In response to the eternal run of threads about spell damage in PvP, I’ve added support for PvP Power and Resilience to the TheoryCraft-o-Matic Lite. If you set “Target Player(s)” to “Yes,” fields will appear for the two PvP stats. I currently have them set to default to 45% PvP Power and 60% Resilience. Changing these values should alter the calculated damage numbers appropriately.
Please let me know if you spot any problems!
Water Jet is the new Water Elemental spell being introduced in patch 5.1. It's the answer to a longstanding complaint about the Frost PvE rotation: the awkwardness and strangeness of using a pet-based reticule-targeted AOE control spell against a single target that the Mage knows full well cannot be controlled in order to force a buff to appear on the Mage.
I am completely floored, honored, and grateful. Thank you.
The level 90 Mage talents — Invocation, Rune of Power, and Incanter's Ward — were controversial in beta, and they continue to be controversial in the Mage forum now that people are hitting level 90 in the live game.
For a bit of history, the level 90 talents were introduced in the second major version of the Mage Mists of Pandoria talent grid. The Polymorph tier had been widely panned when the original grid was introduced, and many Mages had also made clear that we preferred to have thematic options available; many Frost Mages wanted Frost talents, many Fire Mages wanted Fire talents, etc. However, there was also general agreement that certain Arcane utility spells felt sufficiently universal that they didn't present a thematic problem for any spec. Polymorph was one such spell, but very few people liked those talents. A tier of talents modifying Evocation was a popular suggestion, and Blizzard ran with that idea.
The Mage class got a significant overhaul for Mists of Pandaria, but if all goes well, it won't feel like a drastic change. Unlike the Warlock overhaul that involves significant changes in design, the Mage overhaul was instead an attempt to preserve the essence of the existing design while replacing a lot of the machinery under the hood. On the eve of the 5.0.4 release, I wanted to reflect on how the class is evolving, what I think has gone well, and a couple of things that I think can still be improved. This will, of course, be from a PvE perspective.