Before remember each mage was assigned their spots on creation? Well now you get hints from your guildmaster where your current spot is when you "discuss" with them. After you collect a rod, your spot will change to a new one, go to a guildmaster and discuss to get your next hint. Repeat. So now you're guaranteed to get a difficult sleek spot, but once you get it you're done with it and on to the next(unless you use a LOT of wands and you go through all the spots the list will restart). I like it a lot better than having your spots be perminent, where your only options were to deal with the tough spots, attunement edges, or delete;reroll and pray for easy sleek spots. I mean yeah it sucks you can't "win the sleek lotto" and have mages with perma easy to get rods, but it also means you don't have to deal with fighting those kinds of mages.

Also, they changed how many charges and the levels of spell the sleek rods have in accordance to the level of difficulty the spot is. So if you can walk in a no-threat area with no deadly aggro mobs and pick up your barrier rod, it will have slightly lower level spell and also fewer charges than a rod deep in an explore area behind a bunch of nasty mobs. Those tough ones will still be lvl51 spells and 4 charges, when the easier ones may be lvl 44-50 and might be 3 or even 2 charges(maybe?). I haven't played a ton of mages since the changes, but I think that's the jest. I hope someone corrects me if any of this is wrong.