With reworks announced for other specs in the coming patch, can we expect one for Frost and Fire Mages at least since they’re doing so poorly right now? Maybe to the class tree that’s also in dire need of attention?
5 Likes
Is that a gameplay issue or a tuning issue?
What’s wrong with the talent tree?
Frost and Fire need tuning obviously.
When you can parse a 95…and get beat by a rogue parsing a 30…there’s an issue.
7 Likes
Damage numbers for blizzard, frozen orb and more just seem totally too low. Also GS is a complete waste of a talent point, please rework this into some type of passive.
3 Likes
Fire’s design isn’t bad but barely got anything new like 0 new buttons. [Flamestrike] vs [Ignite] when 99.99999% of players absolutely hate [Flamestrike], [Phoenix Flames] is a worse [Fireblast], etc.
Frost needs the most changes but not having a proper cooldown button is the worst one.
For the class tree, there are a few useless talents like [Rigid Ice], [Accumulative Shielding], [Improved Frost Nova] (I still think it was ridiculous to nerf the baseline spell to make this talent) and the [Mirror Image] choice node. Some others could be resolved with better numbers. Now [Shifting Power] and [Meteor] need some major buffs/redesigns.
4 Likes
Does this matter? Why?
So a tuning thing, not a gameplay revamp?
So more tuning?
Is icy veins not a proper CD anymore? Since when?
None of those are useless. They may not be impactful in EVERY scenario but they are far from useless either.
Why?
How can you reach the conclusion of it being a tuning problem when I say people hate X? Same with PF vs [Fireblast], the damage isn’t the problem.
[Icy Veins] barely counts as a damage cd for Frost and it was included in my statement.
All those talents I mentioned are actively avoided if it can be helped because their design just isn’t good/useful.
1 Like
IMHO frost mages really don’t need THAT much work.
First off, get rid of ROP… just DELETE it and re-balance our damage without it in the equation. THEN…
On PVP
Increase frost bolt damage… there is no reason frost-bolts shouldn’t be critting for 50k-70k… If you are going to stand and let a mage free cast frostbolts onto you, you deserve to be in a world of hurt.
Give us back deep freeze, replace ice nova and slightly increase the CD.
Blink should remove all snares.
Alter time should not be capable of being dispelled
I think there are probably some things you could do in the talent tree as well to make it less clumsy, but I think this would go a long way to helping mages out.
I dont do much PVE, so this may come off as ignorant, because I am with PVE. But I would say
Buff Frostbolt damage. Maybe have it go up with more and more icicles. This would make you have to choose wisely when to throw an Icelance and dump them all.
Buff Blizzard damage.
Let comet storm hit more targets for more damage
Perhaps icenova can stay in and freeze more targets in place so mages can shatter combo a big group with comet storm.
Anyhow… I don’t feel like a LOT has to be done… but definitely something.
4 Likes
Thats alot just reroll war or demonhunter mage is a lost cause.
2 Likes
Maybe Mages do not need an entire rework, but rather proper tuning and replacement of too niche / undertuned talents. Current playstyles are not entirely bad and some people enjoy them, but some of their aspects should be improved and there should be viable alternatives to them for people, who do not like them.
Here is the list of things that could be changed / improved in current Mage trees to address that. Most of suggestions target specific talents / cases, so general damage tuning could still be needed as well:
General tree:
- Improved Frost Nova is just too niche. In most cases you would break the root until its 6 seconds duration expires anyway, so wasting a talent point on it is very arguable. It should be replaced with a talent that causes freeze roots to deal additional damage when they expire / are removed / dispelled or to CC immune targets, making them more useful in both PVE (for example, in raids with CC immune bosses) and PVP (where people often easily break out of them or dispel them).
- Rigid Ice still makes Frost Nova break after single shattered Ice Lance, so gives no real benefit even for Frost. Should just make freeze effects unbreakable by damage for first X seconds. This would help in both Mythic+, where people easily can break your roots earlier than you are able to shatter them and mass PVP, where chip damage from your teammates causes similar issues.
- Tempest Barrier and Diverted Energy should be unnerfed in PVP. Mage survivability has already dropped singifically from Shadowlands, so these nerfs are no longer warranted.
- Rune of Power vs Incanter’s Flow needs proper tuning or redesign to make both actually competitive. They could for example reduce damage bonus of RoP to 20%, make IF a static 10% damage buff and buff baseline damage of Mage abilities by 10-15% to compensate. This would make both abilities more competitive and also improve both builds - RoP build would be less reliant of the Rune itself and IF build would not need to manage its stacks. They will also be easier to tune up / down if needed, as Blizzard would be able to make small adjustments to any of them if needed instead of current + or -1% per IF stack, which is quite significant.
- Mirror Images upgrade node should work when MI are destroyed for any reason to make this upgrade more versatile.
- Mass Polymorph is just a weaker Arcane based version of Ring of Frost - it has longer CD, melee range, heals affected enemies and has target type limitations. Needs a buff, redesign or just being made a choice node with other CC, so that if people want, they can still take it, but there is also other option in same node for people, who don’t like it.
- Ice Nova root duration should be increased. If your enemy is far enough and / or your Haste is low, it can expire earlier than the following Ice Lance would hit the target, making its shatter effect wasted. This would also make it more useful for Arcane and Fire as a ranged root ability.
- Accumulative Shielding is just very niche and undertuned. At best case scenario, where your Barrier is not broken for whole CD reset, you get 4 seconds off its CD for 2 talent points. However, 1) if your Barrier is not broken, why would you even need to refresh it earlier? and 2) this is very unrealistic in real battle, where barrier gets broken pretty quickly. This talent should just be redesigned or removed.
- Dragon’s Breath PVP duration nerf should get reverted. Its CD got increased and its duration is already nerfed by PVP trinket bonus, resulting in requiring a lot of Haste to just unleash the CC combo, even more than before. This reduces build variety and makes Haste too important for PVP Mages, making other non-Versatility secondary stats redundant.
- Shifting Power as a universal ability being gated behind 2 points of snare boosts and additional charge for Frost Nova, all of which are quite niche, is controversial. I would suggest to move it to current Accumulative Shielding position and create an upgrade talent under it that would give it channeled while moving effect and increase its CD reduction. This would make it more accessible and match other classes trees, which usually have their base Covenant ability and its Untiy effect as separate nodes.
- The freed Frost capstone talent (as Shifting Power is suggested to be moved to Accumulative Shielding spot) should have an effect that would make freeze effects more attractive for Arcane and Fire in PVE (as currently they are not) and would still be useful for Frost. I suggest an effect that would make enemies that got affected by freeze effects take X% increased damage from the Mage for Y seconds, akin to Grisly Icicle legendary (without the unbreakable root and with Frost damage boosted as well). Such effect would make left part of tree CC talents much more attractive for both PVE players, who would have more motivation to take and use them in non-open world content and PVP players.
- Freezing Cold could become a choice node with some hard CC ability (stun / silence / disarm) to give Mages an option to pick between anti-melee roots / snares and anti-ranged / universal CC. This would allow them to customize their CC toolkit depending on the type of enemies they are facing, but would keep the amount of CC they would have at current number.
- Meteor should either deal reduced damage only starting from X targets or have -10% damage per each additional target after first up to -50% instead of split damage. Even then, baseline Meteor would still be weaker than Comet Storm, which does full damage to all targets and even has lower CD, so maybe it also needs a damage buff or CD reduction as well.
Fire Mage tree:
- Scorch needs a damage buff. It is a castable ability that somehow deals less than one third of damage of spammable AoE ability Arcane Explosion. To prevent it from getting too powerful withing Searing Touch phase, its damage bonus could just get extracted from Searing Touch and made baseline.
- Fervent Flickering could use a buff for single-target situations, where its effect is too minor. For example, its benefit could be doubled if Ignite affects only one target.
- Living Bomb needs a damage buff. It deals less damage on low number of targets than spammable Arcane Explosion. If needed, increase its CD and tune / redesign Incendiary Eruptions to compensate.
- Conflagration needs a massive damage buff or redesign, currently it is very undertuned.
- Tempered Flames build needs buffs to make it at least viable. It should not exceed normal Combustion build, as it is easier to play, but should be at least more competitive.
- Wildfire bonus should be changed to either crit damage or other secondary stat. Giving crit chance during already 100% crit chance Combustion is excessive and counterintuitive.
- As Blazing Soul is gone, Blazing Barrier’s nerf in PVP is no longer warranted and should be reverted.
- Flamecannon PVP talent needs its duration nerf reverted. With 3 seconds duration, it can be broken by even accidental movement or using Blink, which is too restrictive.
- Glass Cannon PVP talent needs a bigger damage bonus, less health penalty or a redesign. All it currently does is making Fireball hit 11-13k hits on 330-350k HP pools instead of 8-9k, which is still very low, and you pay with 15% of your survivability and a PVP talent slot for that.
Frost Mage tree:
- Water Elemental needs help to become more competitive with Lonely Winter. For example, Blizzard could reduce Lonely Winter to 10-15% bonus and give affected Frost Mage abilities a 10-15% buff to compensate. This keeps LW build similar, but makes WE more competitive, as you sacrifice less damage to play with it.
- Glacial Assault needs a buff or redesign, it is very undertuned currently.
- Ebonbolt needs a buff, as it is not really competitive with Frozen Touch in PVE and has too low effect for its cast time and CD in PVP. I would suggest to reduce its cast time to 2 seconds, CD to 30 seconds and / or buff its damage.
- Snowstorm is RNG and has too long ramp-up time. It should have bigger (50-100%) chance of application and lower stack count with bigger effect per stack to make it more useful.
- Subzero is niche, as it does not work against raid bosses / CC immune targets at all and is an important gateway talent for non-Mastery builds to your major cleave talent. It should have reduced bonus for semi-frozen effects (Fingers of Frost and Winter’s Chill) in addition to current effect to make it more generally useful.
- Glacial Spike is a DPS loss in PVE and should be buffed. As Blizzard might think that it is already powerful enough in PVP, it could be a PVE buff only.
- Ray of Frost is not a DPS gain in PVE and quite disruptable in PVP, so should be buffed. Reducing its CD to 45-60 seconds, making it useable while moving baseline, trigger Icy Propulsion effect with every tick as supposed and have its duration not affected by PVP trinket set bonus CC duration reduction could help.
- Frostbolt in general needs a damage buff to make Frostbolt based builds more competitive.
- Frost Mage could use a spammable ranged AoE damage talent akin to Glacial Fragments legendary. It can spam 2 target cleave Ice Lances or run into melee range to spam Arcane Explosion, but both of options seem counterintuitive for large packs and a squishy cloth wielder to run right into them. For example, Blizzard could create a Glacial Fragments copy that is a separate ability and not tied to Ice Lance anymore (to prevent it from getting overloaded) and put it somewhere in the middle of the tree, so that you could pick such an option, but would need to spend a talent point for it as a trade-off.
- Both Fractured Frost and Cold Front could use a buff or redesign, they are underutilized and undertuned currently.
- Splitting Ice has a bit of contradiction in it - it is a cleave talent, but it also buffs single-target damage and its cleave breaks CC. This means that if you want to prevent breaking breakable CC near the target, you should avoid it, but by doing that you also lose a part of main target damage and that should not be the case. I would suggest to remove its 5% damage boost to Ice Lance and Icicles and bake it into their baseline effect, turning Splitting Ice into just an optional cleave talent. This would allow Mages to take it depending on whether they want to cleave or to avoid breaking nearby CC without affecting their main target damage output.
- Chilled to the Bone PVP talent is very niche and undertuned. It should affect all freeze effects and have stronger effect to make it actually competitive. Removing it and merging such effect into Improved Frost Nova replacement talent might be even better.
- Concentrated Coolness PVP talent Frozen Orb placement is a massive QoL feature that should not be gated behind PVP only. I suggest to move its FO placement effect into either baseline Frozen Orb or Everlasting Frost talent in Frost tree and buff / redesign this talent to compensate.
- Snowdrift build-up effect being cancelled by “freedom” effects is strange, as they have nothing to do with stuns. This should be fixed. Making it useable on allies, so that Snowdrift could be effectively used in BGs (on allied melee players) as a CC option without deathwish rushing into enemy front line to CC them yourself could also be helpful.
Arcane Mage Tree:
- Arcane Surge is controversial - some people like it and some would prefer to play with old Arcane Power. There is a compromise for both kinds of players - Arcane Surge could become a choice node with old Arcane Power and the upgrade talent could increase damage bonus and duration of both.
- Foresight is too niche, as spending 10 seconds stationary to activate it is often too risky. To make it more useable, Blizzard could reduce both time needed to activate it and time of movement casting provided and just make it stack. This would keep its uptime around the same, but would make it more useable.
- With changes to Arcane tree, it might have ended with too many mandatory throughput nodes, making its utility less accessible. Reducing some of its 2 point nodes to 1 point (with similar effect as now) and merging some of them into base effect node could help with that.
- In a similar manner to Frost, Arcane could use a spammable ranged AoE ability to deal damage from range to packs and not run into melee range. As it already has thematic Arcane Explosion, it could just have a talent in the tree that would make Arcane Explosion usable on enemy target from range and hit both the target and other enemies around it, but would reduce its radius to 8 yards as a trade-off (as both Flamestrike and Blizzard have such radius). Such talent should also be optional, so that if people want to spend talent points on something else or keep the base 10 yards radius, they would be able to skip it.
- Having Concentration (a more niche talent) as a prerequisite talent to Arcane Harmony (a more generally useful talent) is not very good. While I understand that some talents might be locked after less desired ones intentionally, a better option could be to make more generally useful talents more accessible and open access to more niche ones instead of vise versa, so that niche talents would be picked when wanted / needed and are less mandatory. In this particular case, consider swapping Concentration’s position with Arcane Harmony, which could achieve that.
- After all the nerfs, Clearcast Arcane Missiles in PVP deal less dps than 4 charged Arcane Blast, even without Nether Precision boost. As CC AM are supposed to be the Arcane’s burst, that should not be the case. As a result, Arcane Missiles could get a damage boost, maybe PVP only if in PVE Arcane Missiles are already powerful enough.
- Arcanosphere PVP talent lost a lot of value with Arcane Power removal, so could use a bump. Making it affected by Haste, increasing its damage (if needed, with no possibility to crit to compensate) or other buffs could be helpful.
- Master of Escape PVP talent is underutilized and hardly competitive with other Arcane PVP talents, so could use a buff. It could remove X damage over time effects from the Mage when Greater Invisibility is used, but provide less cooldown reduction for it than currently to compensate. This change would give it a niche of making Greater Invisibility a true escape option that sometimes would not be instantly broken by DoTs and a better tool to use against DoT based comps like Shadowplay.
There is still a lot of work to be done to Mage trees to bring them to appropriate level and reach the Blizzard’s goal of providing choices and build variety. Hopefully, now that game is released, they can bring more attention to class trees and develop them better.
11 Likes
Next expansion. RoP ruined Mages. So hopefully the “individual” who authorized it to be the Mage gimmick for 6 years in row knows this.
They don’t give a f about anything else but raid and mythic performance.
8 Likes
Frost needs a total overhaul. Icicles for pvp either take infinitely more effort putting in than damage you get out (ie build 4-5 then fire them with a shatter combo) so much so that its better to pretend you don’t have a mastery as mage and don’t pay attention to them. If you’re playing glacial spike, its still something you ignore and spike becomes the button you push when it glows.
The frost tree is still just awful and filled with not just boring but awful talents. Spells like ebonbolt which should be powerful and feel good to press have been left to rot. We have passives out the wazoo such as glacial assault which does very bad damage, only procs off one of our least pressed moves and doesn’t even look cool. Flurry, for all the absolutely positive changes made, is still a weak hitting enabler and nothing more.
Shatter combos do the same damage as other specs single button while being more labor and skill intensive to get off on the mages part. Frostbolt is like negative damage in PvP. Slick ice in PvP will almost never get to 10 stacks because you’re either not able to cast or there are dozens of spells which are more important to cast than bolt, even under veins and with slick ice chosen.
Frozen orb is still both too big for PvP which causes it to own your own team but also too small for PvE where tanks just run packs out of it and think nothing of it. It also has the problem of in PvE its damage is constantly nerfed and literally never allowed to be good for long but also awful and negligable in PvP. Due to us being a spec that is 100% “get ice lance proc → use ice lance” they don’t and can’t hit hard in PvP but are 100% of our damage in PvE (and also our only damage in PvP but thats because every other move we have sucks butt).
The specs main cooldown is a haste buff and nothing more (unless you take slick ice which makes it… a better haste buff that also gives a damage buff to a single spell). Its straight out of 2004 wow design and embarrassing that not a single dev has thought “hmm this makes our game play like one that is two decades old which for a two decade old game is something we should avoid”. If you want to give away wows age, just have someone press icy veins after they’ve used literally any other specs big cd.
In PvE we are still tied to rune of power and there are still people deluding themselves into thinking that this is a test of skill instead of being a pita design limiter. Blizzard recognized this limitation with hunter’s double tap recently and have removed it, hopefully to give hunters damage elsewhere and fun moves now that a toxic design limiting element has been removed. They refuse to do this with rune of power. RoP is still being taken by fire and arcane in PvP at times because of how cracked it can be despite its constant justified knee capping in pvp.
Nothing frost has does impressive damage except for maybe glacial spike. As THE glass cannon class. Spike is a huge dps nerf in PvE still, a known and ignored issue. Spells like blizzard are just a slow and minor reset for ice lance builder i mean frozen orb in PvP and in PvE are just a minor reset for orb. Ray of frost is a binary talent which either frickin one shots someone if fully channeled which isn’t really fun for the person being ray of frosted and gets boring fast as the mage or does nothing. In PvE I don’t think ray has ever been good. Yet here it is, still gunking up our tree.
Frost still has gigantic bugs such as frozen orb straight up flying through targets because they were “too close” (6 yards away instead of 7+) and then we have no damage because without freezing winds, frost does nothing. Icy veins is still a mandatory 6 point investment in PvE and 5 points in PvP (you can ignore slick ice because frostbolt has been nerfed so much that even casting bolts under 10 stacks slick is pretty awful).
Our interesting PvP talents such as frostbomb are instantly dispelled and no consequence happens for that dispel. Ice Form might be nice if it wasn’t purgable and indeed instantly purged. While its cool having fire moves, I won’t complain about it, ring of fire should never be FROST mages most deadly move. We can’t even take ice wall anymore really without giving up either our best damage spell (ring of fire), a way to get breathing room from melee to cast something (precog), our stun or a way to make frozen orb less of a suck move. Precognition is such a funny passive for frost because really, you want it up so you can poly or ring of fire or just not be fking CCed all game. Rarely does one think “oh boy precog TIME TO SHATTER COMBO FROSTBOLT GO” its more like “I juked them guess ill use my aura mastery to ring of fire/poly/ring of frost/blizzard, now BACK to ice lancing”.
Being so reliant on lance wouldn’t even feel bad if the spell wasn’t doing like 1/9th someones HP. In MoP frost was HELLA reliant on lance damage to kill but lances did 1/6 to 1/4 someones health so a mage could kill someone who doesn’t have defensives up in 4-6 globals aka 4-6 seconds aka a long donkey time in PvP. No one even uses defensives against orb because its a pointless bad move and it takes legit 10+ lances to kill someone. Imagine the outcry if any other spec only had one damage source and that source took that many globals to score a KO. It would be fixed instantly and with an apology. You can spike shatter 5 lances and spike again and someone will still have a comfortable 50k hp even in 411 gear.
Speaking of our stun, the changes are nice, it makes me so mad to admit that I enjoy pressing snowstorm but the move STILL FRICKING BLOWS. Any player who knows how it works just doesn’t get stunned by it. Any team who understands snowstorm can stop snowstorm forever. What other stun can be team played to not only completely nullify but also fricking own the player trying to stun because said stun forces said player to position themselves for their own death? No other MOVE, not just stun but actual ability, can be owned as hard as snowstorm can because if the guy you want to stun gets out of storm for just a millisecond BOOP NO STUN.
These issues have been not only addressed by not just the losers who howl into the wind on this forum but by mage people with clout, by beta tickets and beta forum posts, on discord, in QAs EVERYWHERE.
The only thing mage has going for it anymore is that it has an insane toolkit in its class tree. If its spells did literally anything, then we could make use of our good toolkit to do damage but since frostbolt sucks, glacial spike does less damage than elemental blast while being a longer cast time, deeper talent and requiring more of an investment to actually cast, ebonbolt is useless and most people forget it exists including blizzard, our space making abilities are used for others because mage is also for some reason loaded to the gills with tanking talents to the point that you peel for others, tank damage yourself and run around like an ahole idiot spamming ice lance and instant damage moves, getting hit by 30 interrupts when you cast ring of fire and waiting to dunk a shattered comet storm on someones head which no one is ever prepared for because no one knows what frosts damage comes from because no one plays frost because the spec is outdated and BLOWS for anyone but dedicated frost mage players.
Blizzard just really doesn’t seem to care.
8 Likes
Holy hell, I was wondering why I could no loner DB >ROF … they really do hate us dont they?
IDK man, I crit somone in solo shuffle for 240k with a Glacial spike… That is rare though. most of the time it will pop people for around 180.
Just wait til people are conqed up. On beta I had people let me get every modifier set up for spike, use rune of power, and on use and it just did nothing. We did tests where in the spike cast time, spriests, DH, sub, WW, they all did the same damage. But all instant casts. And without any prerequisites needed. And with better follow up damage. And with better constant damage.
This is all also ignoring that actually setting up glacial spike is more effort than any other spec with a hard hitting attack and the time spent getting to spike is such low damage than by the time you get the spike off, its damage compared to what everyone else has put out is pathetic and the best case scenario is you pull a CD from the enemy who then lives it and doesn’t care and the miracle case scenario is you pull CDs and then get a big spike a second time which just doesn’t happen in practice.
1 Like
Out of all the mage talent tree, the mirror image stuff is probably the most useless I’ve seen.
I’d rather have just about anything else in those slots to be honest. Why not add a slot for something useful? Why not make mirror image do more damage or apply a big slow? Why not make the images spam arcane blast at like 20% strength? Anything else… 
Pretty much anything would be better than the ones that we have there
Because you gave no explanation of the problem nor proof that 99% of players hate it.
Then elaborate, what is the problem? How can you expect a rework when you refuse to even discuss the justification for said rework?
Since when? Why do YOU consider it not to be a damage cd? Does your damage not increase when you use it?
That’s not true. Those talents are taken all the time.
Everything you are questioning here was said over 100 times on the beta feedback thread. Literally every single point.
I just want to talk about this one in particular. Most of them are taken because we have to so we can take everything better they are roadblocking, others are actively avoided, not counting the final capstones.
[Shifting Power] should reduce more cooldown like the conduit and probably be channeled while moving by default like in Shadowlands and [Meteor] should not split damage and deal more damage as well.
Doesn’t it already break stuns and roots? Are you talking about allowing it to removing slows as well? I know taking Shimmer removes the stun/root break, but by default Blink has this feature.
Ok, so why did you decide to make your own thread then especially if you refuse to elaborate on your topic at all?
You don’t have to. You can take any talent you want.
Why?