They are because every spec has access to 2. If there’s one you don’t like you can avoid it. Ion has promised to keep them balanced but honestly that doesn’t matter. Numbers enjoyers will chase numbers fantasies should not be pruned so people can use a spec like a side chick when their favorite spec is undertuned. The hardcore players that must be top will learn what they have to.
This terrible situation you describe is the literal situation anyone who liked water elemental had to endure. If you didn’t like noil you didn’t have a good opening to use it since legion. Last time i ran details on a dummy my dps was taking a 15% hit, would have been higher as i was mostly and m+ enjoyer.
Also welly hasn’t been meta for pvp in ages. Someone screamed me down about that when this debate started.
All of the situations you describe in pvp can still happen as the welly has all of its normal controls and ai. I imagine just a little latency will kill landing freeze if you need it first thing when it’s summoned now that you have to cast iv first.
That was a reshoot at the guy who asked me that question
Its hilarious that some people cannot accept the fact, that some people want to have the summon water ele back.
No one of the pet-fraction wants that mage to be a COMPLETE pet class. Please understand this alrdy.
I don’t really play Arcane, so this isn’t a comment on gameplay.
I remember the way the Arcane Familiar looked when it first launched, and I much preferred it to the way it currently looks. I’m not sure why they even changed it, since it looked so good originally. It felt more real. Like a fairy companion following you around, rather than a magical orb hard-tethered to your general airspace.
It is innovative gameplay because it changes your rotation and cast priority.
It makes Shifting Power a single target nuke
It also makes Arcane Orb worth it to cast in single target
It also provides a massive increase in CC procs via splinter storm
It also turns Supernova into a single target nuke
It also provides massive cleave with Arcane Echo procs
You just aren’t seeing it because you don’t play arcane.
The difference between you and me is that unlike you I’m not saying “Don’t do water elemental” just because I don’t like it. You are saying “don’t do spellslinger” because you don’t like it. You are trying to force your playstyle on us while simultaneously accusing me of doing that.
The tree provides:
After consuming winter chill= you fire 1 frost splinter.
Icy Veins create some frost splinters.
While a target is under the effect of Blizzard, Frost splinters also do aoe dmg.
Some barrier /mirror image stuff.
Direct dmg of frostsplinters have a 5% chance to summon a icy comet.
After consuming 1 frost-splinter incr. the dmg of frostnova.
Some +% crit.
Shifting power fires some frost splinters.
After you have 8 active frostsplinters you cast splinterstorm at your target.
Its almost ONLY passive, bland and boring for frost.
Maybe you can now understand why the majority does not like it.
Now imagine a tree with +complete+ NEW spell-interactions for the summon-water elemental and arcane pet.
That would be rly intresting and not some boring passive splinter-stuff that is nohing exciting or good at all.
And your arcane stuff? Nothing exciting too. Only shifts existing spells at aoe/st ? Also very boring too
Imagine an arcane golem/other stuff that enhances your combat totally new or the arcane familiar or familiars would so some incredible new stuff. That would be very intresting
And if you argument i +want to force+ my playstyle at me, youre doing the same if you say: NO NO PET! just keep that bland stuff.
So we’re the same at that point pal^^
Here is even a compromise:
If frost players or arcane players would pick summon water-ele /summon arcane familiar @ normal tree, the whole hero tree would switch to a Summoner tree. That would keep the tree for you if you like the passive for frost or aoe/st stuff for arcane.
But we know Blizzard:
They are not doing such a complex stuff. They are mostly lazy (see at the frost rework).
Listen, if the gameplay is boring for frost, then change it for frost.
Here’s an example of what you could suggest: whenever you splinterstorm, you increase the duration of your active water elemental by 0.5 seconds per splinter fired.
At the rate you generate splinters, you could probably have permanent water elemental uptime with that.
You could also consider adding some CDR to Frozen Orb whenever you place X number of splinters or something.
Arcane is currently the hardest spec to play in the game, as verified by Max who plays with the literal best players in the game and reported several times that Arcane was one of the hardest specs to get his players to play correctly (recently talked about it on stream during Arcane rework on 5/2).
It has close to 38 different buttons to use in M+/raid, and a sequence of 6 different cooldown buttons currently before entering its cooldown phase.
And you want to add MORE spells to that?
No.
Shifting cast priority is how you make the spec feel smoother. Imagine a world where mana gem doesn’t have to be recast mid-fight, or where nether tempest doesn’t have to be applied? Well both spells are now removed. Was that a good change? Yes, absolutely, unquestionably an amazing change. Adding new spells isn’t how you make every spec have “cool new things”.
There are specs that currently have way too many buttons, and removal of those / re-prioritization of those is how you can create a cool rotation. Arcane is one of those (along with WW Monk)
And no: That incr. of duration of the temporary pet is nothing that pet-lovers want.
We want the spell back and have a permanent water-elemental.
But i thank you for the thought.
I know that arcane is very complex atm, so they should make it more simple and more fun.
But i don t see more fun if they just switch some st to aoe spells and visa versa.
My thought was: Replace some existing spells with an arcane golem/familiar+ spells to enhance/play along with it. So the spec would be (if chosen arcane familiar) not be more complex. Ofc i don t want you to have even MORE buttons while keeping the excisting ones. I guess i read somewhere that they alrdy deleted some spells for arcane?
And ofc you did not even read my compromise. I guess our discussion ends here, if youre ignoring parts of my arguments.
I bet whatever we suggest here, Blizzard will do their thing, and even if its worse than the gameplay yet. (Deathborne for Frost for example meh)
Gonna be honest, Water Elemental has felt out of place to Frost’s kit for a long time as a pet. It being part of a cooldown has been a great thing for the spec.
No. Spellslinger doesn’t need to be reworked to cater to a portion of the players of one of three specs on the class, thereby impacting 2 specs. It works as is, interacts well with the base kit of Frost, and delivers an alternative to Frostfire.
No, let’s not, thanks. Stop asking Blizzard to make Frost back into a pet spec.
By playstyle do you mean “push the summon button once, then tell the pet to go stand in a corner”? Because that’s what WE was ever since it was made a perm summon. It was 100% passive and ignored. I’d even go as far as to say that it was ignored less when LW was introduced, because at least then people remembered WE existed. Mages never were, and never should be a pet-themed class.
I just assumed they all quit WoW like they said they would 12 months ago when 10.1.5 came out.
As for Arc Familiar, does it actually do anything other than passive dps? If not, then why not just remove it and replace it with a baseline buff? (Which to be fair could also be said for 90% of Mage talents).
Hard pass. The gameplay centred around IV uptime was probably the worst thing to happen to Frost since it was nuked in WotLK to be virtually unplayable for any content. Like I’d actually prefer the degenerate playstyle of NoIL over having another maintenance buff introduced.
I still maintain though that these “new” talent systems are going to be terrible. The DF talent rework was a failure, and these are just stacking onto that. Delete, try again, maybe this time you will get them right.
It’s just a little passive DPS and a mana pool increase, I think.
I’ll be honest, though, as far as pets/familiars go it’s fairly inoffensive. I like it because it doesn’t get in the way and doesn’t cause me problems, unlike Water Elemental. Wouldn’t really care if it got removed, but I enjoy it as a little flavor thing.
It does also occasionally pull mobs that you’re not in combat with - don’t forget that part!
If you’re in combat and switch to a target that hasn’t been engaged, the familiar has an uncanny tendency to fire it’s little missile at the unengaged mob (easily noticeable on Terros where you can enter combat with the mobs before the boss that are fleeing but if you then target Terros and get too close, you pull him despite never taking an action against him).
I’ve wiped us in M+. I’ve wiped us in raid. I would LOVE to make the mana a passive without the little trickster buzzing around and pulling stuff.
I’d be down for this if there was a way to get it back with iv on cd. I don’t even care about getting welly back as a directly controllable pet, i just want it around and to be able to customize it with the available glyphs. Alot of what made demo fun to play was that they took the tedium out of it and made it visually impressive. If they change the way welly works and if it’s fun to use, i’m fine with that. Heck even if we summon temporary wellies while fighting i’d be down for that as long as i can have one following me around even if it does nothing.
Here’s a question: let’s say that instead of using splinters and the current effects the damage was dealt by something that looks like temporary summons instead, but the numbers, tuning, etc all stayed the same, would you be down for that? Splinters deal damage over time and that’s essentially what temporarily summoned pets do as well. The game already has assets for elementals both arcane and water on hand. I don’t think it’d be hard to do.
Are you digging the current spellslinger design based on gameplay or the current graphics? Because what i’m proposing here is keeping everything the same but changing the visuals and allowing mage to get its summoner fantasy back for those that enjoy it.
Arcane is interesting because they could make the temp summon vary in appearance. It could be an animated spelltome or elemental or any other arcane construct smattered throughout the wow universe
Properly tuned it would be a nice option for gameplay that not everyone HAVE to play, but some CAN play.
Yes.
It is super dull and need to be replaced with something intresting.
Passive stuff all over the place for frost= no thanks.
Yes ofc please
Don t be afraid of another option for play.
More options are never a bad idea. More options of gameplays are only a win for a class
Also nope.
Water elemental was a nice piece of gameplay but sadly was ignored for TOO LONG!
So bring it back, tune it properly and give us some tools to enhance it even further you don t need to play it then, but let us have fun with it!
And mages can be+ should be a pet-class if you want.
Thats the point of all you pet haters here.
There COULD be an area in our talent-tree and new hero tree that is for the perma-pet.
Do you have to play it? Nope.
Can others play it and have fun with it? YES
So stop spreading the hate and be more open minded for more options
From a balancing and frustration perspective, yes, it has been a great thing.
Honestly don’t think enough of the people playing Frost care about it for any sort of return demands to gain traction.
What all more does Frost need in its current iteration? I don’t feel like Frost is lacking for active buttons, and Spellslinger rewards you for playing around the Splinter mechanic built into it. Seems interesting enough to me.
What’s there to be afraid of? There aren’t enough people that care about Water Elemental to make Blizzard go back to the trash design that having a pet was.
Provide a better option than going back to any part of standard pet AI being attached to Frost. Otherwise, Water Elemental can stay where it is, built into a cooldown.
Thread is going multiple ways, let’s try to bring it back into line.
Arcane Familiar; some liked it(such as I) and others didn’t. Sure, Blizzard can remove it and just buff everything else: But why?!?
Serious question, why should they just up and remove it? It’s a little extra flavor for the Arcane tree that tickles that little extra for some players. If you don’t want it, don’t take it. It’s as simple as that. The only reason someone takes it when they’re adamantly adverse to having it is because they’re chasing numbers. It doesn’t hurt you that some of us use the Familiar, just as with the Welly. It never hurt you unless it was top damage. Every single argument I see on these forums against anything fun is: “But, muh damage might force me one of these times and I don’t want to Mommy. Make Daddy Blizzard change it for me so I don’t have to.”.
Let us keep the Familiar, keep it’s damage >5% less for the(you) number chasing players and let us aesthetic players have our fun. Also: #BringbackpermaWelly.
Side note: If what I read about Spellslinger for Frost… yeah, no, that sounds absolutely boring and just another convoluted version of Icicles.
