By now most of you probably got to experience the joys of Wintergrasp crashing your server. It was bad enough I had a day off and maintenance lasted till almost 4:00 in the afternoon, but then when I finally did get logged in, the server crashed… over… and over… and over. Unlike most times though where the world server went down, Northrend came up almost instantly. However I’ll be the first to say that the new patch made me a very happy man.

Feral Druids Rejoice

Ok I’m not sure bear tanks have any bitching to do.  I have had such a nightmare of a time.  I’ve watched feral druids talk online about how they’ve got these amazing 37k armor stats.  I was stuck at 27k forever.  I tried and tried to improve it, but oi… I just couldn’t figure out how to jack it up without grinding forever for the perfect trinkets etc. 

Enter the patch.  I logged in last night and once we figured out the instance servers were stable, we made a mad dash for Naxx.  Once there we were safe from Wintergrasp’s wrath.  I threw my tanking gear on and shifted bear.  I wanted to see how bad the damage was from the “great bear armor nerf of 2009″.  And I blinked….. No… that number couldn’t possibly be right…. let me double check….. no its right… that’s weird….  Ok  I have 36,850 armor… Pardon me while I jump for joy… Yay… mitigation went up.

I also took the time on a couple of AOE pulls to mess around with the new feral kitty swipe.  On one of the small spider packs in the Arachnid quarter I had to pause…. no… that number can’t be right….  I just did… 5300 DPS on a single AOE pack… Um… yeah… I’ll just wait for the nerf on that one.  Now it may not be as necessary for druids though as we can’t constantly spam it.  I can smack the button about 4-5 times in pretty rapid succession and it does hit HARD, but after that, I’m stuck with waiting for 50 energy to regen before I can hit the button again.  So its pretty much wait…. wait…. wait…hit the button…. wait….. wait…. wait…. hit the button…  We get very high burst potention at the beginning of an AOE and then not much else.

Arcane Fun

Ok I know that the Arcane Mages are called the 3 minute wonders… As one person said to me, “They burn all their mana in 3 minutes and then get to sit there with the thumbs up the *@#”.  Well guess what… rejoice by brothers and sisters of Arcane… Arcane is back.  Is it fixed?  Don’t know, but I”m betting a LOT of people will be testing it soon.  First lets look over the major changes.

  • Arcane Blast now adds 15% damage to your next arcane spell (not including Arcane Blast).  That effect lasts up to 10 seconeds (meaning you can weave in other spells too).  The next cast though is increased by 200% and it stacks up to 3 times.
  • There is a new Glyph of Arcane Blast that inscriptionists can just buy off of the trainer.  This adds an additional 5% to the bonus damage.  So with this glyph your AB lands for 20% bonus.  Stack that bad boy twice and you’ve got a +40% damage on your next Arcane Barrage, Arcane Explosion or Arcane Missles.  Yes please and thank you.
  • Arcane Flows decreases the cooldown on your Evocation by 1 or 2 minutes.  Um… yeah… that means every 2-3 minutes you can pop an evocate.  Burn mana all you like… we’ll make more.

Just for grins I took it for a test drive on my level 69 mage.  After a brief test, I’d say PVE it hits harder now than it did before, but I feel like more of a glass cannon.  If the mob gets to me, I run out of oh shit buttons fast, but by judicious use of slow and careful pulling you can do a boatload of damage to a mob and never get hit.  It does take a good bit of room to use though.  If you get your Arcane Barrage to proc (the one that cuts the time for Arcane Missles in half) and you have a double stack of Arcane Blast, you can just about kill an equivalent mob at 70 in a single missle strike.

Marksman Cheer while BeastMaster’s Cry

I loved Marksman.  I loved it in Burning Crusade, but I couldn’t play it because honestly it just had inferior DPS in a raid compared with Beast Master.  Enter this patch.  Sorry BRK, but I’m fairly certain with the latest round of changes, Marksman should out DPS Beast Masters.  With the buff to Arcane Shot (which is one that Marksman LOVE) and the decrease in Steady Shot, I think Marksman should see a DPS Buff and some mana longevity that they’ve suffered from.

This is 100% a guess, but I Love that Arcane Shot now is the same mana cost as Steady Shot.  With the Marksman Talents buffing Arcane shot, oh yeah… good times.

Profession Joy

I didn’t get a chance to test it till early this morning, but I’m a HUGE fan of the new Mining.  In about 10-15 minutes I got 3.5 stacks of Saronite, about 5 primals, several blue and green gems and half a stack of Titanium.  Will it suck for prime time mining?  Yeah… competition will be fierce, but if you mine at weird times of day, you will have a very good time now.

3 Responses to “Patching’s Joyous Blues”

  1. 12:47 pm, 21 January, 2009 р.
    Hagen says:

    Priest shields work on bear tanks again. Mind Flay no longer gets clipped if you cast a spell immediately afterwards. Pallies got longer range on Glyph of Holy Light and Flash of Light is another 5% crit now. Elemental Shaman got a very nice revamp as well. Lots of goodness in this patch.

    Supposedly when you reset the Shadow Word Pain w/a Mind Flay it takes the new count of Shadow Weaving into consideration, but I haven’t been able to test this yet. Try it once as first case and once as 6th and see how it goes.

  2. 6:00 pm, 21 January, 2009 р.
    mavfin says:

    Yes, elemental shamans got a nice boost. I went from 8K raid-buffed Lava Bursts to 10K+ after patch, and LB got a nice buff, too. AoE totems are doing 2-2.5x as much damage now, and I’m still waiting for someone to discover the Thunderstorm glyph…

  3. 9:21 pm, 22 January, 2009 р.
    Indigo says:

    I must admit I’ve been tempted to respec from fire to arcane, just to see if the changes are going to make a difference.

    Indigos last blog post..Azerothian Dining Experience