2.4.3 is Live!

Well, how do I?

I didn't get a chance to take a look at the new patch changes first-hand. I had overtime yesterday, and didn't come home until 8pm. It took a while to download the patch, meaning that I had spent most of my available time yesterday doing SSO daily quests. I'm at about 20k/21k revered, meaning that I'll be able to ding exalted sometime this week. More on that in a future post.

So yeah, didn't get a chance to experience the new changes, as small as they were. But for the hell of it, I wanna go over the ones that are somewhat relevant to my interests:

General
-Dispel effects will no longer attempt to remove effects that have 100% dispel resistance.
-Mounts at 30?! Yes, it’s true: Apprentice Riding and mounts are now available at level 30. Training costs 35 gold.
-Alcohol cooldowns have been rolled into Drinks: All 10-second cooldowns have been removed and replaced with the 1-second Drink cooldown.

OK, pretty cool. No more wasted 20% base mana on spellsteals that never had a chance to hit in the first place. That extra mana can go to freezing face with a Blizzard or something else.

Level 30 mounts are quite nice, because I'm always considering levelling up another mage alt hordeside, simply because I want to experience new content. Cheaper base costs also makes that prospect quite enticing.

Alcohol cooldowns aren't really that important, but I can always dream that one day mages could conjure booze.

Mages
-Frost Armor, Ice Armor, Mage Armor, and Molten Armor are no longer Magic effects and cannot be dispelled.

Warlocks
-Demon Skin, Demon Armor, and Fel Armor are no longer Magic effects and cannot be dispelled.

Cool! I can imagine that in PvP this would be beneficial. But I've heard in some circles that priests really have more efficient ways to kill mages than dispelling our armor, especially since their range attacks aren't affected by Ice or Molten Armor. Against pallies, however (do they even have a dispel technique? I forget), they're just going to have to deal with getting frozen 15% of the time they try to hit us. Hooray!

Oh, and I added warlocks because of the SSO daily quest that requires you to kill Dawnblade Warlocks. I always spellsteal their Demon armor when I get the chance, and this announcement sorta makes me sad that I can't do it anymore. Oh well, there goes my 2 minutes of fun =(

Magister’s Terrace
-The Stun component to the Sunblade Mage Guard Glaive Throw has been removed and the Bounce range reduced.
-Vexallus’ damage caused by Pure Energy has been decreased.
-Kael’thas’ Arcane Sphere has had its visual size increased. His Arcane Sphere attack has had its range decreased and the damage/second of Phase two on Normal mode has been decreased.
-Sunblade Warlocks have had their damage reduced slightly.
-Fel Crystals in the Selin Fireheart encounter have had their health reduced slightly.
-Warlord Salaris and Kagani Nightstrike have had their damage output reduced slightly.

Glaive Throw stun is extremely annoying, especially considering that a caster-class NPC uses it. Imagine the chaos on the class forums if blizzard gives the old glaive throw to mages in Wrath. Beautiful, sign me up!

The Vexallus fight isn't too difficult, but some may argue that it's the most difficult fight in Magister's Terrace. Particularly because of the pure energy damage. I know that Bashertin simply cannot handle the adds alone because of his relatively lower HP compared to other classes that normally get assigned to adds (ie, hunters, rogues, DPS shamans), so i'm glad that I'll have a better chance at staying alive at the end of that particular fight whenever I get assigned to right or left side for the fight.

Kael'thas is a surprisingly easy fight for frost mages once you get used to phase 2. It's nice to see that the arcane sphere is more visible, because I always end up doing blink tricks to get out of the way of those spheres. Considering our class' squishiness, this should be a welcome change.

I don't know how to react to the warlock change, since I'm always sheeping them first on pulls. I guess that means I can sheep the nexus guys instead.

Selin Fireheart is an interesting fight. All the PUGs I've done always go for the crystals, and more often than not, are always a sliver of HP away from actually getting to destroy them, before getting owned in the face by Arcane Explosion. From the way it's described in the patch notes, this is a very good adjustment. No more need for the "straight DPS on Selin while Ice Blocking through the AE" strategy.

I don't have access to wowhead at work, so I'm assuming that Warlord Salaris is the Naga add in the priestess fight, and that Kagani is the rogue class add. Those guys are incredibly bursty with the damage, and I always end up sheeping them for the duration of the fight if one of them show up. If the damage reduction is reasonable, I might be able to sheep the caster add instead. Salaris will still have that strange random aggro behaviour, so I might still sheep him first anyways =/

User Interface
-The new stopwatch feature can be accessed via the /stopwatch, /sw, or /timer slash commands. Inputting a time into the slash command will make the stopwatch count down. For example, /stopwatch 1:0:0 will make the stopwatch count down from an hour, /stopwatch 1:30 will make it count down from 1 minute, 30 seconds, and /stopwatch 30 will make it count down from 30 seconds.
-You can no longer click the minimap to cast ground targeted spells.
-Invisible players with Hunter’s Mark can see the hunter that put the mark on them.

Cool, no more need for clock mods. I can even time myself doing solo dungeon runs for lowbies. It's little mental games like these that lessen the effect of the pre-expansion blues.

Wait what? I used to be able to cast blizzard using the minimap? Say it isn't so! /cry

This one time, I was actually in alterac, and used invisibility, and got hunter's marked. Didn't go so well. I don't see how this will make it any easier for us to run away from arrowy/bulletted deaths, lol.

Bug Fixes
-The mage spell, Counterspell now shows in the combat log.
-The quest, "Into The Scarlet Monastery" is now available to players of the
appropriate level for the instance.

Great, now I no longer use the false denial method when I get yelled at for not interrupting the boss's major heal spell.

More Scarlet Monastery quests mean more people willing to pay for lowbie runs, meaning more money for mages. Hooray!

That's about it for 2.4.3 commentary. Next time on FitNB, "Dinging Exalted with Style."

Dungeon Soloing as a Frost Mage

With so many bodies, it's hard to find the gnome in the middle of it all...

The other day, I was playing around on my alt, a level 17 Dwarf Holy Priest. I was looking to complete a few deadmines quests, so I joined the LFG channel. Lo and behold, I found a 70 mage offering a free run through the instance (he was running his guildmate through, and had extra slots available). I joined up with a bunch of others, expecting that the run wouldn't take more than 10-15 minutes.

Turns out he was fire-specced, and took 30 minutes to complete it.

At the end of the run, I was grateful for his deed, but at the same time, dissatisfied by the duration of the run itself. This was more attributed to the fact that he was a fire mage (and my slight bias favoring frost), and the undisputable fact that frost mages are strictly better for dungeon soloing. Thus I decided to write this post about the nuances of soloing lowbie dungeons to maximum efficiency.

While not as efficient as farming or playing the AH, there is definitely money to be made in running strangers through low-level dungeons. Surprisingly, a lot of people are willing to spend gold on runs through Stockades and/or Deadmines. Whether it be for easy experience, or obtaining certain boss drops, a frost mage can make good money from such jobs. If you're lucky, you'll find multiple people to run you through the dungeon simultaneously for upwards sum of 10-15 gold for a single run-through. In this post, I will outline the general tips to use when running dungeons for your friends, or for making easy money.

Ice Barrier is Your Best Friend

The most important factor that seperates frosties from their fiery counterparts is the liberal use of Ice Barrier. Ice Barrier shields the mage from the multitude of attacks from a large number of mobs while you run through the dungeon grabbing as much aggro as possible. While fire and arcane mages do not have Ice Barrier, they can still use Mana Shield to absorb damage, but the mana-loss as a result of damage may require the expenditure of potions or mana gems, which limits the amount of mobs that the mage can pull without putting his or her own life in danger. Thus, frost is the safer spec for this situation.

The general rule for using Ice Barrier is to constantly recast it when your cooldown expires. With practice, you can get a feel for how many mobs you can collect on a single pull without having to take a significant amount of damage. Before starting your pull, you want to cast IB first, and then wait a small while so that your cooldown can expire sooner without having to worry about taking damage. Also, there's always Mana Shield available if you're still waiting on that Ice Barrier cooldown to reset.

Molten Armor is Your Other Best Friend

Perhaps the most underappreciated buff that mages received in patch 2.4 is the ability of Molten Armor to inflict damage on enemies after they inflict melee damage to a mage with a damage shield on. Combined with Ice Barrier, this buff serves a purpose similar to the combo of bubble+spikes that pallys use for their solo dungeon runs: it increases the mana efficiency of your pull, since you don't have to use as many AoE spells to kill all the mobs at once. On a stocks run, by the time you reach the last mob that you want to pull, the first mob that you pulled may have already lost about 50% of its total HP, depending on your +Spell Damage. ALWAYS have this buff up, along with Arcane Intellect, which increases the amoung of mana available to do your pulls.

Have a Pulling Path Planned Ahead of Time

Having done these dungeons before as a lowbie, you should be familiar with the placements of all the mobs in the dungeon. With that in mind, try to establish a path that allows you to pull as many mobs as possible with the least distance travelled. The more time you spend running and not casting spells, the more damage you're taking, and the sooner your Ice Barrier will expire. Unlike paladins, mages are squishy, and given enough time without a bubble effect, the mage will surely die.

Deep Frost is the Ideal Spec for Soloing Dungeons

Well, this is not absolutely true. Either way, 0/0/61 (all talents except for Frozen Core and Frost Warding) contains all of the important talents that improve your performance in soloing lowbie dungeons. Ice Barrier is an obvious example. Generally, most important talents for soling dungeons are the ones that reduce cooldown on your important ice spells (Frost Nova, Ice Barrier, Ice Block, Cold Snap), as well as Shatter, which allows your arcane explosion to crit at a higher rate after casting frost nova on all of the mobs that you pulled. Talents that are part of the Blizzard/Cone of Cold grinding specs are also useful for higher level dungeons that allow for killing a room full of mobs in the same pull.

An Example Pull

Before you start off the dungeon, be sure that you have enough food and drink to last you the duration of the run, as well as having the self-buffs mentioned above. Using enchanting oils and alchemy elixirs are not important, as AoE damage is not significantly boosted by them.
First off, put up your Ice Barrier, and wait a small while for your mana to regen and for your cooldown to return, or at least come close to it. Then run your path.

Unlike paladins, bears, and other multi-mob soloers, you have the advantage of using rank 1 Arcane Explosion to pull a number of mobs around you without actually having to run into them directly. Use this only to pull new mobs, not to damage the ones already on you. This method shortens the time you need to pull all the mobs within an area, and lets you maximize the duration of your Ice Barrier.

If there is a sizeable distance between groups of mobs (such as Stockades, when you have to run in between rooms), use Blink to get to the next area faster.

When you reach your limit of mobs pulled, it is optional to use Ice Block to let all the mobs gather around you, but not necessary. If you're in a dungeon that has ranged mobs or casters (eg. Defias Wizards, Scarlet Evokers), you will want to finish your path around a corner, and then ice block allow time for the LOS pull the ranged mobs closer to you. Then, depending on the level/design of the dungeon, cancel your Ice Block, and then do either of the following:

- Frost Nova the mobs in place, and repeatedly use your highest ranked Arcane Explosion until they die, or

- Frost Nova, Blink away, cast blizzard repeatedly until they reach you, then Frost Nova, Blink, and repeat until they die.

The former option is the easiest and simplest method to use in dungeons such as Deadmines, Stockades, Wailing Caverns, and Blackfathom Deeps. Higher Level instances such as Scarlet Monastery might require your more damaging AoE spells such as Blizzard and Cone of Cold.

Soloing Bosses

Pretty much all the bosses up to Scarlet Monastery do not require any detailed strategy. You can simply put up a shield and frostbolt the boss a few times before he dies. In general, bosses that come with adds (Greenskin, Houndmaster in SM) require that the adds should be downed first with Arcane Explosion before the boss himself. To help kill the boss faster, feel free to summon your water elemental for MASSIVE DAMAGE.

In higher level instances, bosses might deal a significantly high amount of damage such that the boss will have to be kited.

Getting your Rewards

Some of the most useful features of soloing dungeons is the fact that you get all the loot to yourself. In a single run, the cash you get in total from all the mobs that you have demolished is considerable, but not on the same level as farming for motes, minerals, or leather. You can get some green world drops from Deadmines and Stockades, and sell them on AH for 2-3g buyouts. Even the Blackened Defias Belt can go relatively high if they ever drop off of Captain Greenskin.
Because of the loot described above, it's quite fair to charge a reasonable amount to run lowbies through dungeons in a way that they can keep all the greens. They'll pay 5-6g for a run, but in the end, may get up to 7-8g worth of drops.

If by chance you happen to be an enchanter, you need to look at your server's economy to determine if disenchanting your loot is more profitable than selling the greens themselves.

You Don't Even Have to Pull the Whole Dungeon!

If you're not in a party, you may elect to go straight to the bosses and kill them for disenchants or vender blues. While each dungeon may vary, you can sidestep through a few groups without having to actively engage in combat with them. This is simply due to the fact that the level difference between you and the mob results in a very low aggro radius, or minimum distance from a mob that a player can stand without drawing aggro. Depending on the dungeon, you can even blink through a group of mobs that is impossible to walk through without drawing aggro (ie, the halls in SM Library and Armory). With proper timing and positioning, you can kill Arcanist Doan within 4 to 5 minutes from stepping into the Library!

In Conclusion...

Soloing dungeons can be rewarding, whether it be by farming your alt's Defias Leather set or Scarlet Mail sets, or disenchanting boss blues for your Fiery Weapon mats, or charging runs to lowbie alts. The rewards may not be as rich as farming motes from outland, but at least you have the pleasure of absolutely destroying those pesky Defias or Scarlet Crusaders, en-masse.

Stay tuned later tonight for pictures to accompany the text above, as I'm posting this from the office.