I just got the latest beta patch for WotLK. I logged in and noticed my rank1 arcane explosion was making me go OOM fast! It seems Blizzard has made all ranks cost the same % of mana. So my rank1 blizzard spell costs about 2100 mana and so does my rank8 blizzard. If this goes through this is a HUGE nerf to mages in PvP, and casters in general. I used my level70 mage to boost my other toons up to 70. I won't be able to round up those mobs very easy anymore. I thoroughly enjoy rounding up an entire low level instance and then AoE'ing the hell out of them. I regularly use R1 arcane explosion, blizzard, polymorph, frost armor, dampen magic, frostbolt, firebolt when doing PvP on my mage. I just see rogues tearing me up even more now that I can't pull them out of stealth/vanish without wasting huge amounts of mana.

If this change goes through, I'm probably going to be finished playing WoW. It dumbs the game down too much. I guess the beta is still on-going so I'm going to continue testing this stuff and voicing my concerns. Who knows, maybe they'll do some other drastic change that will offset this downranked spell change.

I'm not a very happy camper right now.