Spell slingers art is hard to see and feels like a ripoff of frost mastery. Both talent options available to arcane seem to be centric to fire or frost respectively and arcane feels like it’s getting shafted. The phoenix is harder to proc and control with arcane than with fire and the splinters blend into all the other spell effects going on and are harder to proc than they are for frost. Honestly Arcane needs a dramatic overhaul and to be reconstructed from the ground up. its burn/sustain phase gameplay is a headache and makes them flavor of the month depending on what the raid fights are,
I’ve really enjoyed Frostfire Bolt, thematically, and play style, it’s all very reactive and enjoyable, I don’t think I’m playing the build that would be deemed most effective but I’m not giving up being able to chain pyroblasts together for anything lol. I still wish that the procs while pyroblasts were free during hyperthermia wouldn’t munch your hot streak procs so you could always guarantee that final pyroblast either way just as a QOL change.
There is 1 bug and there are 5 Hero Talents that don’t feel like they interact well with Arcane’s design/gameplay. And you could dump these into “weak in power” and “confusing/unclear” category.
Bug
- Prodigious Savant: It is currently a 2pt talent. But rank 2 does the exact same thing as Rank 1, at least according to the tooltip. Rank 1 = 20% buff to certain skills affected by Mastery, Rank 2 = the same 20% buff to certain skills affected by Mastery.
Spellslinger (Arcane)
- Spellfrost Teachings: Probably pretty sweet in AoE, but not noticeable in ST. Primarily used as a builder at the start of the pull, and then when necessary to build charges back up, but due to new tier set that’s less frequent. So basically I never notice if it’s been reset, because it’s hardly ever on CD. And the 50% buff still makes it incredibly weak compared to other options. That combined with travel time means I just end up never using this talent.
- Controlled Instincts: Similar issue as above. Probably pretty sweet in AoE with Orb Barrage and 2 charges of Orb. But forgettable in ST. I’m not actively trying to sync up CDs with this talent/ability. Travel time and weak throughput make it not worthwhile.
- Splintering Orbs: Same. If it meant that you fired 2 Orbs because they “splintered” that’d be pretty cool, but it’s just minimally utilized because again, I’m not looking to use Orb on CD.
I think for Spellslinger modified how orb worked, and those talents shot out an orb and provided those benefits, but as it stands there are 3 talents that provide little to no use in ST, but are probably cool in AoE. Even with those, it feels like Spellslinger is currently more powerful than Sunfury.
Sunfury (Arcane
- Glorious Icandescence: Still a similar issue in that it’s tied to Orb. Not an ability I’m thrilled to press. It’s travel time + the delay of meteors means it not really a “get back to full charges quick” button that it might be meant to be. That and it’s not regularly worked into our rotation (unlike Fire Blast for Fire). If calling down meteors was tied to using the ability (rather than hitting the target) that might make that feel better. Fire Blast can’t miss, Arcane Orb can, and that would suck.
- Arcane Soul: Cool sounding ability, cool in what it does, but it still feels like it’s missing something. I like that it procs CC, but if you’re already at/near max stacks it feels like a waste. Can’t help but compare to Hyperthermia for Fire which is a joy to spam Pyro or Flamestrike and squeeze in a bunch of those after Combustion. Maybe if your CC during Arcane Soul extended Arcane Soul for a little bit, that would be a feels good interaction. But I feel forced to press Barrage as quickly as possible and ignore CC stacks.
In general there have been a lot of new and interesting changes to Arcane, but Orb just doesn’t feel good. Maybe if it had 2 charges baseline, or hit a little harder, or had some other interactions, then sure. But currently it’s use in the Hero Talent Trees feels…meh.
Somewhat related is the shortened Siphon Storm duration to 20s. The extra 10s meant we had time to build to 4 charges, and get a few stacks into (newly named) Aether Attunement. Now it feels rushed and desynced. At least just to start the pull, after is fine because you’re already at max. Could be a skill issue and just a matter of learning a new rotation rather than trying to repeat the previous iteration.
Meant to keep it short and sweet, thanks for taking the time to read! Hope it gets considered.
2 Likes
To expand on this, I actually have updated my combustion rotation to include this PF delay bug. Once you are 20ish yards from your target and you have at least 75% haste, you can do this:
- start with no heating up or hot streak
- cast phoenix flames #1 → heating up
- cast phoenix flames #2 → hot streak
- cast phoenix flames #3 → during its travel time do step 5
- cast pyroblast spell queue to consume hot streak
- phoenix flames #3 lands → heating up
- pyroblast lands → hot streak
- cast second pyroblast
In a more direct explanation, do this by smashing the spells as fast as you can:
have 75% haste/be 20 yards away → phoenix flames three times → pyroblast twice
This is extremely repeatable and I have incorporated it in to my gameplay because it removes 100-200ms gaps in your combust window every time you phoenix flames.
I’m not going to lie it’s kind of fun to do intentionally as it speeds up the combust sequence, but it seems like this should be fixed as this goes beyond acceptable skill expression limits in my opinion. The heating up contribution of phoenix flames should happen in time to be used before the next GCD turns over.
4 Likes
So one thing that I need addressed before any changes happen to Spellfrost Teachings. Multiple mages are proccing splinters for each other. I can generate entire splinterstorms completely afk. This seems to be heavily influencing how this feels in cities. The feel of this tree inside a dungeon vs in town is extremely different.
9 Likes
Sun King’s Blessing needs to be allowed to continue stacking while having Fury of the Sun King (10’th stack, final buff) ready, much like Phoenix Reborn does.
Otherwise it completely clashes mechanically with Hyperthermia granted by Sunfury at the end of a manual combustion. Just like before while Hyperthermia was allowed to proc at any time ~ it causes us to be unable to hard-cast a Pyroblast to activate skb, or completely denies the point of being in combustion (extended via SKB).
6 Likes
Alternatively, have the Sunfury Hyperthermia trigger when combustion fades entirely. Allowing SKB to extend a combustion without punishment, and UI to retain the current function.
4 Likes
Overall Arcane Mage Feedback
Overall Grade as of 6/7/2024: 
A+ (highest possible)
Comment:
Overall, the changes are fantastic. You all did a really good job.
There are a couple of nit-picks that I’m going to list out below, and I’ll place them either in the general section or in the Sunfury/Spellslinger section depending on where I think these changes would fit best.
I think if Arcane were to ship out as is (independent of tuning), I would be very happy. This version of Arcane feels very well done.
Arcane Spec Tree Feedback
Overall Grade as of 6/7/2024: 
A
Comment:
Great changes overall, with just a couple of nit-picks, and the eternal problem of Chrono-Shift not being usable.
Please just make this talent a mandatory pick. Replace Improved Arcane Missiles with it or something; I beg of you Blizzard I want to play with this talent so badly. It’s so much fun to play with…
Leydrinker
- Current: 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: Whenever you cast Touch of the Magi, your next Arcane Barrage is guaranteed to echo for 25% damage.
- Feedback: The reason for this suggestion is that I feel like this talent is a little too RNG, which severely weakens it. The best case scenario for this talent is to happen at the same time as you throw out your biggest Arcane Barrage, which to me seems like Arcane Harmony + Burden of Power (from Sunfury) at the start of every Arcane Surge windows. I don’t think you should make this talent work with the Spellslinger tree because AoE with that tree already feels very tight on points, so this change would be intended to focus on Arcane Harmony + Sunfury builds
Siphon Storm Choice Node
- Current: Evocation grants 1 Arcane Charge, channels 50% faster and while channeling Evocation, your Intellect is increased by 2% every 0.5 sec. Lasts 20 sec.
- New Talent (choice node w/ Siphon Storm): Evocation grants 1 Arcane Charge, channels 50% faster and now has 15 second cooldown.
- Feedback: After playing Spellslinger and Sunfury Arcane, I definitely feel like Siphon Storm mixes well with Sunfury, but it feels a little awkward with Spellslinger. You know what doesn’t feel awkward with Spellslinger? Getting a crapload of haste. That is the most haste-focused tree I’ve seen so far. The only problem with it is that you can’t get high haste as Arcane because you keep going OOM. Giving Siphon Storm the choice node listen above would completely change that, and I think that would be for the best. You could run mega-haste Arcane in Single target and not worry about mana issues while blasting Splinters in AoE and in ST.
Improved Arcane Missiles, Crackling Energy, Chrono-Shift and Presence of Mind
- Feedback: The only way I see making Chrono-Shift selectable is for it to be a mandatory node (and same with Presence of Mind given that it competes with Wizened Wit). Improved Arcane Missiles and Crackling Energy offer nothing interesting to the mix, and can easily be adjusted by simply tuning Arcane Blast, Arcane Missiles and Arcane Explosion up or down.
Spellslinger Feedback (Arcane Perspective)
Overall Grade as of 6/7/2024: A+
Comment:
Absolutely incredible. This tree is so ****ing cool, easily the best one I’ve played with, better than Sunfury, better than Diabolist Destro lock, better than Slayer Fury. Complete banger of a tree.
In dungeons, you are a splinter-slinging machine, which resets your orbs like crazy, causing more splinters to spawn and feed into this loop. In single target, your damage feels a little slower, but that’s also because the start build only has 11% haste. With a priest giving me PI, this felt incredible. If I could run 40% haste with this tree, I would. I really hope you do that Siphon Storm choice node change above. I would play this tree all day with more haste than a Fire mage.
Splintering Sorcery (Arcane Splinter)
- Current: When you consume Nether Precision conjure 2 Arcane Splinters that fire at your target. (i.e. 2 NPs per Arcane Missiles = 4 Splinters per Arcane Missiles cast)
- Suggested Change: Every 2 Arcane Missiles fired conjures 1 Arcane Splinter that fires at your target. Every 4 Arcane Charges spent conjures 1 Arcane Splinters at your target. (i.e. 1 Arcane Splinter per 2 Arcane Missile projective = 4 Splinters per Arcane Missile cast; same as above)
- Feedback: This is the only real piece of feedback/thing I think you should change: in single target it feels really bad that your main source of Splinter generation is Arcane Blast. It simply does not fit the theme. I think you could make it be tied directly to Arcane Missiles and it would fit so much better. It also would prevent clipping Arcane Missiles, which this build might actually favor since every Arcane Blast (especially in Arcane Surge) generates 2-4 Splinters after Arcane Missiles. The other part is just to keep the Arcane Barrage generation part of it, which is fine if you have to nerf to 1 (down from 2 currently); the orbs generate a lot more shards that the Barrage.
Spellfrost Teachings
- Current: Direct damage from Arcane Splinters has a 3% chance to reset the cooldown of Arcane Orb and increase all damage dealt by Arcane Orb by 50% for 10 sec.
- Feedback: I am not suggesting any changes for this. I previously did because I thought this talent wouldn’t feel good. I was wrong. This talent is incredible, and you did an amazing job with it. It feels great in AoE and in single target.
Shifting Shards
- Current: Shifting Power fires a barrage of 8 Arcane Splinters at random enemies within 40 yds over its duration.
- Feedback: The only feedback is that the shards here go all over the place rather than on one target. I would thinking that maybe you could have them all hit the same target since that would give more value, but frankly it doesn’t matter if you do this or not. Spellslinger rocks.
Sunfury Feedback (Arcane Perspective)
Overall Grade as of 6/7/2024: A
Comment:
I think Arcane Harmony might be back with this tree, which if it is I’m very happy.
I would love for you to fix the eternal issue with Arcane Harmony, which I’ve listed below. No, I’m not asking for crit bad-luck protection anymore, I know you won’t do that.
Arcane Harmony
- Current: 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.
- 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 20 times. When out of combat, you generate 1 stack every 3 seconds (20 stacks in 60 seconds); does not reset to 0 when pulling a raid boss or starting a dungeon.
- Feedback: This is one of the most frustrating things with Arcane Harmony, and makes the beginning of every fight a giant nuisance, especially since you removed the ability to fish for CC procs (which was the correct move, but hurts Arcane Harmony nonetheless). I implore you to add this; I can’t imagine a single person would have a problem with this suggestion.
P.S.: Pls help Shaman (especially Elemental), my friend is sad 
9 Likes
Magi’s Spark and Arcane Echo
This ability just doesn’t feel good to execute on - it’s simultaneously not very challenging to execute correctly and not very interesting in what you get from executing correctly. The glorious explosion when you correctly execute it does such low damage as to be irrelevant, the echoing damage removed any intrigue this ability had as a spiritual successor to Radiant Spark, and, because of the rigidity of hero talents and the new spec talent tree, its likely that this talent won’t really be appealing in many situations, whether or not the players wants to opt-in or not for complexity.
Overall, I think the mark is missed here, which is further compounded by the fact that losing Nether Tempest and Radiant Spark means a lot less Arcane Echo procs. While this isn’t an issue for Spellslinger since splinters are plentiful and proc Arcane Echo (thank you for that change), Sunfury is struggling to bring value to this talent. While having build diversity is a good thing, Arcane capstones are in short supply and given the current tuning of many of them, this likely will just resolve in taking a talent further up the tree instead of filling out your capstones which is not only intuitive, but also highlights the poor state of our talent tree post-rework.
1st Gate, 2nd Gate, and Capstone Talents
The more I consider builds, the less our talent tree makes coherent sense. I’m dropping capstones for 1st Gate talents because our capstones have some exceedingly weak options in them, while our 1st and 2nd gate have a ton of options and not enough points to get the ones you need much less want. That is kind of the theme of this rework, Arcane cannot get what it wants from the spec tree. As has been echo’d by people here and by myself all throughout Alpha, Slipstream, Chrono Shift, and Presence of Mind should be viewed as core abilities and not as afterthoughts. The same is true for Arcing Cleave - what even does Arcane Barrage do if not cleave targets? This is an iconic ability now and making Cleave harder to get and less justifiable feels awful.
This isn’t just restricted to individual talents, the builds themselves are not making tradeoffs in one department for another, they’re just flatly incomplete. There are so many dead talents because of this - for example, there is almost no room for Charged Orb to be selected without dropping capstone talents for it. Charged Orb is not a huge amount of damage overall for Arcane, however it is a major quality of life point. Making this inaccessible and the tradeoff for it incomprehensibly expensive just kills the talent most likely. This is also true for Arcane Tempo, Energized Familiar, Mana Adept, Surging Urge, Chrono Shift, Impetus, and hilariously some of these talents were also dead in Dragonflight for the exact same reason. This problem also propagates to our capstone talents as well - Time Loop, Concentration, and Leydrinker are all DOA at this point due to tuning and, more than anything, lack of points to invest into these talents.
So there are two stories here going on, one is a problem of quality of life talents being unjustifiable under the current tree design, which further exacerbates and is exacerbated by how incomplete builds feel. As one of the relatively few people providing community support for Arcane Mages when people ask me why I love Arcane and why I would recommend it to play, I’m going to have a harder time answering that question in The War Within if this is what our final tree is. Frankly, the spec talent tree was better in almost every single materially impactful way prior to the rework.
16 Likes
Sunfury Mage for Arcane feels like you’re leaning into the combustion hyper cooldowns fantasy and it leave you just wanting to slam cooldowns until you can cast combustion again because the free combustions you get through sun kings fury or randomly don’t proc the phoenix. It’s hard to tell how much the the cooldown is doing but it feels good and leans itself towards combustion even more so rather than more of a constant proc heavy and consistent damage like frostfire.
For Arcane, Sunfury feels kinda lackluster with what the phoenix does, even when you preload 2 clear castings before using Arcane Surge, it still feels like you’re just begging for procs of clearcasting so exceptional spells will be used. If you plan well, you can get one for sure, and after that you’re truly praying to RNJesus in the hopes of getting more before your bird pulls a Houdini.
With the fireside of sunfury you feel like if you play well enough you can get the most procs possible, where it feels like arcane lacks that agency.
Still a neat hero talent tree but I think arcane could use some more love to make it feel good, maybe a slightly higher chance to proc clearcasting?
3 Likes
Playing Spellslinger Arcane feels great, it’s a good feeling of a constant flow of damage leading to a huge burst window that happens fairly frequently and there’s a lot of things to proc the splinters and get all these nice damage windows. And it’s really cool how it turns Supernova into a big explosion cooldown which just feels super nice to hit honestly. I haven’t touched arcane since shadowlands but the way Spellslinger feels with arcane would make me roll with it just based on tempo alone.
2 Likes
Sunfury Orbs reset to zero on raid combat
I think I finally found the purpose of Rondurmancy vs Ignite the Future? It appears that your sunfury orbs reset on the beginning of raid combat to zero. This would mean that rondurmancy is for more sunfury orbs later in combat while ignite the future is for more sunfury orbs on pull since you’ll be starting from zero orbs.
I really don’t like that dynamic honestly. Seeing your orbs vanish at the beginning of combat is unintuitive and kind of demoralizing. The opening combust with bloodlust just visually loses power on pull? I would rather it be that orbs are set to 3 on raid combat entry.
3 Likes
Hot take for Spellslinger. Change it from consumption of Nether Precision and Winter’s Chill respectively, to Arcane Missile ticks, and spells that hit frozen targets. Possibly up the amount need to trigger Splinterstorm, but, I feel like, for the amount of spells that would/should feel like splinters get proc’d, it’s only 30% of what should.
1 Like
Spellslinger Frost Feedback
Gameplay
Spellslinger Frost has a much more impactful way of changing the gameplay compared to Frostfire Frost and casting so many Frozen Orbs is fun.
Inside of Icy Veins, I am finding that the doubling of Splinters from Augury Abounds causing more Splinterstorms and with how many Frozen Orbs are being cast from Spellfrost Teachings is causing me to just overflow with Winter’s Chill procs that I cannot use because it’s happening too fast. This feels overwhelming and when a new Splinterstorm refreshes over the existing WCs I feel like I have wasted those entirely. Sometimes multiple Splinterstorms are occurring within seconds of each other and there’s not enough globals to consume the WCs before they’re overwritten.
It also makes Flurry and Brain Freeze feel very irrelevant where I am just sitting on BF procs and max Flurry charges because there’s no value in casting Flurry at all. I’m not sure if this was the intended design but WC is having a >80% uptime which is just crazy. I end up just ignoring WC entirely as it has such a high uptime and this doesn’t feel right cause the historic playstyle has always incentivised us to want to consume WC intentionally.
Side note on tuning: From testing various talent combinations, Spellslinger with Glacial Spike is a substantial dps gain over non-GS builds. Both ST and AoE situations Spellslinger Frost is currently considerably more powerful than Frostfire Frost.
Meaningless choice node
Both options in the Hero choice node for Slippery Slinging and Look Again are terrible and do not offer a meaningful choice. These Hero talents affect optional talents in the general tree, one which is rarely ever taken in the first place.
I use Alter Time for health resetting on large incoming damage, so the time between AT cast/recast is very quick, meaning I’m not running about during that time so the speed increase from Slippery Slinging is redundant. I like to use speed increases to run away from locations mostly because there has been such a huge increase in static ground effect mechanics, but Alter Time just ports you back to the original location so it feels like the speed increase defeats the purpose of being given speed in the first place.
Displacement is incredibly inaccessible in the Mage tree so is rarely taken, and even if it were more accessible I still wouldn’t take it. I have more than enough key binds and have never needed Displacement at all in gameplay. Please don’t take this as a call to move Displacement to be more accessible location in the Mage tree, this is about Look Again not providing a benefit that warrants taking it ever.
Due to this, this choice node offers no meaningful choice to me. It would be more useful to me if this choice node affected talents like Blink, Invisibility, or Ice Barrier as these are core spells to Mage and used all the time, so if a Hero talent affected them it would feel more meaningful as we use them more often.
Some example ways to improve here are: getting a speed increase on casting Ice Barrier, or having Invisibility last longer, or Blink having a longer range, or after doing X action we gain 1 buff of Ice Floes. Any of these would be far more interesting and be useful in different situations to give more meaningful choice.
Tracking nightmare
Shifting Shards is putting Splinters on enemies you’re not even in combat with, so that needs to change.
Tracking Splinters to know when to expect Splinterstorm is challenging, particularly when Splinters are split across multiple enemies from Orb or Shifting Power. I find in AoE it’s impossible to know how many total Splinters you have across enemies at any one time without a weakaura. I am concerned that the skill level between the average player and expert who min/maxes Spinterstorm/Winter’s Chill/Frozen Orb procs/etc will be quite large due to the amount of buff tracking needed.
I’d also recommend that the Frozen Orb button glow when Spellfrost Teachings procs to reset Orb cooldown, as currently there’s zero indication that Orb came off cd naturally or by the Hero talent.
Disappointing Visuals
I really hope the Splinters and Splinterstorm visuals are still works in progress. They are barely noticeable for Frost and just look like mini-Icicles. When Icicles are firing or Glacial Spike is being cast at the same time Splinters as Splinters/Splinterstorm, it’s very difficult to see them.
From a fantasy perspective, Splinters are a brand-new WoW concept and has no historical or lore reference to anything in WoW’s Mage history from any character, so from a Mage Hero fantasy perspective I think Spellslinger fails. Given the tree will unlikely be revised, the visuals need to massively carry and make this playstyle distinct. The current visuals just don’t do that IMO simply because Frost already has Icicles, and Splinters are mimicking them far too much.
For Splinterstorm, perhaps when they’re recalled to you they circle around your character’s body fast and then shoot off, rather than from above your head where Icicles and Glacial Spike belong. Currently I don’t get any “storm” fantasy from Splinterstorm.
The colour scheme of Splinters is also a shade of blue that doesn’t match the existing blue colour scheme of Frost’s other spells, so the Splinters feel out of place to me in this regard.
Bugs
It’s currently very difficult to properly test Spellslinger Frost, particularly on dummies, cause other SS Frost Mages’ Splinters are causing us to generate additional Splinters when our Winter’s Chill is active and they generate a Splinter for themselves, overinflating our true number of Splinters that we generate.
2 Likes
Here is mentioned earlier Frost Mage feedback post in TWW. It will be split into subsections which will analyze its current issues with some solutions suggested, but these solutions are optional - if Blizzard would have better ideas, they could implement them instead, main goal should be to just have these issues addressed.
Frost Mage PVE issues:
- Lack of build diversity
Currently pretty much all single-target builds revolve around using Glacial Spike and AoE builds revolve around Coldest Snap. TWW would add a new “Deathborne build”, but even it has its issues (more about that later) and might be restricted to cleave niches, so there should be additional support for alternative builds both in ST and AoE situations or just more choices.
Suggestions:
- Make Glacial Spike a choice node with a talent that would simply boost damage of Frost(fire) Bolt and Ice Lance by X%. Such talent should be tuned to provide slightly lower average output than Glacial Spike (as GS build would be a bit harder to play and revolve around 1 additional active ability), but still competitive enough, so that people who don’t want to play with it can skip it and remain competitive.
- Make Coldest Snap a choice node with talent that would boost damage of Frozen Orb, Blizzard and Cone of Cold (maybe also Comet Storm) by X%. That would be a similar choice between more active playstyle that involves CD resets and has it pros (additional Meteor procs for Frostfire, additional FoF generated from reset Frozen Orb) and cons (additional management) and more passive playstyle that is easier to play, but has slightly lower average output to compensate. It would also be much more compatible with Snowstorm if that talent is kept in TWW and this is the reason why Cone of Cold is present in the list of suggested affected abilities.
- AoE positioning and scaling issues
Frost still has to play with outdated Frozen Orb placement that both can easily miss the desired area and pretty much forces to play in melee range to have even a possibility to place the Orb correctly. It was called a skill expression in one of the earlier interviews, but what it actually is an unneeded handicap to the spec. Almost all other specs with non-typical placement patterns have better ways to do that - Arcane Orb pierces, Ravager chases enemies, Shadow Crash is now a choice node with target centered Void Crash etc. It is time to finally address the issue for Frost Mages as well.
Suggestion: Create a new capstone talent to the left of Coldest Snap that would let Frost Mages boost and tweak placement pattern of Frozen Orb to better suit their needs or playstyle. For example that could be such a choice node:
Concentrated Coolness - Frozen Orb damage is increased by X% and is now castable at a location with a 40 yard range, but no longer moves. Is based on existing PVP talent, so does not even need additional implementation.
or
Drifting Cooless - Frozen Orb now moves to and starts its slowed movement from a spot selected by player (currently it is from first enemy hit) and now explodes when it expires, dealing X% of Spell Power Frost damage to enemies within its area.
Such choice node would give access to 3 placement options for it - with selected area but stationary / slow movement forward from selected spot / slowed movement forward from first enemy hit (if you don’t take this capstone). This would allow each Frost player to pick the Frozen Orb placement pattern they prefer or need in concrete situations, but would have a cost of potential additional talent post in capstone area as a fair trade-off.
As for mentioned AoE scaling issue - Frost currently has limited scaling beyond 2 targets, since Splitting Ice Lances deal equal damage no matter how many additional targets are present. That could be addressed via adding some additional AoE scaling talents similar to those that were added for Fire Mage.
Suggestion: Add a new talent under Splitting Ice that would mimick Glacial Fragments from Shadowlands with some tweaks - “When 3 or more enemies are in Blizzard, casting Ice Lance on any of them makes it explode on contact, dealing X% of Spell Power Frost damage to Y enemies nearby. Only initial Ice Lance can trigger this effect”.
Such talent would add 3+ target scaling to Splitting Ice Lances, but at the same time would not be mandatory for 1-2 targets situations (limitation of 3+ targets being hit by Blizzard) and won’t get out of control because of Splitting Ice (as only Ice Lance sent at initial target should trigger the burst).
- Freezable vs unfreezable enemies dps difference
Even after nerfs to Subzero, Frost still has significant output difference between enemies that can and cannot be frozen - former get bonuses from Subzero and additional shatters from freeze effects and latter don’t. That can cause tuning issues where Frost is too strong against freezable enemies, too weak against unfreezable enemies or even both simultaneously and could be addressed.
Suggestion: Add an additional effect to Subzero that would make Ice Nova and Glacial Spike apply X seconds of Winter’s Chill (1 stack) to enemies hit that are immune to crowd control effects. That would allow to both make Subzero useful against CC immune enemies (against whom it currently provides no value) and significally reduce mentioned output difference between enemies that can and cannot be frozen, making Frost much easier to balance in future. This list intentionally excludes Frost Nova, Freeze, Freezing Cold and Frostbite roots, as they are primary CC tools and should remain so and not be required for any damaging rotations.
- Non-optional passive snares
While they are a primary strength of the spec, there are still situations where they can be more harmful than useful like Mythic+ Sanguine weeks. As such, maybe there should be a talent to temporarily disable them or switch to other effect for such cases.
Suggestion: Add an optional talent in Frost tree that makes all chill effects either apply small damage reduction or attack / cast speed reduction instead of snaring. That would resolve the issue when needed, but being optional it also can be easily skipped if player does not want or need that.
- Deathborne playstyle issues
Reintroduced Deathborne playstyle is interesting, but it still has issues (many of which were also present in Shadowlands) that could be addressed and could use improvements. Among these issues are:
- No means to shatter cleaved Frost(fire) Bolts against CC immune enemies (as they cannot be AoE frozen)
Solution: Make Fractured Frost’s cleave also affect Flurry - this will provide both means to shatter cleaved Frost(fire) Bolts and more value for Flurry during this phase (as currently it is questionable since Flurry hits only 1 target). To prevent some other anti-synergies, Flurry could also be included into the list for Death’s Chill stacking. - No value for Fingers of Frost procs during Deathborne phase
Solution: Give Fractured Frost an additional effect that allows Frost(fire) Bolt to consume Fingers of Frost and deal X% increased damage only during Icy Veins. This would give FoF procs value during Deathborne phase, but won’t lead to no-Ice Lance Frost(fire) Bolt spam constantly since outside of Icy Veins FoF procs would still be consumed only by Ice Lance. - Deathborne playstyle has anti-synergy with Thermal Void, since Icy Veins get extended only by Ice Lances and Glacial Spikes, both of which might be not used during Deathborne phase.
Solution: Add cleaved only Frost(fire) Bolts to the list of abilities that extend Icy Veins. This will enable extension by Frost(fire) Bolts too, but only during Deathborne phase.
- Outdated tree costs and underused talents
Many reworked in TWW alpha trees got to state where they contain only 1 point nodes. This is the best state, since it provides biggest pathing and build variety and should be the goal for all spec trees in TWW including Frost’s, which still contains several 2 point cost nodes. At the same time, Frost’s tree also contains several nodes that are undertuned / underused or could use choice alternatives. Both issues could be addressed simultaneously via reducing cost of some talents (with close to full current effect) and giving new choice node options to some of them (which are currently badly applicable to 2 point cost nodes).
Suggestions:
- Reduce Wintertide, Snowstorm, Subzero, Deep Shatter and Splintering Cold to 1 point nodes with full current effect. That would make most of them actually match cost to effect value and those that would get too strong could just get their numbers tweaked.
- Make Splintering Cold also affect Icicles generated by Ice Lance with Hailstones taken, as currently it has anti-synergy with Glacial Spike builds.
- Increase proc chance and stack bonus value and reduce number of stacks for Snowstorm and possibly make it provide a flat X% damage bonus that is not based on any stacks to Cone of Cold if Coldest Snap is taken instead - that would make it easier to stack while Cone of Cold is recharging and more reliable as well as better compatible with Coldest Snap, as Cone of Could would then just deal more damage and can be used whenever you need the CD reset instead of waiting for stacks.
- Some people might still not like Snowstorm, so it could use a choice node alternative that could still be related to Cone of Cold to keep the theme. Example of such alternative can be Burst of Cold (that is based on a PVP talent from earlier expansions) - Frost Nova resets cooldown of Cone of Cold and increases damage done by next Cone of Cold by X%. It would enable an alternative to Snowstorm bursty and synergistic playstyle, as Frost Nova and Cone of Cold both have similar range and Frost Nova would also provide Subzero bonus and shatter for following it Cone of Cold.
- Buff or redesign Splintering Ray, currently it is not competitive enough.
Frost Mage PVP issues:
- Design contradictions
Frost Mage is presented both by description and gameplay as a spec that keeps safe distance from their enemies and maintains this distance with roots and snares. At the same time, most of its offensive crowd control tools have close to melee range - Dragon’s Breath has almost melee range, Snowdrift requires getting and staying in melee range etc. That creates a design contradiction that negatively impacts spec in PVP and should be finally addressed.
Suggestions:
- Increase range of Cone of Cold and Dragon’s Breath to 15-20 yards - that would allow to maintain at least some meaningful distance in PVP when using them and would be also helpful for PVE and viability of talents like Snowstorm (for Frost) and Alexstrasza’s Fury (for Fire). It would also bring their area in line with standard for AoE spells 8 yds radius, which is in line with 15-20 yds range wave and cone effects. 15+ yards range cones even already exist in game - Druid’s Typhoon, Evoker’s Fire Breath and so on.
- Replace Snowdrift with Deep Freeze or make them a choice node in Frost tree. A reliable ranged stun would fit the toolkit of ranged kiting-based spec much more than a tool that requires getting in and staying in melee range. Some people might still like Snowdrift, so making it a choice node with Deep Freeze in Frost tree makes sense as well. If needed for balance, Deep Freeze could even replace or be a choice node with other existing CC based node in Frost tree, for example Frostbite.
- Potential issues with killing and no longer needed PVP modifiers
Currently in beta HP pools scale much higher than damage output which results in slower time to kill and potential kill issues for specs with easily counterable burst (with Frost among them) and even more so for specs that lack mortal strike effects / reliable unbreakable crowd control effects (with Frost fitting here as well). As a result, it could use some help to keep its PVP viability, as Frost has historically been one of main PVP specs for Mages.
Suggestions:
- Buff Frost’s sustained damage a bit, if needed for balance also switch part of its dps from easily counterable sources (like from dispellable Frost Bomb) into more reliable (Flurry / Ice Lance).
- Give Frost a reliable ranged unbreakable by damage crowd control effect like Deep Freeze suggested above.
Simultaneously and a part of the issue, Frost has a lot of PVP nerf modifiers that were applied during different periods and might be no longer justified in War Within. Please take a look at PVP nerf modifiers for Piercing Cold, Glacial Spike, Frigid Empowerment, Winter’s Blessing, Glacial Assault etc and decide whether they are still needed in The War Within.
- Undertuned and underused PVP talents
Frost has several PVP talents that are barely if ever played. Some of them are too niche, some are just inferior to other options and could be improved for competitiveness. These include:
Ice Form - since Frostbolt does not do much damage lately, damage bonus to it does not matter much. It also replaces a much more generally useful offensive CD and is easily dispellable and as a result is not played much.
Suggestion: Make it increase Frost damage in general and undispellable, but remove its stun immunity to compensate. That would turn it into a viable alternative to Icy Veins for shorter CD burst window comps and make it much more competitive.
Icy Feet - its effect is too niche and is easily counterable - immune to snares Mage can still be crowd controlled, so it is not like you can easily get away with its effect. Extending its immunity to more crowd control types could make it too strong, so maybe it should just be redesigned.
Suggestion: Revert it to a PVP talent that made freeze roots deal damage when expired / broken with increased damage if dispelled, make it affect all freeze roots (as previous version affected only Frost Nova and Freeze) and have decent enough damage to make it a valid freeze dispel protection tool. That would give it a niche against specs and comps with multiple root breaks / dispels and make it much more competitive.
2 Likes
So far I’ve really only tested Arcane, but after allowing some time for the new talents to digest, I’m once again experiencing discord when picking both Slipstream and Chrono Shift. These talents are once again going to be incredibly painful to pick or even just dropped in favor of damage at every possible opportunity. They really need to be combined with another Missiles and Barrage talent, respectively. Please.
9 Likes
Potential solution could be to just remove Improved Arcane Missiles and Crackling Energy and move their damage increase to affected spells baseline and just put Slipstream and Chrono Shift on their positions (possibly as choice nodes with other utility options for people who don’t want to take some of them and for more choice options). As a result, they would both become much more accessible and would not compete with throughput, as will be required to progress down some parts of the tree. The suggested choice nodes would also help people to pick something else if they want to avoid one of their effects, like Chrono Shift during Sanguine weeks.
6 Likes
I’m still digging into the talent changes and hero trees, but the most glaring thing I’ve noticed so far is… the new Frostfire Bolt animation.
It’s awful, and it’s incredibly noticeable given the original FFB is very much alive and well in Cata Classic atm.
If you want to make the animation more “up-to-date” then it should probably be closer to Pyroblast visually, albeit smaller if you want to maintain Pyroblast being bigger, with a frosty blue exterior. Or add a glyph that we can use to make it look like the original iteration.
I know the major focus is on the bigger aspects of the class, but I’m sure most Mage’s were excited at the return of Frostfire Bolt at least in-part due to the iconic animation of the spell, and this new animation simply isn’t it.
3 Likes
I agree that the graphic for Frostfire Bolt is lacking. It’s Frostfire, not Frost-and-fire, so the two elements should be blended, not just one orbiting the other.
To that end I’d also like to see some sort of graphical change to the meteors summoned by the Isothermic Core talent. As it is it doesn’t feel like anything I’m doing, just some other frost mage that happened to press Comet Storm at the same time I cast Meteor. Hell, maybe just take the current Frostfire Bolt animation, make it bigger, and have it be the extra meteors summoned. It would be visually spectacular if nothing else.
As it is there’s no actual “class fantasy” with Frostfire. It’s fun to play, and I’m really enjoying how it feels, it just doesn’t have anything that makes it stand out visually from a standard mage.
2 Likes
PLEASE GIVE THE FELO’MELORN LEGION FIRE ARTIFACT ORBITING ORBS BACK.
Please, they were beautiful, resembled Kaelthas’s orbiting spheres much better than these static Sunfury orbs.
Even if just as a glyph, give us our beautiful Felo’melorn orbs back. You had an NPC in Legion to even select turning them on and off and which effects you wanted.
If it is an optional toggle, people who don’t like them can opt out.
But please give them back.
And while we’re asking for returned visuals, give shamans their earthen rage and enhancement elemental spikes back.
5 Likes