Fix it all I say 
Frostfire Frost and Excess Frost & Excess Fire
Going back to the problem mentioned before that Excess Frost can completely waste the cooldown reduction on Comet Storm due to both relying on a charge system and the fact that we always want to Flurry before sending the comets in. I would like to ask for that cooldown reduction to possibly be banked if we cast Comet Storm immediately after Flurry when it consumes Excess Frost, effectively making this Comet Storm cast 25s cooldown so as not to waste the proc.
For Excess Fire, I would like to ask for the buff to simply treat Ice Lance as if the target were frozen since casting it without a Fingers of Frost proc or on a target without Winter’s Chill is a loss, even if we need the Brain Freeze immediately after.
Fire doesn’t have any of these problems, so I think it’s only fair that they are addressed for Frost.
From PTR Notes:
- Frost
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Death’s Chill now stacks up to 12 times.
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Time Anomaly now grants a temporary Water Elemental when it procs Icy Veins.
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Refreshing Icy Veins no longer breaks Fractured Frost, Slick Ice, Death’s Chill, or Thermal Void for the duration of the refreshed Icy Veins.
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Glacial Spike damage increased by 10%.
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Cryopathy and Splintering Ray are no longer a choice node.
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The location of nodes in Gate 3 have been adjusted.
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W changes for icy veins bug, Time Anomaly buff, GS Buff.
I’m personally a fan of Death’s Chill change, means with Fractured Frost you now get stacks for every cleave. Before was 3,6,9,10 but now 3,6,9,12 so no efficiency loss
delete cold front and death’s chill
8 Likes
Still hope it’s not completely over for Chrono Shift to return, I think this was a majorly unneeded change and will hurt/remove a lot of the class identity/fun it brought to the spec.
4 Likes
Quick thought on Arcane’s recent nerfs (which are deserved). I’m basing this on the following set of changes seen below:
Arcane Missiles (and the clipping problem in Dragonflight)
- I think one of the reasons you buffed this spell so much last beta cycle was because you wanted us to not clip, which I agree with. The problem with that philosophy is that if we end up running a build without Arcane Harmony, High Voltage and Arcane Debilitation in the future, we may end up going right back to clipping our Arcane Missiles. I personally hate clipping so much; it feels so contrary to what you’re supposed to do, similar to WW Monks in Shadowlands who had to clip their Fist of Fury for optimal damage output.
- The easiest way to prevent this issue in the future is to make the channel time of Arcane Missiles the same as the GCD (1.5 seconds instead of 2) and nerfing Arcane Missiles damage by 25% (to compensate for 25% channel time reduction and resultant DPS increase). That way, the channel would always be completed and never clipped because you would channel for the entirety of your GCD. This would also reduce our mobility somewhat given we are only Clearcasting for 1.5 seconds instead 2 seconds w/ the Slipstream talent.
Arcane Blast (and it’s cast time)
- Although sims are currently in the works and should only be looked at preliminarily, we may run into the possibility where casting Arcane Blast is not optimal in a number of scenarios, including at 0 and 4 Arcane Charges. While nerfing the damage of Barrage (which may end up replacing Blast in those scenarios) is warranted, it doesn’t address the core issue of this problem.
- The core issue is that Arcane Blast at 0 Arcane Charges, besides the fact that it does no damage, it also has a super long cast time of 2.25 seconds. Even if the damage it did was the same as Arcane Barrage at 0 Arcane Charges (which it isn’t, Barrage does more), you would still run into the issue of wanting to cast Arcane Barrage due to 50% more casts (making up for ~50% higher CC proc chance on Arcane Blast) and the fact that Arcane Barrage gives you full mobility.
- The solution I’m seeing here is to make Arcane Blast cast time 1.5 seconds and not have Arcane Charges affect it’s cast time. This would likely not even need much tuning, because the damage buff of Arcane Charges at 4 Arcane Charges would only be 2% (1.53 /1.5). The damage increase of a 0 charge Arcane Blast, however, would be very significant, increasing by 50% (2.25 / 1.5). Note that even with that 50% DPS buff from the lower cast time at 0 Arcane Charges, Arcane Blast only does 52.8% Spell Power per second (79.2% SP / 1.5 sec), while a spell like Fireball does 57.3% Spell Power per second (129% SP / 2.25 sec), meaning Fireball, as weak as it is, still does more DPS than a 0 charge Arcane Blast even after a 50% DPS increase from cast time reduction.
Arcane Barrage (and the Sunfury Problem)
- Spellslinger Arcane is certainly very strong (and overpowered, definitely needed the nerf), and Barrage is certainly a potent contributor. I will say that I’m a little disappointed you decided to nerf Arcane Barrage instead of nerfing the Arcane Splinters, because now you’re running against the wall of making Sunfury pretty poor with all these nerfs (in my testing, SF was roughly 30% behind in overall on single target (sims pending)).
- From all the single target sims that I have seen, as well as raid test and log data, Arcane Splinters currently accounts for ~23-28% of overall damage done (counting Arcane Splinter + Embedded Arcane Splinter + Splinterstorm). By comparison, Arcane Barrage is 15-20% (depending how long the execute phase was; likely higher for Rashanan for example). Nerfing Barrage hurts Sunfury AND Spellslinger (which Sunfury does not need nerfs), while nerfing Splinters hurts only Spellslinger. I have included both logs and preliminary sims that demonstrate this point below, please look at them.
- Logs (7/3/24 - ST by Preheat):
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/T1mr6gXtcvhzP3VJ#fight=4&type=damage-done&source=13 - Preliminary Sims (ST):
https://mimiron.raidbots.com/simbot/report/xdHQWcDpWSUL8hYLBDVRyj - Note: I’ll say it one more time: both the log and sim above show a preliminary estimate of what we suppose the rotation will be for Arcane. Nothing is set in stone here. What I am using these for is to demonstrate that you should nerf these Splinters BEFORE nerfing Arcane Barrage, Missiles or Blast because these Splinters account for almost 30% of your damage in both the log and sims, and nerfing them does not nerf Sunfury.
- Logs (7/3/24 - ST by Preheat):
- This means that when you do eventually make your tier set for Sunfury during Season 2 or 3, you will risk running into the very real problem of people completely ignoring the tier set and still going Spellslinger just because of how far behind Sunfury is relative to Spellslinger, which would be an abject failure.
1 Like
Frost
Our 4 set is still incredibly weak, particularly in ST where for both GS and non-GS its only about 0.8% of our damage.
Death’s Chill needs to be accessible from Fractured Frost and Slick Ice to properly flex between ST and AOE builds. Its stack building is in a good place in AOE, but lacking in ST (having flurry add one stack could be a good compromise).
Fractured Frost really needs to be available in a limited manner out of Icy Veins.
Cold Front is still horrible in design and power in and out of Icy Veins.
Please give us our 2 set from DF S3/4, it was incredibly fun and would synergize greatly with some of the newly added hero talents, where they are otherwise fire and forget. Baselining hailstones to make space for it behind GS would work wonders. And remove one of the always required points in our third gate.
Splintering Ray could do with hitting the main target as well, and potentially a higher split of damage in AOE. With no ST bonus its a hard sell in cleave, and with target capped AOE and the high opportunity cost to using ray in AOE its not looking good.
6 Likes
I SEE THE VISION HERE.
Death’s Chill is still NYI guys, come on. We’re already having issues stacking it to 10, 12 is a tall ask outside of AoE. Spell ID 454371 Effect 1 is a blank whitelist, and Effect 2 is also blank. Gogo, I believe.
Splintering Ray with Cryopathy is an interesting proposition. Toying with build options I don’t foresee a path to actually use it at current tuning, however. You’re asking us to give up 24% damage on our burst set for… questionable damage tuning on Splintering Ray. I think it can work but I’m almost certain it needs to come up a fair bit. I want to use it, I love the idea, but tuning is bad. Keep in mind it’s competing against Death’s Chill here, and DC is both single target and AoE. This thing doesn’t need or want to be a single target pick, but it needs to be worth that loss in a key.
TA IV popping the elemental increases the value of TA, which is in my mind a good thing. Water Jet on the proc also means that Spellslinger doesn’t just get boned half the time with no benefit from the proc unlike Frostfire. VERY good change, thank you.
Still want to see Controlled Instincts on Frost linger beyond the Blizzard ticking being active. My primary issue is that there’s just holes in its uptime, where Arcane’s getting almost all the value out of it on AoE because it’s auto-applied by Arcane Orb which is then proccing the majority of your Splinters. Frost straight up loses entire chunks of it on our Coldest Snap burst Splinters, which is where most of our AoE value is coming from.
ETA: Weekly request to baseline Hailstones, move GS up to that position, and put the DF 2p explosion component below GS as a capstone.
10 Likes
Okay, so Arcane lost chrono shift which made mages slow and BORING. Now we have signifiantly lower chance to clearcast which means there will be a bunch more BORING ARCANE BLAST CASTNG. Why? The whole fun was in running at high speed, casting barage and using clearcasting procs when they pop. IT WAS FUN. Just nerf barrage and missles by 50% but keep the fun of the spec. Id way prefer fun and mediocre dmg spec than high dmg boring gameplay. Ehh
8 Likes
Here is feedback about this week PTR changes (and hopefully there will be additional beta changes, especially for Frost Spellslinger / Frostfire / Sunfury).
Feedback about Frost changes:
- Splitting of Cryopathy and Splintering Ray is an interesting decision. However, Splintering Ray is still undertuned and while you provided 1 additional talent option in third gate you did not provide additional points to spend upon it, so very likely it will remain neglected. At the same time, Glacial Spike was buffed and that is welcomed, but many people would miss current tier set 2 item bonus for it that made it more generally useful. Both issues could be addressed simultaneously.
Suggestion: Buff Splintering Ray for competitiveness, make Hailstones baseline (as a part of Frost’s Mastery), move Glacial Spike to current position of Hailstones and reintroduce current tier set 2 item bonus as an upgrade talent for it (“Glacial Spike does X% increased damage and explodes when hitting a frozen target, dealing Y% of its damage to enemies nearby”). That would address multiple issues - you would provide an additional talent point that people would be able to spend on either Splintering Ray or Glacial Spike upgrade (or both with sacrificing something else), Splintering Ray if buffed would be more competitive and have a potential talent point to be spent upon and current tier set bonus for Glacial Spike would be preserved for people that like it. - Fractured Frost is still controversial and negatively perceived by many Frost Mages. Please still consider redesigning it and related talents (like Death’s Chill and Cold Front) to provide 3 target cleave phase access that would still include actively using non-Frostbolt spells (sample of such design was provided in this post).
- Change of Death’s Chill to 12 stacks is understandable (now 4 casts of triple Frostbolt stack it entirely without wasting stacks), but its bonus should be carefully tuned - it should be a dps increase over other third gate talents only for Fractured Frost builds in 3+ target cleave situations (where it can be stacked by 4 Frostbolt casts) and not for single-target situations, so that Frost Mages would not need to cast 12 Frostbolts in a row (ignoring procs, Ice Lances and Thermal Void extension) just to provide competitive output. Tune its bonus and stack number with that in mind.
- Fractured Frost builds if kept with current design would still have unaddressed issues where they have little to no value for Flurry / Brain Freeze (as it hits only 1 target and does not stack Death’s Chill) and Ice Lance / Fingers of Frost (hits only 1-2 targets and doesn’t stack Death’s Chill). That would turn their rotation into literal 1 button spam, reduce / remove synergies with rest of Frost tree and on top of that keep an issue that these builds would not have means to shatter cleaved Frostbolts against crowd control immune enemies (who cannot be AoE frozen). All of these issues could be addressed simultaneously.
Suggestions:
- Make Flurry being affected by Fractured Frost and contribute to Death’s Chill. That would make it and Brain Freeze procs both provide value during Fractured Frost phase and provide access to shattering cleaved Frostbolts against crowd control immune enemies like mentioned above.
- Make Fractured Frost affected Frostbolts also able to consume Fingers of Frost (only while Icy Veins are active to keep Ice Lance relevant enough outside of this phase) to increase their damage by X%. That would provide some value for Fingers of Frost procs during Fractured Frost phase.
- Ice Nova vs Ring of Frost choice node is harmful for all Mage specs, but Frost Mages especially and accordingly unpopular. Frost Mages use Ice Nova as a rotational spell for AoE shatters of their powerful spells like Glacial Spike and Comet Storm and as a result would just either be close to permanently locked out of Ring of Frost (their main utility spell) or need to sacrifice throughput to pick RoF (which they likely would not do). Please revert this choice node and if needed make Ring of Frost a choice node with other crowd control / utility spell instead.
Suggestion: Split their choice node and make Ring of Frost either replace one of rarely if ever used Frost Nova talents below their node or a choice node with Mass Polymorph instead. They have much more similar niche with different pros and cons, so such choice node would make much more sense and would also be in line with your recent politics about reducing access to or duration of long duration AoE crowd control spells for most classes. - Addition of Permafrost Lances to Frost tree was good, but it created several new issues - it reduced number of points available for AoE builds (as now you need to spend 1 additional talent point to access Ice Caller) and it makes path to Icy Veins more expensive for single-target builds than for AoE builds. Both issues could be addressed simultaneously.
Suggestion: Reduce Wintertide to 1 point investment with full current effect. That would both make Wintertide have cost that is more fitting its value (after it was nerfed) and address both issues mentioned above.
Feedback about Arcane changes:
- High Voltage change is understandable, but tooltip was not updated on PTR (it still states 20% base chance and 5% increase per failed proc) and it is still unreliable and can provide 0 Arcane Charges despite stacking proc chance. It could be made more reliable and useful in general.
Suggestion: Make High Voltage just provide 2 Arcane Charges (close to current average value) over duration of Arcane Missiles. That would make it more reliable and also could indirectly help with risk of getting to a situation where cancelling Arcane Missiles early would become a dps increase again, since changed effect of High Voltage could require full channel to provide the second Arcane Charge and prevent that. - Chrono Shift removal is very negatively perceived by Arcane community (people asked to make it more accessible, not to remove it) and also harmed Arcane Mages even in PVE, where Chrono Shift was used for better mobility in AoE situations to stay in range for Arcane Explosions. As such, this change is not good and should be reverted and there is other solution for Chrono Shift competing with throughput nodes issue.
Suggestion: Make Arcing Cleave baseline (as it is core component of Arcane’s AoE rotation akin to Flamestrike / Fuel the Fire for Fire Mages and Blizzard for Frost Mages and all of them are already baseline) and return Chrono Shift to current position of Arcing Cleave. That would make Chrono Shift more accessible, but keep it optional for people who don’t want it (they can take Consortium’s Bauble instead to progress down the tree). It would also reduce its rate of competing with throughput talents, since Arcane Mages need 8 points invested and a talent picked in 3rd row to get access to second gate talents anyway and Chrono Shift would just be one of the options for that and sacrificing 3% damage to Arcane Blast to pick it would be manageable, especially in AoE situations. - Aether Attunement tooltip on PTR was not updated and still states 150% / 100% increase.
5 Likes
I would argue that this is irrelevant. The stack count increments on damage dealt, and you are likely to have a spell in flight as you push IV, granting you 1(in flight as IV is pressed)-4-7-10-12.
10 is already stretching the limits of what’s achievable through normal gameplay in single target outside of Time Warp, 12 feels bad and maths out poorly once you consider actual gameplay.
3 Likes
I agree with that, that is why I suggested to still redesign Fractured Frost and related nodes to include non-Frostbolt spells or at least make Death’s Chill a dps increase only in 3+ target cleave situations and not in 1-2 target situations.
3 Likes
Personally, with the currently lopsided fire centric visual design of Sunfury, I hope it never comes close to displacing spellslinger for arcane.
There is no arcane identity whatsoever in Sunfury.
The phoenix has no magenta tint, it casts no arcane spells, and the orbs are hideous and a worse stationary version of our Felo’melorn fire artifact orbiting orbs that used to have an arcane tint effect option.
Sunfury feels like it was designed for fire and arcane is an afterthought in visuals.
The phoenix also looks bad flapping its wings while grounded to cast instead of casting attacks while flying.
11 Likes
THANK YOU.
3 Likes
Reabsorption now heals for 3% maximum health (was 5%).
???
3 Likes
All non-healer self-heals got nerfed.
Ice Block 80->50% was the worst.
2 Likes
Just a reminder that chrono shift is still not back. We keep waiting.
7 Likes
Arcane Feedback
These recent nerfs hit Arcane very hard. Prior to the most recent patch, I was doing 1.1 mil DPS on dummies with Spellslinger over 10 minutes; just did a 12 minute try where I landed on 924k DPS (iLvl 607). This is roughly a ~15-20% nerf (sims show similar numbers as well)
And my concerns about Sunfury were completely correct.
Before I was doing 800k on dummies, now my damage is down to 643k (using a different rotation from Spellslinger where you Blast significantly more to increase Spellfire Orb uptime, spend Burden on Blast and follow up Barrage to consume Burden of Power, unclear if this is most optimal due to lack of sims, but it was in my testing)
It now appears that Spellslinger is roughly 40% ahead of Sunfury in my testing, probably as a result of Splinter damage (accounts for a massive 25-30% of my overall, Arcane Echo procs from Splinters, Orb procs from SFT granting more Arcane Charges which pump up Arcane Barrage, etc.
Sunfury Arcane Mage (and your Failure as Designers)
I had initially ranked your Sunfury changes back in the following post:
I would now decrease this grading down to a C (at best). This is the result of 2 things:
- Failure #1: Negligence at the problems Sunfury faces with Spellfire Sphere generation, theme and playstyle modification, as well as buffs that are frustrating to juggle due to failure on your part to create interactive gameplay within these buffs. Examples include:
- Burden of Power and Glorious Incandescence both last 12 seconds, and if you try to keep your Glorious Incandescence until you get your next Burden of Power proc to Barrage and get the meteorites and 4 charges from Glorious Incandescence, the 4 charges come but the meteorites do not.
- In addition, the short buff duration makes this difficult to pull off in the first place (since you need 6 Arcane Blasts casted in a 12 second window; very low time to weave Arcane Missiles in between)
- Sunfury Execution provides an even bigger buff to our Barrage’s execute, incentivizing spamming of Barrages in Execute (something that Spellslinger fits much better thematically) rather than focusing on Arcane Harmony (a few giga barrages that fit much better with Sunfury)
- Invocation: Arcane Phoenix now does completely nothing. This stupid chicken accounts for less damage in my overall on single target than the ****ing meteorites from Glorious Incandescence. Not entirely sure how you managed to pull this one off.
- Arcane Soul lasts no time whatsoever, and while the rotation change is cool, it’s not like you blast massive damage during this phase. You could easily double this duration it would be fine.
- Burden of Power and Glorious Incandescence both last 12 seconds, and if you try to keep your Glorious Incandescence until you get your next Burden of Power proc to Barrage and get the meteorites and 4 charges from Glorious Incandescence, the 4 charges come but the meteorites do not.
- Failure #2 As a result of you nerfing Arcane’s baseline damage instead of Spellslinger specifically, you have created a larger gap between Spellslinger and Sunfury. This is now so noticeable that even non-Mage YouTubers have started to take notice of this, see the following video from Izen
- What feels doubly bad here is that I even told you how this rotation worked and how to nerf this Spellslinger Arcane damage without killing Sunfury (see link here), and you neglected point #1 completely (nerfing Splinter damage; which again accounts for ~30% of our damage) and instead decided to nuke our overall damage. I’m honestly not sure why I wasted my time explaining to you the new Arcane rotation and how to correctly nerf it if you were just going to make this mistake anyways and gut Sunfury. I can’t even defend your decision to not nerf Splinters because maybe you were worried about Arcane Orb usage and wanted it to stay used in single target because you nerfed Orb’s Splinter generation by 50%. If anything, I’ve learned that it’s now best to not tell you these finds and keep them to myself since you’ll just mess up anyways.
- Izen talking about how repeated Spellslinger nerfs make Sunfury unviable: https://youtu.be/ltow5KZ1jP8?si=vXxS4LlUlTzRdny1&t=170
Suggested Change to Buff Sunfury
- Suggestion 1:
1 Like
Here is a recap of this week beta changes for Mages.
Frost Mage:
++ Glacial Spike damage was increased.
++ Time Anomaly procced Icy Veins now summons a water elemental.
++ Controlled Instincts for Frost has 4 seconds grace period, so now if Blizzard expires before you launch your Splinterstorm it still benefits from Controlled Instincts.
± Talents in third gate were reshuffled, can be pro and con depending on what build you play.
± Splintering Ray is now a separate talent. Still needs a boost though to become competitive enough.
– Survivability was overnerfed (Cryo Freeze nerf affected both normal and Cold Snap Ice Block / Ice Cold) with no compensation.
– Really bad choice node (for Frost Mages) between Ice Nova and Ring of Frost was not addressed.
– Death’s Chill now stacks to 12, so if it is a dps increase for 1-2 target situations, you now need to spend even more time spamming 1 button and ignoring spec mechanics, procs, other abilities and Thermal Void extension. It should be a dps increase over other third gate talents only in 3+ targets situations.
– None of other mentioned issues and bugs for Frostfire and Spellslinger were addressed.
Verdict: Several good changes, but also several bad changes that should be compensated for Frost only (like Cryo Freeze nerf that affected them more than Fire and Arcane) and several additional changes that should be made (buff to Splintering Ray to make it more competitive and splitting of choice node between Ice Nova and Ring of Frost that is harmful for Frost Mages). Fractured Frost and Death’s Chill also should affect / trigger from Flurry (to give value for Flurry / Brain Freeze during Fractured Frost phase) and Death’s Chill should really be a dps increase over other third gate talents only against 3+ targets, otherwise it would make Frost’s Icy Veins rotation against 1-2 targets significally worse and receive according backlash from Frost players.
Suggestions: Address all issues mentioned above.
Arcane Mage:
± Bug for Clearcasting generation from procs was fixed, but for some reason they decided to nerf it even more (Arcane Splinterstorm change).
± High Voltage is even more unreliable now, but has a bit better ramp-up for its bad RNG protection.
± Damage tuning was needed, but they also nerfed Clearcasting generation on top of that → more Arcane Blast spam.
– Chrono Shift was not returned despite massive backlash over its removal.
– Arcane Explosion is still a melee range ability with no talents to help address that (when Shamans received targeted Earthquake for comparison).
– Arcane Sunfury is even more undertuned now and did not receive any help.
Verdict: Consider reverting nerfs to Clearcasting generation (as you already addressed the bug that could have made it too frequent) and further tuning being based on that. Also consider making High Voltage just provide 2 Arcane Charges per Arcane Missiles cast (close to current average value) to make them more reliable, returning Chrono Shift for example to a position suggested in posts above (current Arcing Cleave position with just making AC baseline) and giving access to ranged targeted Arcane Explosion with a separate talent (which is similar QoL to Shamans getting targeted Earthquake). Arcane Sunfury is also undertuned and needs some boosts.
Suggestions: Address all of the issues mentioned above.
General:
– Reabsorption was nerfed despite already being an underplayed talent. Nerf should be reverted and it should be looked at to make it more competitive instead.
– Mirror Images upgrade nodes still don’t trigger when Images die themselves and still have very niche trigger condition.
– Choice node between Ice Nova vs Ring of Frost that harms Frost Mages (when it is more reasonable to provide choice node between Ring of Frost and Mass Polymorph that have more similar niche with different pros and cons) and between Dragon’s Breath and Supernova that harms Fire Sunfuries (when it is more reasonable to provide choice node between Supernova with reasonable cooldown and Blast Wave, like similar choices between knockback and knockup effects for other classes) were not addressed.
– Pathing issues in general tree and hardly accessible in PVE Displacement that would additionally reduce viability of Look Again hero talent for Spellslinger were not addressed.
Verdict: Reabsorption nerf made already underplayed talent even more underplayed or just not picked and should be reverted. Mirror Images upgrade nodes should trigger from Images dissipating for any reason to make their trigger condition more reliable in PVE. Problematic choice nodes mentioned above should be addressed and if needed could become choice nodes with other CC / utility talents instead like options suggested above. Ice Cold should become more accessible (for example through Time Manipulation) and Dispalcement should become more accessible in PVE too to make both it and its hero talent Look Again more competitive (for example it could switch positions with Accumulative Shielding).
Suggestions: Address all issues mentioned above.
4 Likes
I think you’re doing rotation wrong. I’m doing 1m on dummies with both specs
1 Like