Leveling, Inscription and Beta 13241

Finished leveling my shaman the other day, the total leveling time you can see above. I’m kind of surprised at how quick it was. I knew the new talents, along with specializations at level 10 was going to expedite the journey of leveling a new character, but I didn’t expect it to be quite so much. Granted, I did have full heirlooms, aside from the heirloom ring from the fishing contest. I guess it helps to have nearly every quest memorized as well, but not so much these days, considering you can just look at your map and instantly know where to go.

On top of that, I decided to level Inscription for my Shaman, half the reason being that, currently, Inscription is a goddamn money printing profession on pretty much any server. One of the very first glyphs you can learn before even reaching skill level 100 in the profession can sell for 100g. Of course, this is most likely prone to entropy, and will decrease quite a bit a month or two after Cataclysm is released.

In the Beta side of things, we have a new build that was pushed today, which is 13241. Changes to the Mage class are as follows:



Arcane

* Arcane Blast now increases damage by 10% (down from 20%) and mana cost by 150% (down from 175%) with each cast of Arcane Blast. Now also reduces the casting time by 0.1 sec with each cast. Base cast time reduced from 2.5 sec to 2.35 sec.
* Arcane Missiles base damage has been increased by 5%, from 341 to 358.
* Focus Magic tooltip clarified to add the 30 min duration and 1 target limit.
* Arcane Barrage base damage has been increased by 5%, from [ 1004 - 1228 ] to [ 1054 - 1288 ].

Fire

* Combustion now combines all your damaging periodic Fire effects on the enemy target, but does not consume them.
* Fire Power damage has been added to the tooltip – [ 1134 to 1336 ].

Frost

* Shattered Barrier now freezes enemies within 10 yards for 2/4 sec, down from 3/6 sec.
* Fingers of Frost now has a 7/14/20% chance to proc from your Chill effects, down from 10/20/30%.
* Early Frost now reduces the cast time of Frostbolt by 0.3/0.6 sec, down from 0.35/0.7 sec.



Some minor nerfs to Frost here, presumably for PvP balance. 20% proc chance on FoF means less shatter Icelances, which a number of people have been complaining about. I’m not sure what to make of the Shattered Barrier change, it may lead me to reconsider Improved Cone of Cold. I previously didn’t like both of them, as the risk of running into heavy diminishing returns with both would be pretty high.

The Arcane bits also puzzle me as well. They look like buffs across the board for the spec, but since Arcane isn’t a spec I really care about it, I can’t fully comment on it. That’s about it for now.

(On a sidenote, you’d think people would learn not to ride ontop of the Elemental shaman’s nuts when in the middle flag section of EOTS. Thunderstorm, ho!)