I see in the War within it looks like Arcane familiar is the go to at the moment after the arcane rework looking at the tree, Just wondering if any other mages dont really see the huge appeal of summoning pets on mage?
Would you prefer if arcane familiar was the main thing you pick right now in order to max dps?
Hell no! I’ve personally never used it even though there really is no good alternative to it. It just looks so silly floating by your shoulder and occasionally shooting out these tiny, pixelated and wholly ineffectual bolts at your enemies. Now if it looked like an Arcane Elemental and fired off the sort of arcane bolts with updated VFX that NPCs use it would be a completely different story.
It’s just another one of the numerous examples of terribly outdated and visually unsatisfying abilities that player characters are stuck with even though the very same abilities are constantly updated for NPCs with every expansion. This hands down my biggest pet peeve in this game!
P.S. Just go run the Azure Vault and look at all the amazing arcane spells all the NPCs and bosses there have. Azureblade’s Arcane Orb looks x1000 times better than our version which hasn’t been updated in well over a decade since it was first introduced way back in WoD. It’s inexcusable when literally all they have to do is update the spell ID in the game’s code!
Wow. You were correct. I didn’t realize it was that old lol. The effects need an update after a decade lol
Yes i am.
With the delete of the permanent summon-water elemental at frostmage some HUGE iconic factor and playstyle was just deleted.
They should redo the boring Spellslinger herotree and made a hero tree for a permanent frost and arcane pet.
Maybe an arcane golem or so x)
I guess i hated water ele because i had to use it in pvp and i needed pet keybinds so i needed summon water ele, move to pet, follow pet and attack pet keybinds for pvp. Like 4 or 5 keybinds just so i could use a range nova… so frustrating
I guess people who love more keybinds and pet micromanagement love it but i just cant stand it, espescally because water ele was range so half the time your pet is out of los of a required nova, or when water eles slow moving attack would break a polly
Yeah, I even made a whole thread about it after I spent so much time at the Azure Vault to get those trinkets recently. I am really passionate about this topic because it’s so easy for them to give us those better visuals which are already in the game but for some inexplicable reason they just don’t.
It was the same with Arcane Explosion/Arcane Missiles and Arcane Blast which were only ever updated for the first time in Legion (2016). Before that they had not been updated since Vanilla (12 years) and TBC (10 years) respectively.
Yes, I like Arcane Familiar. Little floaty orb go brr.
It’s a trivial little thing.
I do wish they created a stronger interaction though. Something like:
Arcane Artillery (New talent): After firing 100 Arcane Missiles, your Arcane Familiar will fire an Arcane Artillery, dealing (300% Spell Power) Arcane damage to your target and all targets within 8 yards
Why do you keep saying this.
You have sunfury which makes a pet
I love Spellslinger as it is, i dont want to see it go. If you want you pet fantasy then play sunfury. Why are you asking to ruin other people’s fun just to get your niche playstyle? Play warlock if you like pets that much
Probably a remainder of the crowd that was screaming about Water Elemental being gone, lol.
I don t like fire and demons. I like elemental pets esp. the summon-water elemental.
Why do you not want others to have fun?
Its my right to say that i want an intresting tree and not this bland and boring stuff.
We had enough of such boring nonsense.
We need something new and innovative 
Just see it as a new option to play mage.
We need MORE intresting and flexible playstyle-options.
Not this boring stuff that we have atm!
If you want some mere proc-caster go play Dev-Evoker 
see i can play that game too.
Why do you no want others to have fun?
I mean the same thing can be said back at you. Adding required pets for utility\dps reasons to a spec that isnt really a pet class might make more people unhappy than it does make people happy.
If blizzard turned mage into a pet class like warlock you would have a bunch of unhappy people, not everybody wants to use water ele or other pets.
No one is asking them to do this. Frost could already summon elementals permanently since cat until last summer and mage was supposedly never a pet class then with 2 specs that didn’t have pets. Why are you happy all frost mages are now forced to have the pet up 20% of the time post rework if you hated it so much? Wouldn’t it be better to shove it in a corner like a hero spec so it’s more optional amd every spec has a non pet option while everyone else gets what they want? if you were a pvper i’m surprised you’d be happy with the current iteration because now you have to manage the pet’s cd tied to iv in addition to all said keybinds to land freeze. Your entire argument is hard for me to follow and grasp. I’d personally prefer freeze on demand if i was pvping instead of having to pop a cd first.
That being said Smaragdt, please stop bringing this up so often. Let other people naturally comment on it for it to come up again. There’s a strong nonzero chance the current devs wanted the data say what it did given the imbalance between lw and welly. I don’t think any meaningful change will happen with just one person commenting all the time, and given how the devs currently act i’m not even sure if there was a full on revolt if they’d do what you want.
My personal take on this given welly was broken on some of the later public df beta builds is that our dev was always intending on removing it and when they tried to convince ion he said hell no because wc3 and that’s how we ended up with it tied to iv and everyone getting nothing they wanted (pet haters must use it now, pet lovers never got the balanced permanent option they were waiting for). But it’s entirely possible if there’s any kind of shake up it will be gone. Don’t play your mage if that part of our lore is anything you’re attached to Smaragdt. If you like the other parts enough that it wouldn’t bother you if it’s gone, then go ahead and keep playing. There could have been other things i’m not aware of, but the combination of the imbalance between lw and welly + the broken welly in beta is where my vibe comes from.
I am not the one asking for a rework/complete redo to an amazing looking hero tree. You are.
If you want the water elemental back, then advocate for it without asking them to gimp a really cool tree (and play elemental shaman, who also summons elementals)
Why does you not having frost elemental mean we can’t have fun with spellslinger?
Bro just bring back the water ele so this guy can stop asking to gimp spellslinger; literally one of the best hero trees so far.
Lol. I liked the comment for the first half. I agree with Kerathas’ assessment that the trees live or die by how exciting the fantasy is and right now the fantasy looks like numbers flashing on a screen(at least that was the last video i saw, nothing new). You know if they changed lw back to a choice node and properly balanced it, we’d both get what we want. I’d probably go frostfire, no offense. But i’d be happy for you.
I am indifferent. I like the “idea” of it, but in execution it’s a bit weak at the moment. As a mana management talent, I went back and forth between familiar and the barrage talent that refunds mana. Right now I am running familiar, but wouldn’t feel much different running the other.
And I think you and me are the only outspoken fans of spellslinger anyway :).
But agree, don’t muddy the water, pick an issue, advocate for it, don’t make one dependent on the other.
Teensy correction: Glyph of Eternal Water gave WotLK Mages perma pet.
That being said, agreed a little on letting Welly love be a little quiet atm. And as an aside, there was a point when it was relatively balanced, and the numbers showed roughly equal representation. Regardless, the class needs a lot of love on more than just whether we can summon familiars of any kind.
That being said. I LOVED the familiar, it’s just so cute like a parrot on your shoulder. I’ve always been a fan of casters with magical pets like that. NO NOT FELL CASTERS, arcane casters.
and people didnt like it which is why they added in lonely winter which is used by most people.
Hero talents are not optional, if the pet hero talent tree does more dps than the other one its not optional people will feel forced to pick it. Just like every other talent point or tree in the past. Warlocks didnt want to use nightfae but over 80% of warlocks did because of the damage.
Its simple, nothing is ever 100% balanced, so if pets are added to mage and add more utility or do more dps than non pet specs then it will be picked and it seems like most mages dont want mage to be a pet spec when warlock is all about pets.
PVPers got forced to pick water ele for years because it was required, its annoying to use, its slow attacks broke poly, you would need 4 keybinds just to micromanage it and keep it near you so you could use range nova without LOS issues which was a huge pain point because its a range mob it would constantly be out of LOS for certain Range Novas. Awful, made me quit frost mage and i played fire and arcane for nearly a decade because of it since BC\WOTLK until lonely winter got added and it was more viable.
if water ele acted more like arcane familiar (so its not actually a pet) and it just follows you around and attacks whatever you attack and doesnt break poly or can be killed or CC then i would be fine with it.