Welcome to Arcane is the New Black!
April 1, 2010 
Hello there! If you’re a first-time reader, this is my newest blog, Arcane is the New Black. In case you haven’t noticed, throughout the entire expansion, Arcane Magery has become THE hotness spec. It does sick and twisted amounts of DPS, and they shoot a bunch of sexy purple stuff to boot! Anyway, I’m going way ahead of myself. Let’s start from the beginning about who I am, and what I wish to do with this blog.
Deep Purple
Back in the days of Vanilla WoW, when I rolled a dwarf Mage, my first fascination was with the awesome spell, Arcane Missiles! It was such an elegant channeled spell, that sent wave upon wave of spammy purply death onto my foes. Granted, I was merely a lowbie at the time, and I pretty much ran out of mana every single time I cast the spell. But the enemy always died. You could say that I’d play like an irishman, doing nothing but drink and fight, drink and fight!
Hilariously enough, I managed to get myself to 60 using the Arcane Tree exclusively. Thanks to a wonderful TALENT called Evocation, I was able to refill my mana every so often, and it was just the greatest thing an Arcane Mage could have. Even the Frosties and Pyros were jealous of my neat abilities!
But then came endgame, and molten core and the like were out. Fire was instantly poo-poo’d out of raid contention as the spec to play, simply because nearly the entire damned dungeon was fire-immune. But that left poor old Arcane to fend off against the ridiculously OP Frost. I mean, they had Ice Barrier! They practically never died!
I stuck to my guns, however, loving the arcane missiles that I had held so dear since the early levels. And for as long as I can remember, I’ve stayed with it, even up until the following expansions.
Arcane Blast, How I Love Thee
Wouldn’t you know it? BC rolled around, and Blizzard had identified the hardcore arcanists such as myself, and rewarded us with a spell that forever changed our style of play. Arcane Blast was an interesting casted spell that stacked debuffs and increased our DPS at the cost of mana. Of course, the spell was fundamentally broken (like all mage spells, amirite? BLINK I’M LOOKING AT YOU!) because all we’d do was abuse the mechanic such that we’d cast some other spell that benefit from ABlast WITHOUT having to cast another one, becoming rather mana efficient.
With the T5 bonus, Arcane had become quite sexy, and people were starting to catch on because of trailblazers like me.
The New Sexiness
Then Wrath came along, and all of a sudden, EVERYONE specced arcane. Lemme tell you this. I was a pioneer. It was because of ME that all you mages are specced the way you are today. Unless you had rolled and writhed with the awkwardness of my tree since the very beginning, you can’t even fathom how awesome it is to be arcane, despite the DPS. Because really, it was never about the DPS. It was about raining purply death from above.
Okay, I lie. It’s all about the DPS. Wrath is all about DPS, gearscore, achievements, and waving the e-peen. If you don’t have the stuff, you simply have to re-roll, respec, or gtfo. Simple as that. There’s no absolute way you can say that you deserve to raid without arcane, no if’s and’s or but’s. Yes, despite the fact that the game is as casual as ever, I’ve grown to be as hardcore as ever as well.
Besides, it’s not that hard, right? Just follow this easy flowchart.
In this day and age, it’s “go arcane, or go home. “ And I’m loving every minute of it.
Conclusion
So stick around, I’ll be here to post about my adventures in ICC hardmodes, where mages are apparently in high demand. Even Paragon, the most skilled guild in the world, having been the first to down Arthas, stacked somewhere between 8 or 9 mages for that fight. I mean, wow. Could we BE any more OP?
I guess I’m a little too ahead of myself. Before the cycle of nerfs comes back to bite me in the ass, I’d like to take a moment to share my history with you. It will be a nice one.
Until next time, may your missiles barrage, and your purply death be swift and quick.
Hah, love the flowchart
Not mine; was floating around the intarwebs, and I presume it originated in the official forums.
Excellent post! Bwahahahaha!
APRIL FOOLS!
Oh wait. I really should have put a disclaimer in the original post, eh? *goes off to edit*
Greetings from a former Torontonian and current Arcane Mage (I love the purply goodness too). I like what I see so far, and will be following you. Hopefully this isn’t just an April Fools joke.
Unfortunately, I am just joking for now. Frost forever baby! Not that I have anything against arcane though =/
Go, Leafs, go!
This is so awesome I just Arcane Barraged in my pants!
BAH, I FORGOT ABOUT ARCANE BARRAGE!
I think I have lost what little credibility I had as an arcane mage by forgetting that spell. And as a Frost Mage, that’s closer to zero than anything =/
That flowchart is teh best!
HURRRRRRRRRRRRRR
DURRRRRRRRRRRRRR
IT IS A GOOD DAY TO DIE
epic win
I think last year’s “Fire is the New Black” was a bit better, since at the time, I even made more of a alternate-universe personna of myself, being a Horde mage, and having a resto shaman and blood DK alt.
Thing is, a year since then, I actually DO have a Resto shaman alt, AND a blood DK alt (the latter even being hordeside!)
Really cant you get any more imaginative then making yourself sound like an idiot for april fools day. stop posting stupid crap like this that half of the reader base will actually believe
The whole point of today is to be silly, since April 1 sets people up to be super paranoid about what they ought to believe. I think the level of outrageousness of this post could have been higher, but I assure you I wasn’t trying to “trick” anyone.
Total awesome!
Now go back to Frost like a good little freezemonkey.
Just kidding, love you!
thanks boss! I read about the thing with moving on from SD, and I will support your cause, keeping that alt in the guild until the very end. I enjoyed my little getaway time there, and I wish you plenty of luck!
Kriz, you turncoat
You inspire me to one day achieve the same level of two-faced-ness!
<3
Me? Two-faced? nawwwww *innocentgrin*
FACEROLL ARCAAAAAAAAAANA. /grin
/Mind Controls you off a cliff for good measure
(jk ilu krizzly)
FFFFF *MASHES ICEBLOCK KEY*
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Gareth Harmer and Angelya, kriz. kriz said: New Post – Welcome to Arcane is the New Black! – http://wp.me/ppWVP-gw [...]
Damn you Krizz.. now dare you write something *almost* believable for April Fools.. that might, you know, fool some people.
Some people.. not all people…
I do have one correction.. Arcane isn’t just about raiding… it’s about LIFE!
I mean if you aren’t PvPing, questing, RPing, epeening in Dalaran etc as Arcane, then you really need to either reroll or cancel your subscription.
Personally I vote for subscription cancellation… because we both know that we will only respec Arcane:
1) Over our dead bodies
2) when our accounts get hacked and the gold farmer thinks it will be a good joke.
it would be a good joke, indeed…in a blasphemous sort of way.