I’ll happily take an archon wizard ability like from D3 just travelling around as a ball of energy with a massive laser beam projecting from your body.
Sad that none of the Arcane hero trees is called Archon but that name was given to Priests instead. I’ve always dreamed of a WoW version of D3’s Archon transformation for mages.
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Fire and frost were a pretty natural combo to come up with stuff for. I’m not sure how they’ll merge arcane with the other two … such different themes at work.
Sunfury kinda works thematically…it’s “Spellslinger” that (to me) shows a lack of imagination. I’d have gone the low-entropy/“cold recesses of space” route, but I guess only Arcane and Frost can sling spells or something. (You’d think heat would speed things up?)
Personally that’s something I’ve been advocating for, not against - for quite sometime.
Currently it feels like mage is a sad shaman that can only cast mostly 1 element, and maybe knows some arcane tricks up their sleeve but isn’t all too great at magic … which is sort of depressing, since we’re playing ‘Mage’
I feel more like I know more magic across the board on my Evoker or Warlock than I do on my mage, and that’s sort of irking.
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I’ve not pushed rating this season, but I have 5 frost mages, 1 at 2200cr currently and the others have been sitting 1900-2100+ since week 1. Camping right now, so not pushing last week. But I am a top 5-10 frost mage every ladder, would be higher if I had people to play with but I choose to play with friends and help people in LFG.
So I just would like to reiterate how important it is in 2v2 PvP to not be forced to pick talents that will AoE and break polymorphs.
As frost mage comps, especially rogue mage, you only get 1-2 goes with icy veins before the game ends. Maybe 3 if your rogue is a god at living. If you have 1 poly break during any of those goes at high MMR the game is already lost. I do not think the mage class designers know this at all or frankly they do not care. The fact that icy veins will cause frostfire bolt to explode is horrible game design. There are also other talents that look bad, like Icelance spreading living bomb and comet placing meteor. Meteor is much larger than comet despite what the tooltip says. Comet tends to only hit in melee range, if you run 5 yards after comet is pressed, even with ice nova it will almost always miss. It also will not break the polymorph next to the person you are comet storming unless that polymorph is remarkably close, 0-8 yards, depending on how the poly waddles when the comet lands. Sometimes you can poly inside the comet storm radius, but still comet the player next to poly, when the poly paths, left or right the comet will miss the poly, this is not possible at all with meteor. Because poly paths 0-5 yards at a time, it is possible to poly right next to the person you are trying to comet and comet will never break polymorph due to poly pathing. Especially if you are good at timing your comet with the poly pathing. This again, is not possible if meteor is placed when you comet.
I know for a fact meteors hit detection is terrible. If you google meteor hit detection, lots of people are aware of meteors issues. Though, I’m not asking for meteor to be fixed, I’m asking for all aoe and cleaving to be completely optional in the hero talents, not a requirement. Currently, no matter what hero talents you pick, there will be some type of cleaving. There is no way around it, other than not spending your hero talent points. Which is laughable, because clearly they are very strong when it comes to doing aoe/cleave damage. So much so, that it will ruin rated 2s and everyone will just cleave/aoe when enemies are stacked. It maybe strong in that moment, but essentially it’s a nerf to organized PvP. You won’t be forcing trinket if the mages burst will already break polymorph. You may, if rogue has stun up, but rogue doesn’t always have stun or stun might be DR’d. Frostfire bolt should have not a chance to explode with icy veins present, there should be another node choice that does not cleave. I don’t play fire, but I heard you poly someone outside of meteor, the polymorph tracks into meteor, you cast meteor but when the meteor lands the poly is not inside meteor, the meteor dot and damage will still hit said polymorph. However, comet storm does not behave like this. Which is why you can sometimes comet storm next to a polymorph and polymorph will not break because the poly has a chance to waddle outside the hit detection of comet. Comets hit detection is far better coded but also I believe meteor does have a bigger radius than comet.
I urge the developers to let frostfire frost mages be able to choose whether we cleave or not. Otherwise, we will have a ton of mages stacking mastery for comet storm, icelance, and orb damage, take splitting ice, the comet+meteor talent and frostbomb and it will just make for a cleave fest where no skill is involved with CC of the healer and setting up.
Which is not how rogue mage is suppose to be played or arena at all. It’s currently a huge problem in solo shuffle. Which is one reason I won’t play solo shuffle.
PvP is pretty much an afterthought when it comes to the hero talents, and we’ll prob have to just swap out. Can’t see a scenario where Fire/Arcane don’t take Sunfury for the stun/burst. FF just doesn’t seem that great for PvP - on top of what you’ve called out, Flame and Frost intentionally excludes Ice Block, and you beg to be kicked having to cast FFB. Naively guessing you’ll have to take Spellslinger as Frost.
Hopefully this will enable a playstyle without glacial.
I like the animation of frostfirebolt thou. Just make it this new bolt, flurry, icelances and so x) for ST.
For AOE a frostfire-orb would be nice! 
But please not so stressfull like atm.
Already play frostbolt spec, so the extra damage with FFb and mastery will make frostfire better than spellslinger for frost PvP. I’m happy the developers realize frost needs some extra mastery for ray damage. As I am currently stacking haste/verse and can constantly get players to 10% after frostbomb+ ray+flurry+comet+few icelances as burst, So having 8% more ray damage, might get them to 6%, as ray does maybe 50% of their health if every ray tick crits(unlikely). Icelance is usually a finisher or filler move if melee is on you as frostbolt spec so the mastery isn’t a big deal here. What would be nice is having mastery changed to effect all frost damage, not just certain frost spells. Maybe mastery will affect FFB? I thought it use to??? I can’t remember, mastery did effect some frost damage way back in the day, I just don’t remember what the spell was or what they were.
If you are frostbolt spec, right now frostfire is the only choice for frost.
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After seeing Frostfire in alpha, here is some additional feedback for the tree.
- Frostfire Bolt does barely more damage than current Frostbolt in PVE, less damage than current Fireball (although with shorter cast time) and it looks like it did not inherit Frostbolt’s PVP modifier, which makes it deal less damage than Frostbolt in PVP while getting locked on 2 schools when kicked instead of 1, so just strictly worse. Since it is a major ability for Frostfire tree, that should be addressed - it should deal more damage than Frostbolt in all game modes and additionally risk getting kicked on 2 schools in PVP should be properly rewarded with high(er) damage.
- Fire Blast does not seem worth pressing for Frost Mage even for 1 stack of Fire Mastery outside of specific niche cases (like having 7 stacks of Fire Mastery and using it to get 8). It should be significally buffed either baseline or for Frostfire specced Frost Mages specifically.
- Frostfire Empowerment has a concerning difference between its tooltip and effect - tooltip says that it would deal 100% increased damage and does not mention instant cast and actual effect makes it instant and crit without the damage bonus. This issue should be addressed, but instant cast for proc should remain - it allows to resemble old Brain Freeze proc in PVE and makes it more reliable to use in PVP. Its proc chance of 1.2 procs per minute (approximately 1 every 50 seconds) also seems too low and could be buffed. If needed, you could just tweak damage bonus to compensate.
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Just some quick feedback after seeing some Frostfire game play on alpha streams:
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Frostfire Bolt currently replaces Frostbolt in both Fire and Frost specs. Believe it’s intended to replace Fireball in Fire?
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Dropping a Meteor/CMS has a high chance of triggering Frostfire Empowerment due to its multi-hit nature. This can often cause proc munching on-pull when popping Combustion/Icy Veins, which also grants Frostfire Empowerment.
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Frostfire Empowerment currently makes Frostfire Bolt instant in alpha, but tooltips does not mention this.
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Dropping double Meteor/CMS during Combustion or into a Ice Nova/Frost Nova/WC is easily the most satisfying moment for this spec. No issues here, just wanted to mention the awesomeness
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As a side note, looks like Meteor from the Firefall talent is also triggering CMS via Isometric Core, possibly intended?
There are still some concerns about usefulness of Meltdown and Flame and Frost, but the core gameplay for Frostfire looks pretty impressive so far.
I am glad you have alpha, thank you for testing for us. Wooohoooo, I love getting insider information. Why can’t they give it to me? 
If they just make FFB damage comparable to FB damage and not break poly when it explodes I’ll be happy. They need to make it inherit frostbolts PvP modifier otherwise it’s spellslinger for me. Which is a slight disappointment. I love reading this post you made, I only read the first two sentences and I got so excited I had to reply before reading the rest.
I don’t know why they don’t just bake the tooltips into the core of the game of what the game actually does so they always match! Then we wouldn’t have this problem.
Some additional feedback about Frostfire:
- As expected, it can be problematic to stack opposite spec Mastery stacks to maximum outside of Frostfire Empowerment procs, which are actually quite rare. Their proc rate could be buffed, but maybe a much simpler solution could be to reduce number of Mastery stacks and buff their stat value, for example to 5 stacks with 2% value each, so that stat gains are close to current, but Masteries are much easier to stack and less reliant on RNG of Frostfire Empowerment and Frostfire Infusion.
- Flame and Frost could be buffed, especially Fire version. With current iteration it is very likely that most people would just play the CD reduction option and not rely on reset of mostly utility spells via using a major defensive or literally dying.
- Like mentioned in Fire feedback thread, after changes to Living Bomb Excess Fire needs tweaks. Its Living Bomb proc would now be significally worse for Fire and especially Frost, who does not have access to its damage boost and upgrade talents. The modifier for Excess Fire Living Bomb should be buffed or it should be replaced by other spell.
I prefer the old frostfire bolt animation to the new one they made for alpha. Old one looked like it packed a punch, with the ice clearly in the middle and the fire outer layer. New ones looks a little undefined and lame; just a blue/orange little stream.
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Yeah, I looked up some alpha footage and was likewise disappointed. The new one isn’t bad per say, but the original is miles better. Like you said, more punchy. I know having that much visual impact made more sense for a proc than what is now our filler spell but still. Reminds me of when Chaos Bolt and Incinerate got downgraded.
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You only have to cast frist fire bolt it counts as both the other fire spells auto cast. Read the talents
Nothing really new, most of the modernized spells and ability sfx have lost a lot of the impact
But this way you can have 600 gfx per second and have streamers mash a keyboard a billion times while screaming, which gets them views.
I miss the old days. Raiding in BC/Wrath was so relaxing - nice long casts that hit hard, chill mechanics. WoW has become a young persons game (or one for people with the attention span of a stoned fly).
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This is how I feel most of the time… especially when I try to play something like Fire. I’m sitting here like… my hands cant keep up anymore!!!
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