Can frost get a good rework without doing our identity dirty?

Classes Mage
1

Frost feels better now than it was mostly due to mastery changes and ability buffs. Our glyphs are now useless as they don’t appear to even have an effect on the icy veins water elemental. Not sure if the soak being missing in mage tower is going to do us dirty there too. Also now we don’t have access to welly for the awesome Torghast powers that existed there for it too. Wish you had buffed welly to be equal to LW before arbitrarily gathering data to prove that one talent was unabashedly better than the other and using it as an excuse to delete the talent you intentionally underpowered.

It sucks waiting for 6 years to have an iconic piece of your class, hoping it would be fixed, only to get it demoted like that. And it doubly sucks that there’s so much that was built around that identity. We’ve also been openly discouraged from taking welly since legion as it’s rarely been competitive. I just wish we had a dev that both cared about how our class played as well as its lore. Also there’s not a ton of different identity between the specs in my opinion. Mage specs work very similarly and it makes the class feel kind of bland.

Also there’s a reddit thread with significant positive votes asking for welly back, so the data saying delete welly was all survivor bias, it wasn’t actually grounded in community opinion. Lonely winter was so good frost mages were forced to take it except in the few cases where NOIL was a thing. Next time, if you’re going to balance an ability around player data, make sure the things you’re comparing are actually equal in power.

I now know how the survival hunters felt. It’s an awful feeling and there really needs to be some lines in the sand that devs can’t cross. There’s so much of our identity we don’t have access to any more. Those BFA glyphs for welly were sweet.

Also glad the programmer for welly finally figure out how to have waterjet as a castable and autocastable ability without screwing over the auto. Don’t know if you fired the guy who broke live DF beta PTR or if he finally got his stuff together, either way, I’m happy.

In WC3, mages could have up to 3 WEs simultaneously. IV we feels nothing like that.

3 Likes
2

Did we need a 57th thread about the Water Elemental when they all say almost literally the same thing? It’s not coming back, removing it was a good thing, Frost is not a pet spec, when LW became better players rejoiced because the pet sucks, no other lore mages use them other than Jaina, WC3 was 20 years ago and is irrelevant, and that with zero interaction to any other spell it was never going to be buffed to be competitive.

At best, we might see a cosmetic spell (like raining frogs) to allow you to summon a non-combat version but outside of that, there is and hasn’t been for over a decade, to make the WE a pet.

6 Likes
3

It got rework that made elemental actual part of rotation and not something that only hypercasuals and RPers use.

1 Like
4

Do we have to have 3 specs that all play the same way? Its removal was based on survival bias.

I seriously don’t understand how anyone can defend how terribly balanced LW was and the resulting justification to remove WE. Why do you want to make frosties all play like you? You’re already whining that Frost was underperforming in another thread. Just play fire like the mage dev wants us all to and let them leave the darned pet alone.

Even though mage tower and Torghast are legacy content, it’s freaking ridiculous to remove abilities that were core to those mechanics for anyone going back to do them.Those were designed with it as a semi pet spec. It’s wrong to do such a drastic removal. If they’re serious about this I want them to screw over BM hunters and Demo locks the same way. It just feels wrong and broken, period.

Same for removing glyphs. Glyphs are literally class flavor and in this decision, they’ve removed that with no alternatives. Are they giving us anything cool to make up for it? Nope. Even if you hate bubbles you should be asking them to not break everything with this change and fix it and give us glyphs. Rune shouldn’t be in mage tower if we don’t get a free soak.

I’m sorry I don’t recall this party. Nor would I call the source of our class “irrelevant”

It was probably just the mythic raiders who felt this way. this is the URL outside of reddit.com for the thread for preserving bubbles:

r/wow/comments/14pn042/save_summon_water_elemental_part_1/

As you can see, it has positive votes. Most players want it. Period. It would be 0 or negative on the top thread if it wasn’t popular.

Also it’s weird you’re defending the loss of an “unpopular” ability but not attacking the ecouragement of using hugely unpopular ones from the past like ray of frost, glacial spike, comet storm.

While we’re on this topic I’d also like to point out most of those are D3 abilities. The first time they decided to give us scaling on our AOE with mastery they put it on FO a D3 ability. FO is far more powerful than blizzard. It feels like more of this class’s fantasy is coming more from D3 than warcraft itself with them emphasizing D3 abilities over wow ones. Blizzard is cludgy sure. but they could have done things to make it easier to use just like starfall. But nope.

Also the devs seem to have a hissy fit whenever IL usage goes down. Ironically though both WE and IL entered into the class at the same time (TBC). In TBC, of the two, only WE was relevant in PVE at all because IL only worked on targets you could freeze and you couldn’t get freeze effects on bosses and most elites back then, there was no FoF procs. WE became permanent in wotlk with the perma elemental glyph in the very next expansion. WE has had a storied history with this class, the devs themselves chose to underpower it and discourage its use and then turn us into something more akin to a D3 frost wizard.

Mages are a DPS class. The moment they chose to make LW the optimal choice, is the moment they decided to screw WE over. They should have just ripped the bandaid off all the way back in legion instead of leaving everyone’s hope’s up. I don’t think I would have bothered with my mage at all if they had done that. And it would have saved EVERYONE. ME and them alot of trouble. I’d be fine with this change if they could give me the hours I’ve poured into my mage back.

1 Like
5

Wc3 is not our source, but WC2 is.
And in WC2 Mage did not have Water elemental at all.
So how is this an argument?

1 Like
6

So Tut’s argument: wc3 was 20 years ago. Your argument:
So there’s this game from 28 years ago that’s our head cannon. So we should go with that.

Well guess what? I can do you even better. Conjuror in wc1 summoned we, it was a beast and most of its damage. It also is referred to as a mage in wow fandom: ending of url:
/wiki/Conjurer

So in the rts we’re 2/3 iterations as a pet class. I’d gladly settle with you that we merely get one spec that’s a pet class and we can have 2 homogenized specs that feel the same and 1 unique one.

Also i earned the archmage title in legion. The archmage could summon up to 3 wes simultaneously.

Also why don’t you care about deleted flavor? What are petitioning for to fix the flavor lost abd broken parts of the game as a result of this change.

Ya’ll play calculators and that’s a problem.

1 Like
7
1 Like
8

That’s an excellent idea. Let’s delete lock pets and hunter pets too, tell them they have battle pets that look just like their pets then completely ignore that they’re not class specific and can’t be used in combat (pet battles aren’t combat imo nor are they relevant for most of the game). Still not seeing anyone talk about getting new glyphs or anything for flavor.

2 Likes
9

Comparing pet classes to a non-pet class isn’t the greatest idea. Let’s not do that.

2 Likes
10

That’s an arbitrary decision you made. If you call access to a permanent pet being a pet class we’ve been a pet class since wotlk with the perma pet glyph: 70%+ of the game’s life span. It would be inappropriate to make a pet class suddenly a non-pet class, no? If they were planning this they should have done it in legion, our class fantasy expansion. Would have saved a lot of time for me and others. I probably wouldn’t have even gotten back into wow if not for perma welly and i want my time bacm.

2 Likes
11

No it’s not. It’s based on the history of Water elemental originally being a CD. The fact that hunter and warlock have so much of their utility locked behind pets, including CC, pet taunts, buffs, dispels, bloodlust, defensives, etc. It’s also based on the fact that hunters and warlocks have MULTIPLE pet options all with unique abilities and appearances. It’s based on the fact that hunter and warlock have MULTIPLE tools for pet management including feed pet, mend pet, health funnel, etc. It’s based on the fact that hunters and warlocks have abilities that deal direct damage through their pet, such as kill command, command demon, guillotine. It’s based on the fact that having a pet out has pretty much always been optimal for those classes.

If anyone is being arbitrary here, it’s you. Mage is not a pet class – it never was and never will be.

2 Likes
12

You’re the one claiming having an optional talent in our tree makes us a pet class. You just contradicted yourself.

Where in the rtses does the pet fantasy for hunter even come from?

Also in wc1 lock pets were all temporary. Up until vanilla mages were the class that had the most backing them being a pet class. It’s strange we didn’t get a pet spec sooner.

1 Like
13

Where do you think I’ve claimed this?

That’s really neat. What are warlock pets like in this game though? What have they been like in World of Warcraft?

14

And why was that decision made? Still waiting to hear where hunter fantasy even came from. Mage had the strongest justification for being a pet class of the 3. Lock couldn’t sustain 3 of its signature pet, ever.

Deleting an ability expansion features were designed around is wrong. Those alone locked us in as a pet class to some extent.

1 Like
15

Does it matter? The decision was made to make warlock a pet class. That’s it – that’s the end of it.

There was not a decision to make mage a pet class.

What content do you believe you can no longer do without a permanent pet?

16

How to defeat our own arguments 101.

It’s conjuror, not mage. What fandom beleives is irrelevant. First appearance is WC2 mage and you can see by the OTHER spells too that both units have.

I don’t remember mages ever summoning scorpions or rain of fire however wc2 mage has fireball and polymorph and blizzard. Obvious that wc2 mage is the original. Not to mention back in vanilla wow mage did not have water elemental, it only became a spell in tbc.

And neither was permanent, so by not having a permanent pet we became more like wc3 mage. Next.

17

It does matter. People who have played the rts see the we as part of their fantasy and would expect a class that had more air time with pets to have them. Again if blizz had made this decision clear when i came back in legion we wouldn’t be having this discussion. In fact i wouldn’t have stayed.

Well i’m an archmage now and it’s clear the class graduated in wc3.

Excellent point. Hence why i want hunter pets and warlock pets deleted if they’re serious about this. There were no permanent pets in the rtses for warlock. Next.

18

From 30 years ago? Sorry but WoW is not going to be pidgeonheld in its design because a few people want things to stay the same after 30 years.

You are welcome to enjoy your permanent elemental in Classic Wrath. That franchise was designed specifically for people who don’t like change.

2 Likes
19

Khadgar was an archmage in wc2 and did not have a water elemental.

Rexxar, one of the OG hunter
, had a permanent pet Misha since the beginning, and Warlocks aswell wc1 they were summoming permanent demons.

20

And not even after another 13 years of having it in the game itself?

Lol. My druid can randomly summon faery dragons now but my mage can’t even hold onto an ability it’s had on and off for 20+ years. You’d hope that classes can take steps forward just like lock and hunter instead of being pigeonholed.

Where in wc2 is he called an archmage? He was labeled as a mage in game.

Except just like mage being split across multiple units, hunters are too. Basically any archer. And Rexxar was unique, not like most versions so it’s a very arbitrary decision in context to base the entire class around it.

Lock pets were never permanent in wc1. They eventually died just like water elemental. Of the two classes mages had a more recent iteration that was pet based.