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

Harro, this is Lipstick!
Yes it is I, the notorious Mage named after a make-up product from Vengeance Battlegroup (BG6). My real name is Tim, I’m 20 and reside in the frigid cold reaches of the north, Northren– I mean.. Ontario, Canada. I’ve server bounced quite a bit in my time, I played on Eredar originally in the legendary PVP guild ROAR, bounced to Agammagan where I battled it out against the Angrycarebears for PVP domination over the server in it’s glory days, after that I headed over to Balnazzar to play my first Mage in the infamous guild : “We Brought Snacks”. I fell in love with Mage at this point. When the dust settled I ended up rolling a priest on Darrowmere, just before TBC hit and shortly after dropped the Priest to play a Paladin for Season 1 of Arena. Co-leading the #1 Whirlwind Battlegroup 5’s team came to an abrupt halt just one month before the Season One finished where upon, I decided to play an Undead Mage alongside my Warlock friend Mascara, on Mug’thol, the server famous for hosting “The Fighting Mongooses”. During Season 2, I’ve maintained Standing 1 in 3’s for most of it’s duration, and also held Standing 1 in 5’s, making me the highest rated Mage in the battlegroup. You can armory my current spec, gear, standings at here.

I’ll get straight to the goods, Patch 2.3 PVP-oriented effects on the Mage class. Read More

Tags: Mage · Articles

Continuing where we left off, the charts below shows the armor upgrade going from S2 to S3 for the Mage, Warlock, and Shadow Priest.

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Tags: Mage · Warlock · Priest · Articles