Thoughts on 2.3 Stuff -- Class Changes and Rated WSG

This is going to be rather long, and NO I'm not going there, but I'm due to discuss some things.

Now for some reason beyond my comprehension, there are apparently people who'd rather read my whiny mage PvP opinions than sweet posts about poker. But whatever, I'll break it down on a few recent hot topics.

The 2.3 changes currently published are going to really make WE the only viable spec to play. Picking up over a 100 damage per Frostbolt and a more potent Ice Barrier is hard to turn down. Combine the Detect Magic nerf with the fact that Baller-Spec™ is more about getting free to CC heavily than chain nuking to do big damage and it'll be hard to justify not playing WE in arena, at least 3s and 5s.

The evocation change is obviously nice; the other stuff is mostly PvE relevant and doesn't interest me terribly. The indirect nerf to elemental shaman arena burst will perhaps reduce the gib of 4DPS, but certainly not to the point where 4DPS will no longer be viable, if anything it hits 2345 harder, but the mage damage buff will likely counteract that. The rogue changes will make 4DPS with rogue terrifying and rogues generally ridiculous in 2s/3s, duels, and world PvP.

Wound and MS affecting drains will hopefully reduce warlock dominance in the smaller brackets which should indirectly benefit mages, but isn't going to change the fact that mages basically are required to run with a lock or rogue in 2s and 3s as we simply don't have the crowd control or damage to be a threat by ourselves. The fear ward nerf might honestly end up helping locks more than the drain change hurts, and while WoTF + Fear Ward could be dominating, most arena teams are alliance to take advantage of the previously superior dwarf racials.

What would I have liked to see in 2.3? Trainable Ice Block. LOL. Would 17/44/0 or 33/28/0 with IB even be as strong as WE? I'm leaning towards probably not. I love playing 38/23, but its a joke how powerful some of the frost talents and abilities relatively are. Compare talented Cone of Cold to Blastwave ("gold medal talent"). Blastwave snares for 10% less, does 40% less damage, and has potentially a 500% longer cooldown. It also is shorter range and higher mana cost. Coolio. Dragon's breath? Does no more than CoC either and you could make a similar comparison...except that you can't even use CoC at all if you're DB. Does this make ANY sense? And Slow? Cool.

I don't mean to be an emo faggot, but it strikes me as somewhat retarded that the only PvP viable mage spec is basically the play-like-a-warlock, spam instants, and let your pet win for you one. Yeah, there's some micro to using your pet well. The thing is... it doesn't fucking matter because WE is so overpowered that you can play like total shit, have your pet autoattack your sheeps, miss half your shatter combos, kite like ass, and still win because it hits so fucking hard. For all of us who resisted the urge to re-roll warlock in BC, you've failed, you now fucking play one.

As for that Arcane Shot change, I'm a huge fan. I actually enjoy rebuffing Ice Armor or Molten Armor every 2 minutes in Battlegrounds. I don't cast Arcane Intellect or Dampen on myself in BGs not because of the mana cost and the inevitability of them being promptly dispelled, but because I like to intentionally handicap myself to make the game more challenging by playing without such powerful buffs on my side. I like it almost as much as when I ride by a lock in WSG and then have to run away and eat twice to recover the DoT damage. Spending most of your time in BGs eating to recover DoT damage is awesome, my rolls are delicious, it's a wonder my mage keeps his slim figure.

At least, there's some cool engineering stuff. Now, I'm not a huge fan of how I have to spend an hour doing daily quests to get enough grenades for 2 hours of PvP, but I understand that its actually good for me and good for the game's economy. See if grenades were cheaper, people would use them in arena or in PvE. Can you imagine what would happen to the economy if grenades didn't cost 5g each? I used to spam iron grenades pretty heavily back in WoW 1.0, but I've been told that Blizzard actually twisted the head off a kitten every time I chucked a grenade -- I've seen the box of heads, it wasn't pretty.

One piece of good news is that rated WSG is on the horizon sooner than most of us expected. Lots of people are getting their teams together already, not so much me. I've been trying to convince FH to transfer to Tich to enable us to get some competition for our sick potential WSG squad, but it's gone mostly like this:

Me: I WANT UP IN THAT BG9 SHIT LIKE THAT GIRL IN HEROES
Guild: What?
Me: I WANT IN IT. IN. IT. THINK ABOUT IT.
Guild: bg9?
Me: RATED WSG NIGGAS. FACES, WE CAN SHIT ON THEM.
Guild: You want to do another transfer?
Me: OR MAYBE THAT HARRY POTTER GIRL SHES HOT
Guild: I don't know if we should transfer, it might endanger raiding progress.
Me: NOW HERES A LITTLE STORY I GOTS TO TELL
Nolan: about three bad brothers you know so well
Me: YEAHHHHHHHHHH REP THAT JEW SHIT LIKE ITS FJBJ SALE HALF OFF
Guild Suck: Why would you want rated WSG?
Me: YOUR NOT ON THE TEAM FAGGOT SHUT UP
Guild: We'll talk later, didn't you say you had to leave?
Me: FINE BUT THIS IS SO GOING IN MY BLOG FAGGOTS

So, I don't really know what's up. I know that rated WSG will be absolutely my top priority. One concern is that PvE gear is pretty important for WSG, but I honestly hope they keep it that way. I miss seeing people in different gear and of different specs. It'll be healthy for the game to have the developers try to balance PvP outside of just the arena mindset -- I honestly think it'll lead to better arena balance too. WSG has been forever been one of my favorite parts of WoW; even when my friends were extremely burnt out of WoW, we always had fun messing around in WSG. I've heard rumors that players are already coming out of retirement to lock in spots on teams -- I'm hoping to bring back a few of the old faces for our team. ^^

Back to what 2.3 "needs" -- fire needs a mid tier talent change that is powerful and relevant to PvP. Something that elevates the offensive threat of AP/fire and deep fire mages to compensate for their extreme fragility. Ignite healing debuff? Crit through resilience? Healing by doing damage? Improved burst on scorch and fireblast? Something. Spellsteal still needs significant improvement. Slow needs to be lower mana cost and not single target limited. All the chance to resist everything talents for all classes need to be reworked to being duration reductions. I could go on, but who really gives a fuck, Blue makes changes, we adapt.