Feedback: Mages

In Development The War Within Beta Test
60

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.
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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.

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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.

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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.
1 Like
64

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.
13 Likes
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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.
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Sunfury Arcane Feedback

Before giving criticism, I would like to say what I like about Sunfury so far.

First of all, the theme and visuals are great, in particular the Phoenix. It appears to be smart enough to do what I want it to do without me having to control it directly. I am currently playing Elemental Shaman in Cataclysm Classic so I am scarred from having my 10-minute cooldown Fire Elemental AFK outside of melee range of Sinestra.

Arcane Soul and Glorious Incandescence provide enough to make Sunfury feel like you are playing something more than just base Arcane. My impression before playing with it was that the Arcane Charge generation from the meteors would be insignificant, but it provides some nice interactions with Nether Precision, Arcane Harmony, and the new 4-set. I cannot say the same for the Arcane Orb cooldown reduction, but I will return to that.

Codex of the Sunstriders: For how much I enjoy the Phoenix, it is currently not a good deal to trade a Spellfire Sphere for an “exceptional spell”. It is currently allowed to untalent Hero talents, and it is optimal to just untalent Codex of the Sunstriders such that the mage gets to keep the 10% damage increase after fully stacking the Spellfire Spheres with Rondurmancy. A consequence of this is that Ignite the Future is currently worthless. But even if we are forced to talent into Codex of the Sunstriders Ignite the Future is still bad because exceptional spells are not strong enough.

I do not see the point of Ignite the Future at all and would prefer if Rondurmancy is the only choice, as it has synergy with other Hero talents like Savor the Moment and Memory of Al’ar (Arcane Soul). Therefore, I think Ignite the Future should just be removed.

It is possible to waste the Spellfire Sphere generated by Codex of the Sunstriders.

  • Scenario 1: You are at 5 stacks of Spellfire Spheres. After casting Arcane Surge the spheres remain at 5 stacks, the Phoenix consumes 5 Spellfire Spheres, and you are left with 0 Spellfire Spheres.
  • Scenario 2: You are at 4 stacks of Spellfire Spheres. After casting Arcane Surge the spheres go to 5 stacks, the Phoenix consumes 4 Spellfire Spheres, and you are left with 1 Spellfire Sphere.

Given how it has already been established that exceptional spells are weak, it is optimal to not max out the Spellfire Spheres before casting Arcane Surge. This is completely unintuitive.

Converting Spellfire Spheres into exceptional spells should feel worthwhile to happen such that talenting into Codex of the Sunstriders is correct. The exceptional spells can be buffed, sure, but I would prefer a different solution that puts more power into the mage directly during cooldowns. For example:

  • Spellfire Spheres increases your damage by 1%. Stacks up to 3/5 times.
  • When the Arcane Phoenix consumes a Spellfire Sphere, it gives the mage a buff that increases damage by 2% for X seconds, stacks up to 3/5 times.

Mana Addiction: Personally, 3% haste per Clearcasting does not feel noticeable at all. When compared to Hot Streak for Sunfury Fire, Clearcasting does not occur enough rotationally. I think that Mana Addiction can easily be buffed to 4% or 5% for Arcane.

Glorious Incandescence: When properly used, this proc feels pretty good and rewarding both in single target and AoE. However, it is also easy to completely waste the proc unless you save Arcane Orb for each time it procs.

The problem is that Glorious Incandescence lasts for 12 seconds but Arcane Orb has a cooldown of 20 seconds. If you use Arcane Orb for any reason other than to proc Glorious Incandescence, you are likely to waste it. This happens most noticeably on pull where even on single target you use Arcane Orb to quickly get to max Arcane Charges. Shortly afterward, you press Arcane Surge, which generates a Spellfire Sphere through Codex of the Sunstriders, which quickly turns into Glorious Incandescence. However, Arcane Orb is still on cooldown from getting to max Arcane Charges. This feels awful.

As a consequence of this interaction, it also means that the cooldown reduction granted by Glorious Incandescence to Arcane Orb is worthless. The reason for this is that if you choose to leverage the cooldown reduction by casting Arcane Orb, you are likely to then waste the next Glorious Incandescence. This feels awful.

There are several ways this can be fixed:

  • Glorious Incandescence makes Arcane Orb stack up to two.
  • Glorious Incandescence/Burden of Power resets the cooldown of Arcane Orb when it procs.
  • The duration of Glorious Incandescence is made indefinite.
  • Glorious Incandescence allows for Arcane Orb to be used regardless of cooldown.

Lastly, it would be nice if Glorious Incandescence would also empower Arcane Orb itself to be more exciting to cast, in particular on single target. Arcane Orb is not a spell that is used rotationally against a single target, so it feels wasteful to spend a global cooldown during Surge to cast a spell that does not deal a whole lot of damage. For example, Glorious Incandescence could instease the damage of the Arcane Orb by X%, or generate a stack of Clearcasting.

Unsorted comments:

  • Aether Attunement is currently not properly increasing the damage Arcane Missiles deals against the primary target by 100%.
  • I would like if Arcane Surge deals way more damage relative to how much mana it spent to cast.
  • Non-rotational spells for Arcane, such as Fire Blast and Counterspell, can proc Clearcasting. Is this intentional?
9 Likes
67

Frost Mage Feedback

I’m not going to assign grades and such because I only play this spec recreationally. Most of this feedback is clunkiness that me and my friends noticed while testing out Frost mage.

:snowflake: Frost Spec Tree Feedback :snowflake:

Splintering Ray
  • Current: Ray of Frost deals 25% of its damage to 5 nearby enemies.
  • Suggested Change: Ray of Frost deals 100% of its damage to nearby enemies, reduced beyond 5 targets.
  • Feedback: As you well know, Splintering Ray is currently not used in M+, which I’ve been told is simply due to lack of damage. Comparing Ray of Frost to spells like Hammer of Light (Templar Ret Pally; 30 sec cd) and Demolish (Collosus Arms War; 45 sec cd), these spells do massive damage in an AoE (on the same order as Ray of Frost in my testing), but this cleaves 100% of their damage (reduced on targets >8 for Demolish and hard cap of 5 targets for Hammer of Light). I think you could justify buffing Splintering Ray in AoE to do the same thing given Ray of Frost’s cooldown is ~48 seconds (w/ Shifting Power), which might bring some life into this talent.

:snowflake: :fire: Frostfire Frost Tree Feedback :fire: :snowflake:

Glacial Spike and Frostfire Empowerment
  • Glacial Spike (Current): Conjures a massive spike of ice, and merges your current Icicles into it. It impales your target, dealing (450.065% of Spell power) damage plus all of the damage stored in your Icicles, and freezes the target in place for 4 sec. Damage may interrupt the freeze effect.
  • Feedback: This talent currently doesn’t seem to fit with either the Frostfire mage or the Spellslinger mage. I think thematically it would fit best with Frostfire mage, but there aren’t really a ton of talents that support it I guess maybe the Frostfire Mastery talent because it increases Mastery by 8%?. I’m going to suggest something crazy here for Frostfire Empowerment, let’s see what you think of it:
  • Frostfire Empowerment (Current): Your Frost and Fire spells have a chance to activate Frostfire Empowerment, causing your next Frostfire Bolt to be instant cast, deal 100% increased damage, explode for 80% of its damage to nearby enemies, and grant you maximum benefit of Frostfire Mastery and refresh its duration. (proc rate of 1.2 + Haste ppm)
  • Suggested Change: Your Frost and Fire spells have a chance to activate Frostfire Empowerment, causing your next Glacial Spike to be instant cast, deal 50% increased damage, explode for 40% of its damage to nearby enemies, and grant you maximum benefit of Frostfire Mastery and refresh its duration. (proc rate of 1.2 + Haste ppm)
  • Feedback: My thought process here is simple: how can we bring back the S3 DF tier set (which is currently not in the tree and a lot of people loved) without disrupting the rotation of the Frostfire build? Frostfire Empowerment happens rarely enough (on Icy Vein cast and 1.2 + Haste ppm) that it could allow occasional uses of Glacial Spikes that cleave and grant a similar feel that the Season 3 tier set did in DF, although less frequently (thus why it should cleave for more than 15% damage like in that tier set). I also think it would solidify Glacial Spike into the Frostfire Mage build, since it currently doesn’t fit anywhere. In addition, you could also think about adding some cool visuals down the line where Glacial Spike empowered by this is wreathed in flames or something, which I’m sure would look cool.

:sewing_needle: Spellslinger Frost Tree Feedback :sewing_needle:

Splintering Sorcery (Frost Splinters)
  • Current: When you consume Winter’s Chill conjure a Frost Splinter that fires at your target.
  • Suggested Change: When you consume Winter’s Chill or Fingers of Frost, conjure a Frost Splinter that fires at your target.
  • Feedback: I feel like this is an oversight. Fingers of Frost is technically a Winter’s Chill proc, it just only applies to Ice Lance. Furthermore, you only spawn 1 Splinter when you consume it. I think you could justify making FoF also give Splinters here since this build so clearly wants to focus on the Ice Lance over the Glacial Spike build in theme. If this omission was intended, then I strongly suggest making the above change, even if you have to nerf the damage of the splinters, the proc rate of Spellfrost Teachings and the %proc rate of Winter’s chill on Splinterstorm. This doesn’t feel correct at all, like it makes me not want to use Fingers of Frost Ice Lances without Winter’s Chill (which is a giant waste of a FoF proc)
Splintering Orb and Splintering Ray
  • Current: Enemies damaged by your Frozen Orb conjure a Frost Splinter up to 4. Frozen Orb damage is increased by 10%.
  • Suggested Change: Enemies damaged by your Frozen Orb conjure a Frost Splinter up to 4. Frozen Orb damage is increased by 10%. Enemies hit by Ray of Frost generate 2 Splinters over it’s duration per target hit (i.e. Splintering Ray).
  • Feedback: I’m so surprised by this: you have a talent in Frost’s Spec tree called “Splintering Ray” but you didn’t include some kind of synergy with a tree based around Splinters? The purpose of this change is to grant a significant amount of synergy between Ray of Frost/Splintering Ray and Spellslinger, and provide an even bigger reason for Frost Mages to use Ray of Frost in AoE; while also provide some funnel with the Splinterstorm you would get from this ability.
1 Like
68

I think the entire premise of losing a SP modifier when entering cooldowns is a little counter intuitive for Fire and Arcane. I would prefer to see the Phoenix increase the potency of all orbs when summoned, and then them fade as he does. The phoenix could retain the same exceptional spell mechanics.

My biggest issue with the Spheres is the fact that they regenerate insanely slowly out of combat, and that they are cleared upon engaging a raid boss. This means that our cooldown window on pull will likely be the weakest of any during the fight, and we will suffer from any group wipe in mythic plus.

Side note on that- they are also cleared when changing talents, even when the talents have no effect on Spheres’. This makes testing quite tedious.

1 Like
69

Even when running Charged Orb, the duration on Glorious Incandescence can be very restrictive and a bit annoying to play around.

One other thing to note, if Glorious Incandescence were made longer (even if it wasn’t indefinite) the buff would potentially overwrite in an optimal rotation, specifically when coming out of surge with arcane soul.

70

You are likely talented in to flame accelerant. Right now frostfire bolt benefits from it without consuming it. This leads to it having a near perpetual 40% reduced cast time lol. A beta-ism.

2 Likes
71

Some very unintuitive and sometimes backwards interactions for fire mage:

Sunfury Single Target
Phoenix comes out when you press combustion → play unleashed inferno for lower combustion CD
UI buffs phoenix flames, does not buff liing bomb → play Phoenix Flames talents, ignore living bomb if you can
Sunfury rewards you for generating a lot of orbs by consuming hot streak (pure damage, bird’s damage, post-combust hyperthermia duration, combust duration) → Consume as many hot streaks as possible
Phoenix Reborn does VERY high damage → aim to spend them inside combustion to buff their damage even more
= Conflict: Better to cast phoenix reborn in combust, or fireblast+pyro if available?
Ignite the future asks for latter, unleashed inferno asks for former. This results in the priority having to be determined by sims instead of thinking about the build, and that’s bad.

Sunfury AOE
Living bomb is not buffed by UI, we get significantly fewer instances compared to frostfire, maybe ignore it if we can. Well, we can’t but that’s fine.
We can aim to do a lot of Phoenix Reborn and Flamestrike damage in AOE.
Phoenix reborn only stacks up from direct damage. From the ashes CD only reduces from direct damage.
Conflict: better to press flamestrike, or avoid it in favor of phoenix reborn and pyroblast ignite playstile? Ambiguous. Needs to be simmed

Frostfire Single Target
INSANE damage from frostfire empowerment. Incentivizes to play living bomb → Play sun king’s blessing to trigger living bomb more often.
Sun king’s blessing rewards you for consuming a lot of hot streaks, especially inside the actual combustion window → press pyroblast
Frostfire empowerment does high damage (and cleaves). Excess frost and fire incentivize you to press phoenix flames and fire blasts → Press instant frostfire bolt
Conflict: do I press pyroblast, or frostfire bolt and phoenix flames?

Frostfire AOE
INSANE damage from living bombs and comet storms. This comes from two sources:

  • Meteor → spec into meteor, deep impact, maybe even firefall
  • Frostfire Empowerment → make sure to fire blast after instant frostfire bolts, and maybe even phoenix flames to trigger ice nova.
    Living bomb already does a lot of damage. Let’s take Mark of the Firelord to buff its matery. This also buffs flamestrike → press flamestrike
    Firefall does not stack up from flamestrike → don’t press flamestrike. Press pyro.
    Conflict: do I keep pressing flamestrike for more damage, or pyroblast to trigger more meteors and comet storms?
    Again, must be simmed. It’s not clear.

In both cases
Absolutely flooded with fire blasts, phoenix flames, and even Heat Shimmer if you play it. This makes it so the skill in fire mage is less about cleverly managing resources in order to do high damage and align it with high damage windows etc.
Instead, this makes it so you have to learn a priority of damage abilities under different circumstances. Based on some of the interactions I pointed out above, and much more than that still, this priority is almost impossible to discover without a lot of trial-and-error simming of APLs that most players cannot do. You will not be able to learn to play fire very well without the help of external resources. This I’m sure is counter to what you guys ideally want.

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Got the opportunity to finish WAs for all of frost and fire to give some more feedback. Sunfury and spellslinger both feel great to play w/, but frostfire is definitely by far the weakest link.

  1. Frostfire overall feels severely undertuned for frost and fire getting significantly less damage when compared to sunfury and spellslinger. This could be a good oppertunity to hopefully add to the tree since this hero talent is definitely NOT fulfilling the fantasy with me still feeling like a frost or fire mage. Perhaps adding something like chance to cast blizzard at target when casting pyroblast or make us a fire orb for frost or your ice lances can occasionally turn into PF (with faster travel speed) that apply living bomb. Something is needed since the fantasy is just not there.

  2. The free frostfire procs + PF CDR and Brain freeze procs make both GS and SKB buils feel great to play with! However overall damage for frostfire is severely undertuned when compared to the alternatives in ST.
    Currently DPS seems to be the following:
    Frost: Spellslinger no-GS>Spellslinger-GS* >>>>frostfire-GS>frostfire-no GS
    Fire: Sunfury UI>Sunfury SKB>>>>Frostfire SKB>Frostfire UI

So definitely need overall damage buffs for frostfire to not only compete, but I feel that that Frostfire SKB and Frostfire GS should be the highest DPS considering they are the hardest to play. (Not saying other choices should not be competitive just saying that these should be the top if they are to be even remotely viable)

*(this may be due to bugs, but now we get so many procs we munch like crazy to cast GS literally no time during IV)

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Arcane Feedback

Arcane got a long awaited major rework with The War Withing but unfortunately with it also came a few problems, as well as returning ones. The biggest feeling that I get when trying to put an Arcane build together is that the tree is incomplete or that I’m constantly a few talent points short of building something that actually feels satisfying to play.

Utility versus throughput, a recurring problem with the Arcane tree

Arcane has had problems with throughput versus utility ever since the return of talent trees, which the 10.1.5 rework didn’t properly address. Now in The War Within, despite deleting a few such talents like Foresight that was never realistically picked, it has potentially made this problem even worse.

  • Slipstream
    – Our biggest quality of life and utility/movement talent is entirely optional, meaning it’s hard to pick up due to competing with throughput talents in a tree that makes us feel like we are already talent starved. Playing without Slipstream is an absolutely miserable experience, so I really don’t want this to be the case. Please either make it baseline or mandatory through pathing.
  • Presence of Mind / Wizened Wit
    – Wizened Wit is a throughput talent that even after getting nerfed by 50%, still eclipses Presence of Mind that was primarily used for utility/movement even though it could be used for a small DPS gain by squeezing in an additional Arcane Blast inside a Touch of the Magi Window. Presence of Mind is realistically never going to be taken when it competes in a choice node with Wizened Wit.
  • Charged Orb
    – Technically this is a DPS talent, but it provides a huge quality of life improvement with the management of the Arcane Orb cooldown and now way more than ever with so much focus on Arcane Orb from both hero trees available to Arcane. Not picking up this talent simply doesn’t feel good from a basic gameplay perspective, but at the same time it doesn’t provide as much throughput as other options, making it hard to justify spending our very limited talent points on it.
  • Chronoshift
    – This has always been very hard to justify taking and has really felt like some sort of premium investment because of the throughput I’d be sacrificing for picking it, with the only saving grace being that it really is just niche utility compared to the other options.

Touch of the Magi

I liked Touch of the Magi better when it had a shorter duration but stored more damage to compensate. Even if we don’t return to 8s Touch windows, I’d be fine with just 10s instead and upping the damage from 25% to however much makes sense by shaving 2s off its total duration.

Arcane Barrage, Resonance & Arcing Cleave

Arcane Barrage cleaving not being baseline already doesn’t feel very good, but having Arcing Cleave so far down the tree by the 3rd gate just feels beyond terrible. It also doesn’t make any sense that we have access to Resonance that increases barrage damage per target hit before the talent that allows it to hit more targets.

You guys didn’t want Fire to have to actively choose between getting its basic AoE functionality in the talent tree by making both Flamestrike and Fuel the Fire baseline, so why go the opposite direction with Arcane? At least Arcing Cleave should have been made baseline for consistency, or just combine both Arcing Cleave and Resonance and make it available a lot earlier.

Siphon Storm

This talent has been mandatory the entire expansion and is probably gonna continue that way in The War Within as well and will continue to limit build diversity. Reducing the duration from 30s to 20s didn’t do much to impact its viability. In addition to that, I’m just really not a fan of having to cast Evocation at full mana because 14% extra Intellect for our entire burst window is way too valuable to pass up. I’d rather get rid of this kind of cooldown stacking and just cram more damage into Arcane Surge itself.

13 Likes
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Here is some Sunfury feedback from Fire Mage POV.

Overall, spec’s theme and design are good - you generate Spellfire Spheres outside of combat / during Combustion on CD and spend them in Combustion to make Phoenix cast big hit spells. Phoenix AI was definitely improved - now it not only attacks the same enemy you do, but it even attacks your current target if you don’t / can’t do anything (important for situations when you are crowd controlled). However, spec still has issues, some of which can be addressed by numbers tuning and some require changing how certain talents work or via adding more choices. Here is feedback about each individual Sunfury talent for better visibility with suggestions how they could be improved or their issues addressed.

Spellfire Spheres - look good, provide decent effect, but their out of combat generation is too slow. Currently they generate around every 50 seconds out of combat, which is often not enough to generate them between pulls even for base 3 spheres, let alone 5 spheres with Rondurmancy.
Suggestion: Hasten their out of combat generation and additionally hasten if Rondurmancy is taken. Generating a sphere outrside of combat every 30 seconds without Rondurmancy and every 20 seconds with Rondurmancy seems fitting - it is in line with base cooldowns of both Combustion and Arcane Surge and would allow to effectively utilize them immediately instead of holding your major CD till you stack spheres to the maximum, which can be bad for both Arcane and Fire.

Mana Addiction - good and valuable effect, no suggestions here.

Arcane Phoenix - after fixes to his AI is quite good. There is an issue with its exceptional spells often not being worth the value of Spellfire Spheres they consume, but more about that in the corresponding talent feedback.

Burden of Power - is currently undertuned. Here is simple math - you buff every 7th Pyroblast by 30% (4.3% average increase) or every 7th Flamestrike by 60% (8.6% average increase). For a hero talent that value is low and should be boosted.

Merely a Setback - very niche and a bit undertuned defensive node, since you not always need Avoidance, especially in PVP and 5% Leech with limited uptime is not much either, since some specs get 5% Leech constantly from their regular talents. Should be buffed and even then would remain niche, so it could use a choice node alternative like both other Mage hero specs that have a choice node for their “defensive hero talent”.
Suggestion: Buff its Avoidance / Leech values and make it a choice node with other defensive talent. For example that could be Cauterizing Blink from Legion artifact traits - it is generally useful and fits the Arcane + Fire hero tree since Blink / Shimmer is an Arcane spell and cauterizing is a Fire effect.

Lessons in Debilitation vs Gravity Lapse - first option is decent, since it provides additional passive disruption and purge effects, but second one after the change from stun to root is bad. Currently hero talent Gravity Lapse is worse than general tree talent Ice Nova - Gravity Lapse has less target count that Ice Nova, does less damage than Ice Nova in some cases, its delayed damage breaks breakable crowd control effects that you could try to apply, it has longer CD than Ice Nova, its CD is not affected by Time Manipulation while Ice Nova’s is and on top of that it locks you out of Dragon’s Breath. Even if most of these issues were addressed, it is yet another root that Mages already have plenty of and is simply not needed.
Suggestion: Revert it to a stun, which is much more fitting for both a hero talent (like Storm Bolts which is also an AoE stun hero talent for Mountain Thanes) and a talent that upgrades existing CC / disruption effect (Supernova). If needed for balance, reduce its target count back to 3 and / or increase its base cooldown to compensate.

Glorious Incandescence - decent effect with good visuals, no suggestions here.

Savor the Moment vs Sunfury Execution - former talent is quite good and synergizes with both Arcane Phoenix and Memory of Al’Ar, but latter is not impactful enough for Fire. 5% increased execute threshold for Scorch is not enough to justify refusing all the benefits and synergies of Savor the Moment and Sunfury Execution should be boosted. Increasing threshold even more can be dangerous as it can become too strong against some bosses, so instead Sunfury Execution could in addition to current effect increase Scorch execute damage by X% like Arcane version does.

Codex of the Sunstriders - currently it can be more beneficial to not take this talent at all, since damage boost from Spellfire Spheres outweights special spells casted by the Phoenix. Like mentioned by other posters, it is also weird design for burst-oriented specs like Fire and Arcane to lose personal damage during their major CDs which are their most important period. That could be addressed.
Suggestion: Buff exceptional spells for Phoenix and make it preserve damage bonus from Spellfire Spheres on Mage for several seconds after they are consumed, reducing the amount of his / her personal damage lost during major CDs.

Rondurmancy vs Ignite the Future - it seems like a choice between bigger damage bonus from Spellfire Spheres and more exceptional spells cast by the Phoenix, which is decent. However, since Spellfire Sphere generation is so slow out of combat and kinda slow even in combat especially for Arcane, Rondurmancy loses value and often is not competitive enough. That could be addressed.
Suggestion: Make Rondurmancy reduce period to generate Spellfire Spheres outside of combat (like suggested above) and maybe also reduce amount of Hot Streaks / Clearcasting stacks cosumed to generate a sphere in combat by 1. That could make it much more competitive.

Memory of Al’Ar - good effect both during major CD and post major CD, no suggestions here.

2 Likes
76

This, Blizzard, PLEASE. Remove Siphon Storm, or it will hamstring all build choice.

Arcane barrage needs to cleave and do increasing damage by target count baseline, and its damage needs to be unquestionably tuned so it’s always worth to cast over spamming arcane barrage.

In exchange, since the problem is how slow it is to build arcane charges, make arcane barrage’s cast like 1-1.5 second until the 4th charge, or implement an early talent that doubles the arcane charge gain.

Make arcane orb do more damage if it hits a single target. Don’t force us into a 2 button rotation in ST, please.

Baseline Slipstream and PoM.

3 Likes
77

Well… I didn’t see anyone mentioning it, so i will mention: Sunfury Phoenix does not follow you, so if you are dps’ing in movement, around 20-25y it stops working and just stand there doing no damage.

And if you LOS the bird, it stops doing damage also.

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A lot well said here. The current talent tree feels like we have more we would want to track with WA to line up burn windows and so much investment to get to mandatory nodes.

My time on beta so far has been not super fun on arcane because of these weird talent choices. Even the basic intro quest felt like a slog without arcing cleave, but I was trying to test out other nodes and you just can’t

2 Likes
79

I will speak mostly on thematics here for frostfire frost. Im sure my build was flawed but thats fine on beta.

Killing trash packs feels fun, dropping comet/meteors +orb, doing it again With a coc reset. Doing it a third time since snap resets coc if I really want to. Shifting when I have nothing to start over. Ffb procs reasonably enough and it even stacks so procs cant be wasted.

In st, I dont have the cooldown reduction or reset options anymore So im feeling im just a frost mage again. I was thinking what if I had a reason to use fire blast again. My comet isnt coming off cd as frequently, both excess procs are less effective here. All I really get is ffb.

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Is living bomb supposed to apply ignite?

Ignite tooltip does not list living bomb, and based on testing looks like indeed it doesn’t apply ignite at all, but Mark of the Fire Lord implies that it does.
The talent says 100% increased effectiveness, but even when picking it, it doesn’t apply ignite at all.

Also, Ashen Feather says Phoenix Flames applies ignite at 100% effectiveness. Is it meant to be 100% increased?