Feedback: Mages

[Drlightning-lightbringer]

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?

[Drlightning-lightbringer]

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.

[Lanfear-tichondrius]

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.

[Mizudaisho-zuljin (Mizudaisho)]

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.

[Astarael-barthilas]

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.

@Kaivax

• Hero Talent choice nodes that you feel could offer more meaningful choices.

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.

@Kaivax

• Hero Talents whose functionality is confusing, unclear, or difficult to track during gameplay.

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.

@Kaivax

• Some new spell visuals and audio may still be a work in progress.

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.

@Kaivax

• Fix bugs that are blocking testing of new talents.

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.

[Vlsal-tichondrius]

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:

1. 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:

1. 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.
2. 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.

2. 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).

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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:

1. 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.
2. Make Splintering Cold also affect Icicles generated by Ice Lance with Hailstones taken, as currently it has anti-synergy with Glacial Spike builds.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Buff or redesign Splintering Ray, currently it is not competitive enough.

Frost Mage PVP issues:

1. 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:

1. 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.
2. 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.

2. 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:

1. 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).
2. 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.

3. 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.

[Blastinbigly-stormrage]

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.

[Vlsal-tichondrius]

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.

[Notorious-blood-furnace (Notorious)]

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.

[Kestrall-stormrage]

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.

[Augurio-stormrage]

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.

[Lucidness-thrall]

I say this from mainly an arcane perspective, but the spec tree feels incomplete, and doesn’t feel like it fully interacts with it’s Hero talent trees in a meaningful way. I know this rework was to reduce the complexity of arcane, but in doing so I think it’s ruined a competent spec and has taken away quality of life instead of introducing it

ARCANE TREE

1. Quality of Life Loss vs Throughput

I have a few complaints about the main tree, the main one being loss of easily accessible quality of life. In the current tree, POM and Slipstream are easily reachable. Yes, POM can be used as a technical DPS gain, but more often than not it’s just a movement tool. No one will take it now over Wizend Wit, and Slipstream is in direct competition with surging urge. TBH, I didn’t mind when surging urge wasn’t an option. It was a utility choice with adept.

One solution would be to make POM or Slipstream baseline, or reconfigure the tree. I also love chronoshift, and would love to have it be an option, but it’s not going to compete with throughput. It’s a very powerful talent though, so I can’t necessarily agree with making it baseline at it’s current tuning although it would be fun

2. Capstones

Another issue is the capstones. They seem lackluster. Orb barrage and Siphon seem capstone worthy, but spark/munitions feel rather weak, and leydrinker and harmony are barely DPS gains at this point. When we look at frost and fire, they have many impactful capstones, but our middle section has far more impactful and likely higher DPS throughput options.

Also why is Arcane Cleave in the bottom tier of talents, it has no reason to be there, especially as Resonance emphasizes more targets, and is above it

Solution: Honestly, redesigning leydrinker, munitions and harmony would be the best solution. Bombardment would be a good capstone for it’s powerlevel. I’m surprised it’s so high in the tree

3. Builds: AOE vs ST (Current ret paladin problem)

The final complaint with the spec tree is it seems so hard to get a competent build with the amount of nodes that do competing things. We went from a tree that had good cleave, ST and AOE builds.

Trying to build a good AOE build makes single target missile talents, or even cleave missiles very difficult to take. To get a decent cleave build, we have to drop a 2nd orb and tempo which feels bad. I feel like in dragonflight right now we have a great tree to adjust to target counts very easily. With the way the spec tree is designed, we are going to have a very large problem with AOE vs ST vs Cleave builds with very little inbetween. It’s going to very much feel like a ret paladin problem.

One solution to this that I would have would make Arcane Cleave and/or Resonance passives learned via leveling. I could see leaving resonance, as that is a very powerful barrage modifier, but arcane cleave has been a core part of arcane’s kit for the past several expansions. Not only would it allow people leveling to get used to the idea of using barrage as an AOE “spender” of sorts, but it frees up a much needed talent point and reduces some of the AOE vs Cleave vs single target friction that exist in this beta build.

I can see why they want to simplify arcane. Radiant spark is full of jank. I just wish rather than trying to redesign everything, they just changed spark/echo, and left a well functioning spec.

SPELLSLINGER ARCANE

In AOE this does feel great. I love the orb resets, it feels strong. In single target however this spec is very boring.

With current tuning and playstyle (and I worry even if tuning changes, the playstyle might not), the entire single target rotation is CC arcane missiles into blast even during surge and touch windows ad infinitum. This is not a fun rotation, and is so much less interesting than arcane has been. Arcane orb is also tuned to not be used in ST, even with the Spellfrost teaching buff. I do think spellfrost teaching in AOE is very comparable to frost, if not better than frost, but it is a dead hero talent in single target, as even with the 50% buff to orb damage, it isnt’ going to compete with the rotation of CC missiles into blast. If orb was a larger portion I could see it being a much more engaging loop, but as it stands now it is not worth pressing.

A solution could be to buff orb damage if it hits only one target, but I think that could lead to degenerate gameplay. I don’t know if I there is a good solution to this. This might just be a very boring hero spec with a 2 button single target rotation unfortunately. Fixing the capstones as above to make them more interactive may alleviate some of this as well

SUNFURY ARCANE

I do like a lot of what Sunfury has, but it feels like arcane is a bit of an afterthought again compared to fire with how it triggers some of it’s procs. I very much do not like how Glorious Incandescence triggers off of orb, especially as the buff duration can fall off if orb is on CD letting it go to waste. Additionally, as seen in spellslinger you don’t really want to orb at max charges. It would be better if getting the Charged Orb talent was easier, but as above, the spec tree has a lot of challenges in how it spends its points.

Solution: Don’t give Glorious Incandescence a duration, OR you could have it grant a free charge of orb.

I do also like that Sunfury does have an Arcane Barrage emphasis in some payoffs, but with the current spec tree, building into barrage, while also trying to pick up other talents to make it feel like a complete spec is just impossible. Trying to get harmony and missile talents while getting AOE is difficult. Again, this comes down to some poor spec tree design.

CONCLUSION

I do like the hero trees, and think that they work well with what we have, but the current layout of the spec tree makes it very difficult to utilize them fully, while still being competitive. I do think we lost more than we gained going from TWIW from dragonflight, which does feel bad. I am hopeful with some talent shuffling, and maybe some retuning of capstones, it will feel like a more complete spec in future builds.

[Komoi-stormrage]

Fire Feedback

I’ve been doing some testing on Fire and I wanted to bring up some points of feedback (there’s a lot more I gotta test, but thought I’d share these ones first as they were the things that jumped out at me the most):

TL;DR: Sunfury+Unleashed Inferno POG, Frostifre OOF

Sunfury Hero Talent Tree Feedback

• Sunfury + Unleashed Inferno feels pretty good. I love the feeling of going back to a more bursty Combustion instead of the current uptime-y version. The Phoenix feels and looks badass, and I think the Sunfury Hero Talent tree feels pretty good and does not interfere too much with talent choices and play style.

• I particularly like Mana Addiction as a node. It feels very rewarding to dump a bunch of Fire Blasts right at the start of the Combustion to get a bunch of Haste stacks going, which makes the rest of the combustion go faster and feel smoother, especially making Phoenix Flames GCDs not feel so sluggish.

• Savor the Moment is very interesting to me. I like the idea of choosing to use less combustions (dropping SKB for UI), but getting a longer one and a stronger burst window, I like this talent a lot. On the other hand, I do not see a world where I would pick Sunfury Execution. Increasing Scorch’s threshold by 5% feels negligible, especially in dungeons where 5% of a mob’s health can drop in a matter of a few globals. I would expect this to be at least 40-50% to compete with a longer combustion (which would make it insanely strong on bosses, so that’s a weird balance to strike).

• Gravity Lapse’s text wasn’t very clear to me at first. It says my Supernova becomes Gravity Lapse, but I don’t have Supernova as Fire. After a while I realised this probably meant that the Phoenix would cast Supernova as one of the random arcane spells it casts, and in that case it would be replaced by Gravity Lapse, but I think the text could be clearer.

• I did not like Sunfury + Sun King’s Blessing very much, especially because of Memory of Al’ar. Differentiating between “casted” Combustion and Sun King’s Blessing feels pretty weird, especially when your Phoenix drops mid-combustion because you crossed the threshold between the “casted” Combustion and the SKB one.

• On top of that, gaining Hyperthermia while talented into SKB can feel like a downside since there’s no way to hardcast a Pyro, and then you’re just wasting Hot Streaks at that point instead of building up a new SKB (I know you could technically have a /cancelaura macro to remove your Hyperthermia, but let’s be real that shouldn’t be the intended gameplay of the spec).

• Overall, Sunfury + Unleashed Inferno pretty cool, Sunfury + SKB not cool. Since one of the topics of discussion was “do you feel that Hero Talents require you to play a certain talent”, I would definitely say that Sunfury almost requires you to NOT play SKB.

Frostfire Hero Talent Tree Feedback

• Gotta say I’m a bit disappointed with Frostfire overall. While Sunfury’s fantasy and gameplay is pretty straightforward - you get a cool Phoenix and blast damage, you don’t worry too much about procs, maintenance buffs, etc. - Frostfire felt like the opposite. More on this below.

• Fantasy: The “fantasy” of weaving frost and fire spells doesn’t really come to life at all. When I first saw Frostfire I expected we would somehow get to use Frostbolt in our rotation, or maybe we would get access to some of Frost’s spells (like Comet Storm or maybe Blizzard) as a way to supplement Fire’s boring Flamestrike spam in AoE - something that created interesting choices and synergies between Fire and Frost spells. Instead, we just got a coat of paint on our filler, with the rest staying exactly the same - no interesting interactions, no new spells or combos; just a Fire mage with a blue-ish Fireball.

• Gameplay: Frostfire’s gameplay feels more maintenance-y than ever. Having to keep track of Frostfire Mastery, Severe Temperatures (so you’re not wasting stacks), Exccess Frost (so you don’t waste stacks), Frostfire Empowerment (so you don’t munch procs) and Excess Fire is waaaaay too much. In previous posts it was stated that Blizzard’s goals for Mages in TWW was to reduce rotational complexity and maintenance buffs, but if feels like we just got 5 new ones with Frostfire.
  You could argue we don’t need to keep track of all of that and yeah, that might be true in most cases, but having to keep up with all those buffs and procs to make good use of your talents feels so bad I’d rather just play Sunfury.

• In the “Having to pick a certain talent to play this Hero Talent” department, it’s pretty obvious Frostfire is meant to be played with Meteor/Comet Storm talented, which feels contrary to the goal of not forcing certain talents?

• A few more things annoyed me with Frostfire’s gameplay:

1. Frostfire Infusion’s extra bolt can mess you up in your Hot Streaks, making you spend a Fire Blast/Phoenix Flame at the same time that you’re getting a proc, essentially wasting a spell. I would genuinely prefer if this proc didn’t contribute to Hot Streak and just did extra damage instead. This feels especially bad when you’re in a Combustion with high Haste trying to manage your spells, it can really throw you off balance.

2. The whole thing where more stacks of Frostfire Mastery not refreshing duration feels so unnecessary. You get a tool to refresh them with Frostfire Empowerment anyway. Alongside all the things you have to manage and use (stacks, SKB, Meteor, FB/PF charges, etc) now you also need to cast an instant Frostfire bolt right as you start Combustion to not lose your stacks. Feels so clunky for the same reason that Phoenix Flames does; when you have an off-GCD builder like Fire Blast, anything “worse” than it feels like a downgrade (which is why BFA Fire with Lucid Dreams and Bracers was so amazing).
   Phoenix Flames is getting a facelift with talents like Majesty of the Phoenix, Phoenix Reborn (our S4 4pc), Ashen Feather and the new 4pc that grants you a spell power buff, so it’s a decent button to press for the benefits it brings, but Frostfire Bolt just feels like a button you gotta press cause otherwise oh-oh you lost your stacks. We have so many charges of Phoenix Flames with the Talents + 4set that I find myself constantly sitting at 3 charges with refunds still unused. Besides the regular priority on Fire Blast, we wanna use it even more frequently now when we get the Living Bomb proc. Adding Frostfire Bolt as another “required” global just feels so bad and cluttered - the more GCDs we have to “waste” during Combustion, the worse it feels, cause we really wanna see those Pryos/Flamestrikes flowing.

3. There’s something very weird/off with Frostfire’s bolt cast but I can’t really put my finger on it. It might be the extra haste or some lag on Beta servers, but it felt constantly laggy. I’m assuming its cast time is dropping below the GCD, which causes a little window where nothing happens between casts (which feels sadge). This also means that Thermal Conditioning is essentially useless since there’s a point where reducing cast time just makes you have empty periods during each GCD.
   Aside from that, the travel time also feels too fast, meaning it desyncs from Pyro/Phoenix Flames, at least in my experience. Feels like I couldn’t fish for Pyros like you normally do with Fireball + Pyro, cause the Frostfire would just hit the target waay before fireball got to it. This breaks one of the pillars of Fire’s rotation, and feels like it shouldn’t be this way (is this maybe a bug? an oversight?).

• Overall, Frostifre feels like a big miss and I don’t think I would choose it over Sunfury (unless we get to the unfortunate situation where it’s dealing a crap load of damage more than Sunfury). I understand there are different niches; Frostfire is geared towards an uptime playstile and Sunfury creates bursty gameplay, and each dungeon/boss/situation may require different damage profiles, but strictly “feel-wise”, Frostfire just feels worse, and I would find it pretty discouraing if that ended up being “the hero talent you gotta play if you wanna do good in X content” in its current situation. Might turn me away from Fire after 15 years of maining it.

[Lucidness-thrall]

One other thing I do want to bring up in regards to the Arcane redesign is that from a 1-70 leveling experience, the tree is not good at introducing a person to how the class functions. I know that feedback is being asked for hero/spec builds with 80 in mind, but trees should also serve as somewhat of an introduction to the class through leveling.

Having Arcane Cleave/Resonance so late in the tree and so heavlily point gated is going to make a person’s introduction to Arcane very odd. Essentially, they have orb, Explosion, Blast and Missles, and barrage to clear stacks. They have so many ways to build charges, but barrage is just a button they press to clear.

I would propose having Cleave learned passively at 30 or so, and if warranted, Resonance passively at 50 (unless that is too strong, would be fine leaving that as a talent, but not at almost capstone level above orb barrage)

With how integral barrage is to almost all aspects of this redesigned arcane and the hero talents, having barrage cleave introduced earlier into the tree would make the leveling and introduction to Arcane for new players much smoother, and get the loop of “build charges, spend in aoe for barrage cleave if needed, fill with orb” which seems to be the type of gameplay they wish to go for.

I know this is not the feedback directly asked for in this post, but I do think having Arcane Cleave and Resonance locked at almost capstone level is not a good way for people to level or be introduced to the spec, and I do think either having them earlier into the tree or passively baked would make the tree flow better, and make the leveling/introduction to the spec be far more intuitive as well.

[Ravenfell-azralon (Ravenfell)]

Fire Feedback

Fire really got a lot of attention and plenty of great changes that makes playing it incredibly satisfying and I’m actually excited to play with Living Bomb again. And while most of the tree feels pretty good to play with, I think there are still things that could be better.

• Majesty of the Phoenix
  – My experience with this talent was that we actually only care about the extra damage to Flamestrike since with the influx of Phoenix Flames and Fire Blasts we get either from the restructured talent tree or the hero trees, it’s very rare that I stop to hardcast Flamestrike. On talking about the extra damage, I think that only the next 2 Flamestrikes are very limiting and I think that buffing casting Flamestrike for the next X seconds might be better.
• Scorch
  – The only problem really is that it does very little damage, even with Down in Flames. A 300% buffed Scorch is doing roughly half the damage of a Fireball.
• Improved Scorch
  – I have always disliked this talent. It was a bigger problem before since there was just so many things to keep track of, but even then this kind of upkeep talent still rubs me the wrong way and has the potential to be extra annoying with Heat Shimmer, but I don’t fault Heat Shimmer itself.
• Heat Shimmer
  – Very good talent that makes it even easier to generate more Hot Streaks. The only thing I would ask to be done about it is increase its duration to 15s since sometimes it fades before I can spend all my procs and make sure Fire Blast or Phoenix Flames don’t overcap.
• Critical Mass
  – It was sad to see this talent be nerfed by so much. I know a bit of its power was transferred towards Fire’s Ire, but Fire’s Ire has a few problems that we’ll talk about later. Still, it went from 15% to 5%, which is a big nerf but at least it only costs 1 point now.
• Fire’s Ire & Fevered Incantation
  – One of the problems is that they both cost 2 points and do feel expensive for where they are in the tree, but Fire’s Ire’s extra critical damage, according to people in the Altered Time Discord, doesn’t actually provide 5% critical strike damage and its real value is calculated in a way that makes it much lower than what it’s stated in the tooltip.
• Meteor and its related talents
  – This feedback is more specific for Frostfire Fire Mages in the form that it’s absolutely necessary for the hero tree to function due to Isothermic Core. For such a crucial and mandatory talent to make the hero tree work, it’s way too far down the tree as a capstone, essentially locking in 2 capstones already, because no one that wants to actually do damage would play without either Sun King’s Blessing or Unleashed Inferno as well.
• Hyperthermia
  – Hyperthermia + Time Anomaly make for some crazy variance in damage output depending on if you get really lucky and I feel like it should be addressed somehow.

[Taytorthot-proudmoore]

Fire feedback

Hero Talents

Starting with Sunfury. Out of all 3 of the trees this is my favorite so far. The thematics of it is great. The orbs look really cool around your character, having a pheonix join you in battle really fits the theme. And everything works together perfectly to fit the theme, and gameplay (most of the time).

The one flaw I have with Sunfury Fire right now is how it interacts with SKB. Everything about it seems to go against playing with SKB. If you’re hasted enough to get to your SKB and use it while in your original combustion, you will desummon the pheonix. As well the extra time on combustion doesn’t do a ton. And the capstone, giving you Hyperthermia after combustion just does not work well at all with SKB. To the point that if I was playing on live I would cancel aura the Hyperthermia off it it came at a bad time for me.

But, where this tree REALLY shines is with Unleashed inferno. Everything about this tree works perfectly with fire if you’re playing with UI. The extra time in combustion from Savor the Moment gives you more cdr on your next combustion. The extra fireblasts from Glorius Incandescence means you’re spending less time scorching in combustion. And then Hyperthermia after feels good as a “cooldown” period. This leads to UI fire having a lot less downtime than expected and feels fantastic. Some of the most fun i’ve had on fire mage in years.

Frostfire

The thematics of frostfire are intially a cool idea. Weaving the two together. However practically, something just feels off. With the talent changes to fire we’re casting fireball less than ever before, meaning we’re casting frostfire bolt less than ever. And the tree forces you into meteor and meteor related talents due to how much power is locked into Isothermic Core. Along with this, Excess Fire and Excess Frost leads to a lot of extra bloat in terms of tracking. There’s points where I have 6 different buttons on my hotbar lit up with some kind of proc. And while it’s cool, it feels like it goes against the stated goal with fire of “reducing the amount of tracked things”. But overall this feels like it’s a good fit for someone who wants to play the “uptime” style of SKB firemage, given that it has a lot of consistant damage unlike sunfury.

I’m unsure if it’s the dev’s intention to have it end up like this, but right now I feel like if you’re going to be playing UI due to tuning, you will be playing Sunfury all the time. And if you’re going to be playing SKB due to tuning, you will be playing Frostfire all the time, with no real option to mix them.

General fire tree changes.

Overall I like the tree changes. I feel like UI vs SKB is a solid choice of Burst damage profile or Sustained damage profile. With from the ashes and Pheonix reborn I feel like I have a ton of Pheonix Flames to use, and it leads to me casting fireball less which is good. There’s strong flamestrike points on the tree to encourge flamestrike as the aoe option. And IF and Controlled Destruction together means that ignite can be a real thing for our ST damage, and makes mastery not as dead of a stat, while not making Ignite only fire for aoe the default. Ashen Feather as well further pushes into this, giving ignite value to Pheonix flame. The LB talents all seem strong and interesting, and finally gives fire a real choice between “giga mass aoe” and cleave or ST. The only negative thing I have with the tree is Fire’s Ire and how underwhelming it is, and what’s locked behind it. Fire’s Ire seems like an increadibly weak thing to take, and having to invest 2 points into it just to get to Firefall feels bad. It makes me wonder why Firefall isn’t just under meteor. It’s still thematically weird you can get Firefall without Meteor. As well there’s a LARGE amount of things together that give increased damage to Pheonix flame, leading it it have a very large share of damage for us. This isn’t inherintly bad, but it feels weird seeing pheonix flame deal 3/4 the damage pyros are on single target. You can get single PF hits as large as 1.5 million damage right now on beta which just feels strange. Not bad but strange given that pyroblast should be the focus.

Overall despite the issues i’ve had, I’m having a ton of fun with this itteration of fire, and look forward to testing it in m+ and raid.

[Aerra-stormscale]

ARCANE MAGE-SUNFURY
This spec is hard to play in dungeons with a lot of mobs. The free arcane orbs are fun, but they easily can overpull any mobs behind what the tank is willing/capable of tanking.

[Berthoald-dalaran]

Insta fire fb (aoe)

So, first, I want to address the talent tree. Fire has a very large burden of having too many must have talents in the middle of its spec that by the time one gets to the bottom, there is maybe 3 - 4 points left. Second, why is there ignite spreading and flamestrike damage increase talents on the left side of the tree, locked behind multiple scorch talents?
Another issue I have is the lack of dps choices in the class tree. Honestly, once I was done choosing everything I wanted, I still had around 7 points left. I just stuck them wherever. That feels really, really bad. For a pure dps class, having so few dps talents in the class tree is just bad.
Second, the problem fire has had for a very long time is its extreme highs, which are good, but paired with extreme lows, which are bad. I was hoping that would be somewhat mitigated this expansion, but I am guessing wrong. Outside of combustion, the spec is just…dead, boring, gg, naptime, whatever you want to call it. Nothing to push, nothing to contribute, just spam firebolt.
Another issue with having such extremes is when you are in combustion, the provided buffer for error is absolutely zero. One misuse of a fire blast and you might as well run off the edge and hope that the next pull will be better.
The issue of extremes is only magnified by the fire hero talents, some of which (especially in the middle) are quite boring. Gaining orbs… they are fun bc you get to look like a fire aff lock, but logically, the system is quite disappointing. The phoenix is super cool, and its fire spell is cool, but dps wise its quite underwhelming and since it only arrives during combustion, the extremes issue is just magnified. Essentially, the entire hero system is useless outside of combustion.
Third, I am really sad to see Living Bomb be forced into a passive. It was one of the most satisfying spells to use in its earlier days and although it had been discredited the last few expansions, it was still the most fun to have on the action bar. Furthermore, it was one of the cornerstone spells to fire aoe before we got turned into the combust or bust version.
To conclude:

1. Moving some things around on the spec tree and baking in some of the passives so we can have some choice would go a long way.
2. Adding some dps nodes in the class tree would go a long way.
3. Attempt to find some balance between the extremes
4. Find a new direction for the fire hero talents that doesnt limit its usage around combustion.

[Poram-area-52]

I have given a lot of feedback on the Arcane talent tree, I’ll focus on hero talents available to Arcane.

Spellfire Spheres

Spellfire Sphere’s despawning on instanced combat is disruptive to the flow of how this should feel, I get this is maybe a tuning knob but it is not going to be a fun thing for anyone. People are just going to try to think of ways to get around your barriers and get the orbs in their opener. It should be the complete opposite of what it is: the orbs should respawn on raid combat end so we don’t have to farm new ones, they should survive resurrection and they should be easy to spawn and maintain. This isn’t a good place to put skill expression as it is the core of the fantasy and fun of this tree.

The same issue still persists here that I have pointed out multiple times from the announcement of this tree, Spellfire Spheres do not generate at all in AOE for Arcane. Doing dungeons right now results Arcane Surge casts with 0-1 spheres sometimes, due in large part to the random times in which combat ends and picks up throughout dungeons. This makes Sunfury feel a lot less impactful in AOE, Spellfire Spheres shouldn’t be given for free, but they shouldn’t feel impossible to generate either.

Codex of the Sunstriders

Talenting out of this is a noticeable increase in damage, for the above reasons, this is especially true in AOE. I feel like me saying is going to trigger the reaction of “let’s fix their ability to talent out of this”, but please consider “what can we do to make players want to stay talented into this?” I think simply buffing the Arcane Phoenix Spellfire Sphere consumption to be worth interacting with this mechanic, and addressing the above AOE issue with Spellfire Sphere generation would be a much more satisfying loop.

Spellfrost Teachings

This feels amazing in AOE, but single target this is just noise in my interface. This needs help to be a good feeling talent and more of a core for what it means to be a Spellslinger. I think this is almost there, but it needs more cool factor and throughput for Arcane in single target as this is the only thing fun going on right now.

Splinterstorm

20% Clearcasting proc chance just is super unreliable and frankly, it just isn’t noticeable. When I play Frost, the guaranteed Winter’s Chill on my target is something that feels great and is somewhat leverageable at times such that it’s worth even considering how Splinters work. For Arcane, I just don’t care.

Splinters

I’m still not happy with Splinter animations, they just need something to stand out better. Larger, more whimsical pathing, a more distinct color, something. The theme on Spellslinger was weak, the gameplay is going in the right direction with Orbs, but the animations need to carry weight here and help make it good. They also have a sound effect that is just obnoxious right now.

Bugs

A couple of side notes about bugs that are preventing proper testing and experimentation:

• Aether Attunement does not stop working when no longer talented.
• Aether Attunement occasionally chain procs when it shouldn’t (I think Time Loop is still tied to it instead of the new Arcane Debilitation talent).
• Arcane Barrage, Arcane Missiles, Supernova, Shifting Power do not currently proc Clearcasting.

[Vlsal-tichondrius]

Additional Frostfire feedback after further testing.

General:

• I agree with other posters that it can be quite hard to track all the procs of this spec, especially for Frost, where keybind highlights for Excess Fire and Excess Frost overlap with Fingers of Frost and Brain Freeze.
  Suggestion: Remove keybind highlights for Excess Fire and Excess Frost and instead add UI elements that indicate that you got Excess Fire / Excess Frost / Frostfire Empowerment proc. They could be similar to new Hyperthermia UI element - additional and larger arc to the left / right / above typical proc arcs. For example, Excess Fire could be a larger orange arc to the left of character (distinct enough from Hyperthermia to not confuse them), Excess Frost could be a larger blue arc to the right of character and Frostfire Empowerment could use old Frostfire Bolt Brain Freeze UI element - arc consisting of ice and fire above your character.
• It was a pleasant discovery that Frostfire Empowerment can stack, so even if you activate Combustion / Icy Veins and get a following RNG proc you can use both. However, tooltip for stacked Frostfire Empowerment acts weird - it states that proc does 200% of damage to enemies nearby, tooltip for Frostfire Empowerment in hero tree states about 80% of damage and actual damage is 100% of damage. Tooltips and effects should be brought in line to prevent confusion.

Frost Mage POV:

• Ice Form PVP talent does not grant Frostfire Empowerment and it should since it replaces Icy Veins.
• Excess Fire Living Bomb does spread to enemies nearby, but it is hard to notice as it does not mark secondary targets with Living Bomb UI effect. Maybe it should, but if that would lead to too much icons on screen can be left as is.

Fire Mage POV:

• Frostfire Bolt does less base damage than Fireball. It has faster cast time, but total dps is still lower. Should be addressed, since Frostfire Bolt is supposed to upgrade Fireball.
• Elemental Affinity affects both Frost and Fire spells when it is supposed to affect only Frost ones. It also does not affect Mass Barrier, which is a Frost spell with CD lower than 4 minutes.
• Excess Fire Living Bomb is not affected by Convection’s reapplication effect. It likely should be.
• Frostfire Bolt is affected by Flame Accelerant, but does not consume it.