I didn’t find any guides or useful info on this place for new players, so I decided to write one up myself. If you see something wrong, please let me know – I haven’t figured everything out entirely yet myself (especially the higher-ranked vehicles), and I wanted to get this guide out quickly to encourage more people to play. I’ll try to keep this post updated from build to build.

Without further ado, I present:

The Introductory Guide/FAQ to Lake Wintergrasp by Sekdar of Tichondrius for Build 8885

Rules:

What do I need to participate at Lake Wintergrasp?

-A flying mount and the ability to use it (see: level 77 quest in Sholazar Basin). That’s it.

How do I get to Lake Wintergrasp?

-Fly in on your mount. There are placeholder areas for flight waypoints on either side of the map, but they are not yet implemented.

Note: I recommend you fly in to Wintergrasp from either Borean Tundra or Dragonblight. Wintergrasp itself is a no-fly zone and will dismount you a few seconds after you cross the zone border. It is in your best interest to not be several hundred feet above the ground when this happens.

What is the objective in Lake Wintergrasp?

-The attackers’ objective is to gain entry to the Keep by breaking down the walls or gates to capture the Titan Relic behind the inner gate inside the Keep.

The Titan Relic is looted much like a flag in Arathi Basin. To facilitate the assault on the base, you will be granted use of vehicles, which will be explained later. The defenders have to defend the keep for the remainder of the battle to win.

How long does the battle last?

-Battles in Wintergrasp last up to 45 minutes but can end earlier if the attackers take the keep before the timer expires. Taking the keep triggers a 25-minute timer until the next game begins.

What are the rewards for fighting?

-Right now each victory grants you 7500 honor and 150 arena points, which can be used to purchase full sets of PVP gear at the vendors inside the keep.

Why didn’t I get any rewards for winning? Also, why are people yelling to share killing blows?

-To earn rewards at the end of a battle, you must be “ranked.” Scoring a killing blow on an enemy player will grant you a buff for the rest of the round depicting your rank (this will be changed to an Honorable Kill in a later build), allowing you to earn rewards when the fight is over and build vehicles during the battle.

You only need one killing blow to be eligible for rewards for that round and scoring more will not affect your gains. Gaining additional ranks grants access to better vehicles (more later) but will not impact your honor and arena point gains.

Due to the rather difficult and random nature of scoring a killing blow when there are very few players fighting in Wintergrasp, not allowing other people to score killing blows after you have achieved at least one is frowned upon. Please help or allow other players to get their rank buffs so everybody can gear up.

-Some players have reported not gaining rewards despite being ranked. I can only assume this is a bug.

Game Mechanics

How do the buildings work?

-There are currently four types of buildings in the zone: The Keep, Towers, Bridges and Siege Factories.

(inactive Flight Points are marked as solid, faction-colored circles)

-There are three Towers that belong to the attacking side and each have four mannable cannons that can be used by the attackers to defend their territory. Towers can be destroyed by prolonged vehicle fire. Both players and vehicles can destroy Cannons.

-There are six Siege Factories on the map (two on the north side, two on the south side, and two in the Keep that cannot be captured). Both attackers and defenders can capture the Siege Factories in the zone just like you would bases in Eye of the Storm or in most World PVP setups – have a numerical advantage of players around the flag and it will slowly turn over (you need five players minimum to cap a Factory).

Siege Factories also come with graveyards and Spirit Healers for the side that owns it. Siege Factories are used to construct vehicles if you have the appropriate rank, and every Siege Factory you own grants you 5 vehicle resources. The defenders have two Siege Factories in their Keep that cannot be claimed. Siege Factories can be destroyed by prolonged vehicle fire, though this does not currently seem to impact their functionality at all.

-The Keep belongs to the defenders and is a hardened structure. It is built of a series of destructible walls and towers, two destructible gates (outer gate and inner), and a host of destructible cannons identical to those found in towers. Though you can destroy every part of it, the Keep cannot be damaged by catapults (the Rank 1 Vehicle) and must be attacked with stronger vehicles. This is why you may see players yelling to stop building Catapults. The Keep houses a dedicated spawn point for the defenders, and any defender can use “Defender Portals,” small objects surrounding the outside of the keep to teleport inside. The Keep also houses PVP vendors, a Strand of the Ancients battlemaster, and a Dalaran Teleportation Crystal.

-There are three Bridges in the zone that allows vehicles to easily and directly traverse the map. They can be destroyed by prolonged vehicle fire from either side. Note that currently vehicles can “swim” through water at reduced speeds, so it is not the end of the world if the bridges are downed.

-Flight Points are not actual buildings, but they do double as graveyards for their respective sides and are worth mentioning as a result.

How do RP-GGs and Mines work?

-You will find crates of Inflatable Mines and lines of RP-GGs at every siege factory. You can carry three of each, and you drop them on the ground when you die.

-To use an RP-GG, target a vehicle you wish to attack and right click the RP-GG in your inventory to begin the 5-6ish second cast time. Don’t get hit or the cast will break. The aiming is pretty wonky; I leave it up to you to figure it out with a bit of practice.

-To use land mines, simply right click them in your inventory to throw them a short distance in front of you. The uses for mines are limited only by your creativity. Toss them under vehicles that don’t see you, throw them down to cover your retreat from enemy players (or throw them down in front of you and Death Grip opponents into them!), or use them to clog choke points in the keep when attackers rush through.

Currently, mines do not differentiate from friend or foe. Do try to restrain your griefing impulses when using mines.

How do the vehicles work?

-Vehicles are a limited resource. I’ve put that line first to hopefully convey that vehicles in their current state should not be treated lightly. If you have any confusion or doubt with what you should be doing with vehicles, don’t build them – wait till you get a bit more familiar with the flow of combat in Wintergrasp. When you’ve completely expended your vehicle resources, you cannot get any more!

-To construct a vehicle, you need to be ranked, you need a Siege Factory, and you need a free vehicle resource (viewable at the top of the screen). Talk to the NPC inside the Factory and select which vehicle you would like to build. From there, you simply walk up to the vehicle and right click it to jump in. The current maximum vehicle resource count is 30, and that requires you to hold every siege factory on the map. Protect your vehicles!

-Catapults are available the very moment you get your first rank. They have a ballistic shot that fires dead ahead which you can vary the range of, and a backup weapon in the form of a short-range frontal flame cannon. They’re good for inflicting damage to large clusters of troops from a distance and not much else except annoying players who know that they tend to be a waste of resources. They can damage cannons and towers but their range leaves them vulnerable to return fire. The catapult’s flame attack is unwieldy as it is only usable at ranges where players can outmaneuver it.

-Demolishers are available at the second rank. They have a ballistic shot that fires dead ahead, and I’m not sure what else just yet. They can carry passengers, though there are reports of passengers interfering with the driver’s controls. Demolishers are extremely important as they are the first vehicles available that deal siege damage, allowing you to break down the walls of the Keep to gain entry. If you are on offense, it is highly recommended that you skip building catapults in favor of more demolishers.

-Siege Engines (To be added)

-Fighters (To be added)

-Bombers (To be added)

-Shredders (To be added)

How does the vehicle resource system work?

-The numbers displayed at the top of the screen indicate the number of vehicle resources your entire team has spent / the maximum number of vehicle resources available to your team. For example, if you own two Siege Factories and have three Demolishers in use, your display will read 3 / 10. If you have five Catapults and five Demolishers in use, your display will read 10 / 10 and you will be unable to build more vehicles until you capture another Factory. Should you lose a Factory in the above example, your vehicle resources will display 10 / 5 and you will be unable to build more vehicles until you capture enough Factories to make the second number larger than the first.

When you have built twenty vehicles, there is no way to build any more and you run the risk of entering a stalemate or losing the offense if you no longer have a way to deal Siege Damage to break the Keep’s walls.

Other Questions:

Help! Why did my arena points reset?

-You need to be level 80 to keep your arena points. If you are not at the level cap, your arena points are prone to resetting on logging/zoning/leveling.

Help! Why am I getting the error message “Not enough arena points” when I try to buy arena gear that has its cost listed in honor?

-It’s a display error. The 5 piece arena armor, the relic slot items, and the weapons require arena points. The trinket, ring, neck, cape, boot, belt, and bracers all cost their listed amount of honor.

Gloves: 200 points

Shoulders: 275

Chest, Helm, and Legs: 350

Two-handed Weapon: 700

One-handed Weapon: ?

Relic: ?

Why do vehicles and cannons keep turning from red to green?

-It’s a display error of sorts. All vehicles and cannons show up as hostile until you get within a certain distance of them.

I drowned. In five seconds.

-That wasn’t a question… but yes, the water is dangerous. Whether it is intended to simulate frigid waters that kill you if you try to swim in them, or if it’s simply bugged (the damage is listed as “drowning”), you cannot swim in the water in the zone. The damage is also dealt to people waterwalking on top of the body of water. You can get lucky with timing jumps in/on it (similar to crossing lava without getting hurt while swimming) to cross, but you’re looking at an awful lot of damage if you mess up.

I’m getting corpse camped! This isn’t fun, Wintergrasp sucks, Kalgan killed world PVP, I’m selling my account, Blizzard sucks & when is Warhammer?

-Take a deep breath and relax. The zone is far from finished. Graveyards will be protected, population imbalances will be addressed, and as more people hit the level cap the massacres will turn into even battles. Please be patient and remember that this is beta, quality feedback is important, and changes take time.

-If you’re feeling generous, continue to res while you’re getting camped. When the population imbalances are at the point where people are camping graveyards, people just want their one killing blow and will generally leave after they get it. Let some people get KBs off you and they just might let you do the same when the roles are reversed.

Uhhh…. how do I get out?

-You can take the Dalaran Telportation Crystal, hearth, portal, summon, or fly out. You’ll have to run to the edges of the zone to fly out, though. Be careful of falling!

I want to be a PVP healer, but I’m worried that I’ll have to stop healing to steal killing blows to get my points. Why should I bother going to Wintergrasp?

-Every time I have arrived in Wintergrasp, there was a raid group going. The raid is usually comprised of the following: Death Knights, and occasionally other classes.

Even if you didn’t take into consideration all the disease-DoTs being thrown around by the legions of DKs, healers are a hot commodity. Every raid group that I’ve been in that had the luxury of healers made extra sure that they got them their KBs.

Also, please note that the KB ranking mechanic is slated to be changed to HKs in the near future.

Is Wintergrasp fun?

-When you have several parties full of people on both factions intent on fighting, the answer is a resounding YES! When there are so few people that fighting devolves into graveyard camping, the answer is no. Hopefully, as more people hit level 80, more people will populate Wintergrasp and give rise to more fun battles.

Once again, please remember that Wintergrasp is slated for a lot of changes. If you don’t enjoy it now, don’t give up on it forever just yet.

This concludes the guide. Hopefully someone has found it helpful!

So a friend of mine, who is playing an Alliance character in beta, asked me the other day “So how did you like the Frostmourne event in Dragonblight?” To which I responded… buh?! After a little more digging, as near as we can tell, the Horde doesn’t get to experience this. I’ve completed every quest in Dragonblight, except for a couple of the group quests, but my friend tells me the event in question is not the result of a group quest.

In addition, on my Draenei Death Knight (just shy of level 69 as I write this), I’m able to do a bunch of quests involving Tirion Fordring and the Ashbringer in the Howling Fjord starting area. My quests in Howling Fjord on my Blood Elf seemed to mostly revolve around the Taunka getting their butts kicked and the Forsaken screwing around with plagues again.

I’m a huge lore fanboy. One of the biggest things that’s excited me about Wrath is the developer’s spoken commitment to giving the player a more direct connection to the lore. So it saddens me that most of the “oh wow” moments so far seem to be Alliance-only. Am I completely off base here, or missing something, or are Alliance quests just that much cooler?

So, I was wandering around the Dalaran sewer, when I noticed a long tunnel that heads off the map.I followed this tunnel, and came to an opening that allows you to jump off of Dalaran to Crystalsong Forest below.

I jumped, and let’s just say I didn’t get the achievement for falling and surviving on that jump.

It might be cool to take off from there in flight form, but I can’t see any other reason for it being there.

So, I thought, why not have a little fun with it? I think it would be cool if there was a beat-up human hanging off there and calling out for his sister, or something.

You could call him “Fluke Groundrunner” or something, and he could have the Argent Avenger equipped for effect 

No, it’s not. Armor is “Melee Resistance”.

ArP is Melee Penetration.

Just because no one wears resist gear (which makes Spell Pen. useless), that doesn’t change the fact that the mechanic is the same.

Also, it’s not a flat increase, as armor is non-linear.

Wrong.

Spell pen ensures that your spell hits, and does not get mitigated. It does not increase the damage your spells do.

Example: Mob has 200 fire resistance, if I have 0 pen i will be getting partial resists. If my fireball does 2000 damage, it will never exceed this damage. The damage can however be lowered now by incremetents of 10%.

Armor pen, increases your damage.

Example: Mob has 20000 armor and I have 1500 armor pen. My hits will be hitting the mob as if it has 18500 armor, thus resulting in damage increase.

See the difference? So do not claim they are the same.

Spell pen is more so like the weapon rating used to be.

Higher weapon rating the lower chance of glancing blows. Since glancing blows were in essence physical resistance.  

Inscription is here (if your server is up, that is). And Inscription’s primary goal in life is to make glyphs. For you. I say this because many people seem to have questions about what glyphs are, how they work, and where to get them. In this post I hope to answer those questions.

·         Glyphs are made by players who have learned the new profession of Inscription (AKA scribes).

·         The primary reagent for Inscription is herbs, which are milled to make pigments, which are turned into inks, which are then combined with parchments (which are bought from vendors) to make glyphs. Whew.

·         Scribes can sell/trade/give glyphs to players, who then use them to enhance their spells. Each Glyph enhances a particular spell for a particular class.

·         There are two kinds of glyphs: minor and major. Minor glyphs tend to do things like reducing cooldowns or removing a reagent cost, while major glyphs bring more substantial changes to spells.

·         At level 80, we will each have three major glyph slots and three minor ones. At level 70, we have two major and three minor. Here’s the breakdown for how many slots you have at what levels:

·         Level 15: 1 major, 1 minor

·         Level 30: 2 major, 1 minor

·         Level 50: 2 major, 2 minor

·         Level 70: 2 major, 3 minor

·         Level 80: 3 major, 3 minor

·         The glyph interface is found on the spellbook panel, in its own tab. To apply a glyph, just right-click it and click on the slot you want to put it in. If all your slots are full, you can overwrite an existing glyph; this will destroy it, just like with gemming.

·         Some glyphs require you to be standing near a Lexicon of Power to apply them. Lexica are found near inscription trainers – just ask a guard in any major city.

Hopefully that sorts out some of the confusion I’ve seen flying around.

Inscription was just added to the game two days ago, but many people have it at 350+ already. Understandably, there are a lot of questions. In this post I will attempt to answer some of them. This post is aimed at people who are scribes, or are interested in becoming scribes. If you’re just interested in how to use glyphs to enhance your skills, but not in making them, you may want to look into the glyph FAQ.

So what’s this Inscription all about, then? Inscription is a new primary profession to make glyphs (permanent enhancements to spells), mostly. Scribes can also make scrolls, and for themselves, shoulder enchants and caster-oriented offhands.

What goes into making a glyph? Herbs, primarily. Lots of herbs. You mill them into pigments, turn the pigments into ink, and put the ink down on parchment to make glyphs.

What’s the difference between a major and a minor glyph? Major glyphs make big changes to spells, minor glyphs make small ones. We have slots for both; you can’t put a major glyph in a minor glyph slot, nor vice-versa. At level 70, we have two major slots, and three minor. At level 80, we’ll have three of each.

How do I learn to make minor glyphs? As you may have noticed by now, Inscription trainers only teach major glyphs. Minor glyph recipes are obtained exclusively through Minor Inscription Research, which is on a 20-hour cooldown and produces random scrolls and vellums, with a chance to learn a random new minor glyph recipe.

Vellum? Ah yes, the other crazy-useful thing scribes can make. Vellums allow enchanters to sell their enchantments on the AH, basically. It goes like this:

1.      Scribe makes vellum.

2.      Enchanter buys vellum.

3.      Enchanter casts enchantment on vellum.

4.      Player buys enchanted vellum.

5.      Player right-clicks enchanted vellum to cast the enchantment on their gear.

There are different vellums for different types (armor or weapon) and levels of enchantment, such as Armor Vellum II. I hear vellums are a bit cost-prohibitive right now, but I’m sure it’ll even out eventually.

Why don’t the scribes just give the glyphs away? Yes, I’ve actually seen this question. A lot. The answer, of course, is that scribes are pumping a lot of money into creating the glyphs, both in terms of leveling up their inscription and in terms of the direct mats for the glyphs. Herbs aren’t free, you know.

There don’t seem to be any recipes past 350 that aren’t green. That’s true; it’s not really worth it leveling past 350 at the moment, given that no recipes currently require skill any higher. Wait until Wrath when you have some new recipes to play with.

Two suggestions:

The UC elevator doors are too short for a mounted female troll (raptor) to pass through without dismounting. I realize this is old world, but with the traffic to UC sure to increase due to the Northrend zep, this would be a really nice time to get it fixed…

Also, I may have missed him, but I’m not seeing a LWing trainer among those in the early Horde areas (the alchemy, enchanting, engineering etc. trainers I see are only masters, but I assume they’re getting promoted to grand masters as tradeskills get fleshed out). It seems pretty essential to give people the ability to skill up their LWing before they reach 74.

Also, I’ll register my disappointment with the decision to cut off all access to Dalaran until 74. I realize that short-term problems like the unavailability of grand master trainers, inscription supplies, etc. will probably be dealt with, but it makes the early leveling experience potentially an isolated one if Dalaran becomes the new Shatt. Requiring people to travel to the teleport point (which no longer works if you haven’t done the L74 quest) seemed reasonable.

GB

THE DATE FOR THE MURLOC SUIT MEETUP IS AUGUST 9TH 6PM SERVER TIME

LOCATION: Sholazar Basin – RIVERS HEART (directly in the middle of the zone)

TIME: 6PM TODAY

PLEASE start showing up at 6pm, Photo will be taken around 6:30pm! PLEASE TELL ALL FRIENDS ETC TO LOG ON, if you have multiple accounts with suites, get them on, lets make this epic!

If you don’t have a Murloc Outfit, show up! One COULD be provided for you (*nudes a CM/GM*)

~~~

Use the ingame clock OR  to figure out what time that is for you.

A location for the meet up is still being decided. If any one has any suggestions please feel free to post.

~~~~~

Before the end of BETA we have to get together as many of us 07′ blizconers and take a picture with as many murloc suites as possible.

Truly, an epic feat.

This is aimed at the Nothrend community, I’m sure some one on Lich King can set this up .

Each week Arcane Brilliance patches itself with new Mage content. These weekly patches are always full of buffs, and never any nerfs. They never contain any changes made for the sake of class balance. There are no bug fixes; because Arcane Brilliance has no bugs (or at least no bugs that can’t be retroactively called “features”). This week, the patch notes read as follows:

Mage:

·         New spell: Polymorph: Corpse – 1% of base mana, instant cast, 50 yard range, transforms the target into a corpse, making it dead. While dead, the corpse cannot attack or cast spells. Lasts however long it takes for the target’s ghost to run back to their corpse.

·         Mages can now equip plate armor.

·         Mana no longer goes down when casting, it instead goes up.

Next week, I’ll complain about this patch. It’s totally not powerful enough. Also, Warlocks are OP.

All signs point to this coming Tuesday being the day patch 3.0.2 arrives and turns the game on its head. Up will be down, left will be right, dogs and cats will live together, mass hysteria will ensue. We need to prepare for this coming insanity, if only so that we’re able to give snarky answers to the many questions that will pop up in trade chat after we all log back in. I expect lots of “LOL WUT HAPPEN TO MY TALENTS?” and the occasional “I used my mount and it disappeared! Bug?”

This week will be the first of two columns in which we’ll go over the changes most important to Mages that we can expect come Tuesday. We’ll begin with general changes, and move on to the altered trainable spells. The second part will appear Monday, and will cover the three talent trees and review the many changes we’ll find there. Jump on past the break and we’ll get started.

Patch 3.0.2 is going to be simply enormous. It will be massive not only in terms of actual new content, but also in terms of how it will effect the current class mechanics. A lot of things we accept as normal, things that have become second nature to us, will be altered so dramatically with this patch that the entire landscape of the game will change. Since this is a column about Mages, we’ll lay aside some of the more general changes (barber shops, Inscription, Dalaran moving north, achievements, etc.) in order to focus on the aspects of the patch that will specifically affect those of us who wear cloth and turn things into sheep.

Talent point refund
When you log in on patch day, you will discover, as will every other class, that all your talent points have been refunded. You will also notice an abundance of new talents, including powerful new 51-point talents. Even old talents will have numerous changes from their current iterations. You get a free respec, and you’ll need it, because none of the currently accepted talent builds will work in any recognizable fashion after the patch. More specifics on the new/changed talents will be forthcoming on Monday.

Statistic changes

This is a fairly large change, but it’s simpler to understand than it may sound at first. Several stats that are important to Mages will change significantly with the patch. These changes are mostly an attempt to consolidate several of the various stats together.

“Spell critical strike rating” will become “critical strike rating,” and will be consolidated with the old melee critical strike rating. This means that any weapon that had either rating will now have the same amount of the new, consolidated rating. If a sword gives 15 critical strike rating, that crit rating applies both to the rate at which your magical abilities crit and the rate at which your physical abilities crit, whether you’re a Rogue or a Mage or whatever.

By the same token, hit rating and spell hit rating are becoming the same stat. After the patch, your spell hit rating will become just “hit rating,” affecting both melee and spell chance to hit, so be aware.

So how will this affect us? In most cases, not much. The rating should stay the same on all your gear. When you log in on patch day, don’t panic about your Merciless Gladiator’s War Staff having 42 crit rating instead of 42 spell crit rating. The stat has a different name, but performs the same function. The only real difference I can think of is that if, for some odd reason, you mess up and roll need when Malchazeen drops off Prince, you can claim it’s to help you hit the spell hit cap. You may still get kicked out of the guild, but at least you’ll feel slightly less stupid about it. Slightly.

The final stat change that will affect us is the consolidation of spell damage and healing. These are becoming an entirely new stat called “spellpower.” This change is slightly more impactful than the previous ones. Don’t worry, your spell damage now will become your spellpower after the patch, and the value will be the same. The difference is that in many cases, gear that is now healer-only will be perfectly suitable for Mages. Things like the Primal Mooncloth set will suddenly become viable gear for certain Mages, which is weird to say the least. In the month between the patch and the expansion, when cloth gear drops, you may suddenly find yourself rolling against Priests as well as Warlocks in some situations. It isn’t the biggest deal in the world, but it’ll at the very least be an interesting change.

Casting mechanics
Spell pushback is being changed quite a bit. Nothing–and I mean nothing–is more frustrating than fighting an attacker with rapid attack options (cough…Rogue) and trying to cast a spell with any sort of cast-time. With the current implementation of spell pushback, every attack has a chance of pushing your casting bar back, every time, forever. A 3-second cast could become a 10-second cast, a 1.5 second cast could easily be stretched to 5 or 6 seconds, and heaven help you if you try to throw out a Pyroblast.

The patch will bring a limit to how much your spells can be pushed back. The first hit will add .5 seconds to your casting time, and the second hit will add an additional half second. Every hit after the second will not affect casting time. That means that even if that feral Druid is smacking you 27 times every second, your cast time will only increase by 1 second, at most. No more perennial casting animations while that Rogue turns you into a pincushion in a dress. Very nice.

This change also affects channeled spells. If attacked while channeling a spell, the first hit will decrease the duration of the cast by 25%, and the second by another 25%, while every hit to follow will have no affect on the cast duration. In other words, no channeled spell’s duration can be reduced by anything more than half. Any Mage who’s ever tried to channel Evocation in combat will welcome this change, knowing that even if you happen to get hit while casting, at worst you will only have wasted half of your 8 minute cooldown spell (5 after the patch!).

Spell mana cost (or the end of downranking)

Spell cost has been changed universally from numerical mana costs to a flat percentage of your base mana (your mana pool with no gear at all, and unaffected by talents or intellect, or 2241 at level 70). This change was made to ensure that the mana costs of spells will scale with level. It makes sure that using rank 1 of a spell at level 70 will cost the same as using rank 16 of that same spell. Downranking spellcasts has been a large part of Mage casting strategy for some time. This change will all but abolish such practices as using rank 1 Frostbolt or Frost Nova as low-mana control options, or spamming rank 1 Arcane Explosion to ferret a Rogue out of hiding.

I don’t really have a problem with this change, though I’m sure many do. Downranking was always a kind of exploit, and it makes sense for Blizzard to end it across the board. I never liked the idea of having to mathematically weigh the mana efficiency of each rank of each spell to find the one rank that gave the most damage per mana value. Higher ranks of spells should always be better, and I guess this is one way to make that happen.

Focus

Finally, Blizzard has implemented a way for Mages to use this mechanic properly without an addon and a lot of complicated macros. By right-clicking any unit frame you will be able to set that target as your focus. You will also be able to key-bind shift, alt, or control as a “focus cast key,” meaning that if you hold down your chosen key and cast a spell, it will be cast toward your focus and not your actual target.

Focus is a mechanic that every Mage should learn and use liberally. One major use is to set your sheep target as your focus, and then use your focus cast binding (shift/control/alt + your Polymorph hotkey) to recast sheep without ever having to leave your main DPS target. It has many other uses, especially in PvP, so if you for some reason haven’t been using it before now, the patch will be the perfect time to start.

There are addons that do the job more efficiently, but the default UI version coming with the patch is a perfectly serviceable way to go. It’s not fancy, but it’s something.

Changed spells

We’ll deal with the changes to talented spells on Monday. Below you’ll find the changes to trainable spells, those every level 70 Mage will have when the patch hits.

Evocation:

The cooldown on this spell has been lowered from 8 minutes to 5, which is, quite frankly, all kinds of awesome.

Arcane Blast:

This spell, on the other hand, has been molested so savagely, I’m pretty sure it could be classified as a hate-crime. Each cast now increases the next cast’s damage by 15% while the mana cost goes up by a ridiculous 200%. The effect now only lasts 3 seconds, and is still stackable up to three times, by which point you will of course be using approximately the same amount of mana it would take power Dalaran for like a week. What this means is that you will never want to cast this spell more than once in a row, and that the Arcane tree has nothing resembling a good spell rotation. The change was made to discourage spamming Arcane Blast, but no attempt was made to make the other arcane nuke (Arcane Missiles) viable. As it is now, Arcane Blast is probably too powerful, but it surely didn’t need to be nerfed so horribly. Let’s hope this gets ironed out into something more reasonable in future patches.

Conjure Mana Gem:

When you conjure these, they no longer vanish from your inventory after being logged out for more than 15 minutes, which is nice. Also, if you’ve used charges on your current mana gem, casting the spell again will recharge it to the full three charges. Also nice.

Invisibility:

This spell always had a lot of potential, and now it finally lives up to it. The 5 second fade-out we have to deal with for so long is being lowered to 3 seconds in the patch, and by talenting into Prismatic Cloak, that fadeout can be lowered to instant. For non-arcane Mages, hey, at least 3 seconds is better than 5, right?

Mana Shield:

Currently this spell drains 2 mana for every 1 health it absorbs. This is being lowered to 1.5 mana with the patch, a nice buff to a relatively lackluster spell.

Remove Lesser Curse:

Brace yourselves. When the patch hits, this spell will be irrevocably changed forever and there will be no going back past the point of no return. Did that sentence have enough redunancies? I’m not sure…I think I could have packed a couple more in there. Anyway, what’s changing? Only the entire name of the spell. That’s right: when the patch hits, it’ll be called “Remove Curse.” Where’d the “lesser” go? I don’t know! But I think we can finally give up hope of ever being able to remove greater curses.

Come back on Monday for the second part of this patch 3.0.2 blowout. We’ll review the changes to each of the talent trees, and see how our 51-point talents have ended up.

Though the WoW Insider team has arrived en masse to cover all things WoW at BlizzCon 2008, our eyes can’t help but wander over what other shiny offerings Blizzard has to display. Our sister sites Joystiq and Big Download will be covering Starcraft II and Diablo 3 extensively, but having already been to the Anaheim Convention Center today to get our press badges we couldn’t help but notice in the program (see above) that a playable demo of Diablo 3 will be available for the first time.

Don’t worry we won’t let it distract us from — is that the new class for Diablo 3? It’s class weapon does what?? Shoot witches!? Sorry. What were we saying?