The “At” macro casts at your cursor, not the target. Which a targeted cast would, eliminating the need for the macro, and for you to aim the spell with your cursor. Two totally different things.
1 Like
I don’t think you understood the man, “is that on or at your target. Two totally different things. On your target means itll stay on the target even when moving around, At your target just means it will cast it where they currently are located at. Which if it is “At”, then there is a macro for flamestrike you can use, i dont know any fire mages that do not use the macro.”, hope that helps.
I think I’d be happy with a new macro conditional called @target for ground targeted effects so that spells with a ground target cast with my currently targeted enemy at the center. Would be a nice compliment to @cursor and @player.
1 Like
RIP Chrono Shift 
Here’s a tip Blizzard: When Arcane Mages say "we can’t take X utility talent because there are too many throughput talents that take priority, it doesn’t mean just remove X utility talent.
If you can’t make Chrono Shift baseline, and you can’t thin out throughput for Chrono Shift to be takeable, then please try to work it into the General Talent tree as an option for arcane!
Outside of THAT misstep, I applaud the removal of Siphon Storm though I find it questionable to roll it into Evocation. I also like that Mana Adept is now baseline and I feel like I can take most of the talents I want in Arcane.
12 Likes
RIP Chrono Shift 2024
I do think it should be made a PVP talent for Arcane. It has been a very key part of PVP Arcane’s kit for the last several expansions and having it cut since it can’t be worked into the PVE tree feels bad. Making it a new PVP talent would be great.
5 Likes
Frost Feedback - 7/2 Beta Build
It would be nice to hear a little from development on what the intent now is with Frost. It was stated in the beginning of alpha that the goal was to retain frost’s gameplay and keep the higher complexity variants more competitive (Glacial Spike and Ray of Frost). Glacial Spike and Ray have not seen a single addition, change, or buff since alpha has dropped and they are being left behind amid all of the buffs to the other skills. Neither is part of Spellslinger or Frostfire in any meaningful talent or gameplay either. This direction goes against the stated intent earlier.
Please revisit the thought process if possible at this point, I will reiterate a few of my previous thoughts that still apply post this 7/2 build.
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 and incentivize degenerate gameplay (such as casting 10 frostbolts before doing anything else), making it a non-competitive choice in most forms of high end content.
Fractured Frost
None of the hero specs encourage spamming our filler spell, and very few frost mages want to be spamming our filler spell. This either has to be changed or taken off of Icy Veins. You could utilize a charge based system (say you get one every 5s), and IV could simply provide the maximum amount on cast similar to cryopathy. I would also recommend you put ice lance or flurry on this as well, casting only frostbolt does not work with the flow of frost’s very successful DF gameplay at all.
Winter’s Chill
Please extend the duration of this debuff by 2-3 seconds. It will immensely help the QoL of certain interactions such as unplanned movement during a boss fight, Glacial Spike into Ray combinations, and Cone of Cold (Coldest Snap) combos at lower levels of haste. There are no downsides or unintended gameplays that arise from a slightly increased duration on enemies…but plenty of upsides
6 Likes
Please don’t remove Chrono Shift - we wanted it baseline or the talent points to be able to actually pick it up, not for it to be removed. Chrono Shift and Displacement were two of the spells that made me main Mage to begin with, Displacement was gutted and made a shadow of its former self and Chrono Shift has been unpickable for years now. Please reconsider baselining this core Arcane Mage fantasy and quality of life - not many ranged DPS have to be inside of mob packs melee range to deal complete AOE damage.
21 Likes
They removed Chrono Shift ?! I just can’t understand. It was the huge reason for mages mobility and fun of play. I would literally trade any other talent for it. Thought it was bad enough for me to take useless talents just to get it on previous iteration talent tree a couple of days ago. Now its just gone. Arcane mage gameplay fun down 50%. WHY?!
15 Likes
Does anyone actually use Mass Polymorph? Just replace that with properly themed (like barriers) mage slows in the General tree.
6 Likes
This really hurts to say but I’m of the opinion that frost needs a complete spec tree redesign sometime in TWW. I could reiterate what everyone has been saying for the past week and a half, but it’s all known by anyone paying attention. I’m seriously concerned for frost mage in TWW
1 Like
I also don’t understand why arcane familiar HAS to be taken to reach the talents on the left side. Does anyone actually like to have that arcane birdie float beside you all the time?
Angry Kuni prelim Frost thoughts for 2/7/24. Apologies for salt:
Can you guys like, fix (or implement) talents that were (supposedly) implemented months ago? Like, seriously, Death’s Chill is still an empty whitelist that results in it doing nothing, also you never changed the DoT damage to 2%. Controlled Instincts is still cross-mage proccing. Fractured Frost got a tooltip dummy update so it says 15%! Yay! Can you actually make it do +15% damage instead of +15 flat damage? Hey, what about Elemental Affinity still granting same element CDR dropping Cone of Cold’s AoE burst down nearly 15 seconds? Frostfire Bolt not being on Deep Shatter? Frostfire Bolt not proccing our stupid 5% maintenance buff Bone Chilling? How about Frostfire Bolt not being built like Frost spells so it doesn’t slot into the Shatter combo like Frostbolt?
Like man, I’m telling you right now, Frostfire is super ahead and that’s with multiple talents that just don’t work. Once DC and FF are doing anything at all, it’s going to blast. Spellslinger is in a position that DC doesn’t even make practical sense for it. You could probably revert Splinters back to 30% spell power as they were originally before they got nerfed for multi-mage generation sins and the spec would still be behind.
And that’s not even getting to the whole “Frostbolt spam as a behaviour is not exactly healthy for the spec inside cooldowns” thing we’ve collectively been harping on about since the introduction of DC.
Thank you for fixing Splinterstorm. It let me get a handle on how the spec behaves properly. Between that and the lowered Spellfrost Teachings proc rate, it feels like it’s in a significantly healthier spot in terms of resource generation. Would be really cool if you gave us a proc rate though, even if you stuff it in the spell data. Really don’t want to AHK at the dummy overnight to get us a percentage to throw in SimC.
I am extremely concerned with preserving Ray of Frost and Glacial Spike as viable talents. The continual buffing of the core trio is just pushing these closer to extinction after all the work to get them even remotely worth using in 10.1.5. I am fairly sure GS is already dead at this point, and the fact that Ray is surviving is just testament to how strong it is. I understand you likely need to get the base rotation to a place you want, tuning wise, before you worry about GS, but some communication on this topic and the “Frostbolt spam” topic would be greatly appreciated.
Still hate that Excess buffs light your buttons up. I can’t use them, I don’t have the proc to cast the spell. Stop being lit up. You can’t react to them, they’re just a fact of life. Actively unhelpful information for the player.
Controlled Instincts is still a bad design. At least let it apply to the Blizzard debuff rather than the active ticking ground effect. It would still be inversely Haste scaled but at least it would have a 3 second tail end for Splinters in-flight or just being late to the party, as they do tend to have a slow deployment.
Splintering Orbs is still firing at random nearby targets instead of targets damaged by the orb. Feels bad. Potentially is bad if it can fire at things you’re not in combat with, which seems to be the case on dummies. Shifting Shards likewise should only fire at things you’re in combat with.
Frostfire Empowerment being able to crit itself is weird at best and disgustingly powerful at worst.
7 Likes
Pyromaniac can eat Burden of Power procs. Please fix Burden of Power so that it can only be consumed by the first spell and not the second. Furthermore, Burden of Power is currently empowering the 6th hot streak instead of the following cast. Probably fine if the tooltip is updated to reflect this, but it could also be fun to allow a hard cast Flamestrike or Pyro to interact with it.
It is good that you listened to at least some Arcane related feedback, but almost total neglect of Frost Mages, their hero specs and remaining issues is very concerning and discouraging. This post will both provide links to the post that contains remaining Frost Mages related issues and even directly highlight some of them as a response to your quoted areas of focus and working from feedback parts of initial developer post.
Here is feedback about both hero and non-hero talents for Frost Mages that still need adjustments, bug fixes or improvements.
Frost Mage:
- New choice node between Ice Nova and Ring of Frost is harmful for all Mage specs, but Frost Mages most - they use Ice Nova as a rotational spell to AoE shatter powerful spells and are now pretty much forced to pick between throughput and utility or might be simply locked out of Ring of Frost (their main utility spell) most of the time. That is not good and should be addressed.
Suggestion: Split their choice node and either make Ring of Frost replace one of rarely if ever used Frost Nova talents below their node or if you want to keep number of available crowd control options similar to current - make Ring of Frost a choice node with Mass Polymorph instead. Such choice would make much more sense, since they have more similar niches with different pros and cons. - New Fractured Frost talents are currently causing a lot of backlash from Frost Mages. They promote degenerate playstyle of “spamming Frostbolt / Frostfire Bolt till you get Death Chill stacked”, promote ignoring pretty much all spec mechanics and procs (Fingers of Frost / Brain Freeze / Flurry etc) while doing that and also countersynergize with Icy Veins extension talent Thermal Void that doesn’t include Frostbolt / Frostfire Bolt at all.
Suggestion: Redesign all 3 talents related to Fractured Frost (Fractured Frost, Cold Front and Death’s Chill). Sample of such redesign that is much more synergizing with other Frost tools was provided in this post. Even if you decide to keep their base the same, they would need adjustments - Flurry being added to Fractured Frost and stacking Death’s Chill (to both provide means to shatter cleaved Frostbolts against crowd control immune enemies that cannot be AoE frozen and to give value to Flurry charges / Brain Freeze procs during Fractured Frost phase), some usage for Fingers of Frost procs there (for example while Fractured Frost is active Frostbolt / Frostfire Bolt could consume them to increase its damage by X%) and reducing number of stacks from Death’s Chill to 5 (to reduce ramp-up and align them with Slick Ice stacks). Fractured Frost phase could also use a way to contribute to Thermal Void’s Icy Veins extension. - Splintering Ray was not competitive whole Dragonflight expansion and would continue to be not competitive in The War Within. It needs a buff or redesign.
- Addition of Permafrost Lances to Frost tree was nice, but it also caused several issues - it reduced number of points available for choices for AoE builds by 1 (so even less build diversity when that was already an issue) and it created unbalanced paths to Icy Veins where single-target damage focused builds need to spend 1 more talent point than AoE builds.
Suggestion: Reduce Wintertide to 1 point investment with full current effect. That would make it better match value it provides and would solve both mentioned above issues - there will be 1 additional talent point to spend for some additional choices and better build diversity and paths to Icy Veins would be balanced in talent point investment. - There are other remaining issues with Frost Mages like AoE issues, freezable vs unfreezable enemies output difference and balancing issues it can cause, PVP issues and so on. More detailed info about them is in this post.
Frostfire (Frost) Mage:
- Bugs that were mentioned in the post linked above remain - Elemental Affinity reduces cooldowns of both Fire and Frost general spells, Frostfire Empowerment has differences between tooltips (buff tooltip and hero tree tooltip) and actual effect and so on. Please look at them and fix them.
- Frostfire Bolt did not inherit buff to Frostbolt’s damage in latest beta build that significally reduces its value as an upgrade talent and did not inherit Frostbolt’s PVP modifier making it strictly worse in PVP than Frostbolt (via both dealing less damage there and getting locked on 2 schools when interrupted instead of 1). That should be fixed.
- Spec still has confusing procs that can be hard to track and react to, especially for new players. Excess Fire can easily be confused with Fingers of Frost since both highlight Ice Lance. Excess Frost can be confused with Brain Freeze proc since both highlight Flurry.
Suggestion: Remove ability highlights from both Excess Fire and Excess Frost and instead add UI elements that would represent them and Frostfire Empowerment. For Excess Fire that could be a large fiery arc to the left from player akin to Hot Streak / Hyperthermia (but distinguishable from them for Fire), for Excess Frost that could be a large icy arc to the right from player akin to Fingers of Frost (but distinguishable from them for Frost) and Frostfire Empowerment could be a large horizontal arc above your character consisting of ice and fire akin to Brain Freeze UI element for Frostfire Bolt that is currently used in Cataclysm Classic. Such indicators would both be much more noticeable and distinguishable - players would exactly know when and what proc they got and would be able to utilize them better. If for some reason you would not want to implement these UI elements, these procs should still be more noticeable and added to UI frame near your character - Excess Frost / Fire could override Frost and Fire Mastery stacks there when procced and Frostfire Empowerment could be added to it as well. - Excess Fire Living Bomb is undertuned for Frost (who lacks upgrade talents for it like Fire has) and could use a boost to value, if needed for Frost based Frostfire spec only.
- Fire and Frost choice option is not competitive enough with Elemental Affinity and could use a boost. For example it could trigger from casted Icy Veins / Combustion instead and affect only spells with cooldown equal to or lower than 1 minute. More details were provided in this post.
Frost Spellslinger:
- Frost Splinters still deal very undertuned damage, especially compared to Arcane Splinters that have closer generation rate to them after the buffs. The reason for their nerfs might have been already addressed (bugged interaction with Winter’s Chill from other Frost Mages), so now they could use a boost.
Suggestion: Buff their damage to be more in line with Arcane Splinters and tune damage from there if needed. - Controlled Instincts for Frost both has much more unreliable condition to trigger (tied to a maintenance spell which can expire for example right before you launch your Splinterstorm) and countersynergy with Haste, since Haste reduces Blizzard’s duration and increases probability of such situation. It could use improvements for Frost.
Suggestion: Change it to trigger for X seconds after using Blizzard. That would both bring it more in line with Arcane version and remove countersynergy with Haste. - Splinters from Splintering Orbs hit random enemies nearby including enemies that are not even hit by Frozen Orb. That can cause issues both in PVE (aggroing unintended mobs) and in PVP (breaking breakable crowd control effects nearby) and should be addressed.
Suggestion: Make Frozen Orb’s Splinters hit exclusively first enemy damaged by Frozen Orb. That would bring it more in line with Arcane version and improve their reliability and value against priority target. - Look Again is not competitive enough with Slippery Slinging (both because Displacement is hard to reach and is often skipped in PVE and because Look Again’s value is very niche). There could be improvements for that.
Suggestion: Move Displacement to a more accessible position in general tree (for example it could swap positions with Accumulative Shielding) and make Look Again provide additional bonus - movement speed increase after using Displacement or making it off-GCD or something else. That should make it more competitive. - Phantasmal Image does not affect tooltip of Mirror Images correctly - it states right damage reduction (25%), but wrong number (3 instead of 4).
- Unerring Proficiency is not competitve enough with Volatile Magic (as it requires using of rotational / utility ability to trigger) and could use buffs and improvements to become more competitive.
Suggestion: Buff its stacks value and make it both highlight button and reset cooldown of Ice Nova when reaching 30 stacks. That would allow to use it immediately and when needed instead of potentially losing some generated stacks while Ice Nova is on cooldown and without harming other usages of Ice Nova. - Akin to Splintering Orbs, Splinters from Shifting Shards are too chaotic - they can aggro unintended enemies in PVE, break breakable crowd control effects in PVP and ignore enemies stacked in Blizzard making them lose bonus from Controlled Instincts. Their target priority could be improved.
Suggestion: Make Splinters from Shifting Shards prioritize current target if any, if there is none - random enemies hit by Shifting Power and if there are none - only then random enemies within 40 yards. They should also not be launched at enemies affected by breakable crowd control effects in all these cases.
2 Likes
With the window for further spec changes slowly closing, I figured I’d take a step back and look at where Frost is in Dragonflight and where it’s heading in The War Within.
In Dragonflight, Frost has been a lot of fun after the rework in 10.1.5. The spec still has issues, but the gameplay has been excellent and a breath of fresh air compared to the various degenerate playstyles that existed before. Previous iterations of Frost struggled with the identity of Frostbolt and I think the rework pretty conclusively demonstrated that Frostbolt doesn’t need to be anything other than a filler for the spec to work and be fun. What I think the spec needed going into The War Within:
- Reducing the amount of must-pick talents by making them baseline (e.g. Shatter, Fingers of Frost, Ice Caller) or merging them (e.g. Flurry + Brain Freeze + Perpetual Winter)
- Removing dead talents (e.g. Snowstorm, Fractured Frost, Cold Front, Splintering Ray)
- Adding new talents and relaxing the pathing to increase build variety (especially in the second tier)
- Adding a new capstone that’s reasonably competitive with Glacial Spike
The changes coming in The War Within honestly feel like a huge regression, undoing a lot of the good that came with the 10.1.5 rework. There are some minor upsides (such as the removal of Snowstorm), but as a whole the spec just feels worse.
- Talent tree is still as rigid as before; build variety almost nonexistent
- Frost now has to give up utility (Ring of Frost) to pick a core AoE talent (Ice Nova); especially bad because the other specs can pick Ring without any real downside
- Ice Caller, a core AoE talent, is harder to pick
- Active talents have been neglected as more and more power is put into Frostbolt, Ice Lance and Flurry
- New talents actively promote degenerate Frostbolt spam that no one wanted
The last point is the most egregious. People played the Deathborne Frostbolt build because it did a lot of damage, not because it was fun. Besides, an alternative to Glacial Spike should have focused on Ice Lance and Flurry, not Frostbolt.
Bugs
- Fractured Frost increases Frostbolt damage by 15, rather than 15%
- Death’s Chill buff affects no spells; the direct and periodic components have different values
- Refreshing Icy Veins breaks Fractured Frost and Death’s Chill
- Frostfire Bolt doesn’t trigger Bone Chilling
- Frostfire Bolt doesn’t work with Deep Shatter
- Frostfire Bolt snapshots its damage on cast finish rather than hit (like Frostbolt does)
- Frostfire Bolt DoT cannot crit
- Elemental Affinity affects both Frost and Fire cooldowns (rather than just Fire)
- Thermal Conditioning can easily reduce Frostfire Bolt’s cast time below its GCD
- Frostfire Empowerment explosion can crit
8 Likes
Not only is it a move to remove some fun for arcane, but how is it going to do in PVP where the talent is a big reason arcane is good? Having only 1 real school of casting, with most spells being either cast or channeled is going to hurt extra with the lower mobility. Plus melee getting more mobility. Hopefully it doesn’t gut the class in PvP.
1 Like
This. But then it also limits what arcane can take for PvP too. Maybe I am missing something, but this looks to be a big big blow to arcane pvp.
1 Like
Frost feedback
Another build with no meaningful changes to Frost based despite extensive feedback being consistently provided by lots of players. We’re getting to a point where we cannot provide any additional feedback because none of the feedback we’re providing is being actioned. The only positive change for Frost made has been removing Snowstorm and adding in Permafrost Lances.
A quick summary of what changes Frost players are still asking for and we hope some of this happens soon:
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There are still extensive bugs with many Frost spec talents and Hero talents.
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Universal agreement by Frost players that we do not want the Frostbolt-spam playstyle of Death’s Chill, Fractured Frost, Slick Ice, and Cold Front, and requests to heavily revise or remove these talents entirely. We do not want Deathborne to return as a playstyle.
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An option to cast Blizzard on our target without needing the reticule.
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Frost’s spec tree is too restrictive and has very few options for flexibility, along with being the spec with the lowest number of unique talents in the game. Talents like Brain Freeze, Shatter, and Fingers of Frost should be baseline, to give space to create more interesting unique talents and variety.
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Button glow on Excess Fire and Excess Frost needs to be removed.
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Ice Barrier and Cone of Cold still using 20-year-old visual graphics from 2004.
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Winter’s Chill needing an extra few seconds’ duration.
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An option for our spells to not freeze our targets.
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Splinters still firing at random targets that we’re not even in combat with.
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Ice Nova and Ring of Frost should be split in the general tree, or make Ice Nova baseline to Frost.
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Dead, too niche, or problematic talents need reviewal: Look Again, Slippery Slinging, Meltdown, Splintering Ray, Subzero, Frostbite, Deep Shatter, Fractured Frost, Cold Front, Death’s Chill.
8 Likes
It doesn’t. It’s only required if you want Big Brained and Energized Familiar. Otherwise, you can use the branch off of Arcane Surge to Presence of Mind, or the branch off of Touch of the Magi to Evocation to get down the left side.
1 Like
Arcane and Fire were literally the reason for me to preorder TWW for $90. I kinda wish I didnt play Arcane on beta when it was so fun and fast. Feels bad losing it.
Scratch Arcane off of the fun list. Now they just have to make fire less mobile and all the hype is gone lol
1 Like