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!

Kebina Trudough here, offering you the best gold making secrets they don’t want you to know about! I was like you once, poor and homely, before I discovered my patented system. Now you too can fill your pockets with the good stuff without ever breaking a sweat! Why spend all your time toiling when you could be vacationing in the Hot Springs? I’m not offering these tips for 100 gold, or 90 gold, or even 50 gold! No, not even 20 gold! My system is yours for FREE! Satisfaction guaranteed or I’ll give you a full refund (handling charges may apply). After all, Time Is Money.

The new Dungeon Finder that was added in Patch 3.3 has been garnering a lot of attention lately – and for good reason! But did you know that you could use it to make money?

Step One: Maximizing your speed.
If you spend too much time in each instance, or waiting in the queues, the amount of gold that you make per hour will decline significantly. Fortunately, there are a few things that you can do to to help ensure that your dungeon runs go as smoothly as possible.

• You can queue from anywhere, so choose a location that will allow you to do some farming on the side should you need to wait in a queue. Why not try a favorite fishing locale? Don’t wander too far away from a vendor, though, unless you have peculiarly empty bags.
• Don’t be choosy. Sign up for a random dungeon, because you are more likely to find a match more quickly.
• To avoid queues almost entirely, sign up as a healer or tank if you can. Don’t do this to trick your group mates, however. Many people are selecting tank or healer and then showing up in green sets expecting someone else to agree to switch specs. This is not only idiotic, it will take more time in the end.
• Queue prepared. This means snacks, drinks, in-game buff food and water, glyphs, enchants, scrolls, flasks, reagents, and whatever else you might spontaneously want.
• Use the teleport feature! On the way into or out of each dungeon, simply click on the little green eye around your mini-map and select teleport. This is also handy if you do have to go back to town in the middle of the dungeon.
• Sell and restock! Between groups, hit up a vendor.
• Keep a good group member! Once you meet up with a good group member, remember that you can keep them! Ask them if they would like to continue playing with you, and make sure that no one degroups between queues. Polite, competent, geared group members will not only make the experience more enjoyable, it will also speed it up significantly, and minimize dying.That last part is important because, aside from the lost time, repairs will cut into your profits.

Step Two: ???
No, I’m just kidding. Step two is the bread and butter! There are some wonderful features and changes that you might not have noticed yet, as well as some generic tips to help you earn big. To begin with, you will want to use a level 80 character if possible, and queue for Heroic Northrend dungeons.

• Right off the bat, you’ll get some goodies. The first successful run each day using the Dungeon Finder tool will net you 26 gold 46 silver and 2 Emblems of Frost. Each subsequent run in the same day will net you half of the gold (13 gold 23 silver), and 2 Emblems of Triumph.These awards are in addition to everything that you get from bosses, including the last boss.
• When something drops that can be rolled for, notice that there is an extra button next to Need and Greed when you have an enchanter in your party, called Disenchant. When you click this, if you win the roll, you will automatically get the disenchanted materials instead of the item. This is a great way to make money. Although the prices of Infinite Dust are down on many servers because the drop rate has been increased, on many servers, they are still selling for 2-2.5g a piece, and you’re likely to get 5-7. It is also a helpful way to get your own Dream Shards, Abyss Crystals, and if you get lucky, Greater Cosmic Essences. The price for the essences has risen wildly on many servers, so be smart with how you auction your new goodies!
• To gamble, or not to gamble? A weapon, whether green or blue, is going to be worth over 10 gold most likely. In fact, you can check the exact amount simply by hovering over the tooltip! As such, the vendors will pay you more for it. Of course, they also award more, or better, disenchanted materials.
• Pick up everything. From food and water to greys and up, don’t pass on or ignore any piece of loot. Keep in mind that you will need some bag space, and take heed of my advice to hit up a vendor at every chance you get. Otherwise, you’re simply throwing away several gold per mob that you were able to loot. If you can skin, mine, or herbalize, politely ask if you can harvest the nodes that you encounter.

Step Three: Profit!
This is the fun part. You can vendor plenty of items in between queues, but you can also funnel auctionables to your bank alts via the mail. If you don’t have anything pressing to purchase using your badges, remember that you can always buy heirloom for alts or even epic gems, which you can either use or resell for a profit.

So how many times per day can you exploit this? As many times as you can stand to before beginning to pull out your hair. As long as you are using the Random feature, the completion of a Heroic will not give you a lock-out. In fact, even if you are locked out for the day, if the Random feature selects that dungeon, you will still be able to go. Happy dungeoning!

If you’re new to dungeoning, why not head over and check out WoW Rookie’s Grouping With Others collection of articles and guides?

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.

It seems like every Wrath patch brings with it more items than the last by an order of magnitude. It was eight hundred of ‘em for 3.1, between the Argent Tournament and Ulduar, and now Ghostcrawler says that 1400 more PvE items will be packed in every box of Patch 3.3, including our big orange buddy up there.

Given the recent interview with Cory Stockton and our man GC, it seems like there’s a lot of attention going into itemization for all of the Icecrown gear, and thus it’s actually a little surprising that there’s so darn much of it. And there’s a ton of new kinds of procs, set bonuses, et cetera, building on the “Epic. Cool things. Proc’y stuff.” mentality that GC says Icecrown items are all based on.

Then again, with what’s going down with items in Cataclysm, fourteen hundred new items seem downright mundane in comparison. It must seem that way to Ghostcrawler, too, given that this whole comment off-handedly came out in a post where someone was loudly complaining about an itemization bug on a piece of Icecrown gear. That’s casual conversation for ol’ Greg. “Yeah, put the finishing touches on 1400 new items today. Figure later I’ll get the number of that waitress at Applebee’s. Tomorrow I personally reitemize all of the old-world quests for Cataclysm. I’ll get up around noon, probably leave work at 3:30 or so.”

Ah, Kirin Tor rings. We’ve come to rely on these old standbys as gear that’ll always be there for us. Especially if “we” are elemental shamans. But what’s going on with them in Patch 3.3?

Surprising no one, Bornakk confirmed recently that there’s a new set of Kirin Tor rings on the way for those with lots of disposable income in Patch 3.3. With an item level of 251, they’re a significant upgrade to the 226 ring you upgraded back when Ulduar came out. You should expect the upgrade process to cost about as much as the last one — that is, 1000 gold pre-faction discount.

Good to see that they’re seeing this ring thing through to the end of the expansion. The initial investment is a bit steep, but hey, free Dalaran portal, and the upgrade price is pretty reasonable as you go.

Ancilorn over at the European forums has confirmed that the armored Frost Wrym mounts mined from early builds of the Patch 3.3 PTR will be rewards for achievements in the Icecrown Citadel raid. Much like past raid dungeons have awarded mounts for completing meta-achievements, such as the Ironbound Proto-Drake for Ulduar, the Frost Wyrms will be “up for grabs,” for dedicated raiders.

MMO-Champion previously unearthed this armored Frost Wyrm model along with spells named Frostbrood Vanquisher and Frostbrood Vanquisher Flight, which could give some insight into some Icecrown Citadel encounters. Despite the confirmation of new reward mounts (expected to grant 310% flying speed, as well), there is currently no word on the removal of the Ulduar reward mounts, which Blizzard has said to stay for “the foreseeable future”.

The latest build on the PTR has uncovered the stats of the World of Warcraft’s newest legendary weapon, the two-handed axe Shadowmourne. Apparently bandied around by random GMs on the PTR, players were able to see the highly impressive stats of this weapon, which requires an epic quest to complete. MMO-Champion also has it in its database, the entry of which can be viewed here.

Notable among its features, aside from the ridiculous +223 Strength and 344.1 DPS, are three red sockets and an interesting proc. The sockets can combine for a total of 68 Strength when socketed with Bold Cardinal Rubies and obtaining the +8 Strength bonus. If we understand it correctly, the proc also stacks Strength for a total of 360 before firing off a damaging effect, presumably resetting the Strength bonus to 0. Needless to say, even without the proc, this Item Level 284 weapon is the best two-handed melee weapon in the game and should serve players well into the next expansion.

Wowhead has been a go-to site to track what’s going on on the PTR for quite some time, and now there’s even more reason to go there. Their improved new items in patch 3.3 page features the following improvements:

• Categorization by item level, with breakdowns for the five levels of items that are coming at us (219, 232, 251, 264, and 277).
• You can now filter the new items and search within them.
• Items are also sortable.

And this isn’t a new feature, but it bears mentioning, at least if you’re a major news geek like me: you can get an RSS feed of the new items added to the Wowhead database. If you wanted to you could probably hook this up to Twitter, or put it on your blog, or whatever.

Anyway, if you want to know what items are coming at us along with Icecrown Citadel, I think there’s no better place to be. What items are you most excited about?

The latest patch 3.3 build on the PTR has yielded tier 10 purchasing information. When players were purchasing tier 9, they had to to use badges to pick up the item level 232 iterations. But to get the next rank up, they needed badges and a token. When purchasing tier 8, all you needed was a class specific token which dropped from different bosses.

That will not be the case here. Tier 10 purchasing has been streamlined further, and I think this is the best solution as it contains elements of both tier 8 and tier 9 models.

Now when you want to buy tier 10, you have to use Emblems of Frost to purchase the item level 251 variants. This is the lowest version of tier 10 you can get. In order to get the next level which is item level 264, you’ll need to get a class specific token which presumably drops from Icecrown Citadel on 25. It could drop from Icecrown Citadel 10 after taking down Arthas or doing some heroic versions of bosses. We have no idea yet.

In other words, if I want to get item 264 versions my shoulders, I have to first spend 60 Emblems of Frost to get the Crimson Acolyte Shoulderpads. Then I have to raid and patiently wait for a Conqueror’s Mark of Sanctification to drop (Paladin, Priest, Warlock). Once I get the mark, I visit the tier vendor in Dalaran and turn both of them in exchange for the Sanctified Crimson Acolyte Shoulderpads.

In other news, tier prices also released. Gloves and shoulders can be bought for 60 Emblems of Frost, while the Helm, Legs, and Chest can be had for 95.

According to Eyonix, the background downloader for patch 3.3 will begin its work soon. There were some reports that it was turned on yesterday for a short time, when it began to deliver a roughly 450mb pre-patch file. However this time, Blizzard is turning it on for good.

Eyonix points out that the background downloader should provide a faster download than normal. Go into the preferences of the downloader and check “Don’t throttle background download” to see the new speed in action. However, this option has often been known to interfere with WoW and other applications accessing the intertubes, so I recommend you only turn it on when you’re not going to be doing a lot of online activity.

This does point to patch 3.3 coming soon. Whether or not that soon is next week is too early to tell, but usually Blizzard runs the background downloader for a couple of weeks before rolling out a patch. But who knows — we haven’t heard anything yet on (or off) the record.

Update: Many readers are reporting that the downloader is now active.