PTR, Ulduar, Arcane Mage and good old Times

3.1, I'm ready I guess

My first update of self hosted blog software, wordpress from 2.6 to 2.7 that is, went very smooth and the new layout is up, not sure yet if I’ll stick with it though.

In game, there is not an awful lot to talk about, didn’t raid for quite some time now and haven’t done much more than some leveling. But let’s jump right into the topics of this beautiful monday:

PTR

My guild got together their first 10 man group for Ulduar, I wasn’t a part of it and I’ll  probably never be. The idea of trying out new bosses where extensive boss tactics on wowwiki or bosskillers aren’t available yet is very appealing to me. But until now I couldn’t motivate myself to really install the PTR client, all pros and cons for PTR raiding can be found in my previous article (that post surprisingly even got some link love from wowinsider). But to make it short: The idea of spoiling content and doing bug testing for blizzard for a monthly fee is not yet appealing to me. I’m a competitive player, but I’m still far away from counting myself to the really hardcore raiders, I never cleared sunwell at all.  I don’t think of myself as a player who burns through content and does encounters on PTR to get server firsts. Blizzard should provide content for a semi-hardcore semi-casual player like me, I should be able to raid 2-3 nights a week and still need loot. If that’s not the case, well then blizzard fails and I don’t think I’ll go to the PTR just do be doing anything at all.

Ulduar

Don’t get my wrong though, I’m not complaining about the game being to easy. Blizzard was aiming for entry raid difficulty and I guess they didn’t do so bad in that regard. And I honestly think it is absolutely great how many people are raiding Naxxramas at this time, having fun and success. But every serious raider is guessing what Ulduar will bring in terms of difficulty, hard modes and filling our raiding schedule.

In BC, 10 and 25 man raiding was seperated. 25 man raiding was not only harder but different instances. With WotLK came the introduction of 10 man and 25 man versions of every raiding encounter. I’m still not sure if I like that, but I see that advantages: It is just great how many small guilds can see all the raiding content there is. But I sure miss the days where I could raid a 25 man raid and have some fun with 1o peoples on off days in an instances that looked completly different.

What I’m curious about is how blizzard plans our raiding future. Right now, Blizzard is sending mixed signals. The loot in 25 man raids is better than 10 man raids loot, but that is not really reflecting the difficulty: Some 10 man encounters are very simplified, but overall difficulty is pretty equal and some fights, especially sarth 3d, are even a lot tougher in 10 man mode than their 25 man counterpart. And being rewarded with superior loot just for brinhing together 25 insted of 10 people and not for beating harder content seems strange to me.

And that’s why I’m very curious of how blizzard will present us Ulduar, that georgous looking instance. How big will the gap be in difficulty between 10 and 25 man raids? And how big between just a normal run and those juicy hard modes. And most importantly: How will Ulduars difficulty be compared to Naxx? My guess is, it will still be rather easy (after all I can’t imagine Blizzard will let all those thousands of Naxxramas raiders run against a wall if they’re not used to harder raiding) and the challenge can be found in the hard modes only.

Arcane Mage

I don’t like my mage alt. Mages please don’t be offended, but for me leveling a mage is incredibly boring. And that alt is a female bloodelf, which is just the worst race to play. The problem I have with leveling a mage is how strong your main nuke is, be it Fireball or Frost Bolt. This leads to spamming those spells forever. This problem is not mage specific, many classes have fantastic and fun rotations in the endgame but are boring as hell to level, be it because you can’t reach talents in your talent tree, you can’t learn talents just yet or because it’s just not worth applying all your debuffs and using all your buffs for your regular quest mob. But even then, leveling my mage drives my crazy, I’d always do 4-5 levels and then swear to never play her again. Last week I picked her up, respecced from frost to fire and found fire even more annoying and then, for the first time ever, gave arcane a shot.

Since then I’m having a blast. When I started leveling I was around 64, this weekend I reached 70. I guess arcane is much less of a fun leveling spec if you can’t get to the end talents, but as soon as you can get Slow or even Arcane Barrage, things become really interesting.

A leveling arcane mage jumps between Arcane Blast and Arcane Barrage. AB puts a stacking debuff on your toon, making the next Arcane spell hit harder but cost your next Arcane Blast more mana (all other arcane spells cost just the usual amount of mana but will hit for more anyways). If you cast anything else than AB, the debuff will go away. So for moderate damage and great mana efficency, AB ABarr AB ABarr is the way to go, for more damage at higher mana cost you can switch to AB AB ABarr. But that’s not all, every arcane spell can procc Missile Barrage, which makes Arcane Missles worth casting, so whenever you get a proc, it is time for a AB AM combo. Presence of Mind helps finishing mobs quicker, making your next spell instant. Last but very much not least there is Slow: This spell is not only crucial for slowing mobs down and make it possible to kill them before they reach you, You even do more damage through Torment the Weak.

A build for leveling for an arcane mage around level 60 would look something like this. The endgoal would be something like that, which is also a perfectly valid PVE build.

I intended to level my mage just to 70, so my better half would have some company on the way to Northrend with her warlock alt, but now I’m actually really undecided if  I should take the mage to 80 or the druid who’s waiting at 70.

More on the topic of leveling an arcane mage on Critical QQ.

The good old times

No, no more whining about raiding difficulty and no glorification of BC raiding. The good old times I miss are those on my old realm, Teldrassil. Being on a really low population server can be pretty frustrating sometimes, because random PuGs for Naxxramas or sometimes even heroics are hard to find and likely to fail. I don’t regret transfering to this realm, the guild is fantastic and low-pop servers somehow force you too spend more time in that strange RL, nevertheless, I guess everyone thinks of his first realm as something special and will miss the folks there.

Comments on any of the topics are welcome as always.