[Yesterday, I wrote a post for my pal Gnomeaggedon at his blog.  You can take a look at it here.  In return for my services, good ol' Gnomer did likewise, and wrote a post for my blog!  Here it is, enjoy!]

Long cold drinks in the heat of Summer (ohh yeah right now!)

Dead seedlings in the back yard.

Scraping the ice off the windshield.

Stuff that other people have to deal with.

Because I’m a FIRE Mage!

Got it?

What, no I’m not Krizzlybear!

I’m the kind of Gnome that kreeps you warm all fight.

I’m the kind of Gnome that doesn’t use a spell checker.

I’m the kind of Gnome that writes long posts daily but doesn’t have the attention span to write 50,000 words.

Because I’m a FIRE Mage!

I’m the kind of Mage that snorts at rotations.

I’m the kind of Mage that hits Frost Nova instead of Blink, hits Pyroblast rather than Invisivility.

I’m the knobs of Mage that believes that Icy Veins is a talent given to girls at birth to wake their husbands up in the morning.

Because I’m a FIRE Mage!

I’m the kind of Mage that admires any person that can take the spec that is out of favor with Blizzard and turn it into a top DPS Spec.

I’m the kind of Mage that likes to put Frosties down publicly while quietly envying their skill.

I’m the kind of Mage that loves to hear the tales from the other side, the Frosty or even Arcane side.

I’m the kind of Mage that admires Krizzlybear.

I’m the kind of Mage that wishes Krizzlybear and all the other Mages out there the best of Christmas (or holidays if you are that way inclined) wishes.

I am Gnomeaggedon and this is my present to Krizz!

Gnomer and Out!

[Awww gee.  Thanks a bunch bro!  This little post exchange was a pretty fun experience!  I look forward to possibly doing it again.  But don't expect me to do it anytime soon.  He is a fire mage after all.  He and I are rivals, albeit friendly ones!  Maybe once the Christmas Season is over, then the fire(and frost!)works can begin!  See you on the other side of the nether!]

I was asked a question by a loyal reader last week.  He asked, “Do you enjoy Frost so much that you’d refuse to raid as anything else?”  My answer is yes.  It is a style of play that I love so much, that not only am I willing to refuse to raid as another spec, but I am even willing to go so far as accept the hate that frost gets for being pitiful at dealing damage.

My only gripe about the whole thing  was that in the weeks leading up to the 3.3 PTR, I was watching over the mage forums like a hawk.  Any thread mentioning the word Frost outside of a PvP context was met with a “lol” or “frost doesn’t count.”  Nobody made a clear argument about why frost was so bad, and how it could be fixed.  People just shoved the spec off to the side like it was nothing, and happily settled for big numbers elsewhere, acting like a total elitist snob to anyone who was not willing to switch over.

“Frost is not for raiding.  GTFO.”

Are these the same people that are coming out of the closet and using frost again, only now that it’s good?  Somehow, I’m scared that the next person I meet with a squirtle is only there because it’s the flavour of the month, that frost is indeed the New Black.  In addition, I can’t help but anticipate the flack that we’ll get for the buffs we got.

“God, it’s that flavor of the month class again.  I can’t believe they fixed frost and didn’t fix [insert class here].”

I’m not a poser.  I stuck it out with my spec throughout the bad times.  I remained frost even if I was laughed at, called a piss-poor player, or even booted out of raid pugs.  I’ve gone through my hell, and now I’ve earned this bit of heaven.  I feel I’ve earned this buff, and there’s nothing that people can say to sway me otherwise.

Therefore, as a sign of thanks to the devs for fixing what was once broken, I’m going to shut the hell up about how this and that should have been, or why he and she is now a frost mage instead of before.  I’m going to grab my glyph of Eternal Water, respeccing at my nearest mage trainer, and I’m going to aim for the top of the charts.  I will care about nothing and nobody.  The past is behind me.  All I can see now is the future, and what it will hold for the icy veins that run through my body.  I’ve earned my frost, and you can too.

Earn Your Frost (in 3 simple steps)

1) Hug your squirtle.  Every single moment.  By the bank.  In a random heroic.  In your raid after someone whips out the DPS meter and you’ve finally beaten that Fire mage for the first time in months.

2) Get a timer addon like TellMeWhen or Power Auras.  Deep Freeze is GODLY.  You want to use it as often as it’s up.  Enjoy your 20k+ crits.

3) Delete those spare fire and arcane glyphs in your bank.  You don’t need them anymore.  You’re frost now.  Always and forever.

It’s never been a better time to be a Frost Mage, and instead of grumbling about how bad it’s been, I welcome everyone who decides to stop on by and try it out, even for just one raid.  For those who decide to stick with it, then good for you.  I hope you enjoy this ride, because it’s going to be an awesome one indeed.  And for those who have always stuck with it, even through the gruesome times, I give you credit.  I know what it’s like.  It sucked.  But it didn’t matter.  None of this matters.  You’re not alone.  You’ve got support.  Frost is good.  Frost is hot.  Frost is sexy.

Frost is definitely the new black.

December 1!

Did you hear the page on your calendar flipping over or ripping out of its binding?  I know I did, when the clock struck twelve midnight late last night.  It was a momentous occasion on tinychat and the Toronto NaNoWriMo IRC channel.  Virtual champagne was popped, e-hugs were distributed, and plenty of glomps were had.  Tonight is our final meetup, the Thank Gawd It’s Over party, one that I will be attending without question.

As I look back in this past month, I wondered where all the time went.  While it certainly isn’t the 525,600 minutes described in that wonderful song from RENT, the 43,200 minutes spent in the month of November amounted to 54,445 words from my completed novel, and a myriad of friends from around the Greater Toronto Area.  I will surely keep in touch with a number of them long after this event is over, and I look forward to punching the keys with them next year.

But alas, I am back, rejuvenated in my motivation to write for this blog.  I find it strangely wonderful that all it took to get over my writing woes on this blog was to simply write some more.  Hence, I’ve learned that the best way to write is to write often, regardless of quality, whether or not those words would contribute towards a blog post or personal writing.

And while I’m quite sad that I may not see my NaNoWriMo pals until next year, I’m equally happy to be back with YOU, the loyal follower of this blog.  I am very well aware that going a month without something as routine as reading someone’s blog post can be quite dismaying, I assure you that I am very much back in the game.  I want to give HUGE props to those in the blogging community who managed to somewhat keep up with their blog while maintaining a foothold on their NaNo.  In particular, MEGA-HUGE props to Pike for not only winning NaNoWriMo, but also keeping up with a full-time job and a wonderful blog as well.  You, madam, are an inspiration!

While I look forward to continuing this journey of WoW-blogging with everyone, I regret to inform that my posting here will be somewhat reduced.  With the recent addition of my Japanese-steampunk blog, steampanku, I will be dividing my time between the two of them, as well as my own personal writing, meaning that the post updating will be limited to about once a week for each blog.  However, that means you will get to see twice of me, albeit writing about contrasting subject matter.  I am quite excited about my rekindled love for fiction writing, particularly about Japanese alternate history and giant machines!  I surely hope you add steampanku to your feedreader as well!

On the WoW front, I have returned to my guild on Winterhoof, albeit in a reduced role.  While I remain an active evening raider, I am stepping down from my position as Druid class lead, as I’ve shifted my priorities in the game to playing my mage, especially in anticipation for the new patch.  I also have an alt on Kael’thas, in none other than Bear’s guild, <Sidhe Devils>.  She’s a draenei mage named krizzlybear for the simplicity of recognition by the other members of that guild.  I also rerolled a bunch of my Winterhoof alts onto the horde side, particularly my new Tauren Druid Leafeon.

This is surely an exciting time for me.  NaNoWriMo was a huge success, I’m blogging about WoW, I recently handed in my application to JET, and I’m in the process of growing the Steampanku brand.  I look forward to what the future has in store for me, and I am honoured to have you all along for the ride.  See you on the other side of the internether!

pssst, guys.  I have a secret.

The novel isn’t done yet, I still have to write a few more chapters before the plot finally wraps up.  But overall, I really enjoy what I created, and look forward to editing, rewriting, and sending it out for publication.

As for the blog, I still need some time to detoxify from the rigors of writing with reckless abandon.  So I’ll still see you guys in December.  Peace out!

As you can see from the previous post, I attempted to do a multi-post AFK series involving pictures I had taken in my previous trip to Asia.  Turns out, a lot of those pictures were ones I wanted to use for my Japanese steampunk blog, steampanku.  So that idea was scrapped, and I am left with a lot of blog silence.  Not going to fly.

Turns out, something happened in NaNoWriMo that relates a lot to the TNB shared topic regarding finding WoW in unexpected places.  Having participated in NaNo with the regional forum group this year, I met a lot of people in IRL meetup events who had a lot of common interests.  In this case, WoW.  I was having coffee with a number of them earlier this week, and I had brought up the topic of playing WoW.

One of the other NaNo-ers pointed out that she was missing a raid today, and her boyfriend who also plays, came out with her to the event to support her in her writing.  It was one of those self-revelations of minimal impact or importance.  I had met a girl irl who played wow with her boyfriend, even though I had realized later that I knew of a few people like that in my university.  However, the guy was sweet enough to even sacrifice HIS time to support his girlfriend in her novelling exploits.  Good for him.  If I had a girlfriend who did NaNo, I really hope I could be supportive enough to put down my toon and go out to coffee with her and talk to a bunch of random people from the intarwebz who I don’t even know.

Another female NaNoer who I talk to in the regional WriMo used to play WoW.  Turns out she played a mage and a druid at the max level during Burning Crusade.  Their specs?  Frost and Resto.  I think I’m in love!  Okay, not really.  She has a boyfriend.  Boo-urns.

Anyways, I’m at 15,000 words out of the 50,000 word goal, and I’ve already met a bunch of people with whom I can connect with and understand because we come from somewhat similar backgrounds.  If anything, it’s really interesting to see what happens after NaNo.  Will I try to find them in-game? Considering the possibilities of cross-realm communications in the near future, I would not hesitate to add them to my friends list.

With NaNoWriMo taking place in November, I am too busy to play WoW or post, so here’s a few photos taken from my summer trip to Asia.  See you in December!

Hakone is a town situated by lake Ashi, a short drive away from Mount Fuji.  It is famous as a checkpoint town in 19th century Japan, as a it was located on a ‘highway’ connecting the old capital of Kyoto with Edo (known today as Tokyo).

hiatus in November still going as scheduled, but I just wanted to put this up to say that Frost on the PTR is just fantastic.  I couldn’t be any happier.  I am in tears knowing that the patch could drop sometime mid-november and I will ruin my NaNo and my budget by re-subscribing.

Seriously.  Frost is just that good.  Deep Freeze?  Godly.  PermaSquirtle?  Godly.  Frozen Core?  I think they’ll put it back in, just to entice some people who have good latency to use it anyways.  And the new instances?  FABULOUS.  I am seriously loving this.  Frost changes aside, this is quite possibly my favourite patch ever.  And I might not be there when it hits.  But that’s the rub, right?  Sometimes, you need to spend some time in hell first before you get to heaven.

In short, I HAD to post something about this.  It’s who I am.  It’s who I always was, and now Blizzard is letting me go about my ways without being haha’ed at.  And when I come back from the dead in December, I will be out there in Icecrown with frostbolts-a-flingin.  And you know I will be kicking some ass and taking some names.

And thus, I bid you adieu.  Until December!

NaNoWriMo coming up soon.  Seeing that I am taking this month very seriously, I’ve taken extra steps to ensure that I pass.  Unfortunately, it would seem that this was at the cost of taking care of this blog and keeping it update.  Thus, I will eliminate the drama and shut down Frost for the rest of October, and essentially all of November.

Same goes for WoW.  My subscription expires early into November, and I won’t be renewing until December rolls in.  That is, if I choose to renew it at all.  Money is a bit tight, so we’ll just see how it goes.  It will be difficult to blog about playing WoW if I don’t have the opportunity to do so.

And should this test of literary endurance teach me a thing or two about what it takes to become a novelist, then who knows where I will take it.  In the meantime, check out Steampanku, my 19th Century Japanese Steampunk fiction and NaNoWriMo blog.  It even got linked by seventhsanctum!  Pretty awesome!

Anyways, this is it for me for now.  I wish you all good health and happiness. If anything drastic happens in the meantime, I will definitely let you know about it.  Oh, and wish me luck for NaNo!  Or else I’ll sic Squirtle on you!

Build 10571 has proposed the following changes to Frost Mages for patch 3.3:

Frozen Core now also causes your Ice Lance criticals to reduce the cast time of your next Frostbolt or Frostfire Bolt by 0.4/0.7/1 sec.

Glyph of Eternal Water – Your Summon Water Elemental now lasts indefinitely, but your Water Elemental can no longer cast Freeze.

Seemed like a silly time for me to QQ last week, these appear at first glance to be attempts at improving PvE DPS performance.

My Water is Eternal

Not included in this build was the previous change to pets, giving them 90% AoE damage reduction.  Combined with this proposed glyph, which I assume will replace Glyph of Water Elemental, Squirtle seeks to stick around much longer.  With proper talents and glyphs, Elementals only lasted for 1 minute with a 2 minute cooldown on the cast, for an uptime of 50%.  With this glyph, we get 100% uptime.

Amazing.  As it stands, Summon Water Elemental contributes towards about 10% of DPS throughout a single boss encounter.  With the glyph, this number will go up a significant amount, and PTR testing should determine how much this contribution will increase.

That being said, the downside of the glyph is the inability for Squirtle to cast Freeze, its ranged AoE spell.  This precaution was included as a way to make the glyph unappealing to PvP.  This is a brilliant idea, as the major strength of Water Elementals in PvP is the ranged Frost Nova that it has, providing the mage with the ability to threaten a shatter combo by simply casting a frostbolt.

The only questions I have about this change is how soon Squirtle will run out of mana, and if it’s long enough to at least last for the 3 minutes necessary to resummon (normally 2 minutes, but the glyph change appears to remove the cooldown reduction).  Initial observations on the live realms suggest that by the time Squirtle’s duration is up, it only has a thousand or so mana left.  Either the waterbolt cost needs to be adjusted to address this, or the elemental’s maximum mana needs to scale a bit more with the mage’s maximum mana.  Both are feasable, but the dev team is already trying to work out pet scaling as a whole, so the latter might be more likely to come true.

Secondly, while I do embrace the prospect of a permanent pet, I certainly wonder about the inevitable comparisons to warlocks.  While it is one thing to have a reputation of “warlock wannabe,” I’ll very much have that if it means I won’t have a reputation of “terrible dps.”

Shattered Core

The other improvement is a proposed change to the talent Frozen Core.  For three talent points, Ice Lance criticals can lower your Frostbolt casting time by a whole second.  Is this the shatter-style rotation that Blizzard had in mind for frost PvE?  From the looks of it, the best time to fish out a Lance crit is when Fingers of Frost procs.

The main issue I see with this is the implications the change has on talent builds.  As it stands, there are only 3 flexible points in TTW Frost builds, each normally put in Improved Blizzard for AoE Fingers of Frost procs, Ice Barrier for survivability, and somewhere in Arcane for utility purposes.  With the changes to Frozen Core, it will likely be a must-have talent, reducing the wiggle room to zero.  Expect the new spec to look something like this:

Not a lot of flexibility here.  The spare talent in the second tier of the arcane tree is put into spell impact, since Ice Lance is now part of the Frost mage rotation.  In the frost tree, we lose the survivability and a little bit of oomph on AoE pulls in order to afford Frozen Core.  Alternatively, I’m sure you can take out talents here and there, such as Enduring Winter if the raid doesn’t need replenishment, and potentially cold as ice if the water elemental can last longer than 2 minutes, but it still does not solve the problem of talent bloat.

This is a bad thing, since we will continue to lose out on tier bonuses that affect Brain Freeze, namely the 4pc T8 and T9 bonuses.  However, from the looks of it, the molten armor bonus from 2pc T9 will probably be more appealing, since it increases the chance for Ice Lance to crit, so expect frost mages to favour a 2pc T9/2pc T10 gear setup.

Talent bloat aside, this improvement sounds ridiculously sexy.  Ignoring outside haste effects, Frostbolts look to cast as fast as 1.3 seconds after an Ice Lance crit.  At around 500 haste, the base casting time of Frostbolt goes down to about 2.0 seconds, making the “Fastbolt” cast come close to 1 second, the minimum time of a global cooldown.  With so much reduction in cast time, we as frost mages will probably start looking at a soft haste cap in the same manner as balance druids when they proc Nature’s grace.

While utterly pointless, I just want to mention that under the stacked effects of Icy Veins and Heroism, a Fastbolt can cast as quickly as less than half a second.

Suddenly Busy

A week ago, I posted a sorry little piece regarding my frustrations towards the state of frost magery in high end raids, and the dev team’s design philosophy towards frost mages in general.  The conensus problems with frost in PvE were generally along the lines of overall DPS performance and blandness of the frostbolt spam that made up a cryomancer’s rotation.  These two proposed changes to the frost mage’s arsenal aim to address both these problems.

Now, it is up to aspiring frost mages to let their voices be heard once again.  Blizzard is trying to throw us a life preserver, a nice frosty life preserver.  I urge you all to go on the PTR and test these changes out, both in PvE as well as PvP.  Whether or not these changes will be good enough for Frost to return to respectability will be in the hands of the testers themselves.  I for one am now intrigued by the goings-on in the PTR, and will be trying out these changes for sure.

My guess is that the DPS gain will be considerable, but still not on par with Fire and Arcane.  That’s okay.  As long as we’re respectable as a DPS producers, our utility through Winter’s Chill and Replenishment make us a credit to the raid.

While these proposed changes are not set in stone, something tells me that there’s a good chance that they will go live in some form.  Thank you blizzard.  Thank you so much.  I certainly look forward to these changes, and despite the problems that still persist with this spec, I will continue to love the frost tree with the passion of a thousand shatter combos.

Ferociously drunk.  It’s thanksgiving in between Sunday and Monday here in Canada, and in the midst of a really nice bitter conversation about life, love, and the universe, I think that this is a perfect opportunity spout some random crap.  Today, with my netbook readily available as I converse with my cousins, I will talk about inspiration.

Muses for writers come in many forms.  Mine come in the form of crushes.  Growing up as a hopeless romantic, watching many sappy movies and crushing on a large fair of girls when I was in different stages in life, crushes drove me towards personal improvement.  I would secretly single out a girl who displayed features of excellence and a touch of good looks here and there, and I had someone who I could put on a pedestal and strive to become better, just in hopes that the 5% chance that she would notice would actually come true.

In my year as a blogger, I can safely say that said crushes have become great sources of inspiration.  While I was quite sure that IRL crushes would never stumble upon my blog (let alone play WoW), I had the most interesting happenstance of developing admiration for my fellow bloggers, not just for their writing, but for who they are as people.

Here’s my dropped bombshell that I promised Saresa.  I had the HUGEST crush on Lin, the blogger behind Elune’s Guidance.  Like goddamn, it was pretty crazy.  She was asian, her mains were a resto druid and a frost mage, she liked to RP, and when I heard her voice on the Twisted Nether Blogcast, I was absolutely mezmorized by her voice.

Oh gosh, I was a silly little schoolgirl.

While I would never come to terms with myself about it, I subconsciously resolved to write thought-provoking posts just on the hope that she would take notice.  However, she mysteriously disappeared off the face of the earth sometime after noblegarden this year.  Perhaps real life took over, but checking just now, her mage is decked out in emblem gear, T8/T9 and all.  And she still has PvE frost as one of her dual specs.  *swoon*

While she has indeed stopped blogging, there’s still a chance that she only reads blogs instead of updating her own.  Heck, she could be reading this right now.  Oh well, inebriation has gotten me this far, there’s frankly no turning back.

Despite it all, I am forever grateful for the inspiration she brought to my writing, and even though I’ve since moved on from my crush, I can still look back and laugh at it all, and be really appreciative of who she was as a blogger, and what I was capable of doing.

So what about nowadays?  Can’t really say, only mentioned this now because I could definitely get that monkey off of my back.  I certainly feel better now.  Oh well, whatever.  Time to go pass out somewhere…ciao.