On Mage Changes

So, it seems like almost every class is undergoing major changes, well, except for one...us mages. Here's what the developers posted last night regarding mage changes:

* Improved Water Elemental – this talent has been removed and replaced with a new talent that grants Replenishment (similar to Shadow priests).
* We are also working on a way to give frost mages Ice Lance “Shatter combos” in PvE.
* We are also working on more survivability for Fire spec in PvP.
* We are also working on making Spirit a more useful and interesting stat for all mages.

Oh wow, a whole 4 changes? Thanks! Of the changes, only the first one really matters. I'll have some sort of replenishment skill - will it be castable? Passive? I would guess castable since it will replace Improved Water Elemental. It will be a nice bonus, but they'll really need to change mana regen if I ever need to use this spell. I'll probably just throw it into my all-in-one macro and whenever it's available, it'll be used.

Frost mage "shatter combo" in PvE, bleh. No one raids frost, and I doubt a shatter combo buff will get anyone to change their minds. Survivability for Fire Specs in PvP will be nice. I know I've been PvP'ing some on the weekends and I get blown up pretty fast by almost anything that can get a hold of me - Death Knights, Arcane Mages (blast their Slow and Improved Counterspell), etc. A bit more survivability will be nice.

And lastly, making spirit more "useful and interesting"? No thanks. Spirit gear goes to healy types. I don't want to fight them over items. Hopefully they don't make spirit a required stat for mages as this will just throw in one more stat into our calculations and just end up making us take items that should have gone to healers.

As for the other changes, it's more of the same - making the game easier for noobs of all types. QQ...I lose a bag as a hunter. Well that's the way it's always been. Now they're taking away ammo? Why even have any consumables? Let's just give everyone everything free. Makes sense to me. Perhaps items shouldn't break with deaths. Perhaps everyone should be able to make high-end food with a skill level of 1. It's getting pretty lame around here to see the dumbing-down of the game continuing.

Random Thoughts

• The past few days, I've been hanging out in a channel on our server called Bookclub. With their help, I've been able to gather 7 of the 8 books required for Higher Learning. I even took lead of the channel for a while on Saturday night and Sunday as I kept the timers updated and coordinated camping of books by people in the channel. Suffice to say, I really haven't had as much fun outside of raiding for a while. The thrill of the hunt, the camaraderie, it was quite a fun experience. Hopefully tonight I can get my last book and my newest pet and while it'll be sad to leave the channel, I hope my contributions made over the past few days were helpful to the community.
  
• Today is patch day. And with it, I will be getting my Hail to the Chef and Chef de Cuisine achievements. Lately I haven't been sporting any title as they all seem to be pretty commonplace and boring these days. I'm hoping to get Champion of the Frozen Wastes this week if we can down Malygos, but if we don't, or at least until that point, I'll be Chef Tiddlywinks.
  
• Speaking of achievements, leading up to last weekend, I went 6 days without an achievement! SIX! I was stuck at 4,500 achievement points for the longest time. Luckily I've gotten back on track with some heroic achievements, some reputation achievements, some battleground achievements, and even some old school achievements. So now I'm up to 4,620 achievement points and with the Lunar Festival coming Saturday, I should blow by 4,800 with the holiday and profession achievements.
  
• Speaking of Old School raiding...last night we went into Tempest Keep for the achievement. I joined a little late, getting there just in time for High Astromancer Solarian and we easily blew through her and the trash up to Kael'thas before running into trouble. One of the main issues we ran into was our Death Knight tank and off tank. Neither can use a shield so the fireballs and pyroblasts were eating us up. Luckily we were able to make it through a couple times, but then he'd start throwing us around and just doing too much damage to the tanks. So we called in reinforcements. We added another 10 people to our group and with 21, we downed him (a mix of levels from 70-80). In the end, just 6 of us were standing and my heart was pounding like none other. Sitting there, trying my damnedest to nuke him down and get those last few points off his health...it's a shame my damage meter and timers broke during an update right before I logged in - it would have been interesting to see what my damage was like on that fight - I certainly love seeing strings of 10k+ crits. In the end, it was me and 5 others left alive that defeated him. And with that, I earned my acheivement, got Kael's Vial Remnant for The Vials of Eternity, and I should still have a shot at my Hand of A'dal title since I've been carrying around the quest for ages. I also screwed up the rolls at the end which I felt horrible for, but I did walk away with my first and only tier 5 piece, the Robes of Tirisfal.
  
• I'm a bit miffed with one of the changes in the patch today. They're going to be awarding full reputation gains for grey mobs. So what does this mean? Well, I've spent countless hours killing furlbogs, trolls, and undead to get my 32 exalted reputations. Now, anyone and everyone can go back to these old rep grinds and level them 5 times faster than I was able to. It will make all my hard work completely worthless. Even though I know I did the grinds before the patch, no one else will, and we'll suddenly start seeing a lot more people exalted with a lot more factions. On the bright side, I could probably finish up my Zandalar rep a bit quicker now with fewer gold invested in coins and bijous, but that's the only place it benefits me while everyone else will have easy grinds for the Argent Dawn, Bloodsail Buccaneers, Timbermaw, Zandalar, Kurenai, Sporeggar, etc.

So Incredibly Annoying

((Worked hard all day, greatly anticipating the patch when I got home. Got home, patch had already downloaded in the background, let's install! So I started installation and it was going slow despite my speedy computer specs, so I went outside to do some work. Checked after install and tried to get into the game, couldn't get past "Handshaking..."

Went back outside, did more yard work, came back in, connection Success! Select my server, waiting for characters. Nope. No characters. Select my server, waiting for characters. Rinse and repeat x20.

So then the server goes offline. Finally, I think. They're fixing it. It comes back and we get characters to appear. Then the blue bar of doom. Loading World of Warcraft...full blue bar. And we're stuck. Only way out, manually kill WoW.exe. Rinse and repeat.

So, I go back to watching House, return a while later and what's this!? I'm in! Quick, learn pets and mounts from bags full of pets and mounts. Sweet, I've got 50 pets. I've got Stinky waiting in my bank! Yay, it's all working now. Go outside, try and mount. Nope. Sorry - you didn't think you'd be able to go anywhere did you? Try and cast a spell. Nope. Sorry, you didn't think you'd be able to do anything did you?

Oh wait, server crash.

So back to TV. Wait for server to come back online. Blue bar of loading death. Kill WoW.exe. Wait a little longer, get in game. Yay! Maybe everything's fixed now. Hotkey for mount pressed, nope. You have no mounts. WHAT?! All my mounts and pets (except for 4 pets) are gone. Stinky is still waiting in my mailbox (I can't get him out!).

Screw it. Off to bed for me. Sick of this crap. I knew there would be some problems, but not problems on such a grand scale.

Wake up early, shower, shave, etc. Turn on computer just to see if pets and mounts are back. WORLD SERVER DOWN.

Oh what a wonderful start to a beautiful day. Off to work for me. I left early to get home to have fun with patch. I'll probably work late just to save myself some frustration upon returning home to another borked patch.

I did get my point total for achievements though - 1620 with 10 feats of strength (soon to be 11 after getting Polar Bear mount). I probably should have spent more time getting my rep up with Lower City, Keepers of Time, and Honor Hold. Probably another good 100-150 rep there I missed out on. However, I am now known as Tiddlywinks the Diplomat.))