Kaivax recently made a post over on the Alpha forums explaining the direction they’re taking mages in TWW. You can read the full post here.
The overall goals are as follows:
Goals
Allow you to acquire each specialization’s core gameplay with less talent point investment.
Simplify rotational complexity.
Provide tools to help you adapt your damage profile to better match a given encounter.
Provide competitive choice nodes that let you opt-out of complex gameplay.
It all sounds very good on paper and seems to address all the major concerns that have brought up in the extensive feedback we’ve provided. A highlight is that they’ve finally heard us on Temporal Warp and will be removing it, tuning our base damage accordingly!
Yeah, it’s kinda hard not to be cynical but I did find it encouraging that all the things they highlighted seem to be taken directly from feedback that was given on these forums.
As an Arcane Mage I am particularly curious to see what they do with procs because we basically have none aside from Clearcasting which has many problems. And I also take heart in what they said about prioritizing rotational simplification and competitive alternative builds.
Well im up to more simplify playstyles BUT
i fear that there will be again only 1 viable hero-talent-tree.
And sadly no news bout the perma-pet coming back.
They should just delete the arcane/frost tree and make it so a pet-tree for frost and arcane. Would be innovative, new and intresting. With the option of a frost-tank-pet for openworld= just better.
Overall with the mentioned SL Deathbourne playstyle it sounds even for me (as a old-playstyle-lover) kinda boring, bec. it was JUST spamming FB without icelances.
Maybe it can be fun if they tune that and fractured frost better so spamming frostbolt/frostfirebolt would hit up to 5-8 targets. The problem in Shadowlands was the ramping in keys.
Till the ramping was done the trash alrdy died and it never persisted very long (the bonus). If they just make the CD directly rly strong+ FB cleave that would be atleast strong.
But lets see: I fear they will just struggle to balance the hero-trees even and we end up with again only 1 viable playstyle and thats (like atm) just 1dimensional and boring.
Super encouraging they’re looking at all 3 Mage specs and fixing the problems.
Now they just need to get rid of Time Anomaly and replace it with a choice node of Cauterize/Cold Snap.
Seeing the datamined Fire changes makes me very curious to try Fire again. I am keen to want to try Arcane but have avoided it for years cause I don’t like the Radiant Spark gameplay and the overall rotation complexity.
Extremely disappointed that they’re back to doubling down on the Deathborne playstyle. It’s highly problematic and needs to die in a fire and never return. Frostbolt is our filler and turning Icy Veins into a Frostbolt-centred spam fest devalues the excitement of our procs and main spells during our major cooldown. It causes a cognitive conflict during play in trying to work out if it’s a dps gain or loss to use our procs or main spells instead of just spamming Frostbolt. Why even have other spells if Frostbolt just does everything better…
What I’d like to see with Frost in TWW:
Frost needs an alternative playstyle that gives players the option of opting out of Glacial Spike and/or Ray of Frost and be equally competitive. Not everyone likes GS and they should be able to play Frost without it.
Comet Storm should be turned to be strictly an AoE spell and not a dps gain for ST, where Glacial Assault being the main perpetrator.
Coldest Snap to increase Cone of Cold’s range significantly. Get Frost out of melee for AoE.
Scrap Fractured Frost and Cold Front. Stop with the SL Deathborne fantasy, it’s so problematic. Give us something new.
I was very surprised they brought that up. It seems they still think the SL covenant shenanigans were a good idea even though they were extremely unpopular at the time and many people didn’t like seeing them turned into talents in DF either. Really not sure why they’re doubling down on them besides not being able to come up with anything better. Which doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.
Well besides i thought Deathborne was kinda boring, if they fix the ramping and the fractured frost only hitting 2 targets it COULD be okay.
Everything is better than current boring glacial gameplay.
Oh really? So no new procs? I felt like they implied they’re would be. But I also much preferred the AM machine gun build we had in Legion so I wouldn’t be opposed to having that make a comeback, not at all.
I’ve been around quite a while and experienced just about every promise Blizzard has made and broken, so while I try to remain optimistic, I’m also extremely skeptical. I still remember the lengthy post several years back about wanting to do away with cd stacking for specs like warrior to make them less bursty, all the while saying “pay no attention to that mage spec behind the curtain.”
We’re still working on the changes, but we can share this: Radiant Spark will be redesigned to be much simpler. It will also have a competitive choice node for people who do not like the scripted style of gameplay it incentivizes.
The gameplay surrounding Radiant Spark is the use of Arcane Blast, the other gameplay that goes directly against it is the use of arcane missiles. And for those who don’t like Radiant Spark’s play style, the other style is exactly the focus on arcane missiles, just like it was in Shadowlands with people choosing Venthyr.
Then the following was said in addition:
We’re also looking at increasing the power of Arcane’s procs and giving them more exciting procs, such that responding to them as they come up is almost always the best move, even in your burns.
From what I understand from this, we will not receive different procs, especially because they are trying to simplify our gameplay, but they will strengthen the procs we already have, that is, make the abstraction more powerful.
This could solve the old problem of us ending up canceling missiles early to use Nether Precision. And it could also indicate that they would be bringing our current equipment bonus to the arcane tree, perhaps making arcane missiles do more damage, fire more missiles and hit more than one target with the abstraction proc.
I really like all of it. I’m cautiously optimistic and curious to see the final outcome.
I’m okay TA. It’ll be odd for sure, but we also don’t know the full plan, it might change too. And for me TA was bad because it meant you weren’t taking TW. Without that as an option and base damage increased TA could be kinda fun. We’ll see.
And interpreting what people mean by their text is difficult. But I’m interpreting the mentioning of procs as a creation of new ones, in addition to buffing current. I think if they just meant “hey we’re gonna make you proc CC more frequently” that would be “we’re looking at increasing the power and frequency of Arcane’s procs”
But to mention separately that you’ll be giving them “more exciting procs” implies the creation of new procs. Or they don’t understand how unexciting CC is haha. Again, interpreting intended meaning from text is tricky unless the OP clarifies, just my $0.02
The RS change is neat too. I really don’t like RS, but wary of it being a “competitive choice node” because that sounds like you’ll take it for ST and the other for AoE. I’d prefer a buff to base damage and Arcane Echo being part of touch. But we’ll see!
All in all very exciting theoretical changes and feels good that they’re listening to feedback.
I guess I am focusing more on the second part where they say “and giving them more exciting procs” I don’t know how else to read that. It seems pretty clear they’re looking to give us new procs. Besides, I don’t know how you can make Clearcasting “more exciting” if that’s what they’re referring to. Time will tell.
It’s DoA for me if they don’t fix the visuals. Right now they’re absolutely terrible. More so for Frost than Arcane but the “Splinterstorm” literally just clumps them all together and they hover on your right side for a second before auto launching at the target. On Frost it looks like a cluster of low res icicles and on Arcane it’s these tiny looking crystal things that sparkle like those old school wands from Vanilla. I was imagining the Splinterstorm would be this cool whirlwind of bolts that swirl around you when recalled and then spiral out hitting the target in rapid succession. The current version is just pathetic, frankly.
Just carry over your current gear bonuses to the specialization’s talent tree and arcane missiles will be getting the spotlight again. And if you want to encourage their conjuration until the end, just change the 2-piece bonus to be activated at the end of a complete conjuration.
Additionally, increase the arcane missiles damage a little or make it scale with the amount of arcane charges.
I agree with you, they all seem interesting to me, I am excited to try out each on the different specs, especially coupled with this post about base core play adjustments.
I think they are on the right track, the game has lots of content, many of us just experience it from a single perspective, as no one wants to spend tons of time to re-gear to swap spec or use an alt. WW seems to be moving into a better direction, giving each spec a few good playstyles.
<3