3.0.9 - Suprise!

With all this buzz about 3.1.0 on the horizon, blizzard has decided to release a suprise patch, 3.0.9 later this week, probably tuesday.
Here are the patch notes: (Retrieved from http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=16113.0)

Druid (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

* Ferocious Bite: This ability now only uses up to 30 energy in addition to its base cost.

Hunter
(Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

* Kindred Spirits (Beast Mastery): This talent now grants 20% pet damage at max rank.

* Serpent’s Swiftness (Beast Mastery): This talent now grants 20% pet attack speed
at max rank.Pets

* Lava Breath now reduces the target's casting speed by 25%, down from 50%.

* Poison Spit now reduces the target's casting speed by 25%, down from 50%.

Mage (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

* Arcane Power now increases damage and mana cost by 10%, cooldown reduced to 1 minute. (Note: The spell is actually different in game and increases damage and mana costs by 20% with a 2 minutes cooldown. However it would probably be better to wait until servers are online to confirm that.)

* Arcane Power and Presence of Mind now share a category cooldown. Arcane Power causes a 15 second cooldown. Presence of Mind, once consumed, causes a 1.5 second cooldown.

* Arcane Flows now reduces the cooldown of Presence of Mind, Arcane Power and Invisibility by 15/30%.

* Presence of Mind: The cooldown has been reduced to 2 minutes, (down from 3.)

* Slow (Arcane): now increases cast time by 30%, down from 60%.

Glyphs

* Glyph of Arcane Missiles -- Increases the critical strike damage bonus of Arcane Missiles by 25%. (Old - Increases the range of Arcane Missiles by 5 yards.)

* Glyph of Mana Gem -- Increases the mana recieved from using a mana gem by 40%. (Up from 10%)

* Glyph of Arcane Blast -- Increases the damage from your Arcane Blast buff by 3%. (Down from 5%)

Paladin (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.) * The duration on all Seals has been increased to 30 minutes and can no longer dispelled.

* Divine Plea: The amount healed by your spells is reduced by 50% (up from 20%) but the effect can no longer be dispelled.

* Sanctified Seals: This talent no longer affects dispel resistance, but continues to affect crit chance.

Glyphs

* Glyph of Holy Light -- Your Holy Light grants 10% of its heal amount to up to 5 friendly targets within 8 yards of the initial target. (Down from 20 yards, Tooltip text fix, was already hotfixed to 8 yards in game)

* Glyph of Seal of Righteousness -- Increases the damage done by Seal of Righteousness by 10%. (Old - Reduces the cost of your Judgement spells by 10% while Seal of Righteousness is active.)

Priest (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

* Inner Fire duration has been increased to 30 minutes and can no longer dispelled.

Rogue (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

* Hunger for Blood (Assassination): Now increases damage 5% per stack, (up from 3%.)

* Mind Numbing Poison now reduces cast time by 30%, down from 60%.

* Mutilate damage will now do 20% increased damage against poisoned targets, down from 50%.

* Slice and Dice: This ability now increases melee attack speed by 40%, up from 30%.

Shaman (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

Glyphs

* Glyph of Windfury Weapon -- Increases the chance per swing for Windfury Weapon to trigger by 2%. (Down from 5%)

Warlock (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

* Curse of Tongues: Now increases the casting time of all spells by 25% (Rank 1) and 30% (Rank 2), down from 50% and 60%.

Dungeons and Raids

The Obsidian Sanctum

Changed the color of the fissure in the Obsidian Sanctum to be more visually distinct.

User Interface

* The “GM wishes to speak with you” alert/button, at the top of the screen, has been changed so that addons do not obscure it.

* A clickable chat message has been added that duplicates the GM alert/button.

* When a GM wishes to speak with you the Help Request minibar button will glow. * For additional notes on Lua and XML changes please visit the UI & Macrosforum .

Bug Fixes

* Fixed an issue where players using nVidia 3D glasses were unable to see spell
cooldowns.

* Fixed a software mouse cursor bug that was causing the mouse curser to disappear from view when over certain UI elements.

* Fixed a player movement error in which other players were appearing to move erratically when traveling beside them.

Not sure exactly what this means for mages, but looks like they are only changing arcane. Seems to be a slight buff to arcane missiles (through glyphs) and a change to Arcane Power that doesn't seem all too big, more just decreasing arcane's burst potential. Same thing with the AP/PoM GCD, this doesn't affect raiding mages too much but definately hurts PvP Arcane. Also, If i remember Arcane Flows correctly, it used to reduce Evocate cooldown, and with the removal of that it means mana issues for arcane who poorly manage mana. If this is all geniune, the only nerf arcane raiding mages are recieving is less evocate time and arcane blast glyph (arcane blast glyph was changed in 3.0.8a but was bugged for arcane missiles), so overall its more a slight buff for arcane short term damage, but may cause problems for arcane's sustainability. Only time will tell. Though I must say that most mages might be trading in Arcane Power or Arcane Blast glyphs for mana gem... 40% 2 set Frostfire +40% glyph = 180% Mana Gems... and that mana is critical for fights. For shorter fights like patchwerk, Arcane Power, Arcane Blast, Arcane Missiles glyph setup will probably be optimal but will cause pain on long fights like Sapphiron and Kel'thuzad. But only time will tell, and maybe the changes will actually be different.

But on a positive note: Sartharion Shadow Fissure changes are gladly welcomed. Now no more reason to be stepping on them anymore (Or no more things for me to blame :( )
but seriously, nothing is worse then being on Sarth + 3d with all drakes still alive and being stuck between a fire wall and a shadow fissure!

(fire wall)=======_______ =========
_____________Me O <- shadow fissure. Oh crap! (underscores serve as nothing just to make sure that objects in ASCII Art are properly placed)

Burnout Deception

I must say that Burnout talent is not as good as it portrays.
Yes, when fully specc'd it gives +50% critical strike damage.
BUT, this 50% crit is not additive. Its multiplicative.
What exactly does this mean?
Well this is the base calculation for Crit damage: 1X+.5X (X being normal damage done)
This is the calculation for Crit damage with burnout: 1X+(.5X*1.5)
And after a little distribution you get: 1X+.75X.
And?
This means that burnout only gives +25% crit damage. Data testing done by myself and some other people has proven that this crit chance is not additive.
Well, how does this impact mages.
For Frostfire, this means you are not doing 300% damage crits, but actually 250% damage crits. Ice shards increases crit strike damage by 100%. So to prove it is actually 250% watch:
Since this is the crit damage with burnout: 1X+.75X
Lets add ice shards into the fray: 1x+(.75x*2)
Which leaves you with: 1x+1.5x OR 2.5x
2.5X= 250% of normal damage dealt.
This leads me too my next question? Why isn't it additive...
Sure multiplication allows Ice Shards to "build" off of Burnout, but multiplication also misleads initial ideas about the talent.
This is more a warning to people making their own specs rather than QQ.
For sake of being thorough, here is frost: 1X+(.5x*2) OR 1X+1X (2X).

3.1.0... already!

When Woppa told me 3.1.0 Notes were out, some of the changes on classes listed. The first thing I wondered was "How is blizzard going to screw over mages." After 3.0.8a, I'm not impressed. A mere week after 3.0.8, Blizzard hotfixes mages reducing Arcane's "full-burn" damage by up to 800 dps.
After finding out that mage notes aren't available until later today / tomorrow, I can't help but worry what this will mean for mages. After warlocks get a talent similiar to Scorch that "applies a buff that increases critical strike chance by 5%" (which is presumed to actually be a debuff, not a buff) which means that Scorch / Winter's Chill (Each adds a total of 10% crit chance on a full stack) might possibly recieve a major nerf possibly reducing total crit chance on each of them down to 5% maximum.
I ought not to do too many predictions of doom, but with the recent nerfs to mages, I can only hope that blizzard has met their nerf quota for mages.

But on a positive note, that with the slight buffs to elemental shamans / warlocks, there may be more ele shaman's out there to give us their buffs and warlocks to give us casters more crit, which will greatly benefit high-caster groups.

Well, I'm not gonna QQ too much just yet, I think It's time to wait and see what blizzard dishes out to the mages.
Stay Tuned for more updates!

An Introduction

This is Valaraukador of Korgath (Formerly of Duskwood). I am a member of the high-end raiding guild AfterLife. Playing a mage, I watch the changes very closely, and after seeing many drastic changes to the tree, I feel the need to start expressing my opinions on them.
First Off: Mirror Image.
My first expression when I turned 80 and first tried out this ability was "Wow, this is pretty awesome." They were very useful for killing mobs because they instantly (almost) took the aggro off me and tanked them for a decent amount of time and made soloing some otherwise near impossible 5-man group quests possible (for being Frostfire Specc'd, being Arcane specc'd would allow tanking of many more group groups).
Then came the next challenge for Mirror Image: Heroics.
Overall I found them to perform decently on most bosses, but the DPS they added was minimal, but enough to be worthwhile, but there was the few bosses with a mass AoE. Those bosses would one-shot my clones the moment I spawned them. That was the only real setback, though it was very annoying... Though I must say over most bosses it was useful.
Unfortunately Raid environments revealed more problems:
The first boss of arachnid wing, Anub'Rekhan, in Naxxramas, I found no problems with the images, but on the second boss, Grand Widow Faerlina, a major problem was revealed: Lack of Control.
For those of you who don't know the 10-man version of this fight, about a minute into the fight, Faerlina goes into a enrage thats lasts until she dies that increases damage to the point the tank is taking over 20k a hit. (If I remember correctly). And the only way to remove the enrage is to kill one of the four adds she starts with. However, Mirror Images do their own thing when summoned. On this particular fight, the mirror images would generally attack the adds and sheep one of them. This caused problems when they sheeped one of the adds that was weakened to ~10% for a fast kill. And occaisionally killed one of them far early, preventing us from being able to kill Faerlina. And other bosses like Instructor Razuvious, which would do a aoe blast every 15? seconds and would kill all my clones.
So this raises the question: How do we fix these problems?
Solution to Problem 1 (AoE insta Kill): Give Them More Health, or a % of Owner's HP.
Problem: PvPers would QQ about how OP the Clones are and how hard to kill they are.
Solution 2: Make them take reduced AoE damage.
I find this solution to be most advantageous for everyone (PvPers and PvEers alike) because it doesn't make them too much harder to kill in PvP and gives them survival in PvE which is critical for optimum DPS.
Problem 2 (Lack of Control):
Solution 1: Make them act as a Synchronised Pet (All Mirror Images attack the same target and are controlled by the Owner)
Problem: Possibly to much control over the pet?
Solution 2: Make them attack the same target as the owner, and get rid of their polymorph.
Personally I once again like Solution 2 the best because it doesn't give the owner too much control of the Mirror Images, yet prevents the problems caused by them going rampant attacking random mobs. And It also removes what I have found an overall annoying polymorph they keep casting, but then again I rarely Polymorph things. :O

Please leave some replies about what you think should be done about Mirror Image, and other topics for me to QQ on :)