Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. And by "every week," I of course mean "every week when I'm home, have access to the internet, and do not find my time entirely monopolized by my day job." Which, as you may or may not have noticed, did not include last week.

We have some things to discuss today, most notably the recently posted mage class feedback thread on the official forums. It's always interesting to see how mages respond when given an actual, legitimate forum to air their grievances with the promise of actually being heard by the developers in charge of designing our class. I have some thoughts, and if you'll indulge me, I'd like to share them with you.

But let me get this out of the way first and foremost: I love the tier 13 mage set. That's it up there in the picture. So steampunk, but in a good way. I love the goggles, the quilted armor, the gnomishness of it. I can tell you right now that I'll be transmogrifying back to this set for many tiers to come.

If you haven't checked it out yet, I suggest you visit the official site and take a look at that mage tier 13 preview and visual retrospective. It's really kind of cool to see all of our past tier sets in one place, though I have to feel bad for the poor lone Undead mage in his tier 9 gear, surrounded by all of those Humans. I can feel the racial tension from here.

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Filed under: Mage, Analysis / Opinion, (Mage) Arcane Brilliance

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we're applying a hotfix to Arcane Brilliance. Beginning now, any warlock who reads Arcane Brilliance will be overcome by intense feelings of self-loathing and an irresistible urge to reroll a mage. The column's actually been functioning this way for some time now, and we thought we ought to just make it official.

I figure it's about time we discussed the threat hotfix, mages. And before we go any further, I should point out that from now on, the threat level is always midnight. The hotfix has been in the game for a few weeks now, and I would have brought it up long before now but I got kinda sidetracked daydreaming about the whole transmogrification thing. Now that I've spent a few weeks going through all of the pretty dresses in my wardrobe and deciding which one I want to wear on my next date with Ragnaros (he's a passable conversationalist, a snappy dresser, and the dates are so much more fun now that he's bipedal ... but he tends to shout a lot, and he's a lousy tipper), I'm ready to talk about what amounts to the complete removal of one of the most basic MMO battle mechanics from the game.

Now, removal isn't the right word, I know. Threat is still technically in the game, but it no longer really matters much.

It's been sort of difficult to wrap my mind around, to be honest. It's as if I woke up one morning and discovered that I no longer needed to wear pants. For so long, pants (or a reasonable pants equivalent) were pretty much a requirement when leaving the house, but now, pantslessness is considered the style. Do I still have pants in my closet? Sure, but I only keep them in there to hide my porn beneath.

So how does this new status quo impact us as a class? And is the change good, bad, or does it lie somewhere along the spectrum between those two extremes?

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Filed under: Mage, Analysis / Opinion, (Mage) Arcane Brilliance

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we talk more about transmogrification, that oh-so-exciting upcoming feature in patch 4.3 that allows us to make our sweet tier 17 sets look like greens we got while questing in 2004. The aught-fours are so in right now!

Last week, we started our epic journey into old content to find some sweet retro threads for our totally trendy mages to wear at all the hottest mage events of the season, be they spellstealing soirées, Polymorph parties or warlock-wienie-roasts. This week, we delve into slightly more recent content.

Before we begin, we should point out a few important transmogrification details we've learned since we convened last week.

• Apparently only items with stats are candidates for transmogrification -- and by stats, I mean "other than armor." That rules out most cosmetic items. So no running around wielding a fish in each hand while raiding, I guess. Unless you can find a pair of fishes with stats on them, I guess.
• Weapons and off-hand items can only be transmogrified into similarly slotted items. That means no running around with two staves or dual-wielding daggers or perhaps a lantern in each hand. I don't know what you people are into ...
• Heirlooms are eligible, so good news for you speed levelers. Now you're not stuck for 80 levels with a single armor model.
• The gold cost isn't set but will probably be similar to reforging, meaning it will scale, being more expensive the higher the level of your equipped item happens to be -- so maybe not as much of a massive gold sink as I originally feared.
• No legendary items, which I sincerely hope changes at some point. I feel like if you earned a freaking legendary item, you should be able to keep that model on your upgraded gear if you want. Forever.
• All of this is still entirely subject to change.

And with that out of the way, on to some more of the armor sets you and I should both be hunting down and squirreling away right this very second.

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Filed under: Mage, Analysis / Opinion, (Mage) Arcane Brilliance

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we're talking about the stuff I now pledge to spend all my waking moments and most of my sleeping ones farming outdated content to obtain: old mage armor.

So what's this I hear about some newfangled patchamajigger? Transmogrifica-hoochawhatsit? Whachama-void storage? You kids and your crazy doodads and gizmos.

There's a buttload of info being released about patch 4.3, but the following literally leaped from the web page as I was reading it, plunged through my widening eye sockets and jacked directly into the pleasure centers of my brain:

• Patch 4.3 will be bringing us at least two massively important customization options.
• We will be able to replace the look of our current gear with the look of any other mage gear we possess.
• We will also have new storage space in which to store all of that gear.

There are more details, and you should go read about them if you haven't already. But what we really need to discuss here is how we can best start doing what I'm positive we all desperately want to be doing right this very second: hunting for sweet-looking gear sets. I don't know about you, but I am going to transmogrify every single bit of my tier 12 set the very instant it is possible for me to do so. I will log out on patch night in front of the spot where the transmogrifier guy is going to spawn; then when the servers come back up, I will log in and shove my gold in his pockets as forcefully as I can, so that I don't have to look like a stupid mage candle any longer than absolutely necessary.

But the questions I'm asking myself between that magical moment and this one are these: Which gear set do I want to replace it with, and what can I do right this moment to get that gear set in my inventory and ready to deploy the moment such a deployment becomes possible? Click through to see me attempt to answer my own questions.

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Filed under: Mage, Analysis / Opinion, (Mage) Arcane Brilliance

I had played the game for several months before I even realized such a thing as an addon existed. I came from a predominantly console-based gaming background, and the idea of an outside mod that could fundamentally alter or enhance the game I was playing was a completely new concept for me. It wasn't long before I ran into somebody who told me I ought to get Decursive to help me remove curses on my mage, and I remember asking this stranger, "de-whaty-what?"

He educated me about the mod a bit before the end of our dungeon run, and I promptly ran out and downloaded the thing, unzipped it into my interface/addons folder, and logged in to see what all the fuss was about. Lo and behold, it added a set of small buttons to my interface that, when clicked, cast Remove Lesser Curse on one of my poor, curse-riddled allies. (Remember when Remove Lesser Curse was called that? I always wondered where all the greater curses were.) I was blown away. This was infinitely easier than the clunky default interface! I immediately logged out, started perusing addon sites for other useful mods, and never looked back. Now my interface has evolved so far beyond the default that it's probably only one or two modifications away from identifying mankind as a threat and ending us all in a fiery hellstorm.

What was your first addon, and what prompted you to download it? Or are you one of the spartan warriors who insist on playing mod-free, as the good lord intended?

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Filed under: Breakfast Topics

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we'll be talking about ways we can make something that is already awesome (being a mage) even better. It's like when you take heaping bowl of Joss Whedon and add in a liberal sprinkling of Nathan Fillion. Yummy.

I know, I know. We already get to fling massive, flaming boulders at warlock faces. Also, we wiggle our fingers and delicious cake spontaneously appears. Being a mage is already as close to nirvana as mortals can hope to aspire to. How can that experience be improved?

The answer is simple: more warlock-killing. And more cake! Also?

Addons.

They come in all shapes and sizes, and your particular load-out may differ greatly from those of other mages you know. I'm not here to tell you you're wrong. I am here, though, to spotlight a few of those addons that have improved my experience the most of late. Join me, won't you? I promise both brevity and wit. Mostly brevity. Cake and warlocks are available in the foyer. Only one is edible, but both are cooked to perfection.

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Filed under: Mage, Analysis / Opinion, (Mage) Arcane Brilliance

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, though, we're all about frost mages. In case you aren't one, frost mages are the spec to be when fighting anything in Molten Core in 2005.

Just kidding. I kid because I love, guys. If the joke hits a little too close to home, though, it's because there's a very real, very prevalent, very false perception out there. It goes something like this:

Frost is for PVP. It isn't viable for raiding.

This sentiment has been around at various levels of general acceptance since patch 1.1, and even in the most enlightened corners of Azeroth, you'll still find those willing to perpetuate it. But then again, you'll also find people still willing to perpetuate things like racism and gender bias, so I guess ignorance, like a weed or a cockroach or a warlock, is remarkably resilient.

At any rate, in today's State of the Frost Mage address, you'll no doubt discover a recurring theme. That theme is this:

Frost is absolutely, positively viable.

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Filed under: Mage, Analysis / Opinion, (Mage) Arcane Brilliance

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we resume our three-part look at the current state of the mage nation. If you say that fast, it totally sounds like "imagination." DELIGHTFUL.

I am so sorry, guys. I want to write this column. I want to write it every week. Given the choice, I'd like to write it every damn day. I have an incredibly demanding work and family schedule these days. Each week, it's like a magician's trick trying to produce enough time to sit down and provide you guys with a quality column, and some weeks, I wave my hands and say the magic words, and a puff of smoke appears, and when it fades ... nothing's there. I'm working very hard to change my current schedule, though, enabling me to have a regular, slightly more controllable block of time every seven days during which to deliver you something worth reading. So take heart, and keep me in your prayers or thoughts or whatever it is that you think will help, you godless heathens. And if you want someone to blame for the recent irregularity of Arcane Brilliance, blame my children. They are time-destroying merchants of pure evil, and I tell them so as often as I can. Keeps them in line.

Anyway, I know when I wrote the state of the arcane mage column way back in June, I remember promising two more columns, touching upon the current state of affairs for the other two mage specs. It is almost August now. Yikes. Why do you guys put up with my nonsense?

Without further delay, I present to you the 2011 state of the fire mage address, delivered to you from a pulpit of pure flame perched upon the highest peak in the Firelands, to a congregation of mages seated within an auditorium constructed entirely of flaming warlock skulls. It's incredibly uncomfortable, but also crazy-epic.

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Filed under: Mage, Analysis / Opinion, (Mage) Arcane Brilliance

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we dispel mage-related myths, expose wizardly untruth, and separate magical fact from fiction ... just like the Mythbusters, only with more Fireballs.

You may not believe this, but lately I've been finding something more annoying than the continued existence of warlocks. I know, I know. Crazy, right? What could possibly be more annoying than our emo-loving, Hot Topic-frequenting, mascara-laden, parent-hating nemesises? Nemesi? Apparently the dictionary says "nemesis" is its own plural, which is just ... boring.

Anyway, the answer to the question that I just pretended you asked is this:

"Mages are a two-button class." -- The internet

These days, you literally can't post the word "mage" anywhere on the web without someone, usually multiple people, posting some poorly spelled, perplexingly punctuated amalgam of the above words. It's usually intended as an indictment of the class, a dismissal of what non-mages feel is the simplistic nature of of our major DPS spell rotations. The assumption is that mages are an easy, boring class to play, that one could be a successful mage simply by drunkenly alternating pressing two buttons.

For a very long time, it was easy for me to ignore this. It was stupid, and false, and perpetuated by non-mages who were either clear trolls or outright ignorant. But lately, I've been hearing self-deprecating versions of this same phrase from actual, honest-to-goodness mages. Are we really buying into the ignorant assumptions of the rest of the community? It was at that moment that I realized that it was time I addressed what I call the two-button myth.

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Filed under: Mage, Analysis / Opinion, (Mage) Arcane Brilliance

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we're taking a trip through the first 20 levels of the game, which are now eternal. The important thing to remember about rolling a mage is that you've made the right choice; congratulations.

Between the newly adopted unending demo, the extended Recruit-a-Friend promotion, and the freshly bargain-priced WoW/The Burning Crusade bundle, it seems Blizzard is making a concerted effort to woo new players. And from my limited viewpoint, it seems to be working.

I have a brother, a year and some change younger than me, who doesn't live near me. This sucks, because he and I have absolutely everything in common. We grew up taking turns watching each other play Shining Force, or designing Dungeons & Dragons campaigns to force each other to play through, but then college, family, and career separated us. I'm here in Las Vegas playing copious amounts of video games and ignoring my kids, and he's at Purdue, working on his doctorate and just generally making me ashamed of the waste my life has become. Naturally, I've been trying for years to drag him down to my level. Thus far he's resisted, but when I notified him of these new opportunities to play the game on the cheap, he finally took the plunge.

And rolled a warrior.

Sigh.

Oh well. At least it wasn't a warlock, right?

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Filed under: Mage, Analysis / Opinion, (Mage) Arcane Brilliance