Saturday night and picking up in Gruul’s Lair…

So Reav asked me to go to Gruuls tonight to fill a spot for his guild’s raid.  Originally he asked me to go as the mage tank, but they eventually grabbed another mage to tank, so I went along as regular ole dps.  I haven’t raided on any of toons in at least a month, and I don’t think I’ve raided as a mage for at least three months.  Despite that, I had been doing a lot of pvp on the mage lately, so it wasn’t like trying to relearn everything all over again.

Anyways, we cleared the trash and started in on High King.  Mage tank went down quick the first pull due to bad positioning and bad luck.  We reset and tried again.  This time, as I’m dps on the priest, we had him down to about 20% I hear over vent that the Mage went down again.  I decided that I didn’t feel like running all the way back out, so I decided to act!  Cliche, I know, but its true :D.  Anyways, I clicked off my salv buff, spell stole Krosh’s shield, popped icy veins and my trinket and started in with the dps.  Now, I’m frost, since the most of the stuff I do with Fikkle involves running lowbies or doing pvp.  So frost works for me.  I don’t generally like to respec for one specific thing unless I think I’m going to use the new spec for a while, so I stayed frost. 

Now, I don’t know how I managed to grab aggro, especially so quickly, but within three or for frostbolts, I had Krosh’s attention.  A quick call in vent for heals on the new Mage tank, and I managed to save the raid from another wipe.  The healer (whoever it was) managed to keep me alive, and I managed to get Krosh’s shield everytime it went up, and he went down.

After that, only High King himself was left standing so we quickly downed him and moved on.  All in all, it was a pretty successful raid and I was pretty proud of myself for managing to pick up a potential fire bomb in the middle of the raid.

With WOTLKEE so close, I doubt very much anyone even cares about Gruuls anymore, but there will be raids in the expansion and quick thinking and flexibility will always be a help in a tight situation.  So, here’s a little pat on the back for myself, which is always nice :D.

 

– Fikkle

May the Horde be with you!

 

PS. A little shout out to Sabiba from Cenarion Circle.  Sabiba heard me and Sy on the Twisted Nether and has been reading the blog ever since!  Sabiba said hi in game yesterday, which was a nice little ‘geeking out’ moment for me as its the first time a reader’s asked if I was ‘Fikkle from For the Horde!’  Damn skippy!  Hope the arenas went well Sabiba!

White Pox Strikes Again

So White Pox got together last night at our usual time.  This is the third official gathering of the WP.  First time out we went to RFC and wrought utter devastation.  Last week, they went to VC but I unfortunately wasn’t able to make it.

Last night, we all went back to VC and brought the pain.  I had some solo catching up to do, and decided to farm some wool while I was at it.  I had gotten a drop pattern for a pair of wool shoulders, which I proceeded to make 2 pairs of.  One for myself, the other I gave to Jaheal, our super healy priest.

Anyways, VC was no trouble for us.  I often only got one or two casts off on mobs before they were dead, and thats with the 2 sec Frostbolt cast time.  But Deadmines being what it is, there are always plenty of adds and I was sure to throw my sheepish powers around making many-a-barn-yard-animal.

Othar brought the MQoSRDPS, while Melain and Nyema brought auras and blessings and hammers and justice.  Pally’s are so fun to play with, especially as a mage.  They hold aggro extremely well as long as you give them a chance to grab it up front.  Melain did the duties as MT and Ny brought some off tanking goodness when that extra add wanted to get all up close and personal with Jaheals.

We got some pretty good loot as well.  I know I received a nice pair of blue gloves that increased my damage by about 30pts / cast, which was really nice. (That is a bit arbitrary.  In my mind I recall seeing a lot of 70-75s when I’d cast a frostbolt before the drop, and afterwards I was seeing a lot more 100s.  But I didn’t actually test or record it).

We ran into a couple hiccups along the way, but we never actually wiped.  While regaining mana on the steps at the side of the ship, I was too close to the ship and pulled all of the mobs down on us.  We all went down pretty quick, but Othar was quick enough to turn acrobat and jump onto the big water wheel that resets the mobs.

During the fight with VC, we had people start dropping.  In the end, the two squishies were all that were left.  I Frost Nova’d VC and his two remaining henchmen and started running down the plank.  Jaheal didn’t get very far and became squishie bait, but as I started running again, I realized VC was down to 1%…. Bah, I’m going to pretend I one of those huntery guys for a second.  1 jump shot and a Fireblast later, VC fell to the floor, writhing in agony.  A quick hop skip and a jump over to the water wheel to reset the henchmen and voila, done.

We decided to hit up WC next week.  I’ll likely be posting about that run as well.  Unfortunately, I was having too much fun last night to remember to screenshot, so I don’t have any cool pics.  /sadpanda.

I’ll make sure to get some next week.

And, as Don Cherry would say, ‘Stay out of the Trolley Tracks!’

Mage Tanking

Woooooooot! I am now officially no longer a squishy mage!  Well okay, that may be an exageration, but I am geared enough to handle Krosh Firehand!

I logged in game last night for the first time in almost a week, which was a nice change.  Work has been extremely busy lately, so finding time in the evenings was next to impossible.  But I had some free time last night and had told Sylus that I’d be able to get in game to do some Arenas with him and Nim that night. 

When I logged in I got inundated with messages.  Reav wanted some of the Primal Mooncloth I had save up for the Whitemend Hood.  He also wanted to know if I could craft it for him.  Unfortunately, my tailoring isn’t yet high enough to use the pattern, so no joy on that.  But I got him his Mooncloth anyways.  Savageblade (a guildie) then asked if I could give him Mongoose enchant.  Luckily for him, I’d gotten my enchanting past 375 (woot for BElfs) and had the pattern from a few months back.  So he got two Mongoose enchants.  Then he asked what my gear was like, so I told him and he wondered if I’d be interested in doing Gruul’s that night. 

Okay I said, throw me an invite.  So I got an invite and joined a raid.  Only knew 1 person in the raid (Savage) and found out that it was another guild’s run.  They needed a Mage tank however and the raid leader whispered me to ask what stats I had.  So I fired them off.  My HP were at 10,003 (with Power Word: Fortitude) and my Spell Hit was at about 3%.  I’m pretty sure these stats are low for being the Mage tank, but the RL felt that it was good enough.

So, the next problem? I’ve never Mage tanked before.  I mentioned this to the RL as well and she gave me a bit of a primer on what to do.  It goes something like this:

1. Mage pulls Krosh as the hunters MD pull the 4 other bosses.  Pull starts from the little steam vent on the right hand side of the chamber.  Krosh will run to that spot and then start casting so you need to back up immediately after the pull.

2. Mage spell steals Krosh’s shield.

3. Mage dps’ Krosh to maintain aggro.

4. Mage uses Deadly Boss Mods to watch when the next shield is going to come available.

5. Have a great healer spam heals on you.

6. Rinse and Repeat.

So that was basically it.  The first pull ended in a wipe for a few reasons.  The Shaman boss was allowed to run amok and killed off several key members.  The pull also wasn’t started by me and I hadn’t gotten into position so Krosh was not off to the side and was able to kill a few people himself.  I also screwed up and tried to allow a Frostbolt to finish casting before spell stealing his shield.  I got 2-shotted.

So on attempt number two, they asked me to pull.  +1 Mage Biscuit to the RL for that one.  I also realized from my first mistake that as soon as the shield comes up I need to stop casting and steal the shield. 

The second attempt was flawless.  I didn’t notice when the other mobs went down (priest then lock) but eventually all the ranged were dps’ing along with me and Krosh eventually ate dirt.  At that point we all moved onto High King and got <teh phat lewtz>.

Something else to note.  I was running out of mana faster than I would’ve liked.  As a frost mage, I don’t have the longevity of the Fire tree or the efficiency of Clearcasting.  If you’re the regular Mage tank for your guild, I’d recommend having a mana efficient build to take on Krosh as your dps isn’t the all important factor here, its having enough mana to continue stealing his shield.

Fikkle of the Shattered Sun!

Last week I had a conversation with Sy that went something like this:

Me: Hey, I figured out what the requirements are for that new SSO title.
Sy: Oh, really? So what’d you find out?
Me: Well once you get to Exalted you can get a quest to pay 1000g to get the title.
Sy: Holy crap!
Me: I know. I totally want it!
Sy: What for? Thats a total waste of money!
Me: I know and I don’t care I want it.
Sy: Dude, you don’t even have your epic flyer yet, save your cash, you’ll regret it if you don’t.
Me: I know, I still don’t care, I want it… Its my precious!

Well, that may be a bit off, but we were on vent, so no chat log to screenshot, but you get the point.  I haven’t had the chance to get a title for any of my characters before, and this is the first one that has been ‘in reach’ so-to-speak. 

So Fikkle ding’d Exalted with the SSO and picked up his title tonight. I spent 300g buying Primal Mights from Sy yesterday for my Runed Eternium Rod, so he loaned it back to me so I could get my title tonight, instead of having to wait a few more days.  So now, I am Fikkle of the Shattered Sun! 

 

You all can still call me Fikkle though.  Except you Sy.  You must refer to me as Fikkle of the Shattered Sun from now on.  That is all.

EDIT: Okay, so thats not all.  Congrats to Euripedes of the Shattered Sun!

Poly Power!

So in my daily morning read I was going over the most recent post at BBB and noticed that he was discussing up coming changes from the test realm patch notes for patch 2.4.2, which you can read about here.

The most interesting part of the discussion at BBB was about polymorph (the ones cast by a mob on a PC).  In the patchnotes it is stated that this affect will no longer heal a target.  Now as there are only a few fights that come to mind where mobs polymorph (at level 70ish), one being the Shade of Aran.  BBB already discussed this, as did his commenters, so I won’t go over it.  What I want to cover is whether we can expect to see this change being implemented for a Mage’s Polymorph.  The patch notes talk about this change affecting a polymorph that is cast from a Mob/NPC onto a PC.  They will no longer be healed.  This change would only affect PvE.  However, if this change were to affect a Mage’s Polymorph, then it would have much more serious implications.  I for one, wouldn’t view it as a nerf for PvE anymore, but a buff for PvE and a balancing change for PvP.  If you look at all forms of CC, Polymorph is the only one that heals a target back to full health.  In Arenas, any class can CC, only a Mage can CC and heal his opponents. (Note: as far as I know. I can’t think of any others that heal a target, but if I’m wrong, let me know). 

In fact, some of the other CC, such as a Warlocks Deathcoil, can still do damage to an enemy while they’re CC’d.  (I would consider Fears to be an effective form of CC in Arenas as there is no risk of aggro’ing any adds, which is the one drawback of Fear in PvE).

While I do use polymorph when I enter the arenas, it is very situational.  I will use it twice at the very start of the fight to CC something.  The first time assuming they will use their trinket, the second to re-apply CC.  At the start of a fight, health doesn’t matter.  As the fight wears on, it becomes more and more of a liability to polymorph anything as it saves the opposing healer mana and gives your enemy more longevity, especially with the diminishing returns on CC nowadays.

As for PvE, this would be another great change.  If a Mage’s target gets dotted by accident (and that does happen quite a bit) a Mage would then be able to switch targets to another mob and polymorph it (which we can do now, but if its damage, you’ll have to burn it down again).

To be honest, I don’t really see them making this change, although I don’t really see it being such a bad thing.  I know from experience that I get sheep’d just as much as I sheep in Arenas, so I would also be losing out on the free heals.

What do you think?

Mister T

Okay, so this post has nothing to do with NElf Mohawks, Misters, Ts, or any type of BA Baracus’.  But the title says…. Yes, the title says Mister T, but its actually just a play on one of the shortforms I’ve been seeing around for Magister’s Terrace.  Not sure if BBB has seen it since the last time he did the WI Podcast, but its out there.  Personally, I don’t care whether its called MgT, MrT, MT5… whatever.  We all get the idea.  I just chuckle every time I see MrT because theres so many jokes… Oh so many jokes.  Plus I totally love the commercial with the NElf Mowak in it… Okay, so I lied, there is mention of a NElf Mohawk, but I die laughing every time… he he he…

Okay, sorry, back on track.  Magister’s Terrace.  Yes.  I was out doing the dailies in BEM last night.  Following the normal routine, but decided to throw in the Ogri’la dailies as well since I had the extra time and the extra cash couldn’t hurt.  I had just tamed my last Aether Ray, which is the quest I always do last, so I can turn it in and get rid of those *deleted for content* stupid *deleted for content* things!  Sorry, anyways, I’m heading to turn it in and I get a whisper.  Hey, you interested in coming for MrT?  Okay, so I laughed… I did, but I said yes.  I’ve been in there once and the group imploded on itself cause the tank couldn’t keep the mobs off the healer who then couldn’t heal anyone including himself… you’ve heard the story before I’m sure. 

So he throws me an invite and of course its just him (Warrior) and a Pally.  So I’m thinking, With my damn luck the warrior will be Arms/Fury and the Pally will be Ret!  But I’m so tired of PUGs breaking up before they start because of a lack of tank/healer that I don’t even care, I just went on doing dailies while I waited (out on the Isle).

Pretty soon a Rogue joins the group and then a few minutes later we get a Lock.  This is where I assume the Warrior and Pally let us all in on their plan that two of us have to go cause they’re not tank or heals.  And then I get a summon.  So I accept, its only about a thirty second run away, but I’m lazy.  I get there.  /target Pally.  /inspect.  WoW, he is holy.  I’m kinda surprised.  /tar Warrior.  /inspect.  WoW, he is Prot.  This is just… I’m speechless.  I may actually get to do this instance.

Okay, so a little more background.  Over the last week as I’ve been trying to get my SSO rep to exalted, I’ve been joining the LFG for MrT the entire time that I’m doing dailies.  Normally, its about two hours, start to finish, depending on the drop rates of a few things and how motivated I am to finish quickly.  Over the last week, LFG has worked only once to put me in a group that could actually consider going in.  See above about implosion.  So I was pretty excited.  I’d seen right up until the 5 mob boss fight, that fight being the first thing that I had no idea what to expect.  It was a little harry at first and I’m pretty sure the lock missed his CC responsibility (either late or it was resisted) because fairly shortly into the fight the Warrior and I were the only ones left alive.  We wiped, of course as none of them had gone down yet.  5 on 2? Ouch! 

Second try, things went a lot smoother and we moved on, getting to Kael in short order.  Start the wipe fest.  It was bad.  We wiped about 5 to 6 times on him.  I believe that I did fairly well, as I was generally the last one alive with the Warrior on almost every attempt.  Now, I did throw my PvP gear on for this fight.  I’m not sure how much the Resil reduces the periodic damage you take while floating, but I know the 10k Stamina that I had (while buffed) for the fight sure as heck helped to keep me alive a lot longer.  Just to compare I believe the lock had around 6k hit points.  We eventually downed him and he didn’t really drop anything I could use, and I lost the roll, so I sharded a blue something or other for the pally and we all went our separate ways.

It was enjoyable for a first run through.  I believe after the third wipe on Kael, the lock ran out of shards, so he zoned out to go farm a bunch and we all stood around waiting.  I decided to break it down, Dance Dance Revolution, Sunwell style, right in front of Kael!  Um, Kael, you got served!

Daily Routine

Yes, I know, poor choice of pun and I’m sure its been done to death, but hey, it fits!  So I’ve been truckin along with my daily quests each day since I started playing my Mage again and I’ve developed a bit of routine in how I go about doing them.  I’m sure better reviews have been done else where, and this is for just because I’m long-winded and like to talk.  Only I’m not talking I’m writing.  Anywho, I’m also going to talk about the Rep rewards I earned for the entire day as well as an estimate of the gold I accumulate.  I’ll also include any Badges of Justice, Green (or better) quality items I pick up, Netherweave cloth I collect and Sunfury Signets / Marks of Sargeras that drop.

So, I normally log in to my character being in Shatt.  Its generally because I tend to port myself there if I’m about to log off.  I’ve found that with the SSO dailies, Mages have a bit of an edge on most classes as far as being able to get around Outlands to get them done.  Thus I circle Shatt and pick up the three SSO dailies that are available there.  The Multiphase Survey (Nagrand), Maintaining the Portal, and Sunfury Attack Plans.  Once I’m done that I take the portal to the Isle of Quel’Danas and pick up all of the dailies there.  Then I hearth.  My hearth is set to Area 52 in Netherstorm, and I’ve left it there as a deliberate choice.  Since as a Mage I can port myself to Shatt whenever I please, I have no need to set my hearth there, except maybe to save on 1 reagent/hour.  Not worth it in my opinion.  Netherstorm feels like one of the farthest points to get to from Shatt, so its the most logical choice for my hearth.

Once in Netherstorm I head to Manaforge Banar and kill Blood Elves until the Sunfury Attack Plans drop.  I then head back to Area 52 and fly to Evergrove.  From there I head up to Bashir’s Landing and gather Smuggled Mana Cells.

From here, I generally take a detour from the SSO dailies and head to Ogri’la.  If I’m pressed for time I skip this step.  In Ogri’la I complete the following quests: Bomb Them Again, Banish More Demons,  Relic’s Emanations and Wrangle More Rays.  From here I port back to Shatt, hop on quick flight to Garadar and then fly up to Oshu’gun.  I quickly complete the Multiphase Survey, port back to Shatt and then I’m off to Shadowmoon Valley to acquire Atal’mai Armaments.  Once that’s done I port back Shatt again and then take the portal to Quel’Danas.

From here its fairly straightforward.  As I’ve already picked up all the quests I head immediately to the flight master and do The Bombings Must Continue and Dawnblade Reinforcements.  I find that doing the bombing runs is a nice interlude from the Outlands dailies to the island dailies.  If I don’t finish the quest on the first run, I go to the next one and save it for the end as a bit of a wind-down.

Once finished with the bombings, I go and kill Wretched’s for the Mana Remnants as well as the Erratic Arcane Sentries for this quest.  Once I’ve got the 4 Mana Remnants and 5 Converted Sentries I head into Dawnblade Village.  Basically here I work my way towards the Blood Crystal and try to immediately get the reading for Knowing Your Ley Lines.  After that, I kill BElfs until the quest is complete.  Run under the bridge and kill 6 demons, drop the banner on the Emissary of Hate for this quest and then get my second reading at the portal.  Then I head out to the Greengill Coast and Kill the Nagas until I have 3 keys and 10 Murlocs freed for this quest and this quest.  Once that’s done I run back to Quel’Danas, charge a crystal and then start turning in all of the quests.

**Note: Cenarion Circle is currently in Phase 4 and although there are two dailies I haven’t mentioned, there is a reason.  The daily in Terokkar Forest I haven’t done yet because it seems to be bugged for me.  Also, I don’t have a gathering profession, so I can’t do that daily.

Once all these are done I use my scroll back to Shattrath and then fly out to Thrallmar.  From here its up to the Throne of Kil’jaeden and two more dailies.  When those are both done I turn them in, port back to Shatt.  If I have time I fly out to do the Skettis dailies.  When I finish off I end up with this:

Total Rep gained:

Shattered Sun Offensive:  My Rep with the SSO before I started doing the dailies was 6807 out of 21000 (Revered).  Upon completion of all the dailies I had reached 10,507 out of 21,000.  That works out to 3700 Rep (during Stage 4) for completing all the dailies available to me (aside from the bugged daily in Terokkar).  Based on the Rep gain, I should be able to reach Exalted in three more days. /woot!

Total Gold Earned:

233g 34s 32c was the amount of gold that I had on me when I started the dailies.  I basically made sure that from the time I started the dailies until I was finished, I spent no gold nor received any (from auctions).  When I was done I had 396g40s85c.  That works out to 163g 06s 53c.  Note: When calculated I hadn’t sold any vendor trash or repaired. 

Specialty Items:

Here’s a pic of all of the things that I received while doing the dailies.  I made sure to watch and keep everything seperate from what I had previously.

I received 4 green items (most from the SSO care packages).  They were Sundered Footwraps of the Eagle, Murkblood Shoulderguards of the Bandit, Eldr’naan Boots of the Physician and the Divine Hammer of the Elder.  Since Fikkle is a Tailor/Enchanter, I generally choose to DE most of the items I receive to use for my professions.  It resulted in 8 Arcane Dust and 2 Greater Planar Essence.

I received 2 Marks of Sargeras and 15 Sunfury Signets.  81 pieces of Netherweave cloth and 2 pcs of Runecloth.  4 pcs of Jaggal Clam Meat and a Blessed Weapon Coating.  6 Motes of Mana and 1 Mote of Fire.  There’s also an Essence of Fire and an Khorium Lockbox in there.  I didn’t work out what all of this added up to in gold as I generally use all of these items for something specifc rather than for more gold.  The rest was vendor trash which I didn’t count but always adds up to a nice little bonus on top of the quest gold.

Well that’s it, enjoy!

Macros: Mage & Hunter Edition

With my recent post on some of the strategies for my hunter that I combined over the weekend to fairly good success, I decided it might be a good idea to go over some of the macros I use.  Now I basically throw my macros into one of two categories.  There are macros that clean up space on my action bars and then there are macros that save time in combat.  (I guess a third category could include the macros that do both).

Note:  For 99% of my macro’s I choose the < ? > icon, followed by the first line of the macro being < #showtooltip >.  The reason for this is that the macro should intuitively choose the proper icon to display as well as its tooltip.  There are times when this is not prefered, and I will highlight those specific examples. 

MAGE MACROS

Ice:
#showtooltip
/cast Icy Veins
/use Xiri’s Gift
/cast Frostbolt

This is a simple little macro that I use that causes my Icy Veins and Xiri’s Gift to be used at the same time and to immediately cast Frostbolt again to get me right back into my dps cycle.  The idea was inspired by the hunter macro I read on Ego’s site a few days back.

Polymorph:
#showtooltip Polymorph(Rank 1: Pig)
/stopcasting
/focus [button:2]
/cast [button:2] Polymorph(Rank 1: Pig)
/cast [button:1,target=focus] Polymorph(Rank 1: Pig)
/clearfocus [button:3]

This macro does a couple things.  First off, the result is based on which button you click on your mouse.  A right click (button:2) will set the target as your focus and sheep the target.  A left click (button:1) will attempt to sheep your focus target. Also, since I don’t like leaving a dead focus target on my UI, I can click the button with my mouse wheel and it will clear the focus. If you haven’t gotten your Polymorph Pig yet, you should. You can delete the < (Rank 1:Pig) > and it should work for your highest level Polymorph spell.

Tele:
#showtooltip
/cast [modifier:lalt] teleport: orgrimmar; [modifier:lshift] teleport: undercity; [modifier:lctrl] teleport: thunder bluff; [modifier:rshift] teleport: silvermoon; [modifier:rctrl] hearthstone; teleport: shattrath

Port:
#showtooltip
/cast [modifier:lalt] portal: orgrimmar; [modifier:lshift] portal: undercity; [modifier:lctrl] portal: thunder bluff; [modifier:rshift] portal: silvermoon; portal: shattrath

These two macros Tele and Port are what I use to get around Azeroth and Outlands.  Unfortunately, the 255 character-limit in macros prevents these from being all on the same button, but I feel that 2 buttons, down from 12 buttons is some sweet economy.  Note, everything after the /cast should all be on the same line (no carriage returns).

 

HUNTER MACROS

BRK:
#showtooltip Bestial Wrath
/use Bladefist’s Breadth
/cast Bestial Wrath
/cast Blood Fury(Racial)
/cast Rapid Fire

I covered this macro yesterday, so I’m not going over it again.  You can read about it here.

Mark:
#showtooltip
/cast Hunter’s Mark
/petattack
/cast [modifier:alt] Hunter’s Mark

This is a simple utility macro that puts a hunter’s mark on your target and sends your pet in to attack.  The conditional in the last line can be added or removed.  I personally don’t use it, but you may want to throw up a mark on something without having your pet rush off to attack.

Feed:
#showtooltip
/cast Feed Pet
/use Smoked Talbuk Venison

This is a nice little macro that allows me to keep my sanity.  I tell you, by the time I found this macro I was sick of opening my bags, clicking feed pet and then clicking on whatever food I had on me at the time.  It is so helpful.  For leveling it may not be as effective as the type of food you feed your pet changes more often.  This really applies when you get to outlands and you tend to have a lot of the same kind of food on you at once.  Note, there are ways to set it up to feed different pets different foods.  I haven’t quite got it yet.

Track:
#showtooltip
/cast [mod:lalt] track dragonkin; [mod:ralt] track giants; [mod:lshift] track undead; [mod:rshift] track demons; [mod:lctrl] track elementals; [mod:rctrl] track hidden; track humanoids

The track macro is all on one line and it is one of the one that will save space on your action bars.  The form is pretty simple, its generally the same throughout each iteration, with only the modifying key changing.  What does this allow me to do?  Well with a simple push click I can change the type of tracking that I’m using fairly quickly, as well as clean up 6 buttons from my action bar.  The new minimap dropdown menu that allows you to choose tracking options may make this obsolete to some, but I still prefer to use this kind of macro.  The other beautiful thing about this macro is that the icon will change depending on what button you have pushed (or not) down.  Normally, it shows track humanoids.  Push left alt and it shows track dragonkin, etc. Note: I deliberately left track beasts out of this macro as beasts + humanoid are the two most common that I use. Thus the buttons are right next to each other and I can access them fairly easy.

Aspct:
#showtooltip
/cast [mod:lalt] Aspect of the Cheetah; [mod:lctrl] Aspect of the Pack; [mod:lshift] Aspect of the Viper; [mod:rshift] Aspect of the Monkey; [mod:ralt] Aspect of the Wild; [mod:rctrl] Aspect of the Beast; Aspect of the Hawk

This is pretty much the same as my Track macro except for all of my different Aspects.  Once again it cleans up my actions bars and saves a lot of space.  You can obviously set up which buttons you want for which Aspects until you get them to your liking.

Pull:
#showtooltip
/cast [button:1] Distracting Shot
/cast [button:2] Arcane Shot
/stopcasting

 This is a simple little macro I use when I plan on pulling a mob to be guided toward a trap.  I don’t want to keep pew pew’ing and have my trap break, so this will automatically cancel the auto shot and allow the mob to be trapped up nice and neatly!  Like a racoon.  I can also choose which shot I want to use.  By left clicking the button it will use Distracting Shot, great for getting the mob to try and smash you in the face.  If that isn’t enough I can then right click the button (after the GCD) and hit it with an Arcane Shot.  Since both shots have a cooldown this allows me some versatility while still not having to worry about Auto Shot hitting my trapped mob.

Mage PvP

EDIT: After publishing this post I realized that Ratshag has asked what everyone has been up to.  So I’m going to answer his question.  Boy, that was easy.  On to conquering the world….

Well, after a three month hiatus from playing my Mage, I decided to go back and do a little pvp this weekend.  First, things first however, I had to go pick up some new threads.  I picked up all 5 pieces of the Silk Evoker’s Battlegear which in hindsight wasn’t totally necessary.  I realized afterward that I had enough Arena points for the Merciless Gladiator’s Silk Handguards.  Once I had some new digs I went out and did some SSO dailies (the first time since the PTR) to get a little coin, and then I decided to pick up a few gems and enchant a few things.  I’m far from finished, but it was enough for a start.

After that, I turned in a whole bunch of marks for honor and then started to hit up the BGs.  I wanted to pick up the Gladiator’s War Staff and needed about 17k honor still.  When I was done Friday this is where I was at:

 

After some more BGs Saturday morning, I had enough and picked up my staff.  I took a break after I got it, but this was the final count:

There was also one Alterac Valley that I was extremely pleased with.  I managed to keep myself alive and was receiving heals throughout.  I ended up topping the HK list with 246.

Now that I have my nice shiny new staff, I’ve been thinking that I’m probably going to continue to do BGs with him.  Which reminds me, Euripedes has posted an excellent guide on how to gear a fresh 70 Mage for pvp.  Props to him for the hard work.  Although I haven’t followed the order he suggested, I have picked up some of the items he’s recommended.  So the next thing I will be getting is my Medallion of the Horde.  And yes, in hindsight, I should’ve gotten that first.  There have been countless times when I’ve been CC’d and my damn Insignia was on cooldown.  /facepalm.

Deciding on Mage Talents

In a previous post, I asked for some input as to how I should spec my Mage for leveling.  I’ve made up my mind about how to spec my mage(s).  I decided to try out the Deep Frost build with the Mage I’m going to be leveling on Coilfang (pvp), which you can find here.  I think the added control and survivability will be more of an asset since I’ll be soloing a bit.

As for the Mage that will be joining Pox Arcanum, I’m going to give the Elemental build a try, which you can find here.  I think this will be a well balanced build that will help to control the ‘double crit pyroblast/fireballs before the tank has a sunder armor on the mob’ while still giving me some nice damage abilities and some mana efficiency.  I may lose some other utility talents like Imp Counterspell, Clearcasting and PoM, but I’m willing to give it a try and see how it goes.

Thoughts, comments, criticism?

 

I’m also working on a post for my Pox Arcanum Mage.  I’m hoping to have it done in a few days.