Peter's Blog

Maexyn

Maexyn hit Un'goro. I was having connection problems and hence some fights were interrupted. This was tolerable when she could do a ribbon dance with an endless drain soul but overall it sucked the fun out of it. I got her to level 54 and hearthed to the trainer for some next ranks.

Maesyn

Maesyn did a trivial naga quest in Feathermoon and I got bored and quit. Her next quest would be against bosses in a cave and I didn't fancy doing that with a flaky connection.

My plan had been to level Maexyn and Maesyn each one level per week so that could alternate their visits to the class trainer but I got tied up with Maecyn and didn't run Maesyn and more.

Maecyn

Maecyn did some Redwood and Wetlands questing. My connection was still dodgy and she died a few times when I was disconnected during a fight. I swore a lot. After cursing my internet provider I wondered if it was a linux/wine problem so I rebooted into windows, waited patiently while it installed two WoW patches (accepting a total of six pages of terms and conditions) and carried on. No more connection problems. My inventory page is not being updated until the next random ubuntu patch fixes my networking.

Anyway Maecyn got to level 23 and had all available 'improved blizzard' talent points and I fancied a go at the frost AoE stuff. According to this page there are some gnoll camps in Wetlands that are about as good as it gets with this. I started with one or two gnolls and worked up to four and died. I wasn't that fed up with it but it made me think. I've done the AoE thing with Pooky and AoE opportunities aren't that frequent, needing lots of melee mobs. I wanted more general purpose skills. Also something was drawing me to the Fire tree. I thought of Fire mages as glass canons but still I succombed to temptation and respecced as a Fire Mage.

For my first fight I had to refer to my talents and work out what really was different. Well the Pyroblast spell is the main thing, a mighty six second cast for a small nuclear weapon. I tried this on some murlocs and found that with a Pyroblast followed by a Fireball I could two-shot them: they were dead before they reached me. I had talented up the casting range and Pyroblast has a huge 41 yard range, so far that tab-targetting doesn't work, I have to click on them. With equal level mobs a fight goes like this:

• pyroblast
• immediately start casting fire ball (three second cast, with talents, but some of this is while the pyroblast is still in transit)
• if there is time cast a scorch (1.5 second cast) but with fast running mobs there isn't usually time for this but if they are slow then this is devestating and they probably won't survive the next step
• Fire Blast (instant cast)

Mobs of equal level or lower are now dead or will be with a little wanding. For higher level mobs continue with

• blink
• scorch (frost armour should be slowing mob so there is 1.5 second to cast this)
• fire blast (cooldown, with fire mage talents, will be up by now).
• getting bored now so frost nova, distance and fire ball should wrap things up.

Ok the pyroblast has a long cast time but the trepidation makes it worthwhile and I checked out the mana bar and mana is still regenerating during this six seconds. Also, it can take six seconds to run up to the mob to melee it. A normal pyroblast will take 40% of a mobs health in one hit and there is a DoT effect on top of that. Pyroblast can crit for about 380 (level 25 mage) which normally means the mob won't reach the mage alive. I found it is possible to check that the area behind you is clear during the six second cast, you don't have to be facing the target all the time.

The timing of the casts has a little room for manouvre as the Fire Mage talents give a 70% resistance to interruption. Sometimes the mob will be beating for the latter part of a Scorch cast but that is no big deal.

Mana wise, she seems to need fewer mana breaks than when she was frost as more of her casting is offensive and isn't spent slowing the mobs down. The mobs die faster so she doesn't need to defend as much.

Unsurprisingly Maecyn is now level 26 as the Fire Mage thing is great fun. She hasn't died since she went fire. She can tackle mobs three levels higher (e.g. Worgon Shadow Weavers, Sarltooth etc). I've used Mana Shield exactly once on purpose (i.e not finger trouble), against Sarltooth (lvl 29 vs 26) and finished that fight with 90 something health left and 48 or so mana.

So what about multiple mobs I hear you ponder. Well, she could clear gnoll camps in Wetlands, mobs about one level below her. It works like this:

• hit selected mob with pyroblast.
• keep hitting mob till it is dead, should be about the time it reaches you.
• if you get one add, frost nova, distance, fire ball, etc, kill it too. It's good to chuck in an Arcane Explosion before the Frost Nova to finish off the first mob and start on the second.
• if you get two adds, frost nova them both and run away, come back and take them both at your leisure. Polymorph is good.

And there's Counterspell! Love it, turns a caster into a melee mob for eight seconds which is plenty of time to kill it.

In summary, Fire Mage feels like the most overpowered character I've tried so far. It may get harder as she levels and she may well go back to frost for Sorrow Hill but right now I'm having omgwtfpewpew fun.

Maevyn

Whenever I make this kind of comment it normally screws up the market but Maevyn has been making about 100g a day by transmuting Earthstorm Diamonds. There I said it. The mats are getting expensive so she bulk buys.

Peter's 2.4.3 patch notes

• I get the open ticket thing on my UI. I am NOT disabling my addons or resetting the UI, I just ignore it.
• My characters have started tripping on the steps of the ironforge Auction House. How do Blizzard manage to break things that have worked perfectly for years in these patches? That reminds me, I hate it when blink stalls at the edge of bridges or silly things like that.
• Looking forward to Maecyn's Mechanostider at level 30 although the Mage teleports are wonderful timesavers.
• No I'm not forking out 1800g for a gigantique bag. I need that for Maex's, Maes's and Maec's epic mounts.