An ongoing review of the Mage changes slated for Wrath of the Lich King. Current review is based on the latest beta build (8962). Sample talent tree may be found here.

9/19/2008 Update: Significant new changes. It's been a long while since I updated this, and things have changed quite a bit, so I'm not going to underline changes; too much of the info will be new.

Positive changes/additions are in green.
Negative changes and bad additions are in red.
Changes/additions that are on the right track, but need work, are in orange.
Neutral changes are in black.

Please feel free to link to this review on the official forums, the beta forums, or elsewhere.

Performance is not an issue in this review, as Blizzard hasn't really begun trying to get it nailed down yet. This is all about class/spec flavor, playstyle, fun, value per talent point, stuff like that.

Arcane looks good conceptually. Spell rotation for sustained DPS, Arcane Blast spam for a mana dump. Needs a lot of numbers tweaking, but the groundwork is solid.

Fire looks very good indeed, maybe needs some mana efficiency tweaks and/or improved benefit from Spirit, but will be much more interesting to play and probably will require less tweaking than Arcane to get it balanced.

Frost is problematic. Fingers of Frost is intended to give us a more interactive DPS process by making us use Shatter combos on bosses, but in its charged version, it doesn't work unless you can exploit the latency delay. Functions like t his should work by design, not accident. It should be changed to a short timed buff rather than a charged buff, so that in our efforts to sneak in a Deep Freeze or Ice Lance on the frozen target, we're racing the clock in the game, not network packets. Without a proper solution to this, I'm somewhat inclined to retire Lhivera to alt status come the expansion, unless the math pans out on Deep Freeze to make it useful on the second charge over Frostbolt.

There is a pretty major imbalance in the talent count. For the sake of a larger sample size, I'm including Warlock trees in this count of the total number of talents in each tree:

• 81 points: Arcane
• 76 points: Destruction
• 74.83333: Average
• 74 points: Frost
• 73 points: Demonology, Fire
• 72 points: Affliction

The class as a whole needed improvement in several significant areas:

DPS Scaling: We needed better scaling relative to other DPS classes. The class is indeed getting improved scaling; however, whether it's enough to produce competitive DPS at high gear levels remains to be seen, as we don't yet know how well the other DPS classes will scale. Thus, the conclusions I reach in each tree are extremely tentative and subject to change.

Mobility: One of the most significant problems Mages had in both PvE and PvP was the inability to deliver more than token amounts of damage in situations that required mobility, while both arena combat and modern raid encounter design demands much more mobility than was ever required before.

PvP Spec Flexibility: As per the panel discussion at WWI, every tree is intended to perform well in every aspect of the game. However, Frost is generally considered the only viable PvP spec option for Mages at present. Changes/additions to talents and spells should improve PvP viability of Arcane and Fire specs.

Synergy: Synergy has become largely moot due to the sweeping changes to raid buff/debuff stacking. I have removed the synergy comments from the review sections below.

School-Immune Targets: Blizzard has long contended that one of the Mage's strengths is being able to deal DPS in three schools of magic, allowing for flexibility in dealing with targets that are immune to one school or have cycling school immunities/vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, this simply doesn't work out, because the division of talent trees by spell schools means that the Mage only produces viable DPS in his primary school. This means, for example, that a Frost Mage is still better off casting Frost spells at Mother Shahraz during Prismatic Aura: Frost, rather than switching to Fire spells, because his DPS with Fire is less than half his DPS with Frost. It also means that on a Frost-immune fight with a hard enrage timer, he will either sit out or respec, because his DPS with Fire and Arcane is simply inadequate.

Overview

The groundwork on the Arcane tree is nearly perfect. Blizzard has figured out how Arcane Mages want to play: they want to cast Arcane spells as much as possible, and they don't want to be reliant on external sources of mana. These changes do a great deal to make Arcane Mages very happy people.

The primary concern right now, besides overall DPS balancing, is that Arcane Blast isn't even viable as a mana dump. That will presumably be fixed, however.

DPS Scaling: Greatly increased efficiency and a powerful new primary nuke will provide a significant improvement to Arcane's DPS scaling. The low number of DPS talent points in the tree is a concern, however, Blizzard will need to watch Arcane scaling very closely.

Mobility: Arcane Barrage will allow an Arcane Mage to deal a significant portion of his stationary DPS while on the move, better than any other ranged DPS spec.

PvP Spec Flexibility: Greatly improved mobility, increased crit, greatly increased passive spell resistance, and a decent chance at an additional escape with a 1-second Invisibility fade should all combine to make Arcane a much more potent PvP spec.

School-Immune Targets: This has never really been an issue for Arcane Mages.

Arcane Missiles: Long considered a useless spell at high levels due to incredibly poor scaling, Arcane Missiles evolves into a burst-damage spell useful during procs.

Talents

Arcane Subtlety: Replacing the inconsequential spell penetration with dispel resistance is a solid move.

Arcane Focus: Spell hit mechanics are apparently being changed to function more like melee/ranged hit, with only 9% required to cap. Adjusting Arcane Focus to match Elemental Precision is therefore a sensible move, and provides a small but welcome improvement to mana efficiency.

Arcane Stability: Good change; this renamed Improved Arcane Missiles now grants 100% pushback immunity to both Arcane Missiles and Arcane Blast. This makes the entire deep Arcane DPS rotation immune to pushback, a unique feature among casters.

Arcane Fortitude: Never a favorite talent, at least it's no longer occupying the 11-point slot, and has replaced the utterly worthless Wand Specialization.

Magic Absorption: An increase from a flat +10 resistance to +1 resistance per level is huge. It means wearing less resist gear (and thus more damage gear) in resistance fights, and it means a passive 15% magic damage mitigation against level 80 casters — note that this also means 15% dispel protection. And on tier 2, for only two talent points, it's available to any spec.

Spell Impact: Affects more spells, and increases damage rather than crit chance, which is a greater DPS increase for Arcane. A solid improvement.

Magic Attunement: Previously an occasionally useful filler talent, this is now essential to any deep Arcane spec, allowing for range equal to Frost Mages and Warlocks.

Student of the Mind: 10% more spirit is 10% more regen. Boring, but solid, and in conjunction with Mage Armor, it makes improved regen available to Fire and Frost builds with only 13 points in Arcane rather than 18.

Focus Magic: Now a very interesting buff. Use it on another party member to grant him 3% crit. When he crits, you get 3% crit for 10 seconds. Can only use it on one person, and I don't know if you can use it on yourself (if you can, it may be too strong; see Devastation in the Destruction tree, 5% crit for 1 talent point two tiers deeper). Very good return on a single talent point.

Arcane Shielding: Now we're getting somewhere. Not only have they added a 25/50% increase to the resistance on Mage Armor (that's an extra 10/20 at level 80, or 1.875%/3.75% magic mitigation), they've also almost doubled the mana cost reduction on Mana Shield's absorption, while simultaneously cutting the base cost of absorption by 25%. With the current coefficient and 3000 Spell Power, Mana Shield absorbs 3007 damage at a total cost of 4746 mana. With this talent, that cost is reduced to 3242, a savings of 1504 mana.

Improved Counterspell: Changes from 50/100% chance to silence for 4 seconds to 100% chance to silence for 2/4 seconds. I have suggested this exact change many times, as it makes 1 point in the talent useful.

Torment the Weak: It's certainly not a strong talent by any means, but if you have points to spare, it helps you get a bit of extra payoff from Slow. Also handy for Arc/Frost hybrids. Not likely to be chosen by any raid spec, but that's OK.

Improved Blink: The -hit% effect has been improved by 5%, and the old mana cost reduction has also been restored. Like Arcane Shielding, still one of the weaker talents, but not offensively so.

Prismatic Cloak: With the base fade time of Invisibility reduced from 5 to 3 seconds, and with 3 points now available in this talent, Prismatic Cloak now provides you with both -6% damage taken from all sources and instant Invisibility. Useful both for a PvP escape and reduced downtime in PvE when using as a threat dump. Prismatic Cloak was already the second strongest -damage% talent available; this makes it a very solid talent.

Arcane Potency: I'm marking this green even though it's possible to exploit it horribly, because it seems obvious to me at this point that they'll fix that problem. Reducing the cost by 1 point for the same effect, and making it work with Presence of Mind, is a great change to what was already considered a reasonably good talent.

Arcane Empowerment: This one gets a solid "wow" — same effect on Arcane Missiles, but with the mana penalty tossed aside, and now also improves the retooled Arcane Blast. Thumbs way up on this change.

Incanter's Absorption: This talent has been moved to a more accessible tier, and I think that more correctly reflects its value. So while it may still be a bit clunky to use, I'm marking it green now.

Arcane Flows: It's a terrible name, but a good talent. Minimum AP DPS increase goes from 2.5% to 3.75%. Plus, you know, that POM crit Pyroblast or whatever you want to throw out is now available more often.

Mind Mastery: Why am I marking a clear nerf, the reduction from 25% to 15%, green? Because I do believe this is a positive change. An Int-to-Spell Power conversion is one of those things that doesn't make for friendly long-term scaling; it's either overpowered at low levels, or underpowered at high levels. With the dramatic improvements to scaling Arcane is receiving through other talents, it won't have to lean as hard against this relatively clunky mechanic to perform well. It's still a nice flavor talent, so I'm glad it's not deleted entirely, but it's good that it's been reduced somewhat in weight.

Slow: Effects increased from 50% to 60%, mana cost greatly reduced, nice buff.

Missile Barrage: And just like that, Arcane Missiles has a purpose again. This is a very strong talent indeed. Moved from Tier 10 to Tier 9 to make room for the Spell Power move. Pretty strong for its slot, but that's OK, if you go this deep you're going all the way anyway.

Netherwind Presence: 2/4/6% passive haste is a fine expenditure of talent points. Moved from Tier 9 to Tier 10, no big deal.

Spell Power: This move from Tier 7 to Tier 10 was absolutely necessary to save Deep Fire builds and to prevent ridiculous Elementalist crits. Arcane/Hybrid lovers may grumble, but they're filthy hybrids anyway, so who cares? I jest, of course, but Hybridism carries certain advantages -- bringing 2 debuffs instead of 1, and having better school flexibility, and thus it should come with a DPS penalty. Deep Arcanists won't notice the change.

Arcane Barrage: Even with the newly-reduced coefficient, this is a spectactularly good talent that will revolutionize the Arcane playstyle. Its damage per second of casting time remains high enough to make it advantageous to use in any casting rotation, and it provides excellent mobile DPS.

Overview

Looking good overall at this point. The tree is a bit heavy in AOE talents which are fairly situational, and mana efficiency may be a significant issue.

DPS Scaling: Results are looking pretty good.

Mobility: It's a small improvement, but it is an improvement: Living Bomb is now a reasonably powerful instant-cast DOT, which appears to have a coefficient high enough to make it useful on single targets as well as on groups.

PvP Spec Flexibility: I'm tempted to mark this green now, due to significant improvements in several talents. However, I'll await comment from people who actually PvP.

School-Immune Targets: I'm upgrading this to orange because now that deep Fire seems to hold a solid advantage over Arcane/Fire, it seems appropriate that it have a significant disadvantage when dealing with Fire-immune targets that an Arcane/Fire hybrid can more readily handle.

Talents

Improved Fire Blast: A simple change, cheaper, more accessible, positive move.

Incineration: Increased effect, affects more spells, more accessible — all clearly positive, but the name is so completely inappropriate now that I'm marking this orange until they fix it.

Improved Fireball: Compare Improved Fireball's value per talent point with Bane, which reduces the cast time on not one, not two, but four spells for the same talent expenditure on the same tier.

Burning Determination: Protection from interruption/silence is a good thing. I'm assuming this does not affect casting pushback, but it's still useful for PvP.

World In Flames: Boring, but useful if you're speccing for AOE. But for crying out loud, fix the name.

Pyroblast: Down from 6 to 5 seconds, which still isn't fast enough to make it worth casting, but it's a buff. I mark it green rather than black because of the way it interacts with Fiery Payback and Hot Streak.

Improved Scorch: It's a little disapointing to lose a major difference between Fire and Frost Mages, but it's a necessary change for balance. Fire and Frost Mages now bring an equal and important raid debuff.

Molten Shields: Same effect, but now works with Frost Ward as well. Another naming issue arises from this, but otherwise, it's a good change.

Blast Wave: AOE damage with a knockback and a snare — pretty terrific distance-making tool, I'd think.

Blazing Speed: The problem with this talent is how quickly snares can be automatically reapplied by classes that spam attacks with a snare component.
Suggestion: Add 1 second per talent point of immunity to the effects the proc breaks.

Fiery Payback: Greatly improved over the original version, this provides some passive mitigation against killing blows combined with the ability to deliver some serious pain with 1.5 second Pyroblasts. The cooldown is not a great impediment to its primary purpose, and is necessary to prevent PvE exploitation.

Empowered Fireball: Same effect, only three talent points? Yes, please! This handily addresses the imbalance in value per talent point between this talent and the Warlock equivalent, Shadow and Flame.

Firestarter: At 3 points for a 45% chance, it wasn't bad, but it wasn't compelling. At 2 points for a 100% chance, it's good. Cast a Dragon's Breath or Blast Wave, and you get an instant Flamestrike to follow up with, no questions asked. The downside? After that Blast Wave knocks them back, your targets are no longer in the Flame Strike radius.

Hot Streak: Hot damn, I should work for Blizzard. This effectively duplicates a suggestion I've made on numerous occasions to improve Pyroblast, and is related to one I made to improve Hot Streak. Makes Hot Streak's value less mysterious, and makes Pyroblast useful to a raiding Fire Mage.

Burnout: Fixed. Crit bonus increase doubled from 25% to 50%, mana penalty reduced from 1% total mana to 5% spell cost. Many will still complain that it is no stronger than Spell Power, costs 5 points instead of 2, and costs mana. However, with the Arcane talent moves, taking Spell Power now means you cannot take Fire Power, Molten Fury, Combustion, Pyromaniac, or Empowered Fireball, and you'll have to leave 2 points out of Playing With Fire. Those are some powerful talents that are no longer available to an Arcane/Fire hybrid build unless you drop Spell Power and a good deal more.

Living Bomb: Now a pretty powerful instant-cast DOT, with high base damage and a reasonably good coefficient. The explosion likewise seems to be fairly potent, although we'll need to keep an eye on the detonation effect and make sure it's not doing something stupid when it tosses its targets into the air.

Overview

OK, I've mellowed a bit on the Frost situation. Maybe not enough to keep Lhivera as my main, mind you, but things aren't as bad as I thought. First, Deep Freeze got a bit of a buff this patch (back to its previous damage range) which may make it more useful on Fingers of Frost procs. Second, we now know that Glyph of Frostbolt, while annoying, is not quite as bad as it first appeared, because Frostbolt can still proc effects that proc from chills (Frostbite, Fingers of Frost). However, Fingers of Frost still isn't properly designed for Shatter Combos.

DPS Scaling: Frost does well, and should perform competitively with other specs.

Mobility: Fingers of Frost means Ice Lance and Deep Freeze can now produce a significant portion of the Mage's stationary DPS.

PvP Spec Flexibility: Frost is and will remain PvP-viable.

School-Immune Targets: I'm upgrading this to orange because now that deep Frost seems to hold a solid advantage over Arcane/Frost, it seems appropriate that it have a significant disadvantage when dealing with Frost-immune targets that an Arcane/Frost hybrid can more readily handle.

Talents

Frost Warding: Worth 465 Armor and 20 Frost Resistance. No longer reflects, but allows both wards to now completely shrug off the damage of a spell and shunt that damage into your mana pool, which can be a very powerful proc when it works. Still not an A-list talent, but significantly improved. (I actually suggested a mechanic such as this on Frozen Core some time back.)

Improved Frostbolt: Compare Improved Frostbolt's value per talent point with Bane, which reduces the cast time on not one, not two, but four spells for the same talent expenditure on the same tier.

Ice Floes: The name on this talent is fairly confusing. It ostensibly is a renamed Improved Frost Nova, but really what's happened is that Improved Frost Nova and the old Ice Floes talents have become two entirely new talents, with their own effects and a couple of new ones divvied up between them. The practical effect here is that any spec can reasonably reduce the cooldowns on its Frost Nova to 20 seconds (1 second less than the old Improved Frost Nova), its Cone of Cold to 8 seconds, its Ice Block to 4 minutes, and its Icy Veins to 2 minutes, 24 seconds. The shorter Frost Nova and Cone of Cold cooldowns are pretty good PvP buffs to Fire and Arcane specs.

Ice Shards: Same benefit, two less talent points, works for me!

Elemental Precision: It had to move to make room for the new Ice Floes, but it might be preferable to reverse their positions. Elemental Precision is a must-have for any Fire build, and deep Fire is already being punished enough.

Arctic Reach: Now also gives Deep Freeze a 36 yard range, obviously a good thing.

Frost Channeling: Mana cost reduction reduced from 15% to 10%, but now affects all spells. Why make this green? Because it's not a significant loss to the already very efficient deep Frost spec, and it could be helpful to some Elementalist specs in reducing Fire mana costs.

Shatter: Like Ice Shards, this is now a more affordable 3 talent points, and it also has no prerequisite.

Frozen Core: Now reduces damage from all schools of magic by 2/4/6%, which makes it comparable to pretty much all talents of this type except Prismatic Cloak and Survival Instincts.

Cold as Ice: The deep Frost big brother to Ice Floes, reducing the cooldowns of Cold Snap to 6 minutes, 24 seconds, of Ice Barrier and Deep Freeze to 24 seconds, and finally adding the much-requested cooldown reduction on Summon Water Elemental, to 2 minutes, 24 seconds. The cooldown reduction alone (without Improved Water Elemental) increases the minimum uptime of the Elemental from 25% to 31.25% — that's a 25% increase in uptime. Actual increase can obviously be more or less than that, depending on length of encounter. A very solid talent.

Winter's Chill: This is a terrific change. Not only has the cost been reduced to match Improved Scorch at 3 points, but the value has been massively increased by affecting Fire and Arcane spells as well as Frost. This means a deep Frost Mage is now going to be a very good friend to Mages of all specs, Destruction Warlocks (take a look at what Empowered Imp does for them, on top of what the extra crit does for their own spells), and Boomkins. And of course, if you've got a Boomkin, all those crits mean quicker procs on Improved Boomkin Aura.

Shattered Barrier: Now works as it should, freezing targets without damaging them. Nobody'll take it for raiding, but a free AOE freeze in PvP is probably not going to be passed up. This is one of those talents that helps differentiate a PvE build from a PvP build now that all trees are supposed to be useful to create builds in both types of content.

Empowered Frostbolt: As with Empowered Fireball, this fixes the problem of poor value per talent point compared with Shadow and Flame. We lose 1% crit, yes, but we gain three talent points; essentially, this change pays for Brain Freeze all by itself (more on that below).

Fingers of Frost: The talent has been toned down for PvP, which is probably good, but it still fails to accomplish its primary goal of delivering Shatter combos to bosses. Why? Because it's generally going to be preferable to use a second Frostbolt on the second charge rather than switching to Deep Freeze, and always better to do so rather than using Ice Lance. Frostbolt spam is not exciting, guys. Change this to a short duration, timed buff.

Brain Freeze: This is a deceptively strong talent, essentially replacing Clearcasting for the Mage who doesn't want to blow ten points in Arcane. Very small DPS increase, but a solid 10% or more efficiency increase.

Improved Water Elemental: The increased uptime is good, but the mana regen is too weak to be compelling. Take it out, replace it with 33/66/100% of the owner's hit rating and 25/50/75% AOE damage reduction.

Chilled to the Bone: Boring, but good. A deep Frost Mage has the option to completely discard Permafrost while maintaining his current snare strength and free up those talent points, or take Permafrost as well and have incredibly powerful snares (50% on Ice Armor, 60% on Frostbolt/Frostfire Bolt, 70% on Cone of Cold, up to 85% on Blizzard).

Deep Freeze: While every other 51-point talent for both Mages and Warlocks is being designed to function both for raid DPS and for PvP or other functions, Deep Freeze does not, due to Fingers of Frost mechanics. Fix FoF, and Deep Freeze is a winner.

Arcane Blast: This spell is currently useful only in an unstacked state, due to the exorbitant stacking mana cost. I suspect this is to discourage people from using it so that Blizzard can start getting some good numbers on the intended Arcane DPS rotation.

Blizzard: Blizzard's ticks can now critically strike. Given the high probability of Frostbite and Winter's Grasp procs during the course of an Improved Blizzard channel, combined with Shatter, this means a very significant increase in AOE DPS for Frost Mages.

Frostfire Bolt: While it fails to solve the problem of dealing with school immunities for deep Frost and Fire builds, it does allow for an Elementalist spec that produces competitive DPS — in fact, it may well produce significantly higher DPS than other specs, which would not be desirable. Marked orange because we need further details on which talents affect it and when, and how it determines which school of damage to deal.

Mage Armor: The addition of a -50% magic debuff duration effect is a significant buff to Mages in PvP vs. other casters.

Mana Shield: Absorption cost reduced from 2.0 to 1.5 points of mana per point of damage.

Mirror Image: Cool spell. Summon three copies of yourself, instantly teleport to one of the four locations you and the three copies occupy (randomly selected), burn shit down. Only problem? It doesn't scale with gear (yet), and we all know what happens to DPS abilities that don't scale with gear.

What we know so far is that we will be able to use three major and two minor glyphs in our spellbook. Inscribers will be able to use one additional glyph, but we don't know whether it'll be a major or a minor. Major glyphs tend to be very powerful, with effects equivalent to several talent points; minor glyphs tend to be cosmetic or convenience effects. Those that are purely cosmetic are listed for informational purposes rather than for reviewing, and thus will be uncolored.

Arcane Glyphs

Glyph of Arcane Explosion: Major: Reduces mana cost of Arcane Explosion by 10%. Another one that can be useful, as AOE is expensive, but probably isn't going to be high on anybody's list.

Glyph of Arcane Missiles: Major: Increases the range of Arcane Missiles by 5 yards. 41-yard range Arcane Missiles won't be terribly useful in PvE, but in PvP it's probably not a bad thing to have.

Glyph of Arcane Power: Major: Increases the duration of Arcane Power by 3 sec. Doesn't sound like much, but it's a 20% increase in duration and minimum uptime.

Glyph of Blink: Minor: Increases the distance you travel with the Blink spell by 5 yards. People have been asking for a range increase on Blink for years, so here it is.

Glyph of Evocation: Minor: Your Evocation ability also causes you to regain 15% of your health over its duration. Handy PvE utility for a minor glyph.

Glyph of Invisibility: Major: Increases the duration of the Invisibility effect by 5 sec. I'm just not sure that the duration of Invisibility is something any Mage has ever been very concerned about.

Glyph of Mage Armor: Major: Your Mage Armor spell grants an additional 20% mana regeneration while casting. At worst, this glyph can save an Arcane Mage a couple of talent points if he wants them. At best, maybe Fire and Frost Mages really will need in-combat regen and having a 50% regen Mage Armor will actually be very useful. Hard to say how good it is, but it'll be useful to somebody, at least.

Glyph of Mana Gem: Major: Increases the mana recieved from using a mana gem by 10%. Seriously? Using a major glyph slot?

Glyph of Polymorph: Minor: Your Polymorph spell also removes all damage over time effects from the target. Joke all you want about how this glyph is useful when raiding with idiots, but it's actually handy in PvP for situations where you need to switch CC targets for some reason and the new target has been under attack.

Glyph of Remove Curse: Minor: Your Remove Curse spell also makes the target immune to all Curses for 6 sec. Remove Curse is spammable, so you can effectively keep a target uncurseable. Not sure this'll be a first choice for anyone, but it could have good utility in both PvE and PvP.

Glyph of the Penguin: Minor: Empowers a Minor Glyph to cause your Polymorph: Sheep spell to turn the target into a baby penguin.

Fire Glyphs

Glyph of Fire Blast: Major: Increases the critical strike chance of Fireblast by 50% when the target is stunned or incapacitated. What you've got there is a sort of Shatter Combo for Fire Mages. Wind up a Fireball at the target, release, and immediately follow with a Fire Blast before the Fireball breaks the stun, and you get the +50% crit on the Fire Blast. Very nice.

Glyph of Fireball: Major: Increases the critical strike chance of Fireball by 5%, but removes the damage over time effect. This glyph is a no-brainer; the damage over time effect is irrelevant to Fireball, used only in a single situation: keeping people out of stealth in PvP. Living Bomb can now serve this purpose, so essentially this is about a 4.5% DPS upgrade with no penalty attached. Plus, it frees up a debuff slot.

Glyph of Improved Scorch: Major: The Improved Scorch talent now generates 5 applications of the Improved Scorch effect each time Scorch is cast. Cuts your time to stack Improved Scorch by 20%. Allows you to push the line on the debuff timer since you no longer need to recast five times if there's a resist and you lose the stack. Makes the talent useful on trash and in PvP. Excellent.

Glyph of Molten Armor: Major: Your Molten Armor spell grants an additional 2% critical strike chance. That one's quite nice; assuming Fire and Frost Mages can afford to use Molten Armor, this is almost certain to be a glyph of choice for both specs.

Frost Glyphs

Glyph of Frost Nova: Major: Your Frost Nova targets can take an additional 20% damage before the Frost Nova effect automatically breaks. This one is difficult to judge because we don't really understand the mechanic. Reports are that effects such as Frost Nova are now automatically breaking after the target takes damage equal to about 40% of their total health, so a target that has 10,000 health will break out of Frost Nova early if it takes 4,000 damage. Does this glyph increase that limit by 20% of their total health, to 6,000? Or does it increase it to 120% of 4,000, or 4,800? The former might be well worth using; the latter, you're as likely as not to blow past 4,800 health as quickly as 4,000, so it wouldn't have any practical effect. We need to wait and see on this one.

Glyph of Frostbolt: Major: Increases the damage dealt by Frostbolt by 5%, but removes the slowing effect. This glyph is not so hot; it seriously affects the Mage's ability to perform outside of raids. A simple fix: reduce the snare by 40%. This means if you're specced for Permafrost and Chilled to the Bone, you still have a modest 20% snare on your Frostbolt.

Glyph of Ice Armor: Major: Your Ice Armor and Frost Armor spells grant an additional 20% armor and resistance. It's difficult to imagine anyone using one of their major glyph slots for an extra 186 Armor and 8 Frost Resistance.

Glyph of Ice Block: Major: Your Frost Nova cooldown is now reset every time you use Ice Block. So once every 4 minutes (assuming you took 3/3 Ice Floes), you get a free reset on your Frost Nova...which may well not even have been on cooldown. Not terribly compelling.

Glyph of Ice Lance: Major: Increases the range of your Ice Lance by 5 yards. A 41-yard range on a Frost spell that can be spammed on the run and can proc Fingers of Frost. I'm not a PvPer, but it strikes me as very useful.

Glyph of Icy Veins: Major: Your Icy Veins ability also removes all movement slowing and cast time slowing effects. Very nice, turns Icy Veins into a dual-purpose spell: not only a DPS cooldown, but also a mini-ice block that can remove some common negative effects.

Glyph of Water Elemental: Major: Reduces the cooldown of your Summon Water Elemental spell by 30 sec. This one's fantastic. Fully talented and glyphed, your Water Elemental will have a 1 minute, 54 second cooldown with a 1 minute duration. With Cold Snap, this should push your Water Elemental's uptime into the 60-65% area on most PvE encounters.

Last Updated Thursday, September 18 2008 @ 01:30 PM PDT; 13,612 Hits