Can we get a choice node for Alter Time to have it restore a certain % of HP? Or a certain % of HP taken in the last however many seconds, yada yada?
Something like that. It’s a great spell, super useful, but I wouldn’t mind having the option to just bump my health back up through “time magic”. Because again, it’s a great spell, but if I’m at 25%, I’ve used all my defensives and that only one I have left is Alter? Not so helpful.
Not commentary on survivability of mages, that’s in a good place, just a request to make one of the abilities easier to use because I’m a big dumb dumb and don’t always use it effeciently.
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I actually think it’s not a very good ability at all and you pinpointed why. Its use is actually rather limited and at the same time very rigid in that it always has to be your first line of defense. Otherwise you run into the problem that you described where it’s useless if you use it at low health. On top of that it has a massive countersynergy with all your other defensives because to maximize it you want to actively let enemies wail on you which is reckless.
I would gladly take any change that makes it less clunky but ultimately I’d rather have it replaced with something more useful instead. Evanesce comes to mind.
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We’ve all made mistakes lol. I have used alter time at like 20% before, Ice Blocked, then healed up to full. Then alter time proc’d and brought me back to 20% hp lol.
You can make cancel aura macros to remove it as well.
#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast alter time
/cancelaura alter time
So a second press will activate it. Play with it.
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Lol that hurts my soul. Probly done something similar. I never thought about canceling Alter, that’s a good suggestion. Thank you!
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Yeah, having to do all of that just because the spell is jank is only adding insult to injury. I get that macros are a thing in this game but they should never have to be a substitute for Blizzard doing their job in the first place.
Besides, there are so many different ways Alter Time could work that aren’t directly tied to health and that would make it so much more user friendly. It could absorb damage for its duration and then slowly damage you over time after it ends. It could drastically reduce the attack speed of whatever is attacking you. Or it could even work like Reincarnate. That’s just off the top of my head.
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Honestly, I don’t mind its current version too much, but I would make a couple suggestions.
Don’t make it vulnerable to purge or dispel mechanics!
If that means increasing the cooldown a bit, I wouldn’t mind. Hell, it can even be a PvP talent lol.
Yeah, there’s lots of options that still fit the theme of controlling time, any number of them could make sense and I bet they’d be welcomed. As long it’s a choice because I’m sure there’s people that prefer the current version. It has moments where it’s great, like if you know which mechanics are coming, but it’d be nice to have a reactive defensive (in addition to Ice Block with Cryo-Freeze if you count that).
Most of the time I just end up using it as a movement spell, wouldn’t be surprised if that’s true for others, so definitely not getting the most out of it.
Even then it can easily turn into a death trap. For example, I frequently used it on Raszageth whenever she put the bomb debuff on me because that way I could avoid the damage and also port back to where I was before I had to take it out. I stopped doing that after Alter Time snapped me back directly into the cone of her breath attack…
So yeah, even with good knowledge of an encounter most of the time it can lead to more harm than good. A lot of that is because like everything else that falls under the broad umbrella of “arcane” (that’s with a small “a” not just referring to the Arcane spec) in this game it has to have some kind of major downside and/or a clunky mechanic attached to it.