Talents like cryofreeze, reabsorb, tempest barrier, diverted energy and accumulative shielding all suck and need to go. Mages shouldn’t be tanky, they should be controlly. Mage should survive not by having infinity self healing but by being able to control the enemy team. These points should be moves like blazing speed, frost jaw, and deep freeze. If blizzard is dead set on mage having a self healing move, it should be through a long channel like evocate glyph. Talents like frigid winds and flow of times shouldn’t be the gate keepers of our capstones, and they should be 1 point talents replacing these self healing abominations.
This both enables mages to get their spells off but also lets mages play with more than rogues as fire/arcane and warlocks as frost. It also is way less toxic since it has more counters from the enemy than “purge shield mage dies” which is better from both the perspective of the mage and the enemy team. From the mage perspective, your ability to survive isn’t nearly nullified by an infinitely spammable move and from the enemy perspective, the mages can’t run around forever and ever with self healing that would make the most egregious hybrid self healing seasons blush.
Furthermore, mages damage needs to be not tied to cooldowns. Talents like rune of power and abilities like combustion promote an incredible margin of error for balance. The mage can not have self set up with them otherwise, with a partner they become oppressive. In PvE, it makes mages opt to ignore mechanics because of how significant a dps loss these talents are. They also necessitate mage be tanky so that they can live through the damage they have to tank in PvE and live in PvP to get more rounds of cooldowns off.
Having no damage outside of cooldowns also means that mages don’t have a way to punish people for overextending on them. When a player chases a mage behind a pillar, if the mage has no cooldowns the player will not be punished hard by the mage. Without sustained damage - without get off me damage - mages are forced again into being tanks to be any viable.
So, in addition to talents that let mages control the pace of the game, these tank talents should instead be things which boost mages latent damage. Stuff like incanter’s flow verses focus magic is not only a bit more enjoyable but is much more of a choice than anything against rune of power. Although people will complain they are forced into focus magic for others parses which like it happens but others are forced into stuff for yours so its a wash in the end. Moves like Living Bomb which generates Brain Freezes/Fire Blast charges as they tick increase consistent damage and not only give mages damage while moving and instant damage and a dot to monitor for pve, they give get off me damage for PvP.
They even have the makings of this with shatter and ice nova in the general tree. If they make it so that Ice Nova applies winter’s chill to targets which can’t be frozen, these two talents allow all mages to participate in shattering their sustained damage moves. This is a direction that they can take mages. It promotes casting, which is something mage players picked the class up to do. As of right now, mages instant moves are stronger than their casted moves. Another showing of moving in the right direction is Tempered Flames. It makes your casted spell 20% longer but do 90% more damage essentially. Shortening the combustion window but giving a sustained boost in its pace. Instant and casted damage both represented by this talent. Thats good as both should be potent. Their healing should not be.
Thus, these tanky talents going away would then require talents like RoP to go away and playstyles like combustion to be changed. It would require mage to survive using mobility moves and control moves. It would require mages to have their damage profile not be tied to instant damage every 1.5 minutes and then nothing the rest of the time. Dragon flight is the chance for blizzard to reset the status quo. If they keep mage as they are then for another 6 years or more they will be always on a knifes edge for balance.