I like the theme of the tree, it blends well both magic spells cools in a way that makes sense.
I think I will play it as fire spec but not as frost, because I want to keep the spec fantasy.
Hero talents are suppose to let players have different archtypes. I hope Sunfury y Spellslinger let players choose to keep fire, frost and arcane specs fantasy without merging magic schools on regular spells.
This is the only hero tree that actually looks good. However I canât see fire ever running this in single target. Considering we donât talent meteor the 5 second cooldown reduction does nothing and living bomb on single target isnât great, but it does absolutely help out in m+.
Personally just want sunfury to be a banger and I hope that frost gets a hero tree thatâs pure to frost and not a mixture.
Personally, I donât like how this plays though and I donât find the tree that interesting considering it feels like more procs and a buff that doesnât refresh is insanely annoying.
Iâm torn on it. Half of me thinks itâs ok and the other half thinks itâs very disappointing and lackluster.
Ok so first thingâs first. Iâve been playing this game for nearly 20 years while being consistently active on the forums and I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times Iâve seen a blue post asking for feedback. You guys need to do a lot more of that going forward!
Now, on to the feedback!
Bringing back Frostfire Bolt is amazing and something I think was universally expected when the Hero Talents were first announced. Frankly, it should never have gone away but letâs not dwell on the past.
Comet Storm and Meteor are two of my all time favorite Mage spells so a talent that makes one automatically cast the other is a big win in my book. My only regret is that I wonât get to experience that on my Arcane Mage.
Everything else is⌠okay. Alternating between Frost and Fire spells is an obvious choice (perhaps a little too obvious) and could have had potential to be interesting but since Frostfire Bolt counts as both elements it takes away any agency a player may have had and just turns it into a completely passive feature since Frostfire Bolt will be your spammable. But at the end of the day thatâs fine, we donât need to reinvent the wheel with these Hero Talents and, quite frankly, going out of your way to try may do more harm than good. Personally, I am fine with taking the safe choice in this regard.
Looking forward to seeing the other two Hero Talent paths!
I donât have much to add other than generally I like the tree, but when it comes to gameplay I lean on people like Manather to detail design issues.
I do want to say I think itâs important we temper our expectations and understand the design INTENT behind these Hero Trees so we give the correct kind of feedback. Resigning yourself to never playing this Hero Spec isnât useful feedback since these are still early stages. Giving feedback like âI donât like how it forces you to blend frost and fireâ (I think) can be actionable. Let them know that youâd be willing to play Frostfire if you were able to maintain your Frost or Fire identity via node options or even glyphs.
The entire point of Frostfire is using Fire and Frost at the same time, though. Thatâs what people wanted Frostfire Bolt back for, thatâs the entire fantasy behind the tree. Itâs like asking for glyphs to make Dark Rangerâs Black Arrow and Withering Fire be nature spells instead.
I donât understand the issue with purely cosmetic choices for people who want them. If it doesnât affect your gameplay or aesthetic options, why not let them have their chosen fantasy as well?
Biggest issue is that this seems very geared for m+ content and not raid environment. Kinda need to play it to give better feedback I feel but from the outset I donât see any single target value in this tree at all.
This is my favorite one so far. Isothermic Core looks really cool; I like how they are keeping the rotations basically the same but adding the other schoolsâ spells as effects.
The tooltip says âwith a cooldown less than 4 minutesâ so I somehow feel like it wonât affect Ice Block even if you have Winterâs Protection speccedâŚ
The tree puts a lot of power into meteor and comet storm. What if the player does not pick those talents?
This should be changed or make it so it affects other spells.
From the thread in the OP:
Some Hero Talents do require you to take certain talents in your class or spec trees to access their powers. This is often because those talents fit the flavor and theme of that specific Hero Talent tree. The Mountain Thane warrior tree enhances Avatar and Thunder Clap , Templar paladin gives extra power to Wake of Ashes , and Eluneâs Chosen druids can cast a particularly strong Fury of Elune .
Lowing the cd of fire spells seems broken for pvp. That means mages can reset dragons breath and blast wave.
Please donât do this. Thereâs already way to much cc in pvp. Please donât add more cc in the hero talents.
⌠youâre not forced to take Frostfire. You can choose Spellslinger if youâre Frost or Sunfury if youâre Fire.
First pass: (did not see interview yet, will watch tonight), looks very cool! There are a few talents in there with an absolute monsterload of damage (the comet storm+meteor talent), and the final capstone is pretty strong. Im not a fan of mixing spec identities, but if its just frostfire bolt then thatâs fine. As an arcane mage, I am kind of mad about the frost+fire barrier talent since Arcaneâs only defensive benefit over fire and frost is prismatic barrier (while frost has double immune and fire has cheat death), but weâll see what Arcane gets.
Overall looks cool!
While I think the poster you replied to is being a little dramatic with the threat to quit if heâs âforcedâ to cast Fire spells as a Frost mage, I also think youâre missing his point. He seems against mixing schools for some reason, which the other two hero trees are certain to do as well.
Spellslinger will be a hybrid of Frost and Arcane, Sunfury will be a hybrid of Fire and Arcane. I guess if someone is that tied to school âpurityâ they might object to the hero trees. Seems like a silly hill to die on to me, but to each their own.
It may sound silly to you but not to others. If I donât like frostfire for frost and spellslinger makes purple stuff or arcane missiles going out from frozen orb 
I would be sad.
I hope they donât make the same barrier talent for sunfury and spellslinger. When I play Frost I want it to be similar to Jaina.
Xpost from the main thread.
First off, the naming schema of all these talents is infuriating. Like many others have pointed out, saying âIâm a frostfire fire mageâ sounds ridiculous, and now we have all these subtalents called some variation of Frostfire thing.
Thematically, FF mage very cool. Thematically the tree is cool. The talents themselves have a lot of glaring issues. This is not a Frost and Fire tree, this is a Frost mage tree.
Imbued Warding: Blazing Barrier also casts an Ice Barrier at 25% effectiveness for Fire. Ice Barrier also casts a Blazing Barrier at 25% effectiveness for Frost. This also affects your Mass Barrier.
Love it. Balanced between both specializations.
Meltdown: You melt slightly out of your Ice Block and Ice Cold, allowing you to move slowly during Ice Block and increasing your movement speed over time. Ice Block and Ice Cold trigger a Blast Wave when they end.
At first glance, pretty useless. By default, weâre running Ice Cold because it is enough DR to live just about anything and paired with Cyro-Freeze itâs insane. When we donât, weâre running Block to either live an unlivable hit,
or more often to quickly clear a debuff and then /cancelaura Ice Block to get back into the fight. With us already running Ice Cold, the movement is pretty pointless, and us canceling IB instantly means it isnât a big concern.
The Blast Wave just means we can have a very niche additional stop that we probably wonât use except on accident. We arenât going to waste our biggest defensive for a knock.
Elemental Affinity: The cooldown of Frost spells is reduced by 10% for Fire. The cooldown of Fire spells is reduced by 30% for Frost.
Hereâs our first example of a very imbalanced node. As a Fire Mage, you get 10% reduced cooldown on your frost spells- Ice Nova, Frost Nova (Which we usually have two of), and maybe Block/cold if that is included. As a Frost Mage, you get a reduced cooldwown on some of the most powerful AOE utility spells in the game- Dragonâs Breath and Blast Wave. 30% less CD on these is incredible for additional stops.
Flame and Frost: Cauterize resets the cooldown of your Frost spells with a base cooldown shorter than 4 minutes when it activates for Fire. Cold Snap additionally resets the cooldown of your Fire spells.
Same imbalance here. For Frost, pressing Cold Snap gives you those powerful utility spells back. For Fire, technically dying gives youâŚanother frost nova? A more powerful return for a player controlled option seems wrong.
Isothermic Core: Comet Storm now also calls down a Meteor at 100% effectiveness onto your targetâs location. Meteor now also calls down a Comet Storm at 150% effectiveness onto your target location.
This one is amazing, itâs going to be incredibly powerful for both specs. But to my knowledge, Meteor is still whitelisted to Shatter. This could lead to a pretty massive tuning issue, and may be too strong?
Excess Frost: Reaching maximum stacks of Frost Mastery causes your next Phoenix Flames (Fire) / Flurry (Frost) to also cast Ice Nova at 200% effectiveness. When you consume Excess Frost, the cooldown of Meteor (Fire) / Comet Storm (Frost) is reduced by 5 seconds.
Additionl CDR in the mage tree is not something I enjoy. And on top of that, additional random freezes is going to compound the issue frost already faces in keys on Sanguine Weeks.
Excess Fire: Reaching maximum stacks of Fire Mastery causes your next Fire Blast (Fire) / Ice Lance (Frost) to apply Living Bomb at 150% effectiveness. When this Living Bomb explodes, reduce the cooldown of Phoenix Flames by 10 seconds (Fire) / gain Brain Freeze (Frost).
This is going to compound the issue Fire is currently facing, where the actual Living Bomb button is next to worthless outside of niche padding opportunities, because it is tuned around it proccing from Incendiary Eruptions. A 30 second cooldown button does pitiful damage as is. Adding another proc effect that also buffs the damage of it means the base version will remain in the gutter.
In addition to that, more PF CDR (when we already have a ton of that baked into our tree to the point where you can often be unable to spend enough PFs to do things like have efficient use of From The Ashes) compared to a Brain Freeze proc is wild.
Frostfire Empowerment: Your Frost and Fire spells have a chance to activate Frostfire Empowerment, causing your next Frostfire Bolt to always critically strike, explode for 80% of its damage to nearby enemies, and be instant cast.
This could be cool, but I see some places where it may be veryâŚinteresting in play. For example Flame Accelerant reduces the cast time and increases the damage of Fireball. With FFB replacing Fireball, can we now proc an instant FFB bolt that benefits from FAâs damage increase AND the Empowerment 80% AOE?
Overall, not very impressed outside of thematic reasons.
xoxo
Degen
Generally agree with this although Iâd like to see Meteor get a buff, especially for single target. Then again, maybe this is it.
On the other side of the hero tree Iâm curious if Fire actually has to take Living Bomb to benefit from Excess Fire since itâs another spell (Fire Blast) that actually applies LB. Since right now the only reason we take LB is to get to Firefall (which is actually Meteor-based despite Meteor not being a prerequisite for it), it seems like they might be doubling down on LB still sucking to waste a GCD on but weâll force you to take it to get a strong passive benefit from somewhere else.
The LB/Meteor corner of the Fire tree has always been a little weird so hopefully they will tweak that too and not just rely on the hero talents as a band aid.
Sure. I understand that, I just donât think it rises to the level of an âI quitâ offense. But, like you say, thatâs just me.
Not counting FFB it doesnât look like as a Fire Mage Iâll have to cast any Frost spells that I wouldnât normally cast, so if my Meteor also throws down a Comet Storm (which is a cool spell effect anyway imo), I can live with that.
With that said, if they added a glyph to make Comet Storm look like fiery meteors that would be even coolerâŚ
Even Jaina uses Fire and Arcane sometimes.
Sanguine just needs to be removed. Itâs a garbage affix.