Skip to content

The Mage 5.4 Patch Notes and Changes

mage 5.4 patch notes

The biggest change in 5.4 is for the Frost Mage. Your Mastery has changed. You no longer do increased Mastery damage Vs frozen targets. Now, a portion of the damage done by Frost bolt and Frostfire bolt is stored and your next Ice Lance will unleash those icicles. Your pet damage is also increased and various spells were buffed, such as Living Bomb, Ice Lance, and your pet’s Waterbolt damage.

Frost did get a nerf, Frostbolt‘s damage has actually been decreased a bit.

Mage Patch 5.4 Contents

 

Overview of the 5.4 Mage Changes

Updated for 9/4/13

Draenei Frost Mage considers the mage 5.4 patch notes

Icicles will require you to do some set-up before unleashing them. You can stack up to five and if you can get that stack, then freeze the enemy, then your next Ice Lance will be brutal. If you’re stacking Mastery then you’ll also want to make sure you’re making good use of your pet, with its increased damage.

The downside is that overall damage isn’t too hot, so it might be worth your while to stack Haste and this might make Frost Armor, with its 7% Haste buff, more interesting than before. Mastery doesn’t directly affect your damage, at all.

Arcane is changing very little. Other than some glyph changes which are interesting you have a couple of bombs that were buffed for PvP. Then, of course, there are those “essential” minor glyphs…

Fire is changing a bit. Combustion’s DOT was reduced, which will be bad for PvE, but not so much in PvP. Living Bomb, as noted above, got a buff.

Any mage who blinks a lot will want to look into the new Glyph of Rapid Displacement. If you are using Remove Curse then you will want to note that the Glpyph increases your damage by 15%. I think a lot more curses will be removed in 5.4. One might even considere it a Warlock nerf as far as PvP is concerned.

In addition, Temporal Shield, arguably the best talent of the shield tier, has been improved. IN patch 5.4 it reduces damage by 15% in addition to its other effects. This is rather nice.

 

Mage 5.4 Patch Notes

Tooltips (hover over the links) will show 5.3 info until patch 5.4 goes live. New talents and abilities will show the new info. These Mage 5.4 Patch Notes are as of Aug 27. I’ll update then (and note it above) if there are additional changes. All the official patch notes can be found here.

General

  • Ice Lance damage has been increased by 43%.

Fire

  • Combustion on targets affected by the Fire Mage’s Ignite now deals additional damage equal to 20% of Ignite’s damage per tick (down from 50%).

Frost

  • Mastery: Frostburn has been replaced by Mastery: Icicles. When the Mage damages an enemy with their Frostbolt, and Frostfire Bolt (16% + 2% per Mastery) of the damage done is stored as an Icicle for 15 seconds. Mastery: Icicles also increases the Water Elemental’s Water Bolt damage by (16% + 2% per Mastery). Up to 5 Icicles can be stored at once. Casting Ice Lance launches all stored Icicles at the target.
  • Frostbolt now deals 10% less damage and no longer increases the damage of any spells. The damage for those spells have been increased instead.
  • Water Elemental – Waterbolt damage has been increased by 25%.

Talents

  • Frost Bomb now deals 70% damage to players (up from 60%).
  • Ice Floes now has 3 charges (up from 2 charges) and has a 20-second cooldown (down from 45 seconds.) The changes are perhaps because no one was using it?
  • Living Bomb now deals 85% damage to players (up from 70%).
  • Nether Tempest now deals 85% damage to players (up from 70%).
  • Rune of Power now has an increased effective range. The Mage can remain up to 8 yards away from their Rune of Power and still receive benefits to mana regeneration and spell damage (up from 3 yards).
  • Temporal Shield now also reduces damage taken by 15% while active in addition to its existing effects. This is a pretty nice change if you use this talent.

Glyphs

Major Glyphs

  • Glyph of Ice Lance has been renamed to Glyph of Splitting Ice.
    • Glyph of Splitting Ice causes Ice Lance and Icicles to hit 1 additional target for 50% damage.
  • Glyph of Invisibility has been replaced with Glyph of Rapid Displacement.
    • Glyph of Rapid Displacement gives Blink two charges, gaining a charge every 15 seconds, but no longer frees the Mage from stuns and bonds. This will likely be much more interesting for PvE, when mobility is required, and PvE where the “break from from effects” aspect will be missed.
  • Glyph of Remove Curse now increases the damage dealt by 15% after successfully removing a curse (up from 10%). This is especially nice when fighting Curse using types, such as Warlocks. Remove Curse has an 8 second cooldown and the buff has a 10 second duration.
  • Glyph of Spellsteal now heals the Mage for 5% of their maximum health after successfully stealing a spell (up from 3%).
  • Glyph of Blink now increases distance travelled with the Blink spell by 8 yards (up from 5 yards).

New Minor Glyphs

 

Other Mage Pages

Tags:

1 thought on “The Mage 5.4 Patch Notes and Changes”

  1. Pingback: How to do Damage as a Frost Mage in PvP

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.