It's A Kind Of Magic

Recently I have been talking about the Valor cap, and that since the MoP expansion began I have only managed this once, and that by getting all my Valor early on in the week I free up time to do what I want. The Godmother who also plays the Alt version of WoW, has managed this feat twice, so I am in good company.

I knew in advance that the Easter weekend would be a bad time for me to play, with my wife off work and my kids going to bed much later than normal. I attempted to race through on Wednesday and Thursday, but LFR was long waiting times, and I was forced to abandon this plan.

With no pressure, and being time restricted I decided to try something else, like levelling one of my languishing characters. My choices boiled down to my second Hunter, a Mage, or my Monk. I already have a max level Hunter, but they are so damn easy to level and it would be a stress free exercise. My Monk I have been playing in 60 minute intervals to make full use of the Enlightenment buff. I eventually settled on some quality time with my Gnomey Frost Mage who was stuck at level 87.

Frost mages have never been the goto spec for PvE, but I always loved the versatility, a complete toolbox of tricks which makes them so formidable in PvP.

The major nuke of the Frost mage was historically the Frostbolt, but the current incarnation of the spell seems very lacklustre. I can only liken it to the Elemental Shaman spell Lightning Bolt. It is the filler spell, which leaves the spec with the main task of engineering Fingers of Frost, and the supercharged Ice Lance. This seems a bit too stage managed with 3 controllable Freeze spells and a random proc. The Freeze element and the Ice Barrier was the element that gave Frost more survivability. Fire Mages want mobs to go up in flames before they get into your face, Frost is about stopping them getting from getting toe-to-toe.

Mages are the first class that I levelled in Pandaria that regularly misses with the spells. There is a 3-4% chance of missing when fighting mobs of the same level, and I am seriously considering Re-forging to achieve this. Hunters, Death Knights and Warriors are able to power through this difficult levelling period, when they constantly need improvements in gear to stop becoming less powerful on the way up to level 90.

My little Glass Cannon seems less Cannon and more like a pea shooter in this expansion. To be honest I am enjoying the challenge.

With the current trend towards homogenisation of the classes, I still like the quirky spells that some classes have that are unique to them. With the mage class there are plenty of tricks that you can do with the Blink spell. One recent experiment went very badly whilst helping the Shado Pan in Kun-Lai Summit. There are 2 quests that you can do on the wall, which involve booting archers off the wall and stealing explosive/tar/alcohol in barrels. Having killed many archers, there was distinct shortage of barrels. This required that I should venture further along the wall, but would no doubt require me to fight my way back. I collected the last barrel and I ran back attracting a lot of attention. My intention was to go invisible and than reappear next to the quest givers.

This of course did not go as intended and my Clingon Cloaking Device lasted less than a second and reappeared in front of a large and very angry mob. Rather than tough it out and Frost Nova them all, I turned and Blink in the hope of handing the quests in and flying out of the area.

The biggest problem with Blink is the random distance travelled, this time I achieved maximum range and promptly fell into the abyss, missing the quest givers by some distance. My usual method for unexpected encounters with gravity is to blink near the ground, and so I have long stopped using Slow Fall. Of course Blink was still on cooldown so I was left in a very Wile E Coyotesque situation. I could swear that Gnomey's legs were still running long before gravity won the day.

Perhaps now is a good time to reinstate Slow Fall on my spell bar.