Warcraft Experience

I added screenshots to the right hand side for your viewing pleasure See the latest kills and fun! We even have screenshots of Onyxia’s and Nepharian’s heads both hanging in Stormwind. Really cool looking. If you click on the thumbnail, it’ll pop up in a new window in full-size mode.

Want more WoW screenies? Check out the 12+ pages of others!

http://www.filenuts.com/426.html

This is a hysterical machimina video. Somewhat dirty so don’t watch it at work

The guildies got together and ran LBRS for Muridis as a 5-man so he could get the [item]Trindlehaven Staff[/item].

Wow it was not my night though. My wireless mouse died half way through, so I had to plug in one and promptly ran off the bridge, landed in a mob and died. Running back FTW. Of course I wiped the rest of the party, except Wendra who feigned death, because I didn’t get my polymorph spell off on the Warlock before I bit the dust. Had a couple of other oopsies. Pulled a mob that we weren’t targeting, pulled the spiders at the end by running by them. Of course it was only after Paganos aggroed them the first time and we all wiped. Babba, Muridis and I made it back before repops but Paganos and Wendra stealthed their way through. Still not sure how I did that one though.

Of course all that and the stupid staff didn’t drop. The Devout Belt did twice, a formula of +7 strength to gloves (which I got - didn’t know that one yet), [item]Smolderweb’s Eye[/item], a couple alchemy formulas, a couple gemstones to create the [item]Seal of Ascension[/item], tons of greens and tons of runecloth (I think we each got around 35-40 pieces).

Wipes and all not a bad run, but I do feel bad for Muridis since his staff didn’t drop. The [item]Chillpike[/item] dropped instead.

The Key to UBRS is also the Seal of Ascension and is a ring, not a trinket like most people believe. It has pretty decent + 10 FR, Nature and Frost resists for some of the boss fights.

* If you equip the key before fighting Rend, when Rend dismounts right click the key. The dragon will become a ghost and buff the party for 5500 health. Just make sure you warn everyone before hand because the ghost dragon does throw you off for a minute.

I don’t personally have this “key” or really many of them at all because I am useless at getting keys. If I do have them, I leave them in my bank. LOL.

I keep waiting for Blizz to come up with a keyring like we all have in RL that can hold up to say…5 keys on each ring. Think of all the saved inventory space! And no more “forgot it in my bank” statements. Maybe one day.

I found this on the WoW Boards and thought I’d post it here. Not to diminish Nether’s post but to get more people there. Great write up!!!

Written by Nether:
I’ve decided to write a FAQ guide for the class, simply because I’ve seen so many posts in this forum about the same questions. Hopefully this guide will answer a majority of questions new Mages have and come to these boards seeking guidance about.

Thanks to the many of the excellent guides in the Profession forums, which I used pieces of to form the format of this guide. A special thanks to all of us Mages on these forums who try to help one another by answering the questions of our fellow Mages.

Where’s the official Blizzard guide on the Mage class?
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/mage.html

Where’s the unofficial guide to the Mage class?
Visit the Mage forums for a wealth of information by your fellow Mages here: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.aspx?fn=wow-mage

You can find more unofficial Mage class information here: http://wowvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Classes.Detail&id=3

What is supposed to be the role of the Mage class?
The Mage class is primarily a ranged damage-oriented support class that has three separate schools of magic available to them: Arcane, Fire, and Frost. The three different forms of magic schools available to the Mage make it a very flexible class to deal damage to almost any type of creature in the game. The Mage also has the strongest multiple target area of effect (AoE) damaging spells/abilities in the game.

Other support functions that a Mage can provide include single target control [Polymorph], and short-term crowd control [Frost Nova/root effects]. The Mage class is also the only class that has the ability to conjure food and drink – This saves a great deal of cash for the Mage and his/her friends. The Mage is very highly sought after class for groups, raids, and instance dungeon crawls.

Although the Mage is a very strong group-role class, it makes a very effective character in soloing many same-level quests and creatures on its own. The general rule is:
-Anything below your level is safe
-Anything one/two levels above your level will cost a good portion of your mana but is usually safe and you should expect resistances at around 10-25%
-Anything three levels above your level will cost you a majority of your mana and a decent supply of your health and you should expect about 50%+ resistances.
-Anything four levels above your level or higher will cost you all of your mana, all of your life, potions/mana gems, and you should expect around 75% or higher resistances. Success is not ensured and may result in an unplanned visit to the Spirit Healer in some cases.

What character stats are most important to my Mage?
How important a stat is to your Mage truly depends on how you wish to play your Mage. It is the general understanding of the Mage community that Intellect and Stamina are the two top priority stats a Mage should focus on: intellect impacts your Mage’s critical strike chance with spells and increases your available mana pool; stamina increases your Mage’s health points. Spirit, although the description states it regenerates your mana and health pools, is largely seen as insignificant by the Mage community simply because of its diminishing returns at higher stat levels and lack of effectiveness during spell casting. Agility and Strength stats primarily affect melee-based characters defensively and offensively. Although these melee stats can affect a Mage’s melee abilities, the benefit from these stats alone will not impact your function in combat as greatly as the others [intellect, stamina, and spirit].

What armor, weapons, and tradeskill professions can a Mage learn?
- Mages start out with proficiency in Cloth armor; Mages cannot learn any other armor types, regardless of their character levels.
- Mages start with the weapon skill Staves. Mages can also learn how to wield Daggers and 1 handed swords in addition to their existing weapon skills.
- New spells become available to Mages on every even-numbered level: 2, 4, 6, etc to 60. Be sure to visit a Mage trainer as soon as you can upon reaching an even-numbered level: you will be finding it more difficult to fight creatures at your level without updated spells.
- Mages have the ability to learn any two of all the available tradeskill professions.

Where can I find more information about tradeskill professions?
The official Blizzard profession guide can be found here: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/professions/
The player community has put together an awesome amount of in-depth information [FAQs] regarding all available professions, here: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-professions&t=40&p=
1&tmp=1#post40

What tradeskill professions should I train into for my Mage?
Tradeskill professions vary in effectiveness on a per-player and per-character basis – There is no one perfect profession that is absolutely best for every Mage; all of us play our Mage differently and have different goals/needs for our characters. It would be strongly advised to read through the above mentioned links to better understand tradeskill professions and decide upon which, if any, you would like to explore with your Mage. It is a general rule of thumb that the gathering professions have the potential to make money without as much effort, time, or money as the crafting professions – gathering professions can sell their items directly on the auction house whereas crafting professions must gather/buy resources, learn how to create the item, create the item, and then sell it. However, the crafting professions do provide your character with the ability to produce useful items for your character without the need to purchase them from someone else.

What are talents and which are available to the Mage class?
All classes obtain the ability to train in class talents upon achieving level 10 with their character. Talents are ability/spell enhancements for your character classes. Once your character reaches level 10, a new icon will be placed on your action bar that allows you to access your class talents allocation page – The keyboard shortcut key is by default the “N” key. Training in your class’ talents requires one talent point per ability/skill/spell ranking you wish to learn. Your character will gain one talent point per level from level 10 through level 60 – 51 talent points in total at level 60. A character cannot move allocated talent points once they have been spent. The only way a character can ‘clear’ their talent point allocations is to visit their class trainer and ask them to reset their talents. Please remember that this will reset ALL your talent points, it is not a selective process and you will be refunded all of your talent points as if you never spent them. This talent reset process is expensive: 1 gold for the first time you reset your talents and the price increases steeply afterwards; try to plan ahead on a talent roadmap if you can.

For a Mage, talents are split into three categories: Arcane, Fire, and Frost. A character can train in any of the three available talent trees [tabs/categories available on the talent allocation page]. As a matter-of-fact, a majority of players train into two or more talent trees because they wish to have spells and abilities within multiple talent trees available to their characters. Remember that just because your Mage trains into one talent tree does not mean that your character cannot use any other schools of magic. For example, if your Mage character has trained extensively into the Frost and Arcane talent trees it does not mean he/she cannot use the Fire-based spells any longer; although you may find it more effective to use those magic schools you have placed talents into.

Where can I find more information about available Mage talents?

Blizzard’s official talent calculator can be found here:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/mages/talents.html

An excellent resource for creating a talent roadmap for your character is here: http://wowvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Talents.View&category_select_id=4

What is this 33/18, 30/16, 31/20 talent thing I keep hearing about?
Class talents are broken down into categories, as mentioned previously, and players tend to create what are called ‘talent builds’ for their characters. Talent builds are usually represented in the form of numbers and slashes: numbers representing the number of talent points into a talent tree and the slashes separating different talent trees. For example, if you see a 33/18 Frost/Arcane talent build, you would expect 33 talent points allocated into the Frost talent tree and 18 talent points allocated into the Arcane talent tree.

Alcaras began a thread in the Mage forums whose sole focus is on talent builds and explanations of talents. This excellent guide/thread can be found here:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-mage&t=23&p=1
&tmp=1#post23

Most popular talent builds, for all talent trees, can be found here: http://wowvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Templates.List&class_select_id=Mage

I am having some problems understanding what some of these spells do, help!
Do not panic, you are not alone in having a difficult time understanding all your spells. Not only are some of the Mage spell descriptions misleading or very vague, they are sometimes just insufficient in explanations. I will list some of the most popular spell-related questions here:

- Amplify Magic: This spell can be cast upon yourself or your group mates and will amplify [increase] any magical effects on the character; this includes healing spells as well as damaging spells and effects. Uses: Very effective to cast on tanks when fighting against pure melee targets; increases healing effectiveness. Each rank of this spell increases its effectiveness on spell effects.

- Dampen Magic: This is the exact opposite of its sister spell Amplify Magic. This spell can be cast upon yourself or your group mates and will dampen [lessen] any magical effects on the character; this includes healing spells as well as damaging spells and effects. Uses: Very effective against casting targets that deal a majority of their damage via spell/magical damage. This spell also affects damage shields, such as Fire Shields, and in many cases lessens Elemental creature melee damage [because it is considered magical, in nature]. Each rank of this spell increases its effectiveness on spell effects.

- Arcane Missiles: This is a multiple volley channeling spell which must require your Mage to stand still, facing your target, and not perform any action while casting. This spell has multiple rounds; meaning that Arcane Missiles will launch a magical missile every second, dealing its respective damage each round. Remember, like all channeling spells, if your character is hit during the channeling of Arcane Missiles, it will stop the remaining Arcane Missiles from launching – Unless you place talent points into the Arcane talent tree to become uninterruptible while casting Arcane Missiles. This spell is currently known to be bugged in the game where your character will channel the spell; however, no damage is dealt to the target.

- Polymorph aka Sheep: This spell is the Mage class’ single target control that allows the Mage to place one target out of combat for a period of time. There are some very important side effects of this spell that every Mage must keep in mind: Your target will regenerate their health and mana very quickly while under the effects of Polymorph; you will only be able to Polymorph another player for up to 15 seconds, during PVP combat. A target under the effects of Polymorph will wander around aimlessly in a five yard radius surrounding the spot it first came under the spell’s effects – If you look closely you will even see the Sheep graphic eating grass and blinking its eyes at you. Any damage done to the target, including Damage over Time effects, will cause the target to break out of the Polymorph effect.

-Portals and Teleports: These lines of spells are very rapid methods of transportation for both the Mage and his/her group mates. A Mage will gain his/her first teleport and portal spells beginning at level 20 by finding the Portal Trainers at any of the major capital cities of their respective faction : Undercity (H), Stormwind (A), Orgrimmar (H), and Ironforge (A). At level 30 the Mage will be able to purchase the remaining teleport spells: Thunderbluff (H) and Darnassus (A). Teleport spells are self-only rapid transportation spells and require a reagent component that is consumed each time the spell is cast – Reagent “Rune of Teleportation” is found on Arcane Goods/Reagent vendors throughout the game and must be purchased in order for the teleport spells to function. Portal spells are group teleportation spells that enables the Mage’s group to travel to a target location very quickly. The locations are the same as the Mage teleport spells, however, unlike the teleport spells group mates must click on the portal to be transported to the destination. Spell availability for locations is identical to the teleport spells, except for the levels required to purchase the spells: level 40, first round and level 50 for the second/final round of locations – Reagent required is “Rune of Portals”.

-Blink: This is an instant spell that propels the Mage forward for 20 yards in the direction he/she is facing – Only exception to this rule is that there must be a clear walkable path 20 yards in front of the Mage, jumping or climbing paths will not work. A major side effect of the Blink spell is its ability to propel the Mage out from many root and stun effects. The casting cost [mana] required for this spell will gradually increase each level your Mage gains after obtaining the spell.

-Slowfall: This spell will allow the Mage to float for 30 seconds, allowing the Mage to not take falling damage while under the spell’s effects. A Mage’s downward momentum will be slowed while under Safefall’s spell effects – read: You will not fall as fast as you would if you did not have the effect cast on you. Safefall is a self-only spell that requires a spell reagent – Light Feather. You cannot purchase Light feathers from Arcane goods/reagent vendors, you must obtain them either through the auction house [from other players] or kill feathered creatures throughout the game.

What’s with Wands? How the heck can I use one?
Wands are magical ranged attack items that are found throughout the game as dropped items, purchased from vendors, and can be created by enchanters. Wands use the school of magic listed on them to induce their damage to your target. To use a wand simply open your character equipment portrait (keyboard shortcut key is “C”), drag your wand from your inventory to the Ranged slot on your character. Open your character abilities/spells book and click on the “general” tab, select the “shoot” ability and drag the icon to your action bar. You will now be able to click that action bar icon to perform your new wand ranged attack. Keep in mind, like melee weapons, wands have delays and your ranged attack ability will require it to refresh in order for it to become available again for use; like melee weapons wands will auto attack your target, you must another action (such as clicking the shoot ability again) to stop the wand skill.

A good listing of available wands in the game is available here (notice the magic school name next to the damage range, this is the school of magic the particular wand uses to cause damage): http://www.thottbot.com/index.cgi?s=wand

What is this + damage thing I keep hearing about?
+ damage is a very vague effect that can be found on some armor, weapons, and items within the game that increases the damage caused by a particular school of magic by a certain amount of damage points.

Here is a link for the official answer on + damage:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=blizzard-archive&
t=5&p=1&tmp=1#post5

More official details can be found on the WOW European boards here:
http://forums-en.wow-europe.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-blizzard-archive-en&
t=4&p=1&tmp=1#post4

Help! I see spells on my trainer and have the appropriate level; however, I cannot purchase them!
Relax; you have not been kicked out of the Mage community [unless you’ve received a letter from us…]. You are probably referring to the many of the talents that Mages receive in the form of new spells. Talents such as Pyroblast, Blastwave, and Ice Barrier, to name a few, are all rank two spells unavailable on the Mage trainer until you purchase rank one via the appropriate talent tree.

Level 60 Water quest? Where? How? Help!
Travel to Feralas to the Ogre instance called Dire Maul. You will need to gain access to the Library/Athenaeum and speak with Loremaster Lydros; this is located in dire Maul north and requires a key to enter - The key quest can be completed by following the Imp in Dire Maul east wing. Lydros will ask you to return the essence of a water elemental in Dire Maul east. Slay Hydrospawn [the water elemental] and return the essence to Lydros to learn your rank 7 conjure water spell.
http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?wquest=7463

* You can carry two health stones of different denominations. I thought everyone knew this but someone brought it up last night, so I thought I’d pass it on.

* You can carry more than one mana stone also, in the different denominations. This helps a lot in different fights. I keep mine in my main backpack so I can always find them if the fight runs long enough to pop more than one.

I promised I’d finish with my tips for the dino-pet boss and just now got back to it. Sorry! His name is Bloodlord Mandokir and is a pretty interesting fight.

* Clear the room before attacking him except for the mobs that are located behind the tower. You can leave those mobs or kill them. Sometimes there is a voodoo pile over there.

* Kill the speaker that is standing at the foot of the tower. Once he is dead the boss will come downstairs. Both he and his dino-pet (raptor) are elites.

* Have at least two tanks for this fight. One will take down the dino-pet and one with tank the boss. Keep the boss by the pen and the pet by the doorway area you originally came through. Everyone concentrate on taking down the pet first. Note: If you Offtank the raptor, it will pierce your offtanks armor, reducing it by 75%, he will require a lot of healing. Should your offtank die, the raptor will run loose and kill everyone in 2-3 hits.

* Make sure there are healing chains set up for the main and off-tanks as well as the high DPSers. 2 healers each on the tanks at least until the raptor fight is over. Then the healers can switch to the main tank.

* We take down the pet first, even though it does make the boss tougher. We have tried both ways and find this to be easiest for us. Keep that in mind for your own runs, and organize it the best way for you.

* Heal, heal, and heal some more. Every time a raid member dies, the boss gets stronger. He even taunts you and dings each time he gets stronger. He also gets bigger and hits harder.

* The little spirits around you will rez you so do not try to keep someone out of combat to rez. DPS FTW! Keep your dying to a minimum. Even though you get ressed, you get a 10% durability hit every time you die so if it looks like the fight is a losing battle, wait for your friendly neighborhood priest to rez you. Note: we have experience a wierd issue when the spirits rez you - you do not really get rezzed even though you click the accept button. It doesn’t happen to everyone and it doesn’t happen everytime. Not sure what to attribute it to.

* Because of the spirits rezzing you, soulstones don’t matter. If it is a losing battle have a paly or druid run out, so they can come back and rez a priest. Other suggestions: If a lock is still up they can toss out a quick soulstone or a druid can toss out a battle rez. Obviously don’t accept the battle rez or pop the soulstone until the fight is over.

* The boss will randomly call out different party members’ names or “watch” them. Stop attacking/healing immediately! If you don’t he will charge you and more than likely kill you. Note: CT Raid also will annouce this.

* The boss will also do a whirlwind attack which causes upwards of 3k damage. Back up immediately.

* Spread out around the room. That way if you are being watched (even though he charges you) it takes him longer to get there.

Well…I signed on about a half hour before the Onyxia raid started to do my water making ritual. (I can’t wait for the 1.9 patch when we can make water in stacks of 10. WOOT!). The call went out to go to Stormwind to get the Ony head buff and Hurtu could finally get his trinket. So we all made our way over there like kids in a candy store, got our buff and I portaled everyone to IF. Lucky me, I have my hearth stone set to Theramore (so I can easily get to the other continent), so I “ET phoned home” my butt and headed over to Onyxia’s Lair.

I’m proud to announce Onyxia is on farm status for the SnT alliance members! WOOT! We took her down in one try, without any problems. And I didn’t even die thanks to Muridis. So what phat loot did we get last night?

Hexperiment won the [item]Sapphiron Drape[/item] with a 95. I think he’s a haxxor And Muridis won the [item]Halo of Transcendence[/item]. Goof ball wasn’t going to roll because he has tier 1 but after we explained he could, he came along and sniped it with a 83.

Marragies won the [item]Mature Black Dragon Sinew[/item] with a 100. I happily gave him a portal to Darn after loot was distributed so he could get his epic hunter “staff” - [item]Rhok’delar, Longbow of the Ancient Keepers[/item].

Galvar won the [item]Head of Onyxia[/item] with a 100. Do you see a trend yet? All major high rolls. I think they practiced before the fight or something. Garand won the [item]Onyxia Hide Backpack[/item] with a 100. Wonder if I will EVER get that?

A couple other items dropped and went to raid leader /random 40. Moonwinna was gifted with the [item]Magiskull Cuffs[/item] (I have those and have yet to sell them on the AH. I sent them to Bellisimo for when she gets to be a decent level.) And Jadzia received the [item]Serathil[/item]. Total time on that fight was around 20 minutes.

After that we portaled to IF and Bolicious asked if we help him do “The Calling” quest to kill the egyptian guy (Emissary Roman’khan) in Silithus. The first attempt half the raid didn’t realize the event had even started, myself included; I was still buffing AB. We ran back and did it easily with the second attempt with 25-30 people.

Babba asked if we’d help fight a Duke, which was such a joke. So easy. He dropped the Abyssal Signet that Babba got of course and the [item]Abyssal Leather Leggings of Striking[/item] which Ryjaek got because it was an upgrade for him.

My total repair bill for the entire evening: 99s. LOL