It’s time again for Arcane Brilliance, the weekly mage column that loves nothing more than to gaze down upon the whole of Northrend from one of the floating chunks of stone around Dalaran and realize that at some point, a mage has probably killed every living thing down there. At least the targetable ones, anyway. And the ones you can’t target? I’m sure more than one mage has certainly tried.

So I’m officially nominating patch 3.3 for “best patch ever” status. Here’s a short list of the highlights of this patch:

• Three highly challenging, fun, lore-filled 5-man instances, full of sweet loot
• A massive new raid, with four gated sections, 12 bosses, and the promise of eventually being able to shove a Fireball up the Lich King’s tailpipe
• The incredible, game-changing Dungeon Finder Tool, which is responsible for peace in the Middle East, has brought an end to the recession, and has cured cancer
• A few choice mage buffs, including a PvE viable Frost spec
• Quest Tracking without the need for an addon
• Quel’delar and Shadowmourne
• A swiftly approaching new Arena Season
• Weekly raid quests
• The Kalu’ak Fishing Derby
• Perky the Pug
• A host of little changes for low level characters
• Rocket bare

Not shabby, right? And best of all, Blizzard has managed to deploy the majority of this new content without also deploying a host of bugs, glitches, and instability, or otherwise making the game unplayable for awhile as we’ve come to expect from patches this large. There were some log-in issues and bugginess on day one, but by day two, everything was running relatively smoothly by day two. I’m being relatively conservative when I say that Blizzard, in my personal opinion, has hit this one out of the park.

As we discussed last week, perhaps no single change in the history of the game has altered WoW’s landscape so fundamentally as the Dungeon Finder Tool. Bridging the gap between a fresh level 80 character and a completely raid-worthy character has never been easier, or more fun, to accomplish. The options are myriad. Even those of you who have been raiding consistently with your mages prior to 3.3 will likely find a host of new ways to plug holes in your gear set through this new tool.

So let’s look at our new options:

Gearing from scratch

Once upon a time (and not very long ago at all), hitting 80 was a milestone that ushered in a new weeks-long period of desperately trying to span the gulf between your mismatched greens and blues and the epicness you saw all around you. It required expensive profession mats, reputation grinding, and hours of waiting for instance groups to form. It took, as I mentioned earlier, weeks.

Now you can make more progress in an afternoon.

As I see it, there are two excellent options for a fresh level 80 mage, depending upon the resources available to you. If you have a group of friends or guildies to play with who are willing to carry you a bit at first, your single most efficient path is to head directly for normal Trial of the Champion and then farm it. Item-level 200 epics drop from every boss there, and you’ll find you can fill up a great many slots with quality gear in very little time without ever leaving that instance. It isn’t terribly difficult for even moderately geared characters on normal mode, and after a few runs, if the drops go your way, you’ll find you aren’t a liability anymore.

The other option, for those without access to that kind of in-game support structure, or those who simply wish not to be carried even for a short while, is to immediately begin queuing for random Lich King dungeons in the Dungeon Finder. Not the heroics…you aren’t ready for that. Just hit the normal versions of the level 80 Lich King dungeons, and start upgrading your gear to blue-quality and picking up Emblems of Triumph. Now, the problem with this is that you will likely get thrown into some random Trial of the Champion groups, or even more likely, some random Icecrown Citadel 5-man groups. The Icecrown 5-mans, especially, are a bit beyond your abilities at this point. Blizzard has implemented a hidden minimum gear-score requirement for entry into these instances, but in my experience, it doesn’t always work.

If you get one of these instances, you have two choices: leave and wait out the 15 minute debuff, or stick around and risk being kicked. I’m not telling you what to choose here. If you leave, there’s still a very good chance you’ll get thrown into another of these four tough instances the next time you queue anyway. If you’re confident in your skills, and you feel you can make up for your low DPS by not dragging down your group in other ways, then by all means give these instances a shot. If your group is forgiving, they may not care about your subpar DPS. If the group is struggling, you may need to discretely excuse yourself to provide them the opportunity to find a more seasoned DPS. One place I’d absolutely avoid until you get better gear is the final Icecrown 5-man instance, Halls of Reflection. The wave-style opening encounter can be harsh for even strong groups, and the final flight from the Lich King is such a massive DPS race that you risk crippling your group and causing a wipe if you’re not putting out solid damage.

Of course, you can solve all of these problems by queuing only for specific instances, but by doing so, you eliminate the ability to start collecting Emblems of Triumph. The bottom line here is to start hitting instances right away, learning your role within the group, and collecting gear upgrades as swiftly as possible. When you feel ready (and it really shouldn’t take very long at all), you can again choose from one of two paths.

1. Random Heroics

You should find it even faster to find groups for these, as everybody and their grandma is farming heroics for Emblems right now, and I don’t see that popularity tapering off anytime soon. It’s important that you be relatively well-geared before hitting the heroics, so that you aren’t the proverbial turd in your group’s punchbowl while running these potentially challenging instances. Once you’re ready, though, there may be no single more efficient way to gear yourself up than by farming random heroics.

Your gear upgrade options here are legion. There are the drops themselves, which will all be item-level 200 rare or epic-quality and can swiftly provide upgrades for the gear you got in the normal versions of these instances. In addition, you will be gaining two Emblems of Frost a day, and more Emblems of Triumph than you can keep track of. In a matter of hours, you can have enough to begin purchasing pieces of your tier 9 set from the emblem vendors at the Argent Tournament. I want you to take a brief look at one of these pieces to give you some idea of how massive these upgrades will be:

Sunstrider’s Shoulderpads of Conquest

Yup. And it’ll cost you 30 Emblems of Triumph to purchase that. That’ll take you an hour or two, if you get in some decent groups. In fact, with some efficient heroic-running, you could easily have the entire set in a matter of days. Then you can start farming up Emblems for some of the other choice items available at the vendors in Dalaran, like this trinket:

Talisman of Resurgence

Now again, though the gear-score requirements should keep you out of them early on in your heroic-running, you may find yourself thrown into a random Heroic ToC or one of the Icecrown 5-mans, any of which may very well be a bit beyond your capabilities at this point. If you can stick around and not kill your group or get yourself kicked from it, then by all means do so. The gear you get there is potentially very nice. But as with the normal versions, if you’re going to be a liability, leaving is always an option. Only you can make this decision.

Which leads to the second option:

2. Trial of the Champion/Icecrown 5-mans

Once you’re ready, you may instead choose to gear up by running these instances exclusively, farming all the gear from them that you want, then moving on to the heroic versions. This is an especially efficient options if you have an already established group to run them with.

The normal version of ToC nets you item-level 200 epics (the trinket is especially nice), and the heroic item-level 219 epics. If you want a more detailed run-down, see my ToC gear guide here. The normal versions of the three Icecrown instances provide you with item level 219 epics on par with those from heroic ToC, and the heroics throw item-level 232 epics at you. These can easily fill open slots in even an experience raider’s gear sets.

Here’s the full list of mage gear from these three instances:

Normal Forge of Souls

• Cold Sweat Grips – Hands
• Coil of Missing Gems – Neck
• Essence of Anger – Waist
• Mantle of Tattered Feathers – Shoulder
• Blood Boil Lancet – Staff
• Coffin Nail – Wand

Normal Pit of Saron

• Ice-Steeped Sandals – Feet
• Palebone Robes – Chest
• Rimewoven Silks – Legs
• Wristguards of Subterranean Moss – Wrist
• Unspeakable Secret – Staff

Normal Halls of Reflection

• Frayed Abomination Stitching Shoulders – Shoulder
• Marwyn’s Macabre Fingertips – Hands
• Tattered Glacial-Woven Hood – Head
• Chilled Heart of the Glacier – Dagger
• Splintered Icecrown Parapet – Sword

Heroic Forge of Souls

• Very Fashionable Shoulders – Shoulder
• Arcane Loops of Anger – Neck
• Mord’rethar Robes – Chest
• Seethe – Sword

Heroic Pit of Saron

• Ancient Polar Bear Hide – Chest
• Braid of Salt and Fire – Waist
• Prelate’s Snowshoes – Feet
• Engraved Gargoyle Femur – Staff
• Nevermelting Ice Crystal – Trinket

Heroic Halls of Reflection

• Sightless Crown of Ulmaas – Head
• Bracer of Worn Molars – Wrist
• Suspiciously Soft Gloves – Hands
• Strip of Remorse – Waist
• Shriveled Heart – Off-hand Frill
• Soulsplinter – Wand

There are a few other possible upgrades in there, but they all have mana-per-5 on them, which means that they go to the healer unless the healer passes. If they’re upgrades for you, and the healer doesn’t need them, by all means take them.

Bottom line here? You can very easily gear your mage up in full epics in a very short amount of time. No more grind. Most of the old stop-gaps (expensive profession epics, BoE world drop epics, faction rewards, PvP gear for PvE) have fallen into the realm of obsolescence. It’s too easy, too fast, and too much fun not to gear up through the new instances and the Dungeon Finder these days.

One final tip, before you embark upon your great random 5-man adventure: As soon as you can, buy up all of the various faction tabards. You can purchase them from the various faction quartermasters at Friendly, and by equipping them while running these random dungeons, you’ll find you hit exalted with the various factions with amazing speed. I’m not even kidding, it’s ridiculous. And though the gear these factions offer is no longer worthwhile, the head enchants totally are. Start with the Kirin Tor, since they’ve got the one for mages. You’re already running the dungeons, right? Might as well get the rep while you’re there.

And make friends with a Jewelcrafter and an Enchanter. You’re gonna need lots of both. Oh, and a disclaimer: You’re a DPS, which means finding groups might take a bit longer than you’re used to if you’ve tried to find groups as a tank or healer before. As with all things that annoy me, I blame this particular problem on warlocks. They’re all over the place. Like cockroaches. Stealing our DPS spots. And generally just smelling up the place. When I’m mayor of Dalaran, I’ll fix this, I promise. I have a whole new Warlock-Population-Counter-Measure program ready to go before congress. It involves trading in warlocks for a used car. I call it Trash for Clunkers.

Belt in 2010! Yes we can!

We’re going to get to kill Arthas. And as excited about that as we are as players, you have to imagine the mounting incursion against the Lich King gets a much deeper and visceral emotion for our characters. This represents a relatively unique opportunity to roleplay your characters in an otherwise static world. After all, the entire game is about to change in some pretty radical ways. This is the purest possible fodder for roleplay, and it would be remiss of us to lose this opportunity.

Join me behind the jump so that we can talk about the roleplay opportunities. The good, the bad, the ugly.

The Good

The good opportunities here are massive. It’s easy to simply roleplay your way through quests and enjoy the character immersion, but the real benefits can also be had outside of your simple quests. You can (and should!) explore the events surrounding your character by discussing what’s going on in-character.

Certainly, I would expect everyone to want to roleplay those stellar, introductory quests in Icecrown. In these quests, you will have the unique opportunity to team up with faction leaders like Lady Sylvanas and Jaina Proudmoore. Not only will you get to team up with them, you’ll actually get to fight alongside them. They will treat your character like a hero, as a luminary of your respective faction.

For many of our characters, this will be a final, notable “coming of age.” If your character has been struggling as an outcast of your faction, then this could be a final, immutable blessing from a beloved leader. Maybe your character will be surprised and taken off-guard by this level of respect.

More cynical characters should wonder if Jaina is just setting them up. After all, it seems a little foolish to go storming the Lich King’s castle with only six people. Maybe Jaina has finally given over to her love for Thrall, and this is a betrayal to trick your crack team of operatives into certain doom.

Sylvanas has got to have her own baggage. You can almost hear the Lament of the Highborn while cruising through the opening quests. Sylvanas takes this fight very personally. We’ll talk more about the Forsaken’s approach to this conflict a little bit later.

Regardless, the final incursion against the Icecrown Citadel should be treated as a massive, overwhelming thing. After all, this is the final big-to-do of the expansion. This is what (in theory) most of our characters have been working toward for a year. This whole event will live forever in the minds and dreams of Azeroth’s races.

Try and remember that your characters are becoming famous. They’ve just succeeded as the chosen champions from Tirion’s trials. Every little nod and twist is could become a character quirk that spells out stories. Do you still distrust Tirion and his plans? Do you travel with a pet? These are the little details that add depth to your roleplay and it’s just the kind of detail that the bards of Azeroth will sing about for centuries.

The Bad

It’s not just all war and roses, though. Primordial Saronite is being turned into armor for those storming the Lich King’s fortress. Now would be a great time to roleplay your character’s doubts and fears about that. (Or, maybe, your character’s overwhelming support of such a plan.) Why would it seem like a good idea to clothe your finest warriors in the very blood of an Old God?

The Forsaken still have more than a little explaining to do. It’s not like Wrathgate has suddenly become ancient history. During your in-character raids, maybe roleplay through keeping a special eye on the rotting among you. You never know when “Death to the Scourge” is going to make a simple flip over to “Death to the Living.” If you are an Undead yourself, now would be a great time to roleplay your vast sorrow for the event — or maybe your overwhelming indifference.

And don’t forget this whole fight is awfully damned personal to the Undead and Death Knights. This fight isn’t just about “us versus them” or anything so abstract as “good versus evil.” For the Ebon Blade and the Forsaken, Arthas isn’t a general enemy. Phrases like “You did this to me” and “I’ve finally come for you” should be pretty common.

The Ugly

The hardest part about this kind of event, in terms of successful roleplay on a MMORPG, is that you won’t be the only person to do those awesome introductory quests. And, in terms of “game reality,” you didn’t even do them together. How can you reconcile the fact that your 5-man group already killed Scourgelord Tyrannus . . . but so did the guy at the next bar seat over?

There’s a couple ways you can reinforce your suspension of disbelief. First, it’s pretty easy to assume that it wasn’t actually a single five-man group. After all, that was a pretty big assault. Maybe it was dozens of 5-man groups all doing about the same thing. And in the furor of war, you guys just didn’t notice each other. Secondly, you can go with the “we didn’t finish the job the first time.” Maybe they all got better. I know, that’s a pretty weak statement, but sometimes you have to stretch disbelief a little thin to make it all work out.

Your last option is to decide that you didn’t all fight the same guy. Maybe he fought Tyrannus, and I fought Bobyrannus. This is probably my favorite option for disbelief, because it allows you to place your own, unique spin on the situation. Maybe instead of charging up onto a mountain top for the final boss fight, you found yourself spiraling deeper and deeper into the Pits of Saron. You could also “seed” your own future stories that way. Maybe while there, you saw something frightening that reminded you of old Ulduar, something that you’ll become obsessed with for years.

The Real Ugly

The biggest danger zone about roleplaying through the death of Arthas, however, is one of lore. I’ve seen immense roleplay arguments spring up because folks have different opinion of “what happened before now.” It’s not even a matter of being right and wrong. World of Warcraft has a massive amount of stories, characters, and events. It’s a huge world, and it can be very tough to keep track of it all.

I recommend anyone who’s trying to roleplay through the Icecrown Citadel take the time to check out Adam Holisky, Alex Ziebart, and Michael Sacco’s collaborative post, The Lore of Patch 3.3. Even if your character has no knowledge of these people or events, it’s really best for you, as the player, to have a solid grounding in the shared universe. The story hooks to be found via this lore, of course, are also very helpful when you’re trying to plot out your storylines.

Ultimately, this event is going to be about what you can make it. If you just do your quests, the whole thing will fly by, and you’ll find yourself sitting in the Cataclysm before you know it. If, however, you take the time to roleplay your character, interact with other people, and explore the lore… you’re going to bring yourself a whole deeper level of play.

Good luck in there.

Following up on their neat entry for Ulduar, Blizzard has released their newest Bosstiary, this time for The Frozen Halls, the collection of new Icecrown 5-man dungeons coming with Patch 3.3. The site serves as an encyclopedia of information on the many and varied bosses of the Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron, and Halls of Reflection.

The Bosstiaries often have information that the dungeons never really give you; for example, who knew that Auriaya was the Titans’ librarian? Nobody, that’s who. We just wondered why the heck she was wandering around Ulduar with a bunch of cats and a bad attitude. But now you can go into the Frozen Halls and know exactly who you’re fighting and why, replete with marks on the map indicating the position of the bosses and the instance entrance.

The Forge of Souls sees us freeing the souls of innocents from Arthas’ Soul Grinder machines, run by Bronjahm, Godfather of Souls. Guarding the machines and preventing souls from escaping is the Devourer of Souls.

The Pit of Saron is Arthas’ saronite mining operation; Krick, a leper gnome, oversees the operation from atop his abomination, Ick. Forgemaster Garfrost shapes the saronite into weapons of destruction under Arthas’ command, and Scourgelord Tyrannus lords over the pit with his fearsome Scourge powers.
The Halls of Reflection are Arthas’ private quarters, guarded by his lieutenants in life, Falric and Marwyn. Inside, Arthas himself keeps Frostmourne locked away from those who would try to use it against him.