Patch 3.2.2 on live servers this week!

Saw this today, and just can’t help but post quickly about it — World of Warcraft patch 3.2.2 will be on live servers this week. Sadly, I’ve not been able to actually try Onyxia before this patch is out, though I’ve been meaning to. Oh well! I’m quite excited about this patch, more because there are a number of arcane mage changes that are coming:

  • Arcane Blast: The buff from using this ability now stacks up to 4 times instead of 3, and each application increases mana cost by 175% instead of 200%. In addition, the duration of the buff has been reduced to 6 seconds.
  • Arcane Missiles: Casting this spell while both Missile Barrage and Clearcasting are active will cause only Missile Barrage to be consumed.
  • Missile Barrage: The effect from triggering this talent now removes the mana cost of Arcane Missiles. In addition, the chance for Arcane Blast to trigger this talent is now 8/16/24/32/40%. All other listed spells continue to have a 4/8/12/16/20% chance to trigger it. This talent no longer has a chance to be triggered when spells miss.

These are quite interesting changes, as they affect arcane mage playstyle–for better or worse, I’ve yet to decide. Basically, arcane playstyle has always been around mana management and finding the right moment to replenish mana as well as when to blow all your cooldowns. I find that I like this about arcane as it’s not as “reactive” as I find Fireball or Frostfire bolt specs to be (on initial tryouts of the specs). I know that the theorycrafting around arcane rotation is that you cast arcane barrage when you don’t have a missile barrage proc, but with my latency I cast arcane missiles at every 3-stack of arcane blast. Slightly lesser damage per second but higher damage per mana.

With those changes, it looks like the rotation would be arcane blast to four stacks, and hit arcane missiles if missile barrage procced, but otherwise keep doing arcane blast until you get a missile barrage proc. It looks relatively static; a number seem to like the changes as it’s making arcane more competitive, but a number don’t as it looks like it’s dumbing down arcane too much. I’ll reserve judgment for later, when I actually get to play ;)

In other patch news–damn that Pandaren Monk is cute :D Want!