The “class tree” just feels lazy. Today I was setting up my Mages. I have all 3 specs but on different characters. Why is it the class tree forces frost spells on you if you’re Arcane for example. Or an Arcane spell on a Fire mage. It really bothers me, makes my bars feel weird, and doesn’t look right. Feels like a lazy design to be honest. And due to needing to spend all my points in order to even save my class tree, I have no option but to choose some of these to either complete a path to what I want, or just be filler. I don’t think we need both a class tree, and a spec tree. I think 1 tree per spec that is focused on that specific spec would be 1000x better
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You play a Mage that happens to specialize in [Fire or whatever], not a Mage that never learned the basics and only knows Fire spells.
Most of these abilities are either useless at max level or extremely situational (slows and stuff at best) anyway. Just don’t put them on your bars if they bother you so much.
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Oh I can answer that, apparently there was “a community” which demanded all those spells to be available tho they never used it during like 5 expansions in a row, so that trash was returned.
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Because you’re a mage, not a firemancer, not a frost conjurer.
I’m of the total opposite opinion. We have way too few class skills now, compared to Vanilla → Cata.
As a frost mage, I miss Scorch, Fireball, Flamestrike, Arcane Blast, Meteor, Arcane Missiles, Mana Shield, Mana Gem and Evocation A LOT.
At least hero talents are returning some of that lost aspect of the game, especially Frostfire.
You were always a Mage first and Specialization second.
And how is this different than previous iterations?
Fire and Frost had Blink.
Fire and Arcane had Frost Nova.
Frost and Arcane had… well in some builds they could pick up Living Bomb I think? 
like in MoP.
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If you get Fire locked by an interrupt, those frost and arcane spells come in handy.
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This almost always only happens to PvP players though.
Which is also another aspect of this issue: non PvP players rarely play their classes to their utmost, as the base game isn’t enough for making your whole class set shine.
Agreed, not liking a class tree can really kill a character for me (because you can’t escape by going to another spec! Mwahahaha!)
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I agree but here’s my thought. There’s too many choices that should simply be baseline available to classes in there.
Interrupts and dispels are first to come to mind.
Things that are useful in ALL gameplay for ALL classes, shouldn’t need to be made into a choice. It’s simply taking away from other fun decisions.
They are “choices” because it’s padding for the talent tree that ensures you are getting some kind of somewhat meaningful perk every time you level up.
One of the downsides of the old system was the MASSIVE gaps in getting ANYTHING as you leveled up. The level squish obviously helps with that, but under MoP talents it’d just be squishing the gap from 15 levels to like 5 or something, which is still silly.
Talents aren’t just an endgame feature. They let leveling feel more rewarding.
I guess they could baseline some stuff but still give you the talent point, but then the balance of how many talents you can access gets weird. I think they’re trying to avoid filling the talent tree with a bunch of very minor +1% crit damage talents like we had in Vanilla.
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That leveling, is it in the room with us right now?
Last leveing which I seen is mad priest on steroid nova blasting everything up to the bosses, remix or retail alike. Muh RPG experience, much role play so immersive.
I personally wish they had class tree + hero talents and got rid of specializations.
It’s doesn’t have to be minor stuff, players could get a dispel and then use a talent to make it dispel other things or a shorter cd. There could be reasons you want that talent depending on your role but then if you don’t, you’d still have a dispel to help with group content. They’ve made these things so important in new content… maybe they will change it in war within where it doesn’t make such a difference.
I just know that people don’t change their spec for these types of things even when it was necessary before lol
As far as I can tell you can go through the mage tree without taking a single ice or fire spell.
because you’re still a mage, you still know how to cast novice level spells outside of your field of expertise.
I’ve definitely taken advantage of Remix and pre-patch leveling to unlock more Heritage Armor and build an alt army - but I also deliberately did not delete any characters or remake them. I still have several low level characters that I’m leveling normally with Chromie Time. It’s a very fun change of pace, and getting a talent point every time and learning the trees feels awesome.
As for the original post, this is all working exactly how it should. If you don’t need a spell for the content you play, then don’t put it on your bars. You don’t need to keep everything in your spellbook bound at all times - I certainly don’t.
It also highlights just how stupid the Mage specs are. “I’m a wizard who only throws fireballs” is a completely dumb class identity that shouldn’t have ever existed.
Idk I think most of the basic class spells make sense and also save development time.
For example it both makes sense and saves development time to just give all Shaman Healing Surge to help cover sustainability for the DPS specs. This takes care of that need for the specs without the need to make and balance a new ability for both. I mean it still needs to be fiddled with but there is no need for new graphics, animations, names, tooltips, etc.