So the Tournament Test Realm has been live for a bit, and I wanted to give anyone who hasn’t had a chance to hop on an idea of what it is looking like so far for us.

I kind of like that it is more or less a time capsule back to season 2 as far as gear is concerned, because I don’t think the S2 set is bad at all, as far as stats and looks.

It’s probably a given that you will be wearing at least 4/5 Season 2, and you can mix and match some PvE gear in depending on the comp you are running. Here are some of the more interesting PvE pieces you can bring in:

Belt - Cord of Screaming Terrors - 2 sockets, huge damage, and nearly all the hit you’ll need is there (if you get the spellblade)

Neck - Pendant of the Lost Ages - Reduction on silence, big damage, and OK stam/int

Trinket - Serpent-Coil Braid from SSC. For any mages looking to compete seriously here, I suggest you take a look at using this thing, rather than the Icon of the Silver Crescent for your 2nd trinket (it’s a given you will be using the PvP trinket as your first). You get +225 damage on use, in addition to 600 more mana from your mana gem (~3000 versus 2400) when you use a gem, also spell hit and a ton of crit rating. It also kinda gets you in the mindset that you will use your gem as soon as you drop as much mana as it will restore, which is a desirable characteristic of a PvP mage. You can’t get the damage until you use the gem though, so it’s not really something you can pop at the start, but you can still use icy veins.

You can also use the Nexus Key (staff with huge crit) but I honestly wouldn’t recommend it as you give up a 30+ resilience.

Some Good news:
Icy Veins change is pretty decent. I still feel like there needs to be more done for pushback for frost spells, but I mean I’ll take what I can get.

Blink mana is down to 470 static (from about ~670). Combine this with Serpent Coil trinket, buffed mana gems, nerfed mana drains/burns, and the result is a mage that can fight significantly a bit longer than on live.

Some Bad News:
Mystical Skyfire Diamond (MSD, the 1/2 cast one) is trash now. It gives you 320 spell haste for like 4 seconds, that feels more like 2. I’m using one that is +14 dmg, 5% stun resist. I don’t like it very much.

Chaotic Skyfire Diamond (CSD, +12 spell crit and +3% critical damage) is not appearing on the TTR. It seems like a lot of newer stuff is arbitrarily not included. Things like executioner are not available either though, so I won’t cry too much here.

All in all I put a mage together with 9.7K life, 410+ resilience, and 860 frost damage (9.3K mana, but it was a gnome). It is possible to push over 900 damage though (was up to 940 with balanced stats), using the Icon and different gemming. You can definitely put a character together to lay down some major hurt quickly, especially in the hands of an experienced player.

If you haven’t hopped on yet and are considering playing in the tournament, it is a little easier to get gear/gems now, as they added more vendors. It’s still pretty laggy though, but fun if you want to try out new classes. Anyway, hope you found this semi-informative, good luck.

Tags: Mage · Articles

7 Responses to “Tournament Test Realm Impressions for Mages”

1. Zmbc Says:
   March 9th, 2008 at 11:43 pm

   Nice stuff!

   I’ve been considering which meta I’ll switch to come patch time… Have you experimented with the crit/spell reflect one? It’s super RNG but it’d be nice to reflect UA or a crucial cyclone or something… I haven’t played with it yet though so if you have I’d like to hear your thoughts.

2. Snitchers Says:
   March 10th, 2008 at 8:38 am

   Good read

3. Abdoom Says:
   March 10th, 2008 at 9:59 am

   As a lock I”m really torn on meta choices, spell haste can be nice w/ GCD reduction for spreading out dots and tongues fast, but 4 seconds is just bleh.

   Considering good ole powerful earthstorm atm.

4. Glave Says:
   March 10th, 2008 at 11:58 am

   Nice article.

5. zazo Says:
   March 10th, 2008 at 1:29 pm

   Yea enjoyed the article as well. I was also wondering if the crit/spell reflect gem was good?

6. Mattyo Says:
   March 10th, 2008 at 11:36 pm

   I haven’t checked out the reflect gem yet, but I will give it a try next time we play.

7. Winter Says:
   March 11th, 2008 at 4:31 pm

   On the PTR the mystical skyfire diamond is utterly shit. Not only has it gone from 100% haste to 20% haste but its duration was nerfed to 4 seconds, so by the time you realised its proc’d its too late.

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