Frost Mage PvP. (prepare for QQ and butthurt)

(this post goes out to Frogoe from last post's comments! keep the comments coming, I love it!)
I hope yall have seen the comments on the patch notes any time since 4.0.3 dropped. If it's not "omg why did blizz buff frost mages again???", it's "ffffff blizz loves mages ther class is op," over and over.
(that was a joke, please never read the comments on Blizzard's website, it'll make your IQ drop 10 points)
But in all seriousness, Frost mages are absolutely dominating the PvP scene. We have burst damage, high mitigation (and 10-second immunity), and more stuns and roots than a tree on PCP.
That's why I want to go over some Frost PvP today. I PvP pretty actively, usually getting my 1343 Conquest points pretty easily. I'm at about 2.5k resilience, which is enough to keep me alive against all but the most hardened arena junkies. That said, I think I'm a pretty decent frost mage, and now I want to impart my information and knowledge on to some of you.
First off, know that while we're still the best class in the game, and handsome as all get out, we're still pretty fragile little cannons. Yes, we wear dresses into combat against guys bristling with metal spikes and teeth and emotional issues, all of whom want to mount our pretty dresses on their wall. So that means that we can't let them hit us! Which is where the Frost mage shines.
Let's make a quick list of things which can prevent us from being wailed on by the scary warrior who's holding two giant metal bludgeons:
Frost Nova (glyphed)
Cone of Cold (talented)
Blink
Freeze (pet)
Ice Barrier (talented)
Ring of Frost
Ice Block
This is where we take control. We've got a total of five freezes, two on super short cooldowns, and three that are on a somewhat longer cooldown. That's the point of frost mage PvP.
We freeze, we deep freeze, and we burst enemies down. Look at our nukes: Frostbolt is supestrong and super fast. Ice lance does ridiculous damage. So with those two things down, we can talk about strategies.
Well, use your pet's freeze pretty much on cooldown, and do all you can to keep your enemies frozen. We're talking Frost Nova, Ring of Frost, and Cone of Cold. Once they're frozen, we get a massive DPS boost, so if you're sure they're stuck, start unloading on them. If you can freeze them, get off a Deep Freeze, then you've got time to shoot off two Frostbolts and an Ice Lance.
Of course, this isn't PvE, so there are no definite strategies for opponents that shift their strategy. So the general idea is to keep your opponents as far away from you as possible (utilizing all your freezes/roots and Blink), and then you tear them a new one.
How you accomplish that is up to you.
Oh, and when you gear up with your Bloodthirsty/Vicious gear, shoot for haste, and around 201-240 spell pen, which will negate any and all resistances an enemy could have. Other than that, shoot for resilience and good luck on your arena matches! If I see you, though, no mercy ;)

An update on my current situation!

In game, at least. A lot has happened in the past few weeks, the biggest being the fact that I have now switched guilds! I went from a guild full of squares into one of the best guilds on the server, one that is 13/13 and almost 7/12 heroic! We managed to pull off realm first 25, and now have three solid groups progressing through raids. It's pretty boss.
In other news, I've managed to upgrade a lot of my items, bumping my overall average ilvl to 355 PvE and 360 PvP! There are four blue items in my equipment, which is nothing to scoff at, if I might be so bold.
Whoops, forgot to mention this was on my mage ;)
Also, I have managed to gear my paladin to a similar level, with his average ilvl being roughly 351 in full tanking gear, with plenty of points to spend to get some better stuff.
Lately though, I've been leveling my alts. I created a guild bank for some of my own characters and a friend's, and I've been leveling all the professions I haven't done yet. It's been a pretty good time sink, and I've made a couple hundred gold selling greens and glyphs. Unrelated note, if you can play a death knight well, they're really fun!
In any case. That's a quick rundown on where I'm at (as always you can find me on the armory, links are in previous posts), hope to see you all again soon!

wow! i've missed this!

Hello again everyone, as you may or may not have noticed, I have been away for quite some time! Unfortunately certain things in my life needed some attending to (including finals, spring break, and familial obligations), but now I'm back in the blogging swing! I apologize to anyone who cared to read my blog. With that said, I'm back, and I look forward to reading all of my friends' blogs as well!

I have, however, managed to keep playing in the time I've been gone. Update post soon!

Please hold those in Japan in your thoughts.

As you all might already know, a 8.9 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Japan late Thursday night (PST). The death toll is (as of right now) 24, with many many more injured. Tidal wave warnings have been issued and the damage is enormous.
I would just like to ask you to keep them in your thoughts, or prayers if your beliefs call for that as well. Just remember these are our brothers whose lives have been devastated through no fault of their own.
There have also been heightened tsunami alerts around the pacific, so keep an eye out for those in hawai'i and australia and the philipines and the like. My heart goes out to all afflicted.

Tips for Fire Mages 2: Electric Boogaloo!

Okay! So last post we talked all about rotations for a fire mage roaming the World of Warcraft (or talked a little about them). Today it's all about what you need to get into those rotations with maximum efficiency.
First up, talent points. Now since this is a PvE spec, we won't be needing the primarily PvP talents that lay in the Fire tree, namely Molten Shields and Blazing Speed. The movement boost is nice, but we're already mobile enough with a castable-while-moving Scorch. That said, here's my spec:
Altradine [Nathrezim, US]
A few words about my spec. There's a bit of wiggle room with this tree, but there's also a few necessary talents. I've grabbed Cauterize, because it gives me a bit more utility in various situations in raids and dungeons, as well as soloing. The best way to use it is as soon as it pops, it'll take any blow that kills you and brings you back to 40% health, but for the next 6 seconds you'll tick for a total of 48% of your health. That's 8% you need to mitigate or heal. In a raid or dungeon situation, that's no problem - your healer will notice your health is dropping quickly, and should heal you through it. When soloing, however, it's best to throw your DoTs on targets, get Cauterized, and then pop Ice Block; this will negate all the damage you'll take. I know a lot of people skip over this, but for the time being it's incredibly useful. Often it leaves me the only DPS alive.
And obviously, we're going to grab Improved Hot Streak, after grabbing Hot Streak, of course. Then we're going to grab the various AoE talents that make our class so damn awesome. Impact is necessary for this, as it facilitates our DoT spreading, especially tossing around Living Bomb ;)
So that's my talent spec, and like I said, a bit of wiggle room, but it's necessary to get a few key talents. You can throw a few points into the speed boost talents, or you can toss more into Burning Soul, but I just put my last throwaway point in there for a bit of utility.
Then there's the other trees. We'll just throw a few points into Piercing Ice for some extra crit, and then some points in Netherwind Presence for a bit of extra haste. Nothing else in these trees really helps more, so feel free to dump the rest into Fire talents.
So that's our spec!
Let's discuss glyphs quickly...
Prime Glyphs:
Glyph of Fireball - 5% increased crit with fireball, our main nuke. Good for building more Pyroblast!s.
Glyph of Pyroblast - 5% increased chance to double damage with our best spell? Yes please.
Glyph of Molten Armor - blanket 2% crit to just boost our damage and our Hot Streak procs.

Major Glyphs:
Glyph of Dragon's Breath - nice CD on our best AoE, plus useful for soloing, as it keeps your enemies disoriented.
Glyph of Polymorph - removes all DoTs from our polymorph'd target. Great for CC'ing in dungeons (next post!), as well as PvP, as it keeps your target free from damage when sheeped.
The others are optional, and pick as you see fit, I have Evocation for some self-heals. You can pick Blast Wave or Mana Shields, but they aren't that important otherwise.
Minor:
Trivial. I usually always have Glyph of Slow Fall so I don't have to use a reagent, and it lets me survive some falls (obviously). You can reduce your mana cost for some meta spells but that's all flavor!

I hope this was helpful to you, let me know if you have any questions or suggestions!

Tips for Fire Mages, volume 1.

(warning: lots of jargon and technical details ahead :)
Alright, so now we'll focus on the Mage side of things instead of the Paladin side.
Personally, I play Fire for raiding/dungeons/PvE, and Frost for PvP (like everyone else?). I've always loved Fire since Vanilla, but until recently it hasn't been viable for DPS. Arcane just took a solid lead during the Wrath era, so Fire just kind of got shoved to the wayside. Not so in Cataclysm. With patch 4.0.1 came immense changes to the core Fire mechanics, so much so that it became the de facto raiding spec come Cataclysm. We've become masters of on-the-move casting and DoT-throwing. With that in mind, here is a small batch of tips for those looking to make the switch from someone who considers themselves a pretty good Fire Mage.
First off. Always make sure you have your DoTs up. These include Living Bomb, Ignite (procs automatically as you cast), Living Bomb, Living Bomb, and of course, Living Bomb. Without these (this), your DPS is going to suffer immensely. Living Bomb is out bread and butter. Not only does it tick off a healthy chunk of damage every second, it explodes at the end of its duration and damages all enemies near the afflicted enemy. Not bad, if I had to say. This is key to the rest of our rotations.
Now about your spells. If you've spec'd right, you'll have Critical Mass maxed out, so we're going to toss a Scorch at first to throw the 5% crit chance debuff onto the mob. Then, we're going to Fireball til we run out of mana (or at least start to get low), throwing down an Impact-ed Fire Blast when we can.
The most important part is knowing when to use Combustion. If you're in a boss scenario, you always want to wait until you have the DoT from Pyroblast! (yes, with the exclamation point, this is the one that procs from Hot Streak, then throw down the Combustion. It not only does damage (negligible, but appreciated), but it totals all your DoTs, duplicates them and combines them, then ticks away for that amount of damage. It's a double-DoT that's capable of critting. It's probably the best thing to happen to fire mages since man discovered fire.

aaaand now we're out of the woods, because that's all for today. If you have any tips or things to add, let me know! Next post we'll talk about viable specs and glyphs. Until then!

Yes! Tanking!

So I finally hit 85 last night (took me forever but whatever! I'm there!), and now I can finally tank instances with my guild and whatnot. It's a great feeling, because now I can remove my leveling spec and focus on end-game stuff. I've been waiting for so long, it's nice to be able to fill in roles!
I'll probably start posting with strategies and updates on my raiding progress now, so expect more on Cataclysm endgame content!
In other news, thanks to all my followers! I'm so excited to have such a large following so quickly, and I'll be sure to say what's up to you all as well!

By the way, here's a link to my armory profiles...

Altradine (mage)
and
Valaed (paladin)
!
If you see me in-game hit me up!

UPDATE:
Oh yeah, I forgot, I'm going to also be talking about a bit of music on this blog, just stuff I'm listening to while I play/blog/go through the day. I'll go more in depth next post but this week I've really been digging Radiohead's new album The King of Limbs. Go check that one out!

Almost 85!

So I'm about three bars from 85 on my paladin, and just as I'm about to turn in a bar's worth of quests I get DC'd. It's like Blizzard is conspiring against me...I really wanted to get to 85 tonight too haha. Oh well. I'll pick up my tanking spec tomorrow I suppose!

UPDATE: Unfortunately my asshole internet provider (Time Warner/Cox) decides to throttle traffic to Blizzard servers whenever they feel like it. No logical reason, they just do. I don't understand. This is not good business.

Holy Power generation, and healing.

Alright, well, apparently in 4.1 we're getting a few changes to our rotations as Ret. Word of Glory is now on a 20-second CD if you aren't holy. Kind of takes away from the Ret pally's survivability toolbox, but as it stands I don't think we really need that outside of an unfairly balanced PvP environment. We're damage dealers, not tanks, and with any luck we'll get some kind of buff or new talent to replace the now-nearly-worthless Selfless Healer. Now we'll have to think twice about it, which I'm not really sure is a bad thing. In other news, Divine Storm is getting [meta]-buffed, as it now grants one HP when it hits 4 or more targets. Which only makes sense, as DS and Crusader Strike share a CD, forcing you to choose between AoE and single-target attacks. This should be a nice boost to Ret DPS, especially in dungeons as players gear up and we're able to AoE a little more. My only question is why wasn't this already implemented, Blizz?
Now about healing.....I'm ooming all the time, even though I'm popping all my mana CDs, which keeps me on my toes, I suppose, but makes it hard for hard-headed tanks to realize that this isn't Wrath anymore. Unfortunately....both tanks and DPS don't realize that the healer now needs to drink, which expounds upon the problem of bone-headed DPS taking way too much damage, or forgetting to sheep, or AoE'ing CC'd targets,  or what have you. I've been there as a DPS, it's not that hard to realize something is going to hurt you! They make it pretty clear!
So in summation...please don't stand on top of something that's smoking and rustling like it's going to stab at you. Don't stand in the huge purple circles of death. PLEASE don't attack the feared/sheeped/repented/what have you'd target.
Thanks,
your neighborhood/guild healer

Before I get into the meat of my nerddom...

I thought I'd just say that the new Odd Future is so swag.

just so crazy, so good!
controversial hip-hop outfit, what do yall think about em?

What's up everyone?

Just a little note, I started this blog to capture my musings as I traverse through the world as a Mage and a Paladin. 85 mage, 83 pally. Sometimes I mix up my bars, and then people get mad.