitment and an abundance of patience. You want to reach a level of cooperation where the raiding team seems to communicate almost telepathically. You know the feeling when everyone knows what the other players are about to do without having to say anything about it. But to reach there you have to play together for a very long time. I don’t think any guild that ditches well working parts of the raiding machinery in order to get room for more players of the Trendy Class/Spec of the Day will be successful in the long run.

So to the worrying shadowpriest and to anyone else out there, who now is trembling for upcoming nerfs of your class or buffs of other classes I just want to say: cut it! Worrying doesn’t take you anywhere at all. You can surely use your energy better. Turn your focus to The Big Things. Go take some dancing lessons. Do the daily dragon flying quest at Nexus to prepare for Malygos. Bite the sour apple and keep doing your homework. And I’m pretty sure you’ll keep your spot in the raid. Class changes or not.

The war is upon us again

The mage battleground of Azeroth has rested in peace for a couple of months. With the nerf of the arcane blast towards the end of TBC and the introduction of frostfire bolts at level 75 in WotLK, all mages suddenly seemed to agree upon playing frostfire. The standard spec became so common that it wouldn’t have surprised to see even locks or shadowpriests suddenly casting those melting slushy bolts. Rogues too, whatever. Was there ANYONE in Azeroth not playing frostfire? I doubt it.

But that's all history now. Order has been restored. Once again there is diversity among the mages. Those Halflings of fire mages (what else can you call the slush casters) will meet competition – from pure pyromaniacs, from snowmen in ice shields and – above all – from the mages with the biggest intellect, those who stick to the original, true arcane powers in its pure form – the arcanists.

Back to my roots
The drums of war are once again playing in the distance. In the famous first battle of the mages, Gnomeaggedon was the starting ignite. This time Gnome seems to be occupied burning his face (and probably the barbeque meat as well). So in his place, Krizzlybear at Frost is the New Black has challenged his former friends and colleagues, soon to be sworn enemies. He claims he’s merciless. Well so am I! I’m back, I’m as arcane as you can be and I’m ready to fight.

Yesterday night I turned back to the light after those months dwelling in the darkness of fire. (eh, well :)) Following an evil plan the opponents of the arcane force had already managed to persuade Blizzard to nerf the Arcane spec once again.

But have no fear! They won’t succeed in keeping me away from the spec of my heart once again. It was love at first sight. There were those beautiful, glimmering spells flying through the air once again. And it was much better than it used to be. Frankly, pushing one single Arcane Blast button for a whole raid could get a little monotonous. Now the rotations between Arcane Blast, Arcane barrage and Arcane Missiles, whenever Missile Barrage procs. You soon get the feeling for it. It’s like music. Arcane powers flowing through my veins.

Once again do I need to watch not only my threat and my procs, but also my mana bar and the cooldowns for mana gems and other goodies. And it rocks! I felt only as a half mage when I ended fights with almost full mana bar in my former spec. Making the most out of your mana fuel, that’s what magic is all about.

Cute elemental pet
Following the tradition of our former battles, Krizzlybear throws of a missile in the form of a talent he considers awesome. Since we all know he’s got a very special feeling for his pet it doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone that the first thing he mentions is “Improved Water Elemental”. It’s quite touching, this affection of his. Perhaps I should counter with the awesome abilities of Peanuts? The enemies flee whenever he sneezes. It’s cute Krizzly, but seriously, you must have some better tricks than that in your pocket if frost is going to be really competitive.

So what do I counter with this time? I’ll start with the newest and maybe dearest acquisition in my spellbook. The brand new 51 point spell Arcane Barrage. It’s instant! It hurts! A lot. The range is decent, 30 yards. And the cooldown isn’t more than 3 seconds. Finally we’ve got a spell worth the name in fights where we have to move around a bit. Don’t be decived by this “causing 936-1144 damage” description of it. As far as I saw this first night as arcane in WotLK it did many times more, with all the additions you get from gear, buffs and whatever. Any theorycrafter out there (real one, not fake like me) can surely tell you why. To me it’s enough to know that it does its job.

Sisters and brothers! I urge you all to join the battle. Help me to make Krizzly, Gnome and the other poor mislead mages out there see the light! The time has come to let the arcane tree rule the world, as it was meant to do from the beginning.

Open letter to an absent mage

It’s been over a month since Gnomeaggedon almost vanished from the Blogosphere, going for his epic journey to gain the Explore India Achievement. He’s still present by his Googled-posts, popping up every now and then, looking a bit like that stand-in angel that comes whenever a priest dies. It helps a little, but it really isn’t the same.

However we got a sign of life from him a while ago. I had commented on one of the Googled-posts, and to my surprise, Gnome himself answered! It was just a few lines, but they made me think. This is what he wrote:

So how is the whole FrostFire spec going?How are people enjoying their Mages at 80?

And I couldn’t help feeling a bit bad reading this. I’m supposed to run a mage blog, right? I write about other stuff too – but at least I imagine it’s from the point of view from a mage. Still I’ve obviously failed to describe what’s it like to play a mage these days. It’s about time I do it. So this is for you Gnome – a letter from one mage to another. Here we go:

Dear Gnome!

You were wondering about how we’re enjoying our mages at 80, maybe because you’re subconsciously pondering about what to do at your return. Is levelling your mage to 80 what your heart really desire? Maybe you hear the tempting whisperings from the Deathknights. You’ll never ever get a better opportunity to roll something else than now, balancing on the line between the old and the new content

Well, no need to worry any further, dear Gnome! Knowing the desire of your heart – making huge damage, hurling big balls of fire – I can tell you that you’ll get more than pleased with how mages have developed.

I haven’t run Recount lately, due to lag, but my general feeling is that we’ve finally been given some love and attention from Blizzard. We’ve been improved, but not to the extent that it has pissed off everyone else and resulted in a backlash nerf, which happened to ret paladins and hunters.

I know it’s silly and immature, but I’m kind of fascinated by big numbers. You see them a lot nowadays. Frostfirebolts are often critting for 8-9 k damage – sometimes a lot more – I saw one at 16 k the other day. And with two of those in a row, followed by a hot streak and a pyro for 6-7 k damage it adds up. Then I haven’t mentioned the little helpers you have whenever mirror image is up, or the living bomb, a nice dot which actually hurts a lot more than it looks. The enemies are literally melting in front of your eyes.

And the best thing of all: in spite of all this damage, threat hasn’t become a bigger issue – rather the contrary. I think tanks do better aggro these days – actually I’m working on changing my playstyle, trying to become a little bit more aggressive. I’ve been taught to wait for a few seconds, preferably a few sunders, before starting to cast my first nuke. Now I should rather cast it as soon as the tank starts the pull.

Since we haven’t started 25 man raiding yet in my guild I haven’t seen any recent WWS charts. I have a friend mage who has though, and his reports have been quite promising, doing 4 k dps on average during a normal raid night, ending up second on the damage list.

After the last patch in TBC mages had very hard to compete at all, doing damage on par with a tank – or less. Geared and talented at level 80 my impression is that we shouldn’t complain too much. Maybe the days when mages were known for their constant whining in public forums are over.

Other news
This was the nuke part. Nuking is important – it’s the essence of being a mage. But I’ll give you a few of the other news for mages at lvl 80

• You don’t necessarily have to be a tailor anymore. The gear you can craft isn’t overwhelmingly good and anyway it isn’t restricted to tailors – you can pick another profession if you want and have another tailor make them for you.
• Your bills for bringing potions to a raid will be smaller, since they’re restricted to one per fight. I had fears that mana would be a big issue because of this, but so far I haven’t seen experienced any lack of mana. It remains to see if this will be the same when the fights will get harder and longer.
• I don’t know if it’s my imagination but I don’t see many warlocks around anymore. Are they all sulking and rolling Deathknights? I don’t know, but they’re gone.
• Competition for gear will be a bit harder. You’ll find yourself rolling on a spellpower ring, not only against other dps casters, but also against healers. On the other hand there’s a lot of good gear around – through reputation grinds, badge collecting or crafting, so you can’t really say that gearing up is hard. One and a half month after the expansion was released I’ve got only 4 out of 17 slots that aren’t epic. And I still count myself as a pretty casual player with a limited time for gaming.
• The cost for making tables has gone insane. Five powders for one table! I haven’t been to any BG since the release, but I suspect that you rarely see tables there nowadays.
• Blastwave has changed, making it behave like… a real blastwave(!). It sure looks fun, knocking away the mobs, but it’s useless in an instance, too hard to control. I imagine though that it can be great fun in PvP.

Class balance
Are their any things to worry about? Well maybe that would be the class balance. Being a mage you don’t bring anything else to a raid but dps. We used to bring our int buff and awesome cc as well, but other classes can provide the same thing now. We’re not indispensable. The dual spec upcoming means that hybrid classes will be more attractive, being able to provide extra healing for one boss and dps for another one. A mage is a mage is a mage. We definitely won’t be given any spots in the raid by default.

Another problem is the constant lack of healers. The addition of the DK class has made a few more tanks available (though I must admit that I have yet to see a good DK tank, the ones I’ve met so far in pugs really haven’t been top class if so to say). But that makes the lack of healers even more urgent. There have been nights when I’ve spent hours in the LFG channel, and all you hear there are the desperate cries from the surplus dps. “DPS lfg heroics”, followed by “Good DPS lfg…” And then another one: LFM healer, last spot, gtg. The only thing we can hope for is that Blizzard makes a new hero healing class pretty soon or finds another way to make healing more fun and attractive.

The best of times
But enough of worries now. The new capital is even a dedicated mage town with mage NPCs in every corner. We’re the only class with a trainer of our own in Dalaran. And you can even join and honor The Mage Society itself, Kirin Tor, by wearing the tabard. We’re certainly living in the best of times for mages

Welcome back to Azeroth, to the brand new mage friendly world of Northrend! And welcome back as an active blogger!. We’re all looking forward to your return.

Best of regards

Your fellow mage and blogging colleague

Larísa