Inconceivable

Trainable Ice Block. Inconceivable. Inconceivable.

As I sit here in the very charming White Plains airport and listen to the many excuses as to why we cannot take off anytime soon, let's think 2.3.2.

I said before I felt trainable IB was needed, but that it, without other changes, would not reduce the prevalence of WE as the arena spec. The Icy Veins talent was really no shock -- most people were predicting a new 21 point PvE talent; I thought that Cold Snap would become the 21 and the 11 would be a nonsense PvE thing, but this isn't entirely the case. If Icy Veins were simply a brief casting speed buff without the increased chance to freeze, I think people would let it go as marginally useful, but not worth obsessing over, it's the increased freeze proc shatter synergy that leaves many of our mage panties firmly in a bunch.

Basically, there are a few specs that have significant potential with the 2.3.2 changes:

33/28/0 - This is pretty fucking obvious. I see big potential for this in 2s as mage/rogue or mage/lock and less obvious, but still solid potential in the traditional 3s/5s matrices. Imp CS, IWIN, blazing speed, etc. Ice Block keeps you alive against DoTs and hunters (well a little bit) and the improved mana gems should allow for slightly more use of mana shield and alleviate the cost of chain casting with AP up. The spec will be pretty satisfying in BGs against low resilience targets and the combination of IWIN and Ice Block should allow for some nice 1vN that was probably not previously possible without gay Water Elemental tanking.

0/41/20 - DB is fucking awesome and terrible at the same time. Why it shares a cooldown with CoC boggles the fucking mind. The inability to kite for shit, the lack of silence, atrocious mana efficiency, and not enough talent points to get what you need really are the big problems with this spec. Do you ignore fireball entirely and max out shit like playing with fire? Or ignore crit shit like Pyromaniac and Incinerate and max out all 10 fireball points? Compromise and just take empowered? I don't fucking know. Scorch sucks dick still. Icy Veins and Bloodlust do nothing for it, but then again, once the casting speed buffs are up, does the .5 second on fireball matter much? I'll almost certainly be playing this spec, but it is inevitably going to be love-hate. Bottom line is that DB reeks of unexplored potential, molten fury is severely underrated, and the playstyle will be ridiculously fun.

0/10/51 - You can play whatever gay variant you wish. Fuck off. Bigger mana gems means clearcasting is more of a non-factor and you can afford to fireblast more often. Hell you might even talent that shit, WHO KNOWS. Yeah, it's true that the Icy Veins + Ice Armor fusion makes you not want to use Molten quite as much, but honestly just kill yourself.

17/0/44 - I have no words for you. No words.

0/38/23, 41/20/0, 41/0/20 etc - Baller spec is less attractive than 0/41/20, but having only one IB might be too great a liability. The problem is that you don't get much love out of Icy Veins, and while in oldschool WoW, you could do elemental "frost side" (24/27), those specs don't make much sense anymore to me; I always hated 30/31 as you hit like a bitch. No offense to bitches. But you do. The slow specs have potential to gay the fuck out of people in the small arena brackets and if you're on some bumblefuck battlegroup full of hunters and shamans, go for it. Shit I can't wait for sick 2v2 vids from slow mages fighting only hunter/X and shaman/X teams. Blast some Fort Minor and zoom in on big pyro crits, fuck yeah.

That's all the theorycrafting I got in my head right now. I'm sorry if you expected my normal gayness and instead found this faggotry, but there will still occasionally be WoW ramblings. ^^

Post up thoughts on what you think you'll be doing next patch or if you think I'm a fucking moron.