If they’re going to simplilfy the rotation then Mage needs to get the Warrior treatment of always being balanced towards the middle / lower middle of other classes.
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Honestly pretty impressed with the direction thus far, and I’ll reiterate that I think a lot of the feedback / constructive discussion that’s made its way through this forum has been a big driver in that. Removing double lust is alone huge and speaks to one of the bigger design flaws we’ve had for a while now. Maybe I’ll eat my words but really does give me confidence that Arcane is going to finally get its long overdue moment…
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This feels like a complaint for the warrior forum. Might have misinterpreted, but no need to have ill-wishings towards another class because you’re unhappy with the results of another.
I’d hope all classes are op and tuned to be capable of being top dps.
But mainly mage 
A lot of good stuff here, most of which is the Temporal Warp removal. Temporal Warp is kind of like the Mage’s version of Power Infusion issue: you can pop it for your personal benefit or for the group’s benefit, and sometimes they are not the same. I am glad they are removing the conflicting incentive. The obscene amount of haste also causes some weird GCD issues in some cases, so that’s also a bonus.
On the Arcane front, not a big surprise that Radiant Spark gets the rework. It was the only cooldown that doesn’t fit neatly into the Big Burn/Mini Burn cadence, and the fact that it counts number of spell hit, along with spell queueing oddity has causes some complex optimization for rotations in the past since its introduction in Shadowland. Since the Harmony build in Shadowland, they have continued to work on reducing the amount of pieces that go into the arcane puzzle, first Arcane Power, then Rune of Power, so this is another logical step toward streamlining the spec, and hopefully reducing the barrier of entry and make it less intimidating for new mages to try out.
I don’t play a lot of Fire, so I am kind of ambivalent about the Fire changes. However, pretty excited about them adding support for Deathborne style gameplay again.
A lot of people hear Deathborne and gets triggered about spamming Frostbolt, but remember the context is a lot different now. We are not chasing permanent uptime on Icy Veins, Deathborne doesn’t extend itself via Legendary, and instead of having no heavy hitter toward the end of the window (which is why we spammed frostbolt back then) now we get to make use of Ray of Frost and/or double meteor drop via Frostfire talent tree. Not to mention that Deathborne will probably be linked to Icy Veins itself, therefore being extended by Ice Lance/GS anyway, we will probably use the same rotation throughout the CD, but with an eye toward conserving CD for the end of the window instead.
Another thing to keep in mind is that we have to look at the rework in combination with the presence of Hero Talents, since it’s slated for Alpha and beyond. If you look at the recent datamining from mmo-champion post, it’s not inconceivable that many of the slated changes are aiming toward a particular playstyle that works coherently with one of the hero talents available to the spec.
For example, the arcane rework talking about “increasing the power of Arcane’s proc” is almost surely some kind of change to Arcane Missile that addresses Clearcasting proc, that hooks into Sunfury Arcane using CC to generate Spellfire Sphere, and Spellslinger triggering Nether Precision via CC usage.
In conclusion, looking very hopeful for mages in Alpha and beyond, hope we get to experience soon, and remember to keep providing feedback to make mages great.
So I forced myself to sit through and watch several streamers that have Alpha access on Twitch and while it was a thoroughly miserable experience having to listen to some of the most nonsensical commentary I’ve ever heard in my life, I think I came away with a pretty good idea of where things stand right now.
Frostfire is hands down the best of the three both in terms of the overall vision and the execution. It plays very smoothly for both specs and the procs both feel and actually are impactful. I even like the updated visual on Frostfire Bolt. It may use a couple of minor adjustments but, honestly, if it went live as is it would be fine.
Sunfury is stellar for Fire but feels clunky with the current version of Arcane. That said, they’ve clearly indicated that the Arcane spec tree will get a significant rework so that may well change once those overhauls are implemented. It still needs some tweaks particularly to Arcane Soul which is currently very underwhelming. The biggest problem by far is the ridiculously amount of ramp up that is required to trigger Glorious Incandescence which is arguably the most impactful node in the whole tree. That needs to be significantly simplified, again more for Arcane than Fire, but is a must for both. Lastly, the phoenix needs some major VFX improvements because right now it just looks like a bird, lol. It needs to be wreathed in fire and arcane particle effects (as do the Spellfire orbs, btw) and shouldn’t just awkwardly fade away once its duration is up but should instead divebomb the target and set off a spectacular conflagration. In fact, come to think of it that should be its capstone node. Those changes alone will make it infinitely better. The phoenix’s AI is also a bit wonky atm but I am sure that will get ironed out.
Spellslinger, however, is an absolute disaster. The visuals are awful, it has virtually no interaction with the rotations of either spec and just feels completely passive and utterly uninspired. This is especially true when you compare it with the other two hero trees. It definitely feels like they just couldn’t come up with a good idea for the third hero tree after using up all the interesting stuff on the other two and this was the left over. Right now it’s the red headed stepchild of the mage hero trees.
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I want them to just scrap the concept and do something grounded in our lore. We don’t need a hero spec that is essentially a repitition of an existing mastery. I imagine the coding being very difficult to do well with frost icicles: what will work for frost will probably look like visual diarrhea for fire because it will be missing what goes in the place of frost’s icicles.
I imagine if they try to do the display for fire and frost differently, someone will accidentally break that code periodically and the splinters will look crazy.
Just being announced as “Spellslinger” was enough to know it was going to be an unimaginative dud so not at all surprised lol. Hopefully they don’t just overtune it to compensate and then pretend it’s popular.
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I agree the Spellslinger tree looks super awful and dull.
Better scrap it totally and bring something innovative and fresh/new like a Summoner tree ;))
Keep in mind that they already said some animations are incomplete, and Spellslinger splinters are likely one of them (especially the Frost ones). A minor nit about Spellslinger having no spec interaction, the Splinters do trigger Arcane Echo from Touch of the Magi, so there is something there, and possibly Splinter benefiting from Winter’s Chill but not consuming them as well. I really haven’t seen too much Spellslinger footage myself to tell either way.
Yeah, in hindsight everyone who pointed that out back when they first unveiled the names was right. I didn’t much stock in the nomenclature at the time but it really was telling.
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They could start by deleting 75% of the talent points, removing all the passives and superfluous talents, and then reverting back to a talent tree with maybe 15 talents in the general, and 15 talents in the spec trees… 120 talents plus whatever TWW brings is too much for no reason. Failed system has failed.
The only way to do that is to reduce the number of active spells, such as GS, CmS and Ray. Any further and you risk returning to the bad old days of NoIL, or IL spam. Placing those 3 on choice nodes would be a good start, or as I have suggested in the past, making them all “spenders” for icicles. For Arcane, this reads like removing the 600 ramp-up cooldowns, which actually sounds pretty appealing. If it plays anything like WoD/Legion Arc then bring it on.
I’m somewhat hopeful, but at the same time I don’t think this solves the problems. It’s just more bandaid fixes for problems they created. Sure, the specs might feel better than they currently do, but it’s just another small fix when a bigger and more extensive overhaul is needed.
Who knows though, they could pull something out of their behinds and surprise us all with a great expansion.
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Which were just spells and spell buffs we already had.
That’s mind blowing when you think about it.
Rofl… Oh wait you were serious? 
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Yea, I’m only moderately hopeful, talk is something, we’ll see if they put the effort into it. If it’s gonna happen at all TWW is a good place to insert it. I think they have big ideas sometimes that get stuck in the weeds of the details as they try to change things and end up finding out they tied their own hands from previous expansions and previous designs. As they get into the details they realize its a BIG effort, not a simple one, so they push it off.
But hope we can!
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I was digging on Spellslinger and will likely start/stay there, unless in the end it’s not competitive at all.
The splinters do decent damage but, my word, are they fugly! Right now I am really torn. For the first time ever I am considering not maining Arcane because Frostfire Frost and Sunfury Fire look so much better. If I stay Arcane I am basically facing another expansion full of frustration. Between those concerns and the fact that they’re nuking my city to generate hype for what otherwise looks to be another very underwhelming expansion story, I am even weighing whether I should just skip it entirely.
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I love arcane but the gamefeel of the spec needs some big adjustments.
Changing Radiant Spark is a good first step but I feel the ultimate problem is that the spec has too many cooldowns that are all meant to be used either before the rotation or during it. This creates a bad gamefeel for the spec, more like you are pressing a load of the buttons so you can do damage after (or between them) rather then doing a more responsive rotation.
Mana Management is a really cool concept for a dps spec. I really love it, and even loved it in Legion (which I still think had the best iteration of the mana management spec aspects). I think “mana management” and “cooldown management” got conflated in the design somewhere, and now there is too much all around “management”.
I think fundamentally what needs to happen is a design shift in the talent tree and developing different types of builds. Less single target v AOE builds, and more builds around augmenting mana management and the burn/conserve phases. Like make the left side of the tree more focused on longer / less frequent burn/conserve phases (more sustained dps less burst dps), the right more on focused on a high-intensity burn phase with a lot of micromanaging/cooldowns for the people that do want more “cooldown management” gameplay.
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It’s not even cooldowns necessarily, it’s that no other spec (with the possible exception of demo lock) has to do so much set up to dps. You have to hit 8 buttons (evocate, AB, AO, RS, NT, AS, ABar and TotM) before you even start doing meaningful damage. And God help you if you have to move or get a mechanic.
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I finally read the source post you mention from the Alpha thread…and by my read they aren’t really planning to change much. Expect a few talents to be in different places, or one or two removed…but I don’t expect fundamental changes at all.
What cracked me up the most is they start by talking about arcane (because alphabetically it comes first), then make sure we know they are working on fire first! just LOL from me.
I would have preferred if instead of shards we had buffed Arcane Missiles and Flurry.
In the past we already had a passive talent that when we used arcane spells they corroded the target’s defense and increased our damage against them. Blizzard could have implemented something similar, making Arcane Missiles, for example, increase the damage of the next Missiles against the target, creating a gameplay of increasing damage as time passes, similar to the affliction sorcerer with its periodic effects.
All of the tree’s interactions could be maintained, increasing the target’s vulnerability to our spells up to a certain limit, which when reached would transform our Missiles and our Flurry into a different ability that would do much more damage, one that would fuse arcane and ice.
I read it the opposite for Arcane. To me, it seems to imply a less scripted rotation and more impactful use of Clearcasting/Missiles.
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