Feedback: Mages

In Development The War Within Beta Test
146

Frost Feedback - again

Following on from my original post, more feedback on the Frost tree changes.

Fractured Frost

The more that I test this the more it doesn’t work with the actual gameplay. Frost’s AoE rotation for both Spellslinger and Frostfire are essentially the same, where it’s focused on Frozen Orb, Blizzard, Comet Storm, CoC/Coldest Snap, and FoF Ice Lance as fillers. From all of my testing, I am getting zero downtime in my Icy Veins AoE rotation to cast Frostbolt at all, which means Fractured Frost is providing zero benefit for AoE while IV is active.

The only time when Fractured Frost is benefitting is as Frostfire when Frostfire Empowerment procs, as that’s causing Frostfire Bolt to be instant cast with a dmg boost so it can squeeze into the primarily instant-cast AoE rotation window. However, I’m averaging 1-2 Frostfire Empowerment procs per IV window which isn’t a lot to provide any noticeable benefit for Fractured Frost.

Frostbolt is a filler spell and our AoE rotation is too busy with better priority spells. There is just no opportunity or desire to ever cast Frostbolt particularly while IV is active. This is making Fractured Frost in its current iteration a dead talent.

Cold Front

Linking from Fractured Frost, Cold Front’s benefit is then severely diminished in AoE due to Fractured Frost providing no next to no benefit while IV is active. From my testing, in Spellslinger I am exiting a full IV AoE window with no new CF stacks and risk any existing stacks to fall off. For Frostfire, depending on Frostfire Empowerment procs, I am exiting a full IV AoE window with 3-6 CF stacks.

This is causing Cold Frost to benefit primarily from only the ST rotation despite being locked behind an AoE designed talent. Due to the 30 CF stacks needed, this takes significant time to ramp up, particularly in Spellslinger when there’s more Winter’s Chill stacks from Splinterstorm so there’s less Frostbolts being cast. In the end, any CF Frozen Orbs are unnoticeable from a gameplay change/interaction perspective and likely does not provide sufficient dps over non-capstone talents.

Suggestions

Fractured Frost needs to be de-synced from Icy Veins and needs to provide some incentive to be used in a busy, instant-cast AoE rotation that has noticeable impact.

If it is not going to be redesigned away from Frostbolt, then I’d suggest something like:

“Damage from your [insert AoE spell] has X% chance to make your next Frostbolt instant cast and hit up to two additional targets, stacking Y times.”.

The triggering spell could be Blizzard or Frozen Orb as examples. This would allow usage outside of IV, provide a regularly occurring buff that causes a change in our AoE rotation for more variety, allows us to fit it into our AoE rotation because it’s instant-cast, and that it can contribute towards Cold Front for more reliable CF stacks.

Or better yet, just redesign Fractured Frost so that it’s not Frostbolt related so that we don’t have an incentive to cast Frostbolt in our AoE rotation and instead have Fractured Frost augment our existing spells used in AoE for a benefit. A suggestion for example: “Damage from your [insert AoE spell] has X% chance to make your next Ice Lance against Frozen targets to fracture on impact, dealing Y% damage to nearby enemies.”

For Cold Front, if you want this to be locked behind an AoE talent then this needs to be designed so that it’s beneficial in AoE. CF just needs to come out faster, the 30 stacks is too high due to the lack of Frostbolt and Flurry usage in AoE. Include Ice Lance in there so it can build stacks. The Frozen Orb that CF casts is not impactful given we’re casting so many Frozen Orbs already in AoE, so having this trigger something else that is more distinct would be better. Comet Storm is a great example or instead CF just grant us a buff that allows us to do something interesting and new that’s AoE related.

Variety and choice - again

From this recent build and the Hunter rework, Frost Mage now sits at the lowest number of total talent points offered in the tree across all specs including choice nodes and 2-point talents. It also now has the lowest number of total unique talents across all specs in the game including choice nodes, as the only spec in the game with under 40 total unique talents.

There are a larger number of talents in the tier 3 capstone area that are Frostbolt focused talents so for the AoE ones of these they need to be tuned away from Frostbolt where possible given we barely use Frostbolt in AoE. Currently in tier 3 for AoE builds, Coldest Snap is the only true AoE option to pursue, where current AoE builds are leaning to take GS and RoF/Cryopathy because the rest of the tier 3 capstone options provide no AoE benefit.

Frost is crying out for talent variety and choice, as currently it’s expected that our AoE and ST builds are essentially identical except for 2 talent points. There needs to be revisions and work on Frost in this area to provide better choice and variety. Some new choice nodes would be great too.

6 Likes
147

Here is feedback about Arcane Sunfury.

Spec is decent and Arcane Soul window feels powerful, but its flow and aesthetic are worse than Fire Sunfury - Spellfire Spheres generate much slower, Glorious Incandescence Meteorites are very delayed and can easily miss (since they appear only when Arcane Orb hits the target and even then have a delay) and you mainly feel like a semi-Fire Mage with aesthetics for both spheres and procs. There could be additional improvements for this spec’s Arcane version to address that and make its flow more smooth.

Spellfire Spheres - like suggested in Fire Sunfury feedback post, please hasten their generation out of combat, for example to every 30 seconds without Rondurmancy and every 20 seconds with. This will allow to align them with Arcane Surge’s CD much better, as delaying its usage till they are stacked to full can be quite bad. Also please consider Arcane Sunfury’s spheres more purple to match Arcane’s spec fantasy, since current look is still more fitting for Fire.

Mana Addiction - for some reason it provides 0.5% Haste per stack just like for Fire, even though tooltip states 3% per stack. Hopefully it is a bug / oversight and will be addressed. If it is not - Mana Addiction still should provide bigger value for Arcane than for Fire since consuming Clearcasting occurs much less frequently than consuming Hot Streak.

Arcane Phoenix - Arcane version could both use a bit of recolor (more dark purple instead of orange) and have a bigger variety of Arcane spells (maybe with some Fire spells replaced with Arcane analogues) to match spec identity, since it still primarily uses Fire spells.

Burden of Power - kinda undertuned for Fire and even more undertuned for Arcane. Assuming you play Nether Precision rotation, you would buff every 7th Arcane Blast by 15% (2.15% average increase) or every 7th Arcane Barrage by 30% (4.3% average increase). That is quite low for a hero talent and could be boosted.

Merely a Setback - same feedback as for Fire Sunfury - please buff it and make it a choice node with other defensive option, since both Avoidance and Leech with limited uptime are not always needed or useful.

Lessons in Debilitation vs Gravity Lapse - same feedback as for Fire Sunfury - please revert Gravity Lapse back to stun and if needed reduce targets number and / or increase cooldown to compensate. It feels bad as a root, is inferior to Ice Nova and Mages simply don’t need even more roots. Seeing Mountain Thanes getting an AoE stun (that does not replace anything) and Hunters getting AoE stun for Intimidate (without even any drawbacks), but having Mage’s AoE stun replaced by another root is very disheartening.

Glorious Incandescence - effect is decent and powerful, but should trigger immediately on Arcane Orb hit without current delay, as because of it enemies can simply run out of area before Meteorites fall.

Savor the Moment vs Sunfury Execution - both options can be competitive, but track performance of Sunfury Execution. Savor the Moment has synergy with Memory of Al’Ar while Sunfury Execution does not, so latter might underperform in the end and could need boost for competitiveness.

Codex of the Sunstriders - same feedback as for Fire Sunfury - can be beneficial to opt out of entirely, so consider buffing Phoenix’s exceptional spells (including Arcane versions if they were added) and making Spellfire Sphere damage bonus persist for several seconds after being consumed to provide less personal damage loss during your major DPS cooldown.

Rondurmancy vs Ignite the Future - same feedback as Fire Sunfury - consider making Rondurmancy hasten both out of combat and in-combat Spellfire Spheres generation (for example via also reducing period out of combat and number of Clearcasting stacks consumed required in combat) to make it more competitive and more likely to stack to full before pull or while Arcane Surge is on cooldown.

Memory of Al’Ar - good effect, but Arcane Soul currently has no UI indication outside of your character becoming purple. Many people play with extremely zoomed out camera and might not notice it much, especially with all the possible events and swirlies around. As such, please consider adding it a UI indication similar to Hyperthermia (large purple arcs to the left / right of Clearcasting UI arcs around your character).

1 Like
148

MAJOR Bug report:

  • Pyromaniac is not correctly implemented (still interacting with Hot Streak, instead of just counting as one spent).

  • If the Hyperthermia granted by Sunfury hero talents procs (activates) during a Sun King’s Blessing pyroblast hardcast, the said pyro will fail to activate SKB and will just whiff/launch a dry pyroblast.

  • After exiting a combustion, Mana Addiction stacks (from the Sunfury hero tree) will start acting erratically and expire anywhere between 1-4 seconds, instead of 10 seconds as intended.

  • Fireblast sometimes randomly activates a Living Bomb even if the Lit Fuse buff is not up.

3 Likes
149

Here is feedback about Arcane Spellslinger.

Spec feels a bit better than Frost Spellslinger - visually splinters are compatible with Arcane Missiles, flow is faster than Frost’s with splinters being generated 2 at once from most sources and so on. However, it still is extremely passive and could use work, especially after the nerfs to Spellfrost Teachings.

Here is feedback about several Arcane Spellslinger’s talents with suggestions for possible improvements.

Splintering Sorcery - while launched splinters themselves well align with Arcane’s projectiles, especially Arcane Missiles, their hovering animation is not good and delay before launching can be annoying or even lead to losing some Arcane Echo instances. Could be improved.
Suggestion: Make Arcane Splinters immediately launch at target without hovering and delaying - that would both improve spec’s feeling of launching volleys of projectiles and help address the delay issue.

Look Again vs Slippery Slinging - former is not competitive enough, both because its bonus is very niche (if you take Displacement you might use it earlier than even 8 seconds expire, let alone 12 and moving 50 yards away from target would make it unreachable for some time to most of your spells that have 40 yards range maximum) and because Displacement is hard to reach in general tree and many PVE players don’t even pick it.
Suggestion: Make Displacement easier to reach in general tree (for example swap its position with Accumulative Shielding) and add some additional bonus to Look Again - movement speed increase after using Displacement or making Displacement off-GCD or something else.

Volatile Magic vs Unerring Proficiency - latter can be decent, but requires using a utility / disruption spell for damage instead of its main effect, which can both make this choice option less competitive and this spell being on cooldown when reaching maximum stacks if you try to use it according to its purpose. Consider either making reaching 30 stacks also immediately reset cooldown of Supernova if it is still on it or simply replacing affected spell with some purely AoE focused one like Arcane Orb.

Shifting Shards - like Frost version is too unstable and unreliable. It can pull unaggroed enemies in PVE, break breakable crowd control effects in PVP and launch splinters at a random ranged enemy nearby instead of stacked pack where they could benefit from Controlled Instincts cleave. That could be improved.
Suggestion: Make splinters from Shifting Power have target priority levels - main priority is current target (if any), if there is no current target they could be launched at random enemies hit by Shifting Power and if there are none - only then at random enemies within 40 yards. They should also ignore enemies affected by breakable crowd control effects.

Force of Will - has lower value for Arcane than Frost (who has access to shatter and crit damage boosting talents) and low value for Arcane in general. Since this tree is also too passive, this node is a good option to be replaced by or become a choice node with some other talent that involves player interactivity.

Spellfrost Teachings - were a bit overnerfed, especially for single-target situations, where reset Arcane Orb already did not provide much value. Consider reverting the damage bonus nerf and since chance is now 2% per splinter (so very unreliable) it could also get a form of bad RNG protection like being guaranteed to trigger Orb reset after launching X splinters without getting one - it would not much affect good and average RNG windows and will help mitigate bad RNG windows.

Splinterstorm - while it occurs quite often, its chance to trigger Clearcasting is too low and adds even more RNG reliance to the spec. Consider buffing it a bit, as for comparison Frost version is guaranteed to provide Winter’s Chill stacks and is much more reliable.
In addition, while Arcane Spellslinger is less affected by wasting Splinterstorm’s proc than Frost (since it is a buff on you that you can spend in a decently large period of time instead of being a limited time debuff on enemy), having control over it could still be beneficial in some cases, like holding Splinterstorm right before Touch of The Magi window to make it trigger Arcane Echo. Some people might like passive launch more though, so best solution could be to just make passive and active Splinterstorm versions into a choice node and let people pick.
Suggestion: Make passive Splinterstorm a capsone choice node with active off-GCD ability Splintersurge with similar effect. That would allow both kinds of people to pick and use the preferred option.

1 Like
151

Sunfury Feedback

Sunfury is simply awesome, especially for Fire. The theme, the phoenix and the gameplay are all incredible and there are only a few minor grievances I have with it.

Spellfire Spheres

Please accelerate its generation outside of combat, especially after a raid wipe and make it baseline to start a raid encounter with 3 spheres. A boss takes 30 seconds to reset after a wipe, so at least in instanced raid content it should generate all 3 spheres over this duration.

Mana Addiction

  • Fire
    – I’m in agreement that the focus of the hero tree’s power should be the phoenix instead of just stacking a bunch of secondary stats but a nerf of 75%, going from 20% total extra Haste to only 5% was a tad heavy handed.
  • Arcane
    – It’s a lot harder to stack this buff as Arcane due to how it’s tied to spending Clearcasting and how Clearcasting is generated.

Merely a Setback

This is an incredibly weak talent and very niche at the same time. Avoidance doesn’t help with dealing with a lot of abilities and 5% leech after the barrier is broken or expires is also not very useful. Please reconsider this talent.

Gravity Lapse

The real problem with this talent is that Supernova is a choice node with Dragon’s Breath when Dragon’s Breath will very rarely be opted out of. It would be a lot better if Supernova was a choice node with Blast Wave instead and make a lot more sense as well. Additionally, I’m disappointed it’s not a stun anymore and would like to see it return to that.

Codex of the Sunstriders

At the moment the phoenix is undertuned, especially its exceptional spells, making this talent be a DPS loss over the extra spell damage from the orbs so the optimal play is to untalent it, go with Rondurmancy and keep the 10% extra spell damage forever. I would like to see the way the phoenix consumes the spheres to change instead of removing our spell damage bonus and see its exceptional spells buffed significantly.

2 Likes
152

Frost Mage Feedback - Class & Spec Tree

I want to take this time in early beta to reiterate a post Dorovon made earlier in this thread and add in my own two cents. There are quite a lot of low hanging fruit with the current talent tree of Frost mage in TWW. I genuinely believe with some of the aforementioned tweaks Frost can easily become a very exciting prospect for the upcoming S1 of TWW while retaining its current playstyle.

In addition to these, frost now has the least modern talent tree by multiple metrics as pointed out here:

Frost is in desperate need of a few new talent points that can be AoE/cleave/ST skill expressive choices that help you specialize a given encounter. This was a stated goal in the alpha to give a variety of options to the talent trees that allow you to do this.

Class Tree/Mythic + Related Changes Needed

Currently Frost Mage is probably the most disproportionately affected class-specialization in the game by mythic plus mechanics/affixes and this is looking to become even worse with the latest post on the increased prevalence of Sanguine and Raging and a Reflect affix (which going off other reflect mechanics that have existed in the past, frost’s abilities trigger often on them and almost instantly kill you on a high enough key level). Even excluding these, in a modern culture of chaining, bringing mobs together for big pulls, etc it’s often a negative effect to slow enemies as it prevents the fluid nature of these strategic plays.

Please introduce a choice node with Frigid Winds on the class tree (reduce it to 1 point to do this if necessary) that removes slow effects and changes roots to apply Winter’s Chill instead of freezing. As long as these two affixes are prevalent there will be many weeks where it simply feels bad to ever bring a frost mage and this kind of interaction simply should not exist in the modern WoW m+ landscape.

Within the class tree too, please reconsider the Ice Nova/Ring of Frost choice node. It is simply a silly choice node because Frost has to take it for throughput, and Arcane/Fire will simply always take Ring of Frost for the utility. This ends up in simply being a nerf to frost’s utility output relative to its two other specs.

Spec Tree

In my and many others perspectives, you could make a few talents net new, but I would highly recommend taking a look at these to replace first which have been mentioned by others in this thread and in the alpha feedback:

Deep Shatter

  • Your Frostbolt deals 10%/25% additional damage to frozen targets

Not only is this a two pointer, it’s a very boring crit damage talent on our filler spell that makes the interactions with Winter’s Chill very unintuitive and degenerate as seen from the minimal ice lance builds that developed in Season 1 of Dragonflight for frost mage. This is an amazing place to add in a ST talent that builds off Frozen Touch with further investment into procs: Brain Freeze/flurry and FoF/ice lance. This would further enable non-gs/ray builds and allow for a lower complexity frost variant that still embodies the core playstyle and flow of Frostbolt/Ice Lance/Flurry.

Snowstorm

  • Blizzard has an 30% chance to increase the damage of your next Cone of Cold by 18%/36%, stacking up to 15 times.

Another example of a 2 pointer with very minimal impact that does not work at all with one of the more recent additions to Frost (that was very successful) in Coldest Snap. It’s in a place on the tree that works naturally into an AoE flex talent. This would be a great place to lean into something that further builds into Blizzard/Frozen Orb.

Fractured Frost/Cold Front/Slick Ice/Death’s Chill

These 4 talents comprise two of our capstone verticals and are purely built around our filler spell. This should not be a design goal for capstone talents. I would highly recommend that at least one of these verticals plays further into Ice Lance/Flurry instead of frostbolt. In the event that a completely new talent is not an option, you could shift Fractured Frost and Cold Front to affect ice lance as well.

Death’s Chill

However on Death’s Chill I strongly advise you reconsider this talent as a whole. In any similar form or with any inclusivity of other spells in the kit it still amounts to what becomes a very unpopular ramping style of doing damage that we would have to be tuned around. If this talent is a dps increase, it would mean a significant reduction in burst potential for frost as a whole, making it a non-competitive choice in most forms of high end content.

I genuinely believe that quite a lot of these are low hanging fruit with a little bit of brainstorming and forethought. I hope that you will reconsider keeping these talents as is. It would be a shame to be nearing the first .5 patch of S1 TWW and still pushing for these changes when they could’ve been done much more easily in beta.

Frost was made so great in the S2 rework and I know myself and the rest of the frost players would love to see it continue to stay modern with the changes the rest of the classes and specs are receiving.

7 Likes
153

Here is feedback about Arcane Mage in general in The War Within.

The spec definitely had some parts improved - rotation is much easier, Clearcasting untied from mana spent was a good change (though there are still issues to be addressed with it), returning of tier set effect with untying its generation from RNG and its interaction with Arcane Harmony are all nice. However, while some issues were addressed others weren’t and even new issues appeared which lead to many people considering Arcane tree worse than it was pre-rework. Blizzard, please don’t let history repeat itself with Arcane tree being half-baked like it happened in 10.1.5 - it still needs a decent amount of work. Here are the main remaining issues with suggestions for possible solutions (which are optional, so if you would have better solutions they could be implemented instead, main goal should be to address these issues).

Arcane Mage PVE issues

  1. Utility vs throughput
    While that issue was present in Dragonflight, it became only worse in TWW - remaining utility nodes still compete with throughput, but also are either dead end branch talents that don’t progress down the tree (like Chrono Shift) or simply have better options to be picked instead competing with them (like Presence of Mind).
    Suggestions:
  1. Remove Improved Arcane Missiles and Crackling Energy, move their damage increase baseline and put utility choice nodes instead of them. That would address multiple issues - remove these generic but mandatory point sink talents, make utility not compete with throughput as it would be required to progress down in some parts of the tree (with choice nodes allowing to pick the preferred effect or avoid one of them if it is not needed like Chrono Shift during Sanguine weeks). Such choice nodes could be a mobility option and a utility option pick like these:
    Slipstream vs Surging Energy - mobility choice node with option to either always have Clearcast Arcane Missiles and Evocation cast while moving or have Arcane Blast cast while moving only while Arcane Surge is active to help with mobility issues.
    Chrono Shift vs Arcane Exhaustion - utility choice node that allows to pick additional effect for Arcane Barrage between slowing enemies and hastening yourself (useful against melee and crowd control affected enemies) and reducing their damage or attack / cast speed a bit for short period of time (useful against ranged and crowd control immune enemies).
  2. Either make Presence of Mind also increase damage of affected Arcane Blasts by X% or untie it from Wizened Wit and make them separate talents. Currently PoM is just inferior since it provides pretty much no dps increase while Wizened Wit does, so the solution is either to make PoM also provide some dps increasing value or split their choice node. Presence of Mind could also have a duration (for example 30 seconds) and trigger its cooldown when ability is used instead of when stacks are used to make it better aligned with other 45 seconds cooldowns.
  1. Clearcasting issues
    Untying it from mana spent was a good decision, but new generation chance can be too low (for comparison - old chances for triggering it were 27.5% for fully charged Arcane Blast, 30% for Arcane Missiles and 20% for Arcane Explosion and new chances are 15% for Arcane Blast and 10% for other Arcane spells except Arcane Barrage) and there can be lack of Clearcasting procs when they are needed most (to detonate Magi’s Spark / spend Aether Attunement etc) which leads both to overreliance on RNG and frustration.
    Suggestions:
  1. Buff proc chance of Clearcasting and make it also trigger from Arcane Barrage (which also is an Arcane spell like stated in Clearcasting description).
  2. Move guaranteed Clearcasting generation from Evocation (which is not very fitting since 90 seconds CD window Clearcasting generation is already covered by Arcane Surge while 45 seconds CD window generation for Magi’s Spark is not covered at all) to Touch of the Magi itself - it would both be much more fitting and allow to reliably have usable Arcane Missiles to detonate each Magi’s Spark. If this effect is too strong for base Touch of the Magi, it could be tied to one of its upgrade talents like Nether Munitions.
  3. For QoL improvement add an effect that makes Aether Attunement reactivate Clearcasting when triggered, allowing to use it when needed without waiting for another RNG proc of Clearcasting. If that effect is too strong for base talent of Aether Attunement you could create an additional upgrade talent for it that would enable such behaviour.
  1. AoE issues
    Arcane still has multiple AoE issues unaddressed - necessity to stay in melee range to use Arcane Explosion for a ranged spec, overreliance on RNG of Orb Barrage that can lead to frustrating windows of bad RNG, limited target count of Arcane Barrage that can make Arcane inferior to 2 other Mage specs when high number of targets is pulled, long duration of Touch of the Magi that can make affected enemy in pack die earlier than it detonates with Mage having no control over that etc. These could be addressed.
    Suggestions:
  1. Create a new talent in Arcane tree that would allow to use Arcane Explosion on a hostile target from range, dealing damage to target and other enemies nearby. It would address the melee range issue, but would cost a separate talent point as a trade-off. If needed this talent could also increase damage of Arcane Explosion by X% to make it more competitive with throughput talents.
  2. Add a form of bad RNG protection for Orb Barrage like “after spending X Arcane Charges without getting an Orb proc next spending of Arcane Charges is guaranteed to trigger an Orb”. Such mechanism would not affect good and average RNG windows much and would just help mitigate bad RNG windows a bit.
  3. Add a capstone area talent (for example before Orb Barrage) that would increase number of targets affected by Arcane Barrage per Arcane Charge consumed by 1 (and if that would be needed for competitiveness with throughput talents - would also increase damage of Arcane Barrage by X%). A good QoL addition could be if this talent also extended range of Arcane Barrage cleave, since it is currently very tight. It would address the target count issue for a separate talent point invested (though you might also need to cap Resonance bonus at 50% to prevent it from getting out of hand) and would have good synergy with following it Orb Barrage, since both Arcane Orbs and Arcane Barrages would hit more than 5 enemies if their number is higher.
  4. Add a Cloudburst like mechanism to Touch of the Magi - while it is active pressing the ability input again would detonate it early and release the stored damage. Such mechanism could become usable 1 second after ToTM is active (to prevent accidentally double tapping the button and ending ToTM too early) and would be a good form of player control over this ability - if enemy is about to die player can release the stored damage early and still benefit from it.
  1. Lack of niche & survivability options compared to 2 other specs
    Even with mentioned above issues addressed, Arcane would still lack both a good offensive related niche compared to passive cleave from Ignite and now Living Bombs from Fire and passive snares & roots from Frost and lack survivability options compared to their Cauterize and Cold Snap. Improved Prismatic Barrier baseline is something, but it can be not enough.
    As such, there should be a clear and distinct answer to “why could we bring Arcane Mage over Fire or Frost Mage to party / raid” (assuming dps of all 3 specs would be tuned to competitive levels).
    Suggestions:
  1. Add a unique form of utility that would be brought only by Arcane spec. That could be something like mentioned above utility node that would make Arcane Barrage reduce damage or attack / cast speed of affected enemies or even a new active ability like Arcane Singularity, which could pull enemies in selected affected area to its center and slow them. Such ability would both synergize wih Arcane’s toolkit (allowing to better group up enemies before blasting them with Arcane Barrages and Arcane Orbs and that could even make this utility node competitive with throughput nodes), give Arcane spec its own niche and would in addition transitively make non-DH and non-DK tanks more competitive, since there would be a dps spec that would be able to provide their AoE pull effect instead.
  2. Make Temporal Shield PVP talent baseline for Arcane Mages. That would bring their survivability in PVE in line with 2 other specs without increasing their PVP survivability. Other option could be just making Cauterize and Cold Snap a choice node in general tree and let all 3 specs pick between them.
  1. Undertuned / underused / overpriced talents and pathing issues
    Post-rework Arcane tree still has too undertuned / too niche / too expensive / badly positioned talents and paths that could be looked at. These involve (excluding most talents mentioned above):
    Improved Clearcasting - is a QoL feature that should be baseline for the effect and not require a separate talent point investment. If made baseline its node could be replaced by Concentrated Power (to keep Clearcasting related talents close to each other) and Concentrated Power current position could be occupied by something like making Arcane Explosion ranged node, which is fitting for that AoE part of tree.
    Surging Urge - at best effect you would increase damage of Arcane Surge by 20% every 78-90 seconds. That does not provide much total value and should be boosted.
    Arcane Debilitation and Prodigious Savant - their 2 point investment is both too high for their effect (since Arcane Debilitation provides effect similar to old Erosion that was a single talent and Prodigious Savant both has low value for non-Mastery builds and has no increase in effect from second point invested currently) and limits access both to capstone talents and utility options too much. Consider just reducing both to 1 point investment with full current effect to address these issues.
    Time Loop - both has very weak effect ( around 88% average chance to apply 1-2 additional stacks of Arcane Debilitation when its opening node provides 100% chance to appply 8) and is a dead end talent that does not progress down the tree. Should be significally buffed or redesigned and likely should progress down the tree (for example to Arcane Harmony) to make it competitive enough.
    Enlightened - its effect is decent, but not progressing down the tree can make it a dealbreaker for many Mages, especially with current heavily limited pool of points in 3rd part of tree. To address that it should be moved to a more accessible position that has connections to other nodes or at least have a connection to Leydrinker.
    Charged Orb - is both in a badly accessible position currently (you need to spend a valuable talent point from 3rd part of tree pool to take a mostly QoL feature) and is not competitive much with 3rd part of tree throughput talents either. Consider just moving it back to old spot and making Arcing Cleave baseline for Arcane (as it is core to Arcane’s AoE tools just like Flamestrike & Fuel the Fire are for Fire and Blizzard is for Frost and all of these are baseline for their respective specs). As for its replacement in 3rd part of tree - that could be a talent that would increase Arcane Barrage’s target count per Arcane Charge spent like mentioned above or just an AoE throughput boosting talent.
    Arcane Echo - lost a lot of value with removal of Nether Tempest and might need a boost, especially since its uptime is very limited.
    Concentration - very undertuned for 3rd part of tree talent - it is pretty much a worse Rule of Threes which was not competitive much even in 2nd part of tree. Needs a boost for competitiveness - for example it could also make affected Arcane Blast deal X% increased damage (additional throughput value).
    Leydrinker - visually is good, but both its proc chance and effect are undertuned. Here is some math for current effect - on average every 11th Arcane Blast or Arcane Barrage (it has 10% chance to proc on Nether Precision which is consumed by Arcane Blast or Arcane Barrage) does 25% additional AoE damage = total 2.25% average AoE damage increase to only one of them at a time. This is very low, especially for a capstone talent.
    Suggestion: Increase its proc chance to 15-20% and echo effect to 50-75% of its original value to give it meaningful value. An additional QoL change for it could be to make affected Arcane Blast instant (Arcane Barrage is already) and make affected spell cast as if having 4 Arcane Charges (to avoid situations where you get its proc right after consuming all Charges with Arcane Barrage and need to rebuild them before using the proc or even spend the proc on a weakened Arcane Blast / Arcane Barrage). These changes would make the proc much more exciting and powerful (which was a stated goal for Arcane procs in your developer notes).
  1. Remaining bugs and oversights
    Here is the list of discovered Arcane tree bugs and oversights in beta:
  • Nether Precision buff’s tooltip does not mention Arcane Barrage.
  • Eureka might not work - damage stated in tooltip for Arcane Missiles is not increased when you consume Clearcasting to launch them. Unless its damage increase is already calculated in the tooltip?
  • Prodigious Savant’s rank 2 does not provide any value.
  • Aether Attunement does not increase damage of affected Arcane Missiles.

Arcane Mage PVP issues

  1. Arcane Missiles
    While change to Arcane Missiles in PVE is understandable to provide more value to them, it is very harmful for Arcane Mages in PVP who use Arcane Missiles for juke shenanigans or dealing damage after spending all Arcane Charges on Arcane Barrage for Chrono Shift’s effect (which happens quite frequently). Moreover, it is very likely that people would just tune their Weak Aura notifications to Arcane’s Clearcasting procs and keep tools to disrupt every cast of Arcane Missiles (which cannot be juked as a proc since juking cancels the channel and still consumes Clearcasting stack) making it much harder to use in PVP than procs of 2 other Mage specs. As such, maybe there should be an option to make Arcane Missiles more accessible in PVP without affecting PVE.
    Suggestion: Create a PVP talent that would make Arcane Missiles usable without Clearcasting (with Clearcasting still boosting them and all Clearcasting related buffs still affecting only Clearcast Arcane Missiles) and increase their damage by X%. Such PVP talent is a good compromise - you would still be able to tune Arcane Missiles in PVE with regards of being usable only as a proc and can separately tune them in PVP with PVP modifiers as a spammable spell boosted by Clearcasting procs and without harming their current use cases for PVP Arcane Mages.
  1. Potentially no longer needed PVP modifiers
    Arcane Mages still have multiple PVP nerf modifiers that were applied during different periods and might be no longer needed in The War Within. Please look at PVP nerf modifiers for Arcane Bombardment, Nether Precision, Prodigious Savant, Presence of Mind affected Arcane Blasts, Arcane Surge’s damage bonus, Siphon Storm etc and decide whether they are still needed / should have current value.
  1. Undertuned / underused PVP talents
    Arcane still has several rarely if ever picked PVP talents that could be redesigned or booosted for competitiveness. These include:
    Master of Escape - is too niche and inferior to most other PVP talents, especially since big part of Greater Invisibility’s effect is wasted in PVP as damage over time effects just instantly break you out of its invisibility part. Both issues could be addressed simultaneously.
    Suggestion: Reduce its cooldown reduction bonus to 30 seconds (which better aligns with hostile offensive CD windows) and make it cause Greater Invisibility to also remove X damage over time effects from Mage when cast like it did in some earlier expansions. That would both give it a niche against damage over time specs and comps instead of removed Dampened Magic and make its effect much more fitting for its name.
    Kleptomania - is not used much after it was turned into an easy to disrupt channel that both locks your major school when interrupted and still does not allow to use your regular dispel. It was a fair change to make it more counterable, but these drawbacks combined make it too punishing and rarely picked.
    Suggestion: Keep the channel, but make it no longer replace regular Spellsteal and if needed increase Kleptomania’s cooldown to compensate. That would give Arcane Mages access to a tool against buff / heal over time effects heavy specs and comps without losing normal dispel, but enemies would still be able to counterplay it and disrupt / interrupt it, which would lock Arcane’s major school for several seconds and is already a punishment enough.
  1. PVP affecting or related bugs and oversights
    There are several remaining bugs / oversights with Arcane tree talents that are related to or affect PVP:
  • Chrono Shift’s snare is not boosted by Frigid Winds.
  • Chrono Shift’s tooltip in PVP states that it slows by 25% and hastens by 50%, while the actual effect numbers are reversed.
6 Likes
154

Maybe i missed it but im surprised to see that no one is mentioning Majesty of the Phoenix being a bad talent if its going live as it is now. Right now it also affects your pyroblasts but doesnt have that in the tooltip, that needs to be updated. Main negative effect is it gets consumed on your instant casts flamestrikes/pyro blasts as well, making it useless sometimes or wasted. This needs to be changed 100% before going live to only affect your non instant cast flamestrikes/pyroblasts. Simple change and will fix it. If it isnt changed then its just a talent that feels good sometimes but feels bad most the time.

155

For arcane honestly at this point it would be better to just revert the whole thing and just keep us with DF talents. The ST gameplay is beyond boring, awful, and uniteractive. There is nothing going on w/ any of the trees, we are forced to make awkward utility dmg choices still, and most meaningful skill expression has been gutted.

Making arcane choose between QoL talents and dmg is not a good way to add skill expression to a spec.

8 Likes
156

Here is feedback about Mage’s general tree in The War Within.

Some improvements were made in alpha - removal of Temporal Warp is welcome and moving Supernova to general tree so that it does not compete with throughput in Arcane tree was a good move. However, these changes also brough several questionable or outright bad choice nodes and did not address most issues with the general tree that have been present since 10.1.5. Mage general tree still needs a decent amount of work to adress these issues and reach level of other reworked general trees for other classes.

Mage general tree issues:

  1. Bad and limiting choice nodes
    After alpha rework Mage general tree contains 2 choice nodes that are either outright bad and force picking between throughput and utility for some specs (Ice Nova vs Ring of Frost) or are not balanced well and can cause issues for some builds (Dragon’s Breath vs Supernova).
    Ice Nova vs Ring of Frost - since for Frost Mages Ice Nova is a rotational spell that is used to AoE shatter big hitters like Glacial Spike and Comet Storm, this choice node pretty much locks them out of their main utility spell or forces to lose throughput to take it, so is very bad. It affects Fire and Arcane less, but Fire still loses 1 CC option compared to Dragonflight and Arcane outright loses 2 (both either Ice Nova or Ring of Frost and Dragon’s Breath or Supernova when it could pick all of them simultaneously in Dragonflight), which is not good either.
    Suggestion: Split Ice Nova and Ring of Frost back and either make Ring of Frost replace one of Frost Nova talents below their node or if you still want to have some nerfs to Mage CC / utility - make it a choice node with Mass Polymorph, which would make much more sense since they have similar niche and that would still nerf Mage’s CC options and be in line with your nerfs to AoE CC durations lately.
    Mass Polymorph then could use a bump for competitiveness like 45 seconds base CD and have selectable 8-10 yards radius area within 30 yards range, but it needs it anyway, since it is not picked much already.
    Dragon’s Breath vs Supernova - while less problematic than first node it still has issues. It caused Supernova to gain 45 seconds base cooldown that is too large for its minor effect and harms talents that rely on it like Arcane Spellslinger’s Unerring Proficiency and choice node between DB and Supernova can be even harmful for some builds - for example if you want to play Fire Sunfury with Alexstrasza’s Fury and Gravity Lapse you simply cannot as affected by these talents options compete with each other in a choice node. That could be addressed.
    Suggestion: Split Dragon’s Breath with Supernova, reduce base cooldown of Supernova to 25-30 seconds and either make Supernova a choice node with Quick Witted (similarly to how Shadow Priests pick between CD reduction for their CC / interrupt ability Silence and additional CC in form of Psychic Horror) or with Blast Wave again (similarly to how Shamans can pick between knockback of Thunderstorm and knockup of Thundershock with upgrade talent reducing CD for both by 5 seconds and increasing knockback / knockup distance like Shaman’s Travelling Storms PVP talent does). If you are worried that upgrade talent’s CD reduction would cause issues with Gravity Lapse availability you should not - if it is reverted to a stun it could just have higher base cooldown and if it remains as root - it is already comparable to or worse than Ice Nova that has 25 seconds base cooldown, so bringing Gravity Lapse to 25 seconds base cooldown with Volatile Detonation would make sense too.
  1. Pathing issues
    Tree still has several pathing issues that remain since 10.1.5 rework or even Dragonflight alpha and could be addressed.
    3rd row talents - 2 point cost talents are more expensive than middle 1 point cost talent that can make people take it even if they don’t need its effect simply to preserve talent points to be spent later in the tree.
    Suggestion: Make paths from all 3rd row 2 point talents to 5th row talents beneath them - that would both allow to progress down the tree through them with similar point cost to central talents and also create some new thematic tree paths like Ice Block related path via Winter’s Protection and Cryo Freeze and defensive path via Arcane Warding and Diverted Energy.
    Left capstone area talents - they are all extremely niche, this niche is too similar and provides little to no choices (effects against melee and affected by crowd control enemies) and they gate Ice Cold behind 4 point investment on talents that might have simply no value in a game mode that you play, for example against bosses - since they are immune to crowd control effects the snare boost does not matter and additional root options don’t matter either, so you pretty much spend 4 talent points on Ice Cold alone. That could be addressed.
    Suggestions:
  1. Merge Ice Ward and Freezing Cold into a choice node - they have similar niche and only one of them is usually taken and mainly to access Ice Cold anyway.
  2. Freed node in 9th row in left capstone area could be occupied by some generally useful or anti-ranged talent / choice node to provide bigger variety of choices to access Ice Cold. For example, there could be a choice node between Counterspell being usable while casting without disrupting the cast and providing a benefit on successful interrupt (useful for cast-heavy specs like Arcane to make interrupts more reliable and less disrupting to their rotation) and Counterspell applying a short duration silence (similar to talent Improved Counterspell from previous expansions that would make it a more effective tool against multi-school casters that can just cast spells from other schools when interrupted by Counterspell).
  3. Since Frigid Winds is too niche to be a gateway talent in 8th row, it could be turned into 1 point talent (to better match the effect and be in line with similar effects of other classes like Rogue’s Master Poisoner that costs only 1 talent point) and replace one of current rarely if ever used Frost Nova nodes above it. As for its replacement - that could be a generally useful talent that boosts survivability to provide choice in 8th row between survivability boost (replacement of Frigid Winds), mobility frequency boost (Flow of Time) and mobility potency boost (Temporal Velocity), allowing players to pick the preferred option(s). For example, it could be a talent that would reduce cooldown of spec’s Barrier and Mass Barrier by X% per point invested or something like that.
  4. Make Ice Cold accessible from more nodes, for example from Time Manipulation. You could even go further and make it a choice node with Ice Block itself, since Ice Cold already has pros and cons compared to it. Its capstone node could in such case be occupied by other utility node like Mass Invisibility, which is simply not competitive enough with Mass Barrier.
  1. Lack of anti-ranged options
    Currently most of CC / utility nodes in general tree either have melee range or trigger / affect snares and roots. These can be useful against melee enemies, but often can have little to no value against ranged or crowd control immune enemies. Since Death Knights had similar issue in their general tree (lack of anti-physical talents) and it is being addressed (with new / buffed talents like Runic Protection and Blood Draw), Mages could get similar treatment and get more anti-ranged options in general tree, if needed some of them as choice nodes with existing options.
  1. Undertuned / underused / too niche / arguable talents
    Mage general tree still has several talents that are arguable, not competitive enough or provide too low value to justify spending a talent point on them. These talents could be looked at:
    Reduplication vs Reabsorption upgrade choice node for Mirror Images - both effects don’t work in PVE where enemies attack images instead of Mage and even if that was fixed are still often too low value to justify taking.
    Suggestion: Make them work when Images dissipate for any reason (to make their effect triggered in more cases), buff healing from Reabsorption (it currently provides less healing over time than Displacement provides instantly) and replace Reduplication with effect that would create X additional images, which would extend distraction from Images in PVE (that would be useful against strong open world enemies that are immune to crowd control effects and Mages can have issues with) and extend their damage reduction and passive snares in PVP. Such changes should make both choice options competitive with each other and Mirror Images upgrade node more relevant and competitive in general.
    Mass Polymorph - has a lot of issues compared to both Ring of Frost and AoE crowd control effects of other classes. It has both melee range and cast time (where Ring of Frost and AoE CC of other classes usually have only one of that), it has target type limitations when both Ring of Frost and AoE CC of other classes often do not and it heals affected enemies without a specific PVP talent. After its duration decrease both in PVE (15 seconds) and PVP (6 seconds) it definitely needs a boost for competitiveness.
    Suggestion: Reduce its base cooldown to 45 seconds and make it affect a selected 8-10 yards radius area within 30 yards range. That would at least bring it in line with Ring of Frost with different pros and cons and make it more competitive.
    Improved Frost Nova - its root extension effect does not matter much, since in PVE its root is often broken long before even its base 6 seconds duration expires and in PVP roots should be capped at 6 seconds duration maximum anyway. As a result, it is not picked much and is not competitive enough.
    Suggestion: Merge it back into baseline Frost Nova (like it was pre-Dragonflight) and replace with Frigid Winds as a 1 point investment talent with full current effect.
    Rigid Ice - while there are moments where this effect could have value they are too rare in PVE and in PVP its effect is heavily nerfed, making it redundant. As a result, this talent is also not competitive.
    Suggestion: Replace it with Ring of Frost. If Ring of Frost would become / remain a choice node with other talent, this talent could at least get a boost for competitiveness - affect all freeze roots, provide bigger value and maybe even extend freeze effects grace period (when they are not broken by any amount of damage) to make it more useful at least for Frost Mages in group content, who could pick it to avoid getting their freeze effects broken by damage from allies before they can shatter them.
    Accumulative Shielding - its effect is both niche (as it is heavily diminished if your barrier takes damage and quickly breaks) and is almost always inferior to Barrier Diffusion, which triggers much more reliably.
    Suggestion: Move it to 8th row position of Frigid Winds, turn into 2 point investment talent and make it just reduce cooldown of spec Barrier and Mass Barrier by X% per point invested. That would resolve multiple issues - make it not compete with superior Barrier Diffusion, make left capstone area 8th row gatekeeping talent more generally useful and remove its niche trigger conditions to make it much more reliable.
    Mass Invisibility - is simply more niche and less useful that Mass Barrier, so is almost never picked. As such, it could be buffed for competitiveness or just split from current choice node and turned into a separate talent.
    Time Anomaly vs Inspired Intellect - while removal of Temporal Warp is good, many of its issues remain in this node - it is still the only direct throughput node between capstone talents (so mandatory and reduces number of choices) and it is still pretty much just a tuning knob node. Consider just removing it and replacing with other defensive / utility node like long requested choice node between Cauterize and Cold Snap. If it for some reason needs to remain, both options could use improvements:
    Time Anomaly - triggered Icy Veins should summon a water elemental or at least provide maximum amount of Frigid Empowerment stacks for duration to bring Icy Veins proc in line with procs of 2 other specs.
    Inspired Intellect - should provide bigger value, since Time Anomaly provides additional synergies other than just damage increases from its procced major cooldowns - mana regen from Arcane Surge, Cryopathy stacks from Icy Veins etc.
  1. Remaining bugs and oversights
    There are several remaining bugs and oversights with general tree talents:
  • Shifting Power does not reset cooldown of Mass Invisibility (both normal and PVP talented).
  • Frigid Winds does not affect Chrono Shift’s snare.

Mage general tree PVP issues

Aside from mentioned above issues that apply both in PVE and PVP, Mage general tree talents also have several PVP specific issues that could be looked at.

  1. Potentially no longer needed PVP modifiers
    Mage’s general tree has several PVP nerf modifiers applied during different periods that could be no longer needed in War Within. Please take a look at PVP nerf modifiers for Dragon’s Breath (reduced duration in PVP might be no longer justified with 45 seconds base cooldown), Diverted Energy and Tempest Barrier and decide whether their PVP nerf modifiers are still needed / should have current value.
  1. Undertuned / underused general PVP talent(s)
    Some general PVP talents are too niche or undertuned and could use boosts. Main one is Improved Mass Invisibility - since it requires spending a capstone talent point in general tree, a PVP talent slot and locks you out of one of defensives on top of that it is not played much by all 3 specs and might need a boost.
    Suggestion: Either split Mass Invisibility in general tree from Mass Barrier (like suggested in general section) or make Improved Mass Invisibility also grant access to Mass Invisibility without taking it in general tree. If needed - reduce duration and / or increase cooldown of its PVP talent version to compensate.
3 Likes
157

I agree. I really don’t like that the arcane missiles need clearcast to work now. Please change this back to the way it is in retail now.

158

I have another observation to make: Sunfury fire mage is stealing more aggro than intented. I don’t know if its the bird who does too many hits in such a small amount of time, but i’m stealing more aggro when i’m using this hero spec.

I can burst just fine with frostfire mage, without the need of mirror images.

159

I have been testing Arcane Mage on the beta for a few hours now, and I really dislike the new changes to the talent tree.

I get that the changes to Arcane were to reduce complexity, but in reality, the complexity made it fun. Lore wise, being an arcane mage would have taken years of research and studying, so it felt fitting in a RP sense that the arcane mage would also require a bit of research to play optimally.

I think the removal of the radiant spark was a mistake. The animation for the spell just got redesigned and looked fantastic, and we only got to use it for a season and a half, which is a crime.

Without a radiant spark, the mini burn for arcane feels significantly worse, as you barely feel that you are in a mini burn at all. I wouldn’t mind if radiant spark got redesigned to make it less confusing to use (even though it was never confusing, imo), but straight out, removing it was a mistake.

At first, I didn’t care that much about nether tempest being gone, but I kind of miss it. I I used it a lot as a tool to pull mobs quickly as it was instantaneous and did not use up any charges.

The talent tree itself is also really bad. Capstones are boring, and Slipstream competes with three other DMG nodes, which makes it hard to pick them. You can’t have AOE and single target in the same build. Also, the chrono shift will never be picked in its current location.

I feel like presence of mind should share a choice node with charged up instead of a node that lets you cast arcane blast faster. Just my opinion.

The few good things about the talent tree rework are the inclusion of aether attunement AOE missiles, which is great, and removing mana gems, which is great as well.

Can arcane explosion please be a ranged spell? It’s been almost 20 years of arcane needing to be in melee for AOE, and it’s high time that changed. Being in melee makes your AOE missiles just so much less satisfying. Arcane mage also has less defensive’s as the other mage specs so it’s weird it’s the one that’s forced to be in melee.

So to fix Arcane, I say revert it back to Dragon Flight Season 4. Remove the mana gem, add AOE missiles, and make the arcane explosion a ranged spell that targets the focused mob. Also, keep the changes to generating CC procs; those feel pretty good alternatively you can keep CC procs based of mana but just increase for arcane explosion.

I don’t have much to say about the hero’s talents. I found SS pretty fun in dungeons, but I heard complaints about using charged orbs on a single target, which I would agree with. I would also prefer the splinters to generate of off consuming clear-casting procss. SF was also quite fun; however, the visuals should only include arcane-themed spells (and for fire, it should just be fire-themed spells) to keep the arcane visual identity intact.

Overall, I really hope the changes don’t make it to live. Playing Arcane for season 3 was the most fun I’ve had in this game, and it feels terrible that a spec that was really close to being amazing got absolutely gutted because a few people couldn’t be bothered to watch a guide. Arcane was never that hard; it just required instance and spec knowledge, which felt fitting for it being a mage spec, which, lore wise, would be that hardest magic type to master.

6 Likes
160

Forgot to add one thing… You should be able to manually detonate touch of the magi.

1 Like
161

Spell Slinger is lost. The cornerstone of the hero talent tree is sad and worthless. it was weak prior to the nerf now a complete joke. The fact its so difficult to pull of a splinter storm in M+ before mobs die. The fact that when hitting icy veins and shifting power then hit different targets rather than actually getting a splinter storm off by placing all 8 into the mob Im targeting. Yet a hellcaller warlock has a 1 shot button that makes everyone with wither take 332 spell power damage. ours 10 spell power??? This needs to be worked on big time. I dont want to be forced to play a warlock or wind walker monk. Splinterstorm isnt even fun to play. But I love frost and frostfire is boring, yet grossly more effective than spell slinger. Splintering ray needs to be able to crit surrounding enemies.

1 Like
162

:eye: Post-Raid Testing Feedback (Arcane) :eye:

Overall Feedback

  • Arcane Spec Tree: The simplification of the Arcane rotation has allowed a lot of my guildies and friends to try Arcane, and are definitely liking it. Spellslinger appears to be the go-to spec for people new to Arcane, which makes sense given that it’s definitely the easier of the two hero trees for Arcane. I do think there are still some problems with this tree that have been previously stated (and I’ll list some of my personal issues below), but I don’t actually think this is the most immediate problem with Arcane at the moment.
  • Spellslinger: Feels great, thumps without having a clear outlier over other DPS specs. I wouldn’t really change much here (outside of maybe the Splinter visuals?)
    • Single Target: On single target we were doing anywhere from 600-700k~ish DPS. I don’t think this is currently top 5 DPS spec for ST (Fire Mage, MM hunter, Destro lock have us beat there), but it’s certainly quite good.
    • Multi-Target: In AoE this hero tree feels great, it funnels great and it’s simple, allowing you to focus on kicks, decurses, CC, etc. (as is required for M+ content). The 3% -->2% reset Orb chance per Splinter from last week definitely hurts, but it’s still good in M+. I have seen Fire Mage, Ret Pally, Destro lock, MM hunter and Survival hunter (??? how did this happen?) beat it quite consistently in AoE. I do think this is an OK trade-off given that we do have funnel on our side with the Splinterstorms.
  • Sunfury: This hero tree is what I’m going to spend most of my feedback on because it is currently lacking in a couple of departments.
    • 1st problem (Burden of Power w/ Arcane Blast): The 1st problem is it currently suffers from a clunkiness problem where Burden of Power can be consumed by Arcane Blast, but you almost never want it to consume it since Arcane Barrage gains more damage from it, usually has Arcane Harmony x20 stacks (so has more damage than Arcane Blast as a result) and you’re guaranteed to get your 4 Arcane Charges back with Arcane Orb right after using Glorious Incandescence.
    • 2nd problem (Requiring 4 CC procs to get Burden of Power): The 2nd problem is that requiring 4 Clearcasting procs in order to get that Burden of Power proc is quite difficult. You are clearly intending to try to get at least 2 of these during your Arcane Surge window (the first from casting Arcane Surge since you get an Orb from that, and the second from getting 4 CCs during your rotation in that 15 seconds) but it is quite difficult to get that 4th CC proc in your damage windows (which is probably why you nerfed Mana Addict for Fire mages but not Arcane, you’re also seeing that Arcane has a hard time getting that 4th proc).
    • 3rd problem (damage Output, or lack thereoff): I think you’ve seen this quite clearly with raid testing; this hero tree is clearly undertuned relative to Spellslinger (and everything else). We had some pretty good Arcane Mages (CE + M+ title holders) doing ~400-450k DPS in single target during raid testing. Similarly, it’s damage is quite low in M+ (I burst to >2 mil DPS on a pack of 5 mobs w/ SS + cooldowns, but barely get to 1.2 mil DPS w/ SF). Rather than buff this hero tree, I was wondering if you’d be willing to specifically buff certain aspects of this tree to make it balanced with other specs (namely the things that make Arcane Barrage and Arcane Harmony work, because I firmly believe that Arcane Harmony’s giga crits belong with Sunfury and are a huge dopamine rush when playing it, like it was in Shadowlands w/ Radiant Spark)
    • 4th problem (Codex of the Sunstriders and the DPS loss that comes with this): Because this talent consumes your 5 Spellfire Spheres (which gives you a combined permanent 10% damage increase w/ Rondurmancy), it is currently a DPS gain for both Fire mage and Arcane mage to NOT select this hero talent so you keep your 10% damage buff during your cooldowns. I can’t imagine that you intend for this to go live, so I’ll suggest a change below for you to consider.

:fire: Sunfury Arcane :fire:

Burden of Power
  • Current Version: Conjuring a Spellfire Sphere increases the damage of your next Arcane Blast by 15% or your next Arcane Barrage by 30%
  • Suggested Change: Conjuring a Spellfire Sphere increases the damage of your next your next Arcane Barrage by 60%
  • Feedback: This is meant to address 2 problems (like stated above in the Overall feedback section): removing the punishing clunkiness of having Arcane Blast consume this buff and increasing the damage of this buff for Arcane Barrage given how behind Sunfury is in terms of damage output.
Glorious Incandescence
  • Current Version: Consuming Burden of Power causes your next cast of Arcane Orb to call down a storm of 4 Meteorites on the first target it damages. Each Meteorite’s impact reduces the cooldown of Arcane Orb by 2.0 sec and generates an Arcane Charge.
  • Suggested Change: Consuming Burden of Power causes your next cast of Arcane Orb to call down a storm of 4 Meteorites on the first target it damages. Each Meteorite’s impact reduces the cooldown of Arcane Orb by 2.0 sec and generates an Arcane Charge. In addition, this generates a stack of Clearcasting.
  • Feedback: Like was stated above, we need to have an easier way to get Clearcasting procs during our cooldown windows to generate these Orbs. Fire mage requiring 6 Hot Streaks is nothing compared to 4 CC procs for Arcane. This change is meant to allow us to go into our Arcane Surge cooldowns with at least 3 CC procs (1 from Evocation, 1 from Arcane Surge and 1 from this change above). That way, we could get a second Arcane Harmony barrage in our cooldown windows.
Codex of the Sunstriders
  • Current Version: Summoning your Arcane Phoenix grants you a Spellfire Sphere. Over its duration, your Arcane Phoenix will consume each of your Spellfire Spheres to cast an exceptional spell.
  • Suggested Change: Summoning your Arcane Phoenix grants you a Spellfire Sphere. Over its duration, your Arcane Phoenix will consume each of your Spellfire Spheres to cast an exceptional spell. Your damage dealt is increased by 4% per Sphere consumed for the next 15 seconds.
  • Feedback: This hero talent isn’t picked because the 10% damage buff during cooldowns is worth more than the spells that the fire chicken casts. Instead, I would recommend making each Spellfire sphere consumed give 4% damage for 15 seconds, just so that it is once again worth picking up this hero talent. I understand that Fire mage is already very strong and this would buff Fire mage, but I think Fire is overperforming with both Sunfury and Frostfire, so I think the root problem with Fire can be address with global nerfs (i.e. Pyroblast damage nerfs or something)

:snowflake: Spellslinger Arcane :snowflake:

  • Great job! :smiley:

:eye: Arcane Spec Tree :eye:

Leydrinker
  • Current Version: Consuming Nether Precision has a 10% chance to make your next Arcane Blast or Arcane Barrage echo, repeating its damage at 25% effectiveness to the primary target and up to four nearby enemies.
  • Suggested Change: Arcane Barrage can now consume 2 stacks of Nether Precision in a single cast
  • Feedback: This talent is a little disappointing at the moment. It doesn’t feel strong or impactful at all compared to something like Arcane Harmony, Orb Barrage, Siphon Storm or even Nether Munitions (with Magi’s Spark). Besides the lack of rotational change, it also does no damage. The most it might do is if it procs right before an Arcane Surge for Sunfury w/ Arcane Harmony, but the chances of that w/ a 10% proc rate are slim-to-none. I think a better way to make this talent an attractive choice is to change to the above. This has utility for both Spellslinger and Sunfury:
    • Spellslinger would get double the Splinters
    • Sunfury would get more damage on their Arcane Barrage
Arcane Harmony
  • Current Version: Each time Arcane Missiles hits an enemy, the damage of your next Arcane Barrage is increased by 5%. This effect stacks up to 20 times (Max + 100% damage).
  • Suggested Change: Each time Arcane Missiles hits an enemy, the damage of your next Arcane Barrage is increased by 5%. This effect stacks up to 32 times (Max + 160% damage). In addition, stacks regenerate when out of combat at a rate of 1 stack every 2 seconds and do not reset when pulling a raid boss or starting M+ dungeon.
  • Feedback: After testing, this talent in combination with Sunfury (the tree that clearly fits this talent given Burden of Power and Sunfury Execution), this talent is vastly undertuned. By design, I think you should have some concrete synergy with Sunfury’s 4 Clearcasting procs and Arcane Harmony. This is meant to address this change. As you can clearly see, I am focusing on Arcane Harmony’s big barrage burst w/ Sunfury as a means to increase it’s damage, since I think that will provide a much better gaming experience to myself and another. I distinctly remember the very high feeling of getting that GIGA crit in Shadowlands as Arcane (critting for 350,000 while our max HP was ~50,000), and I would love to feel that again.

Also, there’s a bug for Mage on Dawnbreaker, here’s a vid of it: https://imgur.com/gallery/dawnbreaker-1st-boss-bugs-part-1-2-CcQtZT7

2 Likes
163

Mages and Armor Values

Something is broken when it comes to Mage gearing on the War Within Beta test servers Alleria and Khadgar (where you farm the gear yourself).

For this test, I made two Template characters using the War Within level-up feature in order to calculate how much of a difference the Earthen racial 10% more Armor from gear would actually be in game when it came to Physical damage taken being reduced. I got the following numbers.

Level 70 ilvl 408 Dark Iron: 2,230 & 15.98%
Level 70 ilvl 408 Earthen: 2,453 & 17.31%

However, there’s another problem with this. After finishing my test, I went onto the character I manually leveled 10-80 on Alleria and checked her Armor values and got the following data.

Level 80 ilvl 554 Void Elf: 8,976 & 8.24%

“How is this a practical concern?”
I was just doing testing on my Level 80 ilvl 554 Void Elf in a Tier 1 Delve, specifically Tak-Rethan Abyss. This lack of Armor at higher levels from higher ilvl gear is an absolute massive problem for Mage. Please look into it.

164

Spellslinger Frost

Aside from Spellfrost Teachings this entire tree feels lackluster. The visuals arent there, and Splinterstorms directly proccing winters chill feels unintuitive and annoying to manage with trying to consume them using the correct spells.

In AOE you’re just praying for a Spellfrost proc to even attempt to be as impactful as Frostfire has guaranteed.

Unerring Proficiency buffs Ice Nova by 20% less than Excess Frost, takes far longer to stack, and has no extra effects.

Add splinters to our mastery like you did with arcane please. Only one spec having scaling splinters with a secondary stat aside from vers feels like a massive imbalance waiting to happen.

Frostbolt Playstyle

The frostbolt playstyle is too weak, even in Icy Veins.

At 3t, its best count, its still worse than standard build. And once you leave Icy Veins you feel incredibly weak. Fractured Frosts current design just doesnt work, all the synergies arent strong enough to make Icy Veins a large burst cd, and outside of Icy Veins you are playing without three 3rd gate talents (Slick Ice, Death’s Chill, Fractured Frost) and arguably Cold Front as well given how long it takes to stack with no cleaving frostbolts.

These talents represent a problem for frost’s future design given how hard they are to cater to. Most of our effects will be useless for them like our current tier, and then a significant portion of our 3rd gate will be dead talents.

Suggestions arent generally the move on the forums, but these talents could benefit from two changes: Fractured Frost being available in a limited manner outside of Icy Veins, and potentially a talent that auto casts Flurries during Icy Veins (similar to Thorim’s Invocation for Enhance). This would let the frostbolt playstyle be in effect even in our filler, and flurries being sent off automatically would allow us to still shatter most of our frostbolts without the need to spend a significant period of our cds not casting frostbolt.

Personally, I find that this playstyle in Icy Veins can be satisfying, particularly around Frostfire Empowerment procs and AOE shattering them. However when you start wanting to consider the rest of Frost’s kit it becomes tedious, and you feel incredibly weak out of cds. As a whole the amount of talents required to support the frostbolt playstyle just leaves me unexcited for a large portion of our 3rd gate.

Glacial Spike

Good, fun, with everything going on with Frostfire it can be annoying to maximize though. Would be nice if it had an additional capstone talent. Potentially consider making it generate two splinters. There is really no value to it with the hero talents, losing spell casts (due to GS’s long cast time) is only anti-synergistic to both of them.

Ice Nova

Please uncouple this from Ring of Frost. They arent similar at all, and given Ice Nova is required for Frost, it will just hurt frost’s viability in high end m+.

4 Likes
165

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this yet but would it be game breaking to have Hyperthermia also reduce the GCD of Flamestrike and Pyroblast so we could get maybe 1 or 2 more GCDs in the 6 sec window? Maybe you could reduce the damage a tad during that window to balance it out. I just think it’s halfway to greatness currently with it not reducing the GCD for those spells. I’d just like to go full machine gun instead of half machine gun. Thoughts?

1 Like
166

Cold Snap

The disparity between spec defensives is incredibly high right now. Improved Prismatic Barrier is insane, and Cauterize is an amazing tool for a class that basically only has preemptive defensive tools. Barely buffing Frosts barrier isnt enough to put us on an even footing.

Cold Snap has several main issues:

  • It completely overwrites the cds remaining on your defensives, so often times you dont even gain another use, just shift when you are able to use it.
  • It requires 2 button uses and as such isnt great in an emergency.

Both of these greatly hamper its usefulness. Cold Snap could feel very impactful if it had a minor shift in design:

  • Its passive and you simply have 2 stacks of barrier and ice block (already limited by hypothermia, this would be a rather strong option that has potential to compete with Cauterize and Imp Prismatic Barrier)

or

  • Using it grants temporary charges like time spiral so you don’t overwrite your cds and still gain extra defensive uses in an encounter.
8 Likes