Thoughts on Things

Oh, hi there.

I haven't been too forthcoming with Arena brainstorming because I'm still REALLY far behind the curve on gearing up and being ready for the season. Prepping for the season really depends on what your situation is -- do you PvE? Are you wiling to? Do you have a guild to carry you? What comps will you run? THE QUESTIONS JUST DON'T STOP.

By the way, did you know that in Scotland it is illegal to be drunk while in possession of a cow?

You just learned something new if not. Congratulations. +1 xp of smartness for you.

Capping honor is obvious for season prep.Depending on your luck with BGs, I think 3-4k honor is pretty feasible in wotlk grinding Strand. After that, grinding marks is next, but from what I've seen, the other BGs are rarely up yet. Strand is reasonably addictive and new, but I can't imagine the fascination lasting. I still like AB the best of the BGs. I really don't like the vehicles in WG or Strand -- world of tribes is pretty wtf. Some people claim WG is huge honor but I haven't really found that to be the case. I can claim bullshit stuff too. It doesn't make it true.

I can tell the difference between hooker blood and normal blood purely based upon texture.

PvPing with zero resilience, 12k hp, and less than 1k spell damage is pretty amusing. Being on the receiving end of 9.4k ambushes or 8k eviscerates while not being able to out dps HoTs even with AP up as Arcane is fun. Realistically, I should have 4k more hp, 500 more dmg, and at least a few hundred resilience with real gear, so I'm not terribly concerned. I'm a little more cynical with how Arcane will fair against melee especially due to the extreme rapidity that the spec tears through mana, but then again, the damage is pretty amazing and instant invis is INCREDIBLE.

Pretty much every nonbad player I know is leaning towards 20/0/51 for Arena and I don't deny that it might be the most rounded and highest potential spec longer term. The prevailing logic is that Arcane's 3.0 dominance was simply a product of smaller health pools and that it lacks the burst to drop high HP targets with similar speed. I'm sort of undecided on whether I believe this or not.

Swapping to and fro between Arcane and Frost puts one in a bit of gear bind however. I'm really of the opinion that Haste is generally worthless for Arcane. (OTHERS WILL STRONGLY DISAGREE BUT I'M MORE EFAMOUS AND THEREFORE MORE CORRECT. FUCK YOU HAAB.) I mean ideally I like to hop around like a fairy, pretend I can twirl like a belf, and fire off Barrages every 3 sec until I can look for an opportunity to blow some CDs and skill someone to death with AP burst stupidity. In between Barrages, it's basically either reapplying slow, fireblasting, reapplying a ward/shield, or tossing a lance or scorch, primarily for the imp scorch dispel fodder. With haste you just end up performing a marginal action because you're waiting on the 3s cooldown, and you probably decrease your damage output as you are spending less time Barraging. Arcane also gets very little benefit from Crit, although with Fire as your support tree, it's not awful. Spell damage and resilience definitely seem like primary stats.

Frost on the other hand demands haste, perhaps not to the point of making huge sacrifices to damage, but I can imagine such a setup not being terribad. It's really about maximizing damage during DFs, which haste helps tremendously, and being able to get off casts for Shatter Combos, which is increasingly difficult with the buffs to spell interrupts. Frost is also WAY more mana efficient so the downside of Haste, that is, casting more and thus spending more mana, is less an issue.

A compromise is basically to roll engineering and gear mostly for an Arcane spec. You still can IV + RG (rocket glove) for quick polys or double frostbolt shatter combos during DFs.

Speaking of quick polys, what is going to be the anti spell reflect juke now with it not being on global? I've been still lancing as an Arcane mage, but my homie/gaylover Haab points out that you can fake cast into Slow, if he reflects, it is INSTANT (no travel time waiting) and you can simply reslow him, which removes it from yourself, and then poly. This basically wastes .75 for the fake, then two globals, BEFORE, you start the real poly cast, but compare it to .75, 2.5 for the lance global plus travel time and consider that even if you can't get the poly you've still got some good distance with the Slow, and it sort of makes sense. I don't much like the idea of basically intentionally putting Slow on yourself and counting on the fact you can apply it off yourself personally.

For some perspective on what we'll look like in top gear, consider this setup:

Body + One Ring: 9/9 Deadly
Titanium Spellshock Ring
Sundial of the Exiled
The Turning Tide
Deadly Glad OH
Deadly ToD
Assuming Engi Boots + Gloves (Missing run speed!) and obviously some hard to get PvE stuff (but tbh the PvP equivs aren't much worse)

20033 hp
15813 mp
24.26 % crit
4.04% hit
2% haste
2061 dmg (BASE)
766 resil (A bit low)

Even mages with 20k hp?