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.
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.
Forgot to add one thing… You should be able to manually detonate touch of the magi.
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.
Post-Raid Testing Feedback (Arcane) 
Sunfury Arcane
- 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%
- 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.
- 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.
Spellslinger Arcane 
Arcane Spec Tree
- 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
- 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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+.
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?
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:
Both of these greatly hamper its usefulness. Cold Snap could feel very impactful if it had a minor shift in design:
or
On behalf of a frosty friend.
I like the Frostfire visuals much more than Spellslinger. The gameplay leaves something to be desired, though.
First of all, the Fire Mastery is sometimes hard to fully stack, especially with active talents. Frostfire Infusion can get you pretty close even when not casting Frostfire Bolt that much, but seeing 6-7 Fire Mastery stacks expire happens quite often and is pretty frustrating. Forcing Frostfire Bolts into the rotation when I have other, more interesting stuff to do feels pretty awful. Living Bomb triggering Fire Mastery is neat, but because it requires fully stacking Fire Mastery beforehand, it is often an overkill. Honestly, a lot of the time I wish fully stacking Frost Mastery gave me a fire spell to help finish my Fire Mastery stacks instead of yet another frost spell.
The passives tied to fully stacking your mastery feel fine. More Brain Freeze procs is definitely noticeable, the Comet Storm cooldown reduction less so. However, I dislike the instant Frostfire Bolt from Frostfire Empowerment; it tends to break the flow of the rotation. It’s better in AoE where you don’t cast Frostfire Bolt a lot and the proc is something you get to actively choose; in single target situations it just kinda happens without my input.
Spellslinger visuals are fairly disappointing, especially as Frost. The splinters aren’t visually distinct enough from Icicles; they just look like a second row of Icicles. Splinterstorm is hard to tell apart from a bunch of splinters generated during Icy Veins. However, I like the gameplay more than Frostfire.
It should be noted that providing proper feedback is quite hard because of the current Spellslinger bugs: splinters generated by other mages, Splinterstorm sometimes triggering with 1-2 splinters, splinters from Frozen Orb and Shifting Power hitting random targets I’m not in combat with.
I really like Spellfrost Teachings. The proc feels powerful and I actually get a choice in using it. It definitely needs some indicator (even if it’s just a glowing button).
Controlled Instincts just outright not working between Blizzards feels awful. It happens quite often due to the delays and spell travel times. I think it should linger around for a couple of seconds like the arcane version does, giving you some time to recast Blizzard.
Splinterstorm is really annoying to take advantage of as Frost. Winter’s Chill from Flurry works great because it’s easily predicable, which cannot be said for Splinterstorm. Due to the various delays and differing travel times, you’re not sure how many stacks you’ll have to operate with since one or both stacks might be consumed by spells already in flight when Splinterstorm hits.
The removal of Temporal Warp was a good change. I’m not a big fan of Time Anomaly, though it will feel less awful with a Brain Freeze proc instead of Fingers of Frost (once the bug with missing cooldown reset is fixed). Inspired Intellect is fairly boring, but I’d take it over Time Anomaly if it wasn’t so undertuned.
Moving Ice Nova and Ring of Frost into a single choice node is an awful change. Frost already struggles with utility compared to Fire and Arcane (Cold Snap and slightly larger barrier are very situational compared to Cauterize and Improved Prismatic Barrier) and now we’re forced to pick between a core AoE spell or additional utility, whereas the other specs can just pick the utility without any real downside.
I don’t think it’s controversial to state that the spec tree is just bad. Frost currently has the lowest number of unique spec talents among all specs. The tree barely offers any choice, since many of the talents are just straight up either required or extremely situational. Let me quickly go over the main pain points:
Leveling another mage during Remix showed me how bad the start of the Frost tree is. Frost has a bunch of talents that basically don’t do anything unless you pick 1-3 other talents. The first time you get Flurry, the spell is almost useless. You need to pick at least Shatter and Brain Freeze (but realistically also Perpetual Winter) before the spell starts feeling fine. Ice Lance is mostly useless without also picking Fingers of Frost. Blizzard is a worse Arcane Explosion until you pick Ice Caller, etc.
I’m quite surprised Fingers of Frost and Shatter are even in the spec tree, given the recent trend of making key passives (like Clearcasting, Hot Streak or Fuel the Fire) baseline.
The first 19 talent points are more or less locked. The second tier has really expensive pathing to unlock two key talents: Icy Veins and Splitting Ice. This doesn’t leave a ton points to spend freely before moving to the third tier. The problem is especially bad because the second tier contains many extremely situational talents (Deep Shatter, Snowstorm, Subzero). In the first 20 talent points, the only real choice you make is Ice Caller vs Frozen Touch.
The situation isn’t much better in the third tier. The addition of Death’s Chill (which I have some issues with, see below) was meant to create an alternative to Glacial Spike. But as it stands, two of the five capstones are only useful in AoE, so you’ll always pick the remaining three in single target and cleave. Our only choice node also doesn’t really offer any choice because Splintering Ray would be hard to justify even with 100% cleave.
Deathborne making a return is quite surprising. The Frostbolt spam rotation that it enabled at the end of Shadowlands wasn’t exactly well received. The talent (and its partners Fractured Frost and Cold Front) have two major issues.
Firstly, Icy Veins is currently quite busy (which, to be clear, is a good thing) and doesn’t leave a ton of room for Frostbolt. This is especially apparent in AoE where you might cast a couple of Frostbolts over the entire Icy Veins, making Fractured Frost (which only works during Icy Veins) a dead talent. In the best case scenario, you get a slight benefit from them every now and then and that’s about it. In the worst case scenario, Frostbolt pushes out other, more interesting spells from the rotation.
Secondly, these talents are trying to turn a filler spell into a payoff spell, which creates tension with existing payoff spells. Deciding when to ignore procs and cast Frostbolt instead honestly isn’t a fun choice to me. I cast Frostbolt to enable other, more exciting spells. It doesn’t need to be more than that. The alternative to Glacial Spike shouldn’t be juiced up filler spell that kinda does it all (cleaves, does AoE, buffs you) when there are existing payoff spells to consider.
Regarding Sunfury
I will admit that it feels fantastic pressing combustion. The recent nerfs are a little heavy-handed, however.
Regarding Fire Mage
Fire Mage suffers from a problem present in Dragonflight and is STILL present in TWW: Our spells feel EXTREMELY weak outside of combustion windows, especially in lower content. Flamestrike really is just not a fun button to press - it just does not hit hard enough, even if one goes all in on a Flamestrike build.
Can we please revert the change that turned Supernova and Dragon’s Breath into a choice node? Gravity Lapse is such an iconic spell that really reinforces Sunfury’s Kael’thas fantasy, I don’t see why it couldn’t continue to replace Blast Wave instead of Supernova. I do not like having to choose between Gravity Lapse and Alexstrasza’s Fury. I don’t even like Supernova, so it feels bad to take it just so I can replace it with Gravity Lapse while losing access to Dragon’s Breath in the process.
Living bomb ignite not working still. Also living bomb nerf is really bad for sunfury AOE. Should have instead nerfed living bomb granted from excess fire.
Unleashed inferno doesn’t buff living bomb, while all combust procs give frostfire empowerment → excess fire → living bomb, making any living bomb nerfs extra harsh for sunfury.
Playing flamestrike still sucks - mouse pointer locked to a point on the screen. Please consider making it a targeted ability
Figured i’d drop my list of bugs i’ve encountered so far. Might include some interactions that arn’t bugs, but feel weird they work how they do.
BUGS:
Flame Accelerant is consumed by Hyperthermia instant pyros
Living Bomb doesnt apply ignite (so Mark of the Firelord is useless on ST)
Frostfire bolt benefits from, but does not consume Flame Accelerant
Living bomb seems to be proccing despite not having Lit Fuse active.
Meteorites from sunfury as of the build today 6/18/2024 are not giving Fireblast CDR like the tooltip says it should.
The tooltip of Frostfire Empowerment buff itself is entirely different than the tooltip inside the Frostfire talent tree
A single meteor cast gives you full Frost Mastery and Fire mastery for Frostfire, despite being 1 cast.
Sure there’s more, but that’s what i’ve encountered personally so far.
Having had the opportunity to test the new changes to Arcane (thank you for your continued effort - it is very much appreciated), the pathing is certainly a lot better, but there are still problems (I know Blizz indicated in its patch notes for today that some new talent nodes for the Arcane tree did not make it into this build, so I eagerly look forward to seeing those):
General Observations (Talents and Abilities) - in no particular order
1.) as has been repeatedly stated since the opening days of DF, there is simply no reason why Arcane Barrage’s basic functionality should be split into several different talents. It takes up a few much needed points and forces one to pass over far more interesting options. If nothing else, then at least make Arcing Cleave baseline.
2.) similarly, as has likewise been pointed out time and again, Improved Arcane Missiles and Crackling should NOT be talents. They, too, unnecessarily tie us down in talent selection, and serve no broader purpose.
3.) Arcane Debilitation continues to suffer from RNG issues, because Arcane Missiles (even with the bug fix to Clearcasting procs from Arcane Missiles themselves, etc.) do not proc as often as before. The debuff itself also falls off too quickly, further reducing its value. I do like that I am no longer compelled to select this talent to proceed further down the tree, however.
4.) Prodigious Savant is no longer a required selection to keep going down the tree, but it does bar our way to Leydrinker, which has received a major buff and is now (almost, see below) capstone worthy. This is not necessarily a problem in itself; rather, the issue is that Prodigious Savant is inherently weak and boring. It really ought to be replaced with something else; it strikes me more as filler than a true talent, the surest sign that it should either be made baseline or removed (and replaced) altogether.
5.) as numerous others above have called attention to, the Arcane tree is still bloated with utility nodes that do not belong there, i.e., Slipstream and Chronoshift.
6.) Arcane Explosion is woefully undertuned and does not proc Clearcasting frequently enough. As this has historically been one of Arcane’s most powerful and useful AoE tools, it feels so wrong to try and avoid it in the rotation on account of very low damage. It urgently requires a buff.
7.) Surging Urge seems underpowered and, because it is also tied to a longer CD, it does not compete well with several other more consistent DPS options. I love the idea of this talent - it just needs to be buffed and, perhaps, offer additional benefit outside Arcane Surge casts.
8.) Evocation should be baseline or placed further up in the tree. It is more difficult to pick this talent with the latest talent position rearrangement, especially when constructing AoE builds. Evocation is foundational to Arcane and a very useful tool - not being able to select it in many cases feels bad.
Capstones
1.) As much as I disapprove of Arcane Harmony, I suppose it can stay. However, as was mentioned in today’s patch notes, I avidly hope that one of the yet unimplemented talent nodes is a choice node with Arcane Harmony.
2.) While I am fine with Magi’s Spark and Nether Munitions being on a choice node, both are still underpowered. Now, Magi’s Spark received a huge buff this week, but I fear it is still not enough, as it registers low damage overall in my dungeon experience so far (its other issues include sometimes failing to activate it before mobs die and its (usually) 45-sec CD). For a capstone this is not ideal. The solution, though, is simple: continue to buff it until the numbers are right and possess the power becoming of a capstone. I really love Magi’s Spark’s addition to the game and do not want to see it removed under any circumstances. Nether Munitions, despite being buffed by 2%, is just too weak, not to mention as dry as it gets. Please reconsider this talent by coming up with something both much more creative and powerful. Leydrinker received a needed buff and is now in a OK, but still unsatisfactory, state. I strongly recommend increasing the proc rate once more. Additionally, I do hope that one of the unspecified extra talent nodes will be a choice node with Leydrinker, as the latter is comparatively feeble in single target.
Dead Talents
The following are at risk of either very rarely or never being selected:
These really need buffs or redesigns as soon as possible (in the case of Chronoshift, it should be baseline, in my opinion).
Bugs
New build new Frost feedback.
I like Permafrost Lances. Straight up, good talent, synergizes with the rest of the tree, very happy.
Tier set change is nice. Frigid Pulse is one of those things I would like to see in the tree at some point in the future, much like the DF S3/4 exploding Glacial Spikes.
Fixed Splinter gen off other mages, but I see you haven’t pinned down the lowering threshold for a Storm. Hopefully you can find that soon.
Temporal Anomaly seems to just not be granting Brain Freeze at all now. Has it been removed from possibilities, and if it has, can we get the Water Ele/Frigid Empowerment added to the IV proc instead to shore it up?
Temporal Anomaly is granting Frostfire Empowerment but not the 8 Splinters from an IV activation. Would like some consistency.
Elemental Affinity is lowering the cooldown of shared class spells of the wrong element. Frost is getting CDR on Ice Floes, Frost Nova, Ice Nova, and Cone of Cold. Notably, Cone of Cold while talented into Coldest Snap drops to 32 seconds.
Looks to be the start of a good direction. I’m hoping we have some Frost talent love in the near future for reasons mentioned many times in this thread.
New bug: Controlled Instincts is proccing for Frost from Arcane’s Orb debuff.
That said, can we get Controlled Instincts stuck on Frozen Orb as well, both for thematics and so we have a duration that isn’t reverse haste scaled?
Another build and still nothing to address the problem with Frosts new talent Deaths Chill. This talent is very problematic in a number of ways.
First the talent works against hero talents. As to build the stacks up you will have to spam frost bolt. Which means you will actively be ignoring all other abilities and talents including the hero talents, No brain freezes, No Ice lances, nothing. This mind you is also not interesting gameplay as you will simply be spamming frost bolt for roughly 25 seconds before doing anything else to finish the damage boost.
Second the tier pieces also work against this as they are simply increases to your ice lance damage.
Third if this is the intended idea for the talent, its poorly introduced. Nothing tells the player that they should actively avoid using their rotation and if they arn’t nothing suggests that they should do their rotation either. This is just awful in a design sense because now you are forcing your player to look outside of the game to figure out how to do their rotation instead of things that should be understandable within the game itself.
Ultimately you have a talent that will either A never get used because it works against frosts entire kit, especially the hero talents. Or B its gonna be so marginal in the damage boost because you only get it from filler that it will feel worthless. This has been mentioned multiple times before but as each patch comes out and nothing is address it becomes worrisome that all the feedback is being ignored for frost. And we will see something like 2-3 months after the game is live a change that finally fixes something that was brought up back in alpha.
Here is feedback about Frost Mages and Frostfire hero spec in latest build after testing.
Frost changes feedback:
Frost tree main unaddressed issues:
Frostfire changes feedback:
Frostfire main unaddressed issues: