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.

In celebration of the 70th anniversary release of the Wizard of Oz, Netflix introduced a nifty little flash application that uses face recognition technology to insert faces from any photo into a short clip from the Wizard of Oz movie.

Against my better Judgment, I turned the Wizard of Oz into the Wizard of Warcraft.

Thrall

If Thrall only had a brain, maybe he could actually put Garrosh in check, and not lead the orcs into mindless war!  Watch the video!

Arthas

If Arthas only had a brain, maybe he would have not culled Stratholme and become the idiot Lich King he is now.  See the video!

Ghostcrawler

If Ghostcrawler only had a brain, maybe he’d actually buff Frost Mages in PvE instead of making them so strong in PvP that buffs to PvE would be impossible.  You must see the video!

EXTRA: Jaina

If Jaina only had a brain, she’d learn a few more moves in bed so that Arthas wouldn’t run away and turn into the Lich King.  See video, shit bricks.

EXTRA: Gelbin Mekkatorque

If Gelbin Mekkatorque only had a brain, he’d realize that as a raid boss-level elite, he could easily take back Gnomeregan himself.  Watch the video for nightmare fuel.

I had a very interesting conversation with a few hunters in Blog Azeroth chat the other day, and I came to a conclusion that they are very attached to their pets.  Even though there is a consensus ‘best’ pet for different situations (whether it be PvE, PvP or solo content), they adamantly stick to their favourite, often at the expense of extra DPS/utility/survivability.

“I’ll always stick to my [pet], even if it means I don’t get x or y.”

In hunter terms, can mean a few hundred DPS, depending on the type of pet chosen.  While that difference is negligible in a raid not overly serious about pushing through content, it is usually enough for people to accept the presence of different pets.

Sadly, my decision to bring a water elemental pet has more dire consequences.  It’s one thing to leave a few hundred DPS on the table, but when you leave several THOUSAND, you certainly need a damn good reason to spec frost, or you need to love your squirtle that much.

Nowadays, I’m just not sure anymore.  I used to say that I specced frost because it was my best spec, and compared to fire or arcane, it was the one that I performed best at, and was at 100% productivity all the time.  However, a recent blunder left me without a Mark of the War Prisoner, and to make up for a lack of Hit, I replaced my Fire off-spec with Arcane.

And the results were staggering.  I suppose I should thank the recent buffs that Arcane got over the past few patches, but by spamming arcane blast instead of Frostbolt, and casting arcane missiles instead of Water Elemental, my dps shot up to the 4-5k’s, easily putting me at the top of my guild runs, somewhere in 3rd-5th place in 25-man raids.

And I’m not even trying.  It’s just so easy to put out these great numbers, whereas with Frost, I’m always on my toes for the next cooldown, or calculating the timing in my head to line up my icy veins and water elemental with the upcoming heroism.

Those days raiding as frost are starting to run dry.  For every congratulatory or complimentary whisper that I get from a PuG, I get at least 5 rejections from PuG raids or are forced to switch to my healer by my guild.  The message essentially was, “We’d rather have exceptional heals than just acceptable DPS.”

With Icecrown well on the way, I want to see the content, but on my terms.  I don’t see that happening without the need to push myself into arcane and selling out my soul.  I want to play frost because I love the style in a raid environment.  But what good is that when you’re not raiding at all?

I am a diehard frost mage.  But I’m dying hard out here.  It’s a terrible position to be in, and right now there are more bad things than good.  I will never give up, but that will probably mean I will be unable to raid.  What do I do?

The festivities were in full swing, and inebriation was inevitable.  I stood in open space of the grounds outside Ironforge and took in the sights and sounds of Brewfest.  The saturation of the scent of hops in the air stung my nostrils.  The folksy dwarven music filled my ears with warm tones while the dwarves themselves chattered with vibes of good times.  The coldness from the Dun Morogh westerly winds pounded relentlessly on my gnomish skin, shielded by my rise in body temperature thanks to the alcohol in my blood.  The aftertaste of Barleybrew’s lager was bitter and biting.

And most of all, in a visual representation of everything this holiday represents, Gelbin Mekkatorque stood high above the crowd in a riveting tapping of the kegs.  Rest up.  Drink and be merry.  Forget about the pangs and pressures of pursuing Arthas in Northrend.  Get bloody smashed.

With these messages, he reminds me that there is more to life than petty squabbles with the horde, or the fact that the Lich King is constantly breathing down our necks, or that we have not heard from Deathwing in a LONG while.  As a leader by example, Gelbin brushes off the pangs of his defeats in Gnomeregan, and the regret that lingers over his actions of self-imposed genocide (and as a result, self-imposed seclusion in Tinker Town).  However, for the next two weeks, all I see is the glimmer of his public persona that suggests nothing of the sort, but rather an alluring call to solidarity with my fellow Alliance.

And that, my dear internether, the mark of a truly great leader.  Never mind the brash foolishness of Garrosh and his insatiable bloodlust, for times of unrest in a shaky alliance and a common enemy do not call for aggression.  Never mind the vengeance of Varian Wrynn, whose biased agenda against the Horde promises nothing but continued prejudice and misguided ideas.  Never mind the old age of Thrall and his declining ability to rally the entirety of his own people and create racial identity based on mistakes made in the past, bound to be repeated in the future.

Instead, look to the gnome who did not step into power by birthright, but by appointment of his peers.  Look to the individual who made great strides in technology by connecting the two great powers of the Alliance, Ironforge and Stormwind, with the marvels of high-speed, subterranean travel.  Look to the one who had the influence to unite his people against a Trogg threat.  Look to the tragic soul who, under duress, had the misfortune of pulling the trigger on what is perhaps the single most devastating loss of life, and having to bear the weight of his decision for years to come.

Instead, look at him as he smiles with hope when he taps the keg at every 6:15, and remind yourself that no matter how hopeless the prospect of defeating the Lich King (or any enemy for that matter), it is truly worth fighting for.

And in this case, worth drinking for.