I’m trying to spec out my Mage alt (only does questing and some dungeons), and since almost all spells are talents now questions arise about the practical usefulness of certain abilities.
So Alter Time, what is it actually used for? Advanced kiting? Boss fight repositioning? I’ve never used it in combat. I can concieve of an approach where you use it, Blink away twice, then return like a reverse Blink. But that’s so much set up.
Wowhead included it (and Master of Time) in their suggested Frost questing build which made me think, why?
Its has a lot of uses. in dungeons and raid when you have to run to do a mechanic and need to move back pop AT.
a big damge window is coming in 1 sec? hit AT when its over or if you get really low end it and heal back to full.
jump off a cliff to pretend to kill yourself and AT back =D
Remember that it doesn’t just save your location, it saves your health. While you’re out questing, you can use it as a defensive CD while waiting for your shield to come back up again. Say you pull a few mobs:
-they get through your shield, and aren’t close to dead yet
-pop Alter Time
-mobs beat on you- oh noooooo my health is loooooow
-reactivate Alter Time to bring your health back to where you were
-Ice Nova etc. until shield is ready again
It also has a ton of uses in dungeons. You can use it for movement, such as if you need to drop off something out of the way, but you can also use it to undo big damage if you know it’s coming- just pop it before the boss/mob does the bad thing and end it when the damage is done (or before you die)
I use it constantly in PVP. Pop it early and often. at the beginning of a battle, if you try and use when you see that you need it it can be too late. Remember you do not have to wait the full 10 secs to pop it if you see your health dropping fast.
Mages are fun but take practice to stay alive in tricky situations.
Ditto on using it in PvP. On my Goblin mage, I double shimmer, alter time and rock jump CONSTANTLY in fights to mess with my opponents to great effect.
I consider myself an arcane veteran in PvE content. Alter Time is that one spell that I’m constantly forgetting about and realizing “man, that would’ve saved my life”.
But as of the talent changes I mostly use it and immediately reactivate / cancel the buff to get the movement speed from Temporal Velocity…
It has many uses but I wouldn’t call it useful. Let me explain.
You can use Alter Time as a means of travel by instantaneously transporting yourself back to your original location. This has a clear use when you need to drop a puddle off to the side and then return to where you were before you got targeted but you can also do that with Blink/Shimmer so it’s not particularly useful.
You can also use Alter Time to reverse the damage of a big hit but it doesn’t negate the damage like other defensive abilities because you need to react by activating the ability before you get hit. Again, a clear use but not particularly useful given how situational it is and considering that there are much better ways to mitigate damage not to mention outright immunes like Ice Block or a true cheat-death ability like Cauterize.
Lastly, you can do various shenanigans with it like pretending to jump off a cliff and using it again to return back to the edge but not only is that very risky and hard to pull off because Alter Time cancels itself out if you move too far from the origin point but also, again, it’s extremely situational (certainly in PvE).
In my experience I just don’t ever use it because most of the time I forget it’s even there since (1) there are much better tools for the same job and (2) there are so many other ways to do what it does that it’s kind of pointless.
I think you’re very much underselling it. As long as you know the hit is survivable, or the damage is a pulse over several seconds (Rage in DoS, for example), it’s clearly superior to Ice Block since a) it’s off the GCD unlike Ice Block, and b) doesn’t cost any uptime at all. It may freak out the healer(s) a bit more, but w/e.
Right, but that’s just it. If you know the damage is coming and it is survivable as a DPS it’s not your job to mess around with a clunky ability like Alter Time when your healers will also very much be aware that it’s coming and have AoE heals prepared to counter the incoming unavoidable damage. Those heals will likely go out anyway so even if you reverse that damage you haven’t really helped your healers much, or at all really.
The only time the damage reverse aspect of Alter Time can come in handy is if for some reason you’re out of range of your healers like if a boss fight has a raid split mechanic. But even then a healer should be present in each group. It’s mostly just a flavor spell, certainly in PvE. In PvP you might get more use out of it and it can obviously come in clutch in a 1v1 scenario but that’s about it there too.
Well, it depends on the healing class (and if you are in a raid or a dungeon. I wrote/write from mostly a M+ perspective). Paladins, in particular, that lean mostly on single target healing in dungeons, love a mage that can take care of themselves. Sure, if it’s a Druid that hits Tranq for a big AoE damage event, you’re not helping much with Alter Time, but if you get in the habit of, say, using it when you have some sort of DoT on you, or for predictable damage as I said before, you’ll be helpful plenty of times (particularly if you are quick, you can restore yourself before the healer has even gotten something out)…and redundant other times. But since there isn’t a GCD cost, there isn’t really a downside to being redundant.
Oh, and I hear there’s a new healing class coming out that has a smaller than usual range…maybe being able to take care of yourself a bit if you get out of that range will be helpful? I can think of several bosses in Dragonflight where it’s pretty easy to be very spread out and outrange a healer if you/they aren’t careful.
And to reiterate what I mentioned in my first post in the thread: Alter Time is fantastic for doing solo content in crappy gear, particularly against elite mobs.
I think it’s more of a playstyle thing. I’m with Kerathras in that Alter Time is just not something I’ve ever found I needed, exactly. That’s not to say it’s a bad spell or that it’s not useful for some Mages. I’m sure that a lot of PvPers use it to great effect. I don’t PvP so for me it’s just not a tool I ever find myself reaching for.
Since Cryo-Freeze is being carried forward as a talent, I can do my self healing from Ice Block for a lot less fuss. As you rightly point out there’s a trade off, if you need the full heal Ice Block renders you immobile for 10 seconds which is of course an eternity of no DPS in a raid/dungeon setting. AT doesn’t have that drawback but on the flip side is a little more difficult to use properly. Seems like a fair trade off to me.
I rarely use it, but it has come in handy during dungeons and in world content as a way to avoid dying due to positional unavoidable damage. I don’t use it often though.
Certainly one of the more unique utility skills, takes skill to use it thou, I pop it and die because I can’t read burst. or I pop it early and I’m left standing there like a fool.
Its like disc priests no? predict damage and act accordingly but I only zug zug
i don’t want to indulge an old thread… but Alter Time is so powerful, fun and unique that they made a whole character around it for Overwatch and made her the mascot of the game.