Arcane Mage Guide for Patch 5.0.4

Nymphy is an arcane mage who logged into the post 5.0.4 patch World of Warcraft and noticed two very huge things. 1.) Her UI wasn't as broken as she feared! Yay for quick addon updates, she salutes the addon writers for being super prepared! 2.) Uhhh, her spec however, WAS broken, and broken beyond repair.


(Important Note for the Reading Impaired: Arcane mana regen has totally been fixed. For an actual Arcane mage guide please see the link at the bottom of the post.)

So! Here is my super handy guide for surviving as an arcane mage until Mists of Pandaria is released in a month.

1.) Run to the target dummies or perhaps even a heroic dungeon to test out new rotation.

2.) Immediately commence QQ because OMG MANA?! WHERE DID IT GO?!!!

3.) Realize that you don't get your major mana regeneration talent until level 90.

4.) Respec into Frost as right now there is simply no way you can sustain an arcane rotation on the fixed mana pool without mana regen.

5.) REFORGE ALL THE THINGS! Then QQ when you realize that you have to reforge ALL that lovely, sexy mastery into...<sigh> haste.
       5a.) Then REGEM ALL THE THINGS! (Not really ALL the things, just like 4 gems for me)
       5b) REGLYPH ALL THE THINGS!!!!

6.) Go searching for a Frost guide to help you figure out what the hell to do. Find one and slowly figure out a rotation.

7.) Organize your casting bars so they seem to look like they make sense.

8.) Grab a group of your guildies and convince them to accompany you to a Hour of Twilight heroic and eye your Water Elemental suspiciously. (PET BAR?! Uhh, I guess I put him on assist and leave it right?)

9.) Realize with a sinking heart that you can't go back to arcane until level 90 and you might as well get used to playing another spec that you do, hey, actually halfway decent DPS on surprisingly!

10.) Still countdown the month until you can respec Arcane though!

Frost isn't that bad to be honest <gasp!> But Arcane is where my heart stays and lives and it is where I have found the most enjoyment in playing my mage. I look forward to the Day of Pandas when I can level and respec back into it, but for now I am enjoying playing around with something new.

So hopefully you didn't come here looking for a REAL arcane mage guide for the latest patch, because I am not a huge theorycrafter and you should go here instead. If you did, then I apologize. This "guide" was meant to be a humorous, QQ, mage thing instead of a real thing. Please go to the linked guide, they have super helpful information in an easy to read format. And if you want to L2FrostMage(Nub) then go read Jed's excellent post here.

Gamer Grrls and Guys: Long Distance to Living Together

   Nymphy is the GM of Eff the Ineffable and regrets the sheer neglect of this blog, especially after the brand new header was installed by the lovely Liala, over at Disciplinary Action. Hopefully this revival in the sheer lack of topics in this in between expansions time, will breathe new life into it. 

   Orv is the emergency back up substitute co-GM of Eff the Ineffable. He heard Nymphy was writing about moving in together and wanted to make sure she didn’t blurt all of his embarrassing habits out to all the readers... then had to put his two cents in.

   *Dusts off the blog, sneezes a couple times* Wow, deserted much? But to be honest, while we are majorly behind on a lot of projects, there really isn’t much WoW material to be had. Yes, Eff the Ineffable is proud to have cleared 2/8 heroic Dragon Soul and knocked out about half the steps for the meta achievements as well. But real life has a way of interfering and that is exactly what happened with us. The biggest news of course is that Nymphy is expecting a baby at the end of November. For those keeping time by when Mists of Pandaria is released, she is due approximately two months into the expansion. The fine people of Twitter have dubbed the baby “Lockling” as it was conceived by a mage (blue) and a pally (pink) whose class colors combine to make purple(ish). Such logic can’t be refuted.

   In other exciting news, Orv and Nymphy are finally moved in together after 18 long months of living in different states, which brings up the core of this post; what happens when two geeks who have been in a long distance relationship finally move in together? Whose nerd swag gets to go on the prominent shelves? How do you behave around each other? Well ladies and gentleman, this is the post for you. The answer to all the questions, including the most important one.... “Where does the cereal go?”

In Which D/E the Tank! Celebrates its First Blogoversary!

   First we would like to first thank our readers. Without you guys, this wouldn’t have been nearly so much fun. It is hard to believe that we have been around a year. Well, to be technical we realize that we are a week late, however cast your eyes to the top. See that? Yes! It is our new header! Courtesy of the lovely Liala over at Disciplinary Action we have a nice new shiny! We thought it would be apropos to save our big first year post to also commemorate a new header as well!

   But Nymphy, you promised us babies! I do want to apologize for the severe lateness in two of our Epic Baby Posts. I also promise that we will put them together as soon as possible if not this weekend. Real life has eaten my time and Orv’s as well. We have not forgotten and you shall get your dose of squee here soon!

   This past year has been an amazing experience, both in doing the baby posts and others. The whole blogging, WoW, and Twitter community has been so supportive in helping us turn a maybe thing into a very fun and real thing! Looking back over the year that we have been writing this blog we are very humbled by the people who read and enjoy it. So to all of our readers, commenters, twitter followers, friends, romans, countrymen, thank you for joining us time and time again as we try to make you laugh, make you think, make you a better tank (whether of mobs or the floor), or make you squee at adorable babies. (We promise the rest of the baby posts are coming!) We will also try to up the posting rate. Twice a month, if that, is terrible and we are sorry! We do hope you will continue to follow our antics as we go into Mists bubble sheeping through WoW. And pets! And maybe more babies! ;) Definitely more floor tanking! And perhaps another boring tank guide from Orv.

(In case you're reading this in a feed reader, here is Liala's awesome logo!)

The Bosses of Firelands As Depicted Through Seven Words

Nymphy is the arcane mage GM of Eff the Ineffable. She heard from a guildie that the esteemed Big Bear Butt was hosting a writing challenge. You could write whatever you wanted as long as you included 7 certain words. These words made it a challenge not to go completely perverted and she thinks she mostly succeeded

Required Words: Juicy, Slender, Vain, Shaft, Torch, Star, and Hidden

(As an aside, it was REALLY hard not to go completely perverted with these >.>)

My thought processes on this was that there were 7 mandatory words to be used. There were also 7 bosses in the tier 12 raid Firelands. I then creatively applied one word to each of the bosses.

Mists of...Say What?!

Nymphy is an arcane mage with Eff the Ineffable who just heard about MoPs. I mean she has an enchanted broom, why not a MoP? She guesses that said MoP is going to revolutionize the way she...wait...*peers at spelling* Oh! MoP as in the new land that revealed itself when Deathwing decided to throw a tantrum and shatter Azeroth as she knew it.

Orvillius is a protection paladin who finds the sudden existence of a new continent that people totally never noticed before completely plausible. After all, have you seen the shipping lanes from Stormwind to Darnassus? (It’s an honest question, Orv would never be caught in Darnassus)

Blizzcon has come and gone and once again there were plenty of shattering revelations. This year’s news has brought about an even greater uproar than most years. So all the furor has Orv and Nymphy digging to see exactly what all the fuss is about.

Haha good one Blizzard... What? They're serious?

Our Search Terms Have Made Us Into the Steamiest Blog on the Net

  Nymphy is an arcane mage for Eff the Ineffable. Recently she discovered that people mistake this blog for information on quite a few different things...Oh my...

  Orv is a protection paladin for Eff the Ineffable. When he isn’t busy trying to find a boss that will drop an epic tank helm (seriously...7 months of raiding...1 tank helm dropped. ONCE.) he’s wondering how some of you found your way over here.

  D/E the Tank is a WoW-centric blog that provides a humorous slant on Orv’s and Nymphy’s adventures in the World of Warcraft. At least that is what WE thought it was. Turns out it is a site for quite a DIFFERENT thing. We have turned out to be the steamiest blog on the net. What with all the floor loving and maybe relationships with certain NPC’s. With that in mind...maybe it doesn’t surprise us as much to see some of the emerging terms that people use to find us and this blog.

Orv is Gonna Get It! Or: Nymphy Comes Home to WAY too much Srsness.

Nymphy is an arcane mage who had to take a break from the internets for a week to deal with the Real Life Boss and comes back to find her funny and witty blog that she writes with Orv completely and utterly ruined by, not one, but two (two!) srs posts.

  See?! This is what happens when I leave. You, the reader, expect to find some humorous content to read in your spare time. Perhaps something to give you a chance to chuckle or smile in your busy day. Instead what did you find this week? Yeah, I hear you. Two srs posts by Orv. I apologize right now if he made you fall asleep. I mean, omgwtfbbq?, who wants to hear about pally talent trees? I lol’d at the names of their talents. All I could see is more of the same ego boosting abilities that I have to listen to Orv go on and on about every night. He tries to explain their importance to me but all I hear is that Peanuts teacher’s voice going blah blah blah I am so great blah blah blah. Orv! Get some real talents that read like mine! How about a little Torment(ing) the Weak or Incanter’s Absorption? Yeah, yeah, Blessing of Kings is great and all that, but you can find that buff a dime a dozen. How about feeling important when everyone is like “Ooh Nymphy! I want Focus Magic” and immediately starts parading their crit numbers in front of you? Yeah that’s right. We don’t need no prissy talents like Pursuit of Justice. You think Internet Dragons care about your pursuit of justice? Nope! Not a bit. They do care when they are on the receiving end of my Improved Arcane Missiles and Arcane Blasts.

  In all seriousness (in the midst of all the tanking is srs business posts) I hope that people got a lot out of the tanking posts. Orv is a super amazing tank (shh! don’t tell him! God I can feel his ego swell from over here!) and knows his stuff. He tanks for me both in game and out and saves my squishy self time after time, so I can vouch for his knowledge of things tankadin. And I fully support overthrowing Team Heals’ tyranny. But not officially, you understand. I mean they keep me alive in raids so if I were to out and out support this venture I would see my floor time increase dramatically followed by suspicious claims that I broke Line of Sight. While standing in the middle of an open field. So never fear readers, your laughs are incoming... as soon as I clean up the mess Orv left around here!

How to Build a Good Reputation as a New Tank (In the Post RDF World)

Orvillius is a human tankadin who was started back in Vanilla, but never reached level cap until WotLK. Orvillius dinged level 80 the week the random dungeon finder was released, in a Forge of Souls random, and spent the next couple months figuring out how to get invited to tank a raid. Despite these "handicaps" Orv established a reputation as a competent tank on his small server, joined a solid raiding guild (if one that was a little late to the party) and did manage to down the LK before Cata dropped.

Nymphy is a human arcane mage of the species called DPS. Also not been leveled capped before Wrath, she has since started a career of being belittled about loving the floor which has sometimes been at the hands of tanks. She felt like she had to come here to prevent Orv’s preaching on how to be a good tank and that it needed a dps perspective. While tanking is srs bsns, this post needed to be prevented from taking that tone. Who wants to read a dry account of tanking anyway?

Rhii is a mage-blogger-turned-resto-shaman who tries to talk seriously about healing at least once a week but usually just tells stories about fail PuGs and all the tanks she has on ignore. She’s been a healer since mid-Wrath, starting out raiding as a holy paladin and changing to resto shaman in ICC. She is moonlighting here at D/E the Tank because Oh My, Kurenai! no longer pays the bills. Wut?!

Back in prehistoric times, like when tBC was current content, 5-man dungeons were a BIG DEAL. There was a rep grind just to unlock the heroics, there were CC requirements as strict as, or even stricter than, Cata heroics, and there were attunement quests required to get in the front door of many raids. With all the time a player spent pugging for dungeons it was, speaking as someone who never personally got to level cap in BC, easier to build a reputation as a good tank, a good healer, an excellent chain trapper, a mage who never let their sheep expire, etc. In WotLK attunement requirements were removed and the difficulty curve of even the heroic dungeons was flattened considerably. This was great for casual players who wanted a level-capped toon, but not so great if you were trying to build a reputation as a competent tank! I don't think I've ever been in a guild where we had enough back up healers, so I'm going to just assume here that healers ding level 80 and have guilds offer them cookies and other bribes to come join their healing stables.

While Orv was leveling from 60-79 there was no dungeon finder, and he had to sit in the LFG channel pimping himself out, or desperately seeking a healer, if he wanted to run a dungeon. This worked in his favor as, after a while, he knew a few good healers, a couple of really solid DPS, and even another tank or two he could turn to for advice as he leveled up and unlocked new content. While that is more than many tanks have when they hit level cap today, I can't remember more than one or two occasions where those connections got Orv into a raid, and both of those were well after Orv had already established a reputation as a competent raiding tank. The point of this rambling paragraph is that while Orv did not have the benefit of the random dungeon finder while leveling, he still reached level cap in the same situation that many newly level 80 tanks find themselves in today. His guild was not going to drag him through heroics and older raids to gear him up, his gear was ok for heroics but sub-par for the current tier of raid content, and if he wanted to get into a raid he was going to have to PuG himself out.

“Quick! Someone DE the Tank!”: So What *Would* Your Toon Disenchant Into?

Orvillius is a human paladin, tanking for Eff the Ineffable on Azuremyst. Recently he cut off his gorgeous Willie Nelson braids, and is worried that raid bosses just don’t find him threatening anymore.

Nymphy is a human mage also raiding for Eff the Ineffable on Azuremyst.  And while she could care less about how much the raid bosses find her threatening, she does often worry about how sexy their floors are. 

A few weekends ago the Effers decided to go on an afternoon stroll through the Sunwell Plateau. Calling in reinforcements after a wipe on overly aggressive trash pulls we started rolling through the place. When we reached the “gauntlet” ramp and picked up the pace, jokes started flying about how tough it would have been “at level” and during a laughably easy accidental double-pull I called out “Quick DI the tank so I can rez!”  Only I didn’t. I called out for someone to D/E the tank, quickly spawning a catchphrase for the evening (and a quirky title for Nymphy and I’s new blog).  Since then we’ve been asking Effers, friends, and anyone we can get to stand still long enough, what THEY would disenchant into, hoping to get a few humorous stories out of it.  So enjoy the lulz below!