Feedback: Mages

In Development The War Within Beta Test
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Overall Spellslinger Frost Gameplay Feelings/Issues/Discussions

Gameplay Overview:

Spellslinger Frost plays a lot like retail version of Frost but artificially injected with a lot of Frozen Orb cast via Spellfrost teaching. As a consequence, this also floods us with a lot more Finger of Frost procs via the Freezing Wind talent. Initial impression pointing toward that increased FoF procs being of low consequence due to FoF munching is already very much present in retail Frost, although this does seem to be mechanically unsound as we should not be encouraged to munch any spec procs.
In addition, I also tested an alternate version of Spellslinger Frost without GS, and it seems to be about on-par on dummy testing. Gameplay flows nicely between Orb and Ice Lance to use up FoF or WC stack during CD, and when not in CD, defaults back to Frostbolt>Flurry>IL IL while waiting for Orb. I can see this rotation being the build that takes advantage of the new Tier set effect the most.

On the AoE side, I tested out retail Frost rotation vs Fractured Frost/Cold Front (aka Deathborne) rotations. Despite initial impression that Deathborne style works better with Frostfire, I had mild success with DB Spellslinger. Out of the several rotations for DB frost that I experimented with, I had the highest output by spamming Frostbolt between Orb resets. While still spammy, watching Orb resets did make it seem less degenerate, while outside of CD we default back to retail Frost AoE. One interesting observation here is that the Frostbolt spam does actively consume the WC put up by Splinterstorm, and continues the feedback loop that generates more Splinters, which leads to more Orbs and WC via Splinterstorm.

Regarding retail Frost AoE as a Spellslinger, the frequent Orb reset did have me question a little bit about the value of Blizzard/Orb CDR interaction during IV, although it seems to maintain its value outside of IV window.

All Things About Splinters

As many have mentioned about Spellslinger, Splinter visual effects are a big part of this Hero class. Having spent at least several hours in total with Spellslinger, the Splinters are feeling not too bad as a Frost mage. Although they are still very visually similar to icicles, they do differ in the way they launch at enemies in that Splinters wobbles along the path more like Arcane Missiles does (although I hear Arcane mages might have issues with that). I will also note that Splinter stays at the location when they are created, and doesn’t follow the Mage when my character moves, which is visually kind of cool when you happen to move and create a lot of Splinters at the same time, and makes a neat little line of Splinters.

I do think the location of Splinters relative to the mage could use improvement to reduce crowding. This is especially prominent when playing with a GS build where Icicles also hang above the mage for a significant amount of time.

Also, as others have reported, some abilities that generate Splinters shoots them wildly, and as far as I can tell, does not care whether the target is in combat or not. This could create issue in group content, or in any content with high mob density.

Splinterstorm

After playing with it first hand, the Splinterstorm is not as jarring as I imagine it’d be. During IV cooldown, we get constant Splinterstorms, so the WC is more like a passive effect; outside of CD, we have a lot more time to react to Splinterstorm so it isn’t as mentally tasking to check a Splinter tracker WA once in a while.

There is potentially an issue with Splinterstorm where you can generate Splinters, and not trigger Splinterstorm by not selecting a target. For example, popping Icy Veins and Frozen Orb without selecting a target will shoots Splinters out, but will not trigger a Splinterstorm until a target is selected. A slightly related issue is that perhaps there is an unintended opportunity to optimize by immediately tabbing to a new target keep triggering Splinterstorm on targets without WC to increase output in an AoE situation.

Spellfrost Teaching

As a straight 3% chance per Splinters, I have observed both extremes of the reset chance, where Orb immediately resets upon launching, and what seems by comparison, dry spells, where 20 seconds pass without a second Orb in Icy Veins. Having instant resets where one can miss an Orb without the opportunity to cast feels bad, so does having extremely below average number of Orb during CD. I think the talent could use some mechanic to rein in the extremes a bit. Typically this was done with ICD for the high extreme, and some kind of bad luck protection for the low extreme, but maybe there are other creative solutions that can achieve similar effects.

Time Anomaly Interactions

Due to Augury Abound, Time Anomaly proccing Icy Veins also provides a burst of Splinter generation. This may or may not leading to holding Orb or Flurry for an Icy Veins proc, depending on how it maths out. I think some other mage specs also has this issue where TA procs specs cooldown like Combustion and granting effects that only happens in Combustion.

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92

It’s dumb that arcane missiles require clear casting in beta. It ruins my rotation.

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If you were casting Arcane Missiles outside of Clearcasting procs on live, you were losing DPS. Returning Arcane Missiles to being used only during CC only was a great decision that makes it easy to balance Arcane Missile versus Arcane Blast damage, whereas Missiles were only used and immediately clipped just to enable Nether Precision on live.

Nether Tempest was only used to allow for more Arcane Echo procs during Touch of the Magi. It wasn’t even worth its GCD it outside of cooldowns.

Picking Supernova was also a DPS loss because that talent point was worth more being spent elsewhere, but Supernova was just moved to the class tree, although arguably it’s not in the best place it could be and should be a choice with Blast Wave instead of Dragon’s Breath.

The Arcane tree does have problems, but these aren’t them.

9 Likes
94

That could be cool.

What do you think about the idea of also having Orb Barrage talent consume Clearcast (if available) to guarantee 1 Orb proc from Barrage? You would do the following in ST:

Have CC proc in ST → Arcane Barrage → (proc guaranteed from above change and this orb generates 4 arcane charges) → Arcane Blast (both NPs used, the first in that initial barrage that spawned the orb and the second in the Arcane Blast).

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How does it do that? You use Missiles more actively on Beta right now than you do on Retail even with the Clearcasting requirement, lol.

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97

Here is feedback about Fire Mage in general in The War Within.

Spec feels much better - tree now provides a lot of choices, resource flow is much smoother especially with Spontaneous Combustion that allows you to freely spend Fire Blast / Phoenix Flames charges before Combustion, Living Bomb can do meaningful damage and has synergies with other tools via Sparking Cinders and overall Fire spec feels significally improved.

However, there are still issues with the spec both in PVE and PVP and unaddressed bugs. They will be mentioned below.

Fire Mage PVE issues

  1. Scorch and its upgrade talents issues
    Scorch was improved and now even has its own good instant proc, but base spell remains undertuned. Its role in earlier expansions was spammable cast on the move to use when mobility is needed but you don’t have instant spells and currently its base damage in PVE is so low than it can be better to use spammable AoE spell Arcane Explosion for such cases, which is just wrong. Even though Scorch can have usages in execute phases and with its proc, baseline spell should be useful too and not require upgrade talents to get usage outside of Combustion.
    Suggestion: Buff its base damage and if needed reduce the PVP modifier and / or Down in Flames modifier to compensate. The goal should be to have Scorch still be a dps loss to Fireball (to justify usage of latter at all), but good enough for the niche it is supposed to occupy.
    Second issue with Scorch is related to its upgrade talents - combination of Improved Scorch and Heat Shimmer can create a situation where you get a RNG based damage increase and it is optimal to play, which is not good, since it can make your performance based on luck and not on your own actions and adds another maintenance buff to track (now even outside of execute phase) when rework goal was to reduce their amount. As such, maybe Improved Scorch should be removed or at least do not require 2 stacks.
  1. Blazing Barrier
    Blazing Barrier is the weakest of all 3 Mage spec shields by a large margin and after buffs to both Ice Barrier (more absorb value) and Prismatic Barrier (Improved Prismatic Barrier baseline) the gap is even larger. Some people might think that Fire having Cauterize is enough to justify that, but it is not - Frost has Cold Snap as analogue to Cauterize and much better barrier and Blazing Barrier being weak significally reduces value of both Imbued Warding and Meltdown, making them inferior to talents like Reactive Barrier which can provide both bigger increase value and bigger uptime of more valuable secondary effect. That could be addressed.
    Suggestion: Buff Blazing Barrier’s backlash damage at least to the level of upgraded Lightning Shield / Blistering Scales (other effects that trigger melee attack backlash) to make it meaningful enough and add an additional effect like reducing physical damage taken while active like it did in Legion. Such addition would make it in line with shields of 2 other specs that already have 2 additional benefits each (Ice Barrier has biggest absorb value and passively snares and Prismatic Barrier reduces magic damage taken and duration of harmful magic effects) and still have its own niche. Additionally please remove its PVP nerf modifier - it was caused by a talent Blazing Soul that is no longer present in the game, so the nerf is no longer justified.
  1. Undertuned / underused / too niche / overpriced talents
    Reworked Fire tree still has several talents that are too weak / too niche / too expensive and could use work. These involve:
    Inflame - 10% boost to Ignite damage that affects only Hot Streak boosted spells is very low, especially compared to talents like Intensifying Flame and Master of Flame, which both provide bigger benefit and more frequently. Consider boosting its value.
    Alexstrasza’s Fury - after latest changes it is not competitive much, since Dragon’s Breath both is available much less frequently than in earlier expansions (45 seconds base CD), is used for disruption purposes mainly and on top of that competes with Supernova, so might even not be taken. This talent could use some boost.
    Ashen Feather - its efect is good, but can be easily wasted by any unsuspected or RNG add spawns. It could be a bit modified to address that and for better scaling.
    Suggestion: Make it have mechanic of removed Focused Fury, where Phoenix Flames would deal increased direct and Ignite damage the less targets it hits, up to 50% increased direct and 100% increased Ignite damage if hitting only 1 target. That would both improve its scalabitiy and make its bonus much less wasted in situations like mentioned above.
    Controlled Destruction - after latest nerfs this talent can be too undertuned now, especially in shorter fights where it could even not be stacked to full.
    Suggestion: Reduce number of its stacks and increase stack value to compensate. That would allow to get good enough value from it even if fight is not very long or has invulnerability periods.
    Improved Combustion vs Spontaneous Combustion - them being a choice node is not good, since it forces Fire Mages to pick between massive QoL feature of Spontaneous Combustion in form of possibility to freely use Fire Blast / Phoenix Flames and throughput, especially for Sunfury Fire Mages. A talent point cost for a QoL feature is already enough of a price and should not punish you with additional potential throughput lost.
    Suggestion: Split these choice node options and make them into separate talents.
    Fevered Incantation and Fire’s Ire - both talents provide quite weak effect for third part of tree, are unnecessary expensive that also leads to reduced number of choices and can make part of capstone talents underplayed, since players would likely not wish to spend 3 total talent points on weak effects just to access them. Also for some reason both talents currently provide only 1 point investment value even if 2 points are spent on them - maybe it is a sign or preparations to reduce them to 1 point cost already.
    Suggestion: Reduce both to 1 point investment cost with full current effect - that would make them both better match value to cost ratio for 3rd part of tree talents and make capstones gated behind them more accessible for different builds.
    Pyromaniac - decent, but potentially undertuned (about equal to 8% damage boost to Hot Streak affected only Pyroblasts and Flamestrikes), not reliable (low chance to proc) and not synergizing with the talent that is gated behind it (does not affect Hyperthermia affected Pyroblasts and Flamestrikes) talent. Might need a proc chance boost and should also trigger from Hyperthermia affected spells to improve their synergy.
    Hyperthermia - is both not reliable enough and has bad synergy with both Sun King’s Blessing and Unleashed Inferno, as it cannot proc during Combustion windows. To address most of its issues it could just become an active ability with X seconds cooldown - that would make it more controllable and reliable, allow to use it to hasten either Combustion CDR for Unleashed Inferno or generation of next Sun King’s Blessing and turn into a competitive capstone.
    Firefall - is used, but has a conflicting design - it is positioned in AoE part of tree and triggers an AoE ability, but stacks and triggers exclusively from single-target abilities. To address that and make it more synergizing with AoE situations too, it could get stacks and trigger from Flamestrike as well.
  1. Remaining bugs and oversights
    Here are some of remaining found bugs / oversights with Fire tree in beta:
  • Sparking Cinders buff on character has no tooltip.
  • Controlled Destruction debuff on enemy has wrong tooltip and states 0.0% increase no matter how many stacks it has.
  • Fevered Incantation and Fire’s Ire provide 1 point investment effect even if have 2 points invested.

Fire Mage PVP issues

  1. Reduced survivability without enough justification.
    Fire Mage both has PVP nerf to Blazing Barrier that is inherited from Shadowlands and is not justified anymore and needs to play Glass Cannon and sacrifice both a lot of survivability and a PVP talent slot to do competitive damage to other specs and get modifiers to his spells that specs like Devastation Evoker and Destruction Warlock get for simply existing. These combined lead to Fire Mage having quite low survivability in PVP and cases of frustration both for Fire Mages that can almost melt a moment the enemy ranged spec pays attention to them (especially Hunters) and for healers than need to heal them, especially in uncoordinated environments like Solo Shuffle. That could be addressed.
    Suggestion: Unnerf Blazing Barrier, remove Glass Cannon and tune Fire Mage’s damage to be competitive without it. If needed, also remove health boost from Flamecannon to compensate and to keep their survivability in line.
  1. PVP modifiers that might no longer be needed or justified
    Fire Mage tree talents have a lot of PVP modifiers applied during different periods that might no longer be needed or justified in The War Within. Please take a look at Unleashed Inferno, Sun King’s Blessing hardcasted spells, Fiery Rush, Wildfire and other nerfed talents and consider whether their PVP modifiers are still needed / should have current value.
  1. Underused PVP talents and possible improvements
    Fire Mages have several PVP talents that are not played much and could use boosts or changes to make them more competitive. These include:
    Greater Pyroblast - has outdatedly long cast and travel time, which both gives enemies a lot of time to disrupt it and a lot of time to react to it that exclude it from most competitive environments. Its effect can be strong, but other classes often have tools that can deal similar damage and have lower cast time (like Ruination) or even are close to instant cast (like Decimation affected Soul Fire). As a result, it could be boosted a bit.
    Suggestion: Reduce its base cast time to 3.5-4 seconds.
    Improved Mass Invisibility - while it is not used much by all 3 specs, Fire Mages have weakest Barrier and accordingly Mass Barrier and some long cast times so could be the most likely to take this talent. They do not however and main reason is that Improved Mass Invisibility costs both a capstone talent point in general tree and a PVP talent slot while also removing one of defensives of already squishy enough spec. That could be addressed.
    Suggestion: Make Mass Invisibility PVP talent usable even without Mass Invisibility taken in general tree, but if needed reduce duration and / or increase cooldown of PVP version to compensate. That would give this talent value for all 3 specs and make it more competitive.
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98

I usually just Arcane missled despite not min maxing the DPS because it was fast, so I could get several hits in before something went down.

If it was just myself, my rotation changes but Arcane missle was my goto forever.

I will have to see if the new setup works for me, but at the moment not liking it much at all, but that is just initial impression.

At the worst, my Arcane mages get parked and I play some other class, though not entirely a fan of their direction of druid at the moment either.

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what happened to our ranged spells I have to get almost within melee range … I keep getting that I’m too far away ? …

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The visuals of sunfury combust meteor rain + living bomb going off with blast zone on a huge pull will literally never get old. Might be the most visually satisfying cooldown press ever.

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101

On the subject of new spell visuals, my impression is that the new visual for Frostfire bolt is generally disliked. I will not, however, comment on that here, but instead use it as a spring board to discuss the animation for Arcane Missiles (AM). Its animation is terrible. I have written extensively against it since it was first introduced in the second half of Legion. While I am not calling for a return of the old AM animation (though I would not object to it), the current one is completely unbecoming of Arcane’s cosmic fantasy. Equally important, the visual in no way matches the power level of AM themselves, which promise to be very strong in The War Within. They should look impactful and “punchy” - right now they look so weak and pack little punch at all. This point (and a corresponding request to change the new AM animation) was made by a great many in the visual feedback forum back in Legion, but was seemingly ignored. Although the AM animation does not destroy my ability to enjoy Arcane as a spec, which is one of my absolute favourites, it certainly does detract from it. The AM (or Arcane Salvo, as it’s called) animation for certain Dragonflight NPC’s is actually quite cool, and I would definitely support that becoming our AM animation. Honestly, any adjustment to improve the visual and “punchiness” of the AM animation would be most welcome - just please something, as the current animation is truly terrible in my opinion. I would love to hear others’ opinion on this; if you agree with me, please like this post, as I know Blizzard is paying special attention to spell visuals right now (with the Hero Talents and otherwise), so that change to the animation is possible at this current stage of development.

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I like the Missiles as they currently look, but that’s just me. Maybe a glyph to alter them would be the best solution?

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That would be a great solution - I’m just as open to that. In fact, I think allowing glyphs for other classes’ abilities (like Shadow Bolt, whose animation could not be worse) would be a fantastic idea. That way everyone would be happy. Why Blizz has not introduced such glyphs already is very odd to me; although not quite the same concept, Warlocks got the ability to change the look of their demons, in a few cases dramatically so (e.g., Infernal to Abyssal, which used to be a summonable demon back in WoD).

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104

Please tune arcane explosion to not be terrible. With arcane it feels as if every spell that is not arcane blast, missiles, and touch/AS are massively undertuned.

If arcane explosion is going to be our aoe builder, it needs to not be so terrible we want to avoid casting it even in aoe. Alternatively, you can reduce the cd of arcane orb and tune up arcane orb damage in single target and aoe as well.

I also want to be able to cast arcane barrage in single target instead of just turreting arcane blast over and over with the occasional missiles. Please work on securing rotational variety. It is not fun to just press 2 buttons on single target.

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Arcane’s problems really began in BFA. Legion arcane was by far the best iteration of the spec in WoW’s history, and is widely regarded as such. The best solution would be to restore the old system from Legion whereby Arcane Missiles and Arcane Explosion scale with Arcane Charges. This would make both spells very powerful in their own right once again, and it would work well now that AM cannot be used without Clearcasting and the old artifact trait Rule of Threes - with adjustments - is built into the talent tree. The AM and AE scaling with Arcane Charges option could even be a capstone selection (competing against Nether Munitions, which, frankly, is incredibly boring and rather lacklustre, or Arcane Harmony, for example) in the talent tree to accommodate those who may not want to play that style of Arcane. The spec’s entire design and redesign has been a total mess since BFA because of the abrupt, unnecessary shift away from its philosophy and play style in Legion.

The changes to Arcane in TWW so far are generally going in the right direction (I am overjoyed, for example, that Radiant Spark is gone and has been replaced by Magi’s Spark, which is great and should stay in the tree no matter what), but for reasons already stated above by others there is still a lot of untapped potential and major need for improvement. To reiterate (note, however, that this list is not meant to be exhaustive), with some new ideas of my own:

1.) there is no reason for Evocation to be a talent, especially not so far down in the tree. As it is essential to Arcane’s functionality, it should be baseline. I would also like to see Siphon Storm removed - it is wholly counterintuitive in that one is incentivised to cast it at full mana, which makes no sense. It serves only to stifle build diversity and strain what is already a point-starved talent tree.

2.) that there are several different Arcane Barrage nodes that should be coalesced into one or maximum two talents is perplexing and frustrating. This must be fixed.

3.) Crackling Energy and Improved Arcane Missiles should be baseline; they are a waste of points. As others above state, Slipstream and Chronoshift (or even Presence of Mind, so that both the latter and Wizened Wit can be selected) should take their place.

4.) Concentration is certainly useful, but the proc rate is a little too low, and without further incentive (such as increasing the damage of your next Arcane Blast or a different benefit) it will lose out to other choices in the tree. We have very few talent points to spare to begin with.

5.) the new capstone are certainly much better than their predecessors; however, a couple of them are very unimaginative, boring, and lacklustre. Nether Munitions is the most egregious example, for it is as uncreative as talents come, not to mention of mediocre value, since it occurs after the burst window. Arcane Harmony seems at this point to be a relic of a now defunct model of Arcane that revolved around Radiant Spark to achieve massive Arcane Barrage damage. It is comparatively feeble in AoE, as Clearcasting procs in AoE scenarios will be used on Arcane Explosion to maximize Arcane Orb production through consistent casting of Arcane Barrage, which will only rarely have the time to build to 100% damage, except through Aether Attunement and burst windows with a lot of Clearcasting procs. What is more, we seldom use Arcane Barrage in ST. I am not proposing that this talent be deleted; instead, the PERFECT solution would be to put it on a choice node with a new talent that makes Arcane Missiles scale with Arcane Charges. I personally love Leydrinker (and its animation) but it simply does not proc enough at the moment - either the proc rate has to be reasonably increased or the proc condition altered with the same talent functionality.

8 Likes
106

Regarding the changing positions of Arcane Cleave and Charged Orb for the update on 06/11/2024.

For Spellslinger mage this does make talent points very tight. We are now forced to use 9 points in the top gate to have AOE. It also makes a good quality of life point in Charged Orb much harder to access with the limited capstone points we have, and it doesn’t truly feel powerful enough as a capstone.

For Sunfury, with Glorious Incandescence still having a 12 second duration, it still can fall off with orb being on CD. Having Charged Orb, even in single target, was a great way to ensure the proc was not wasted, and again a great quality of life point.

I would again love to just see Arcing Cleave be learned passively, as it would massively help both specs.

As far as bugs go, Prodigious Savant is still bugged, with it being a 2 point talent, giving the same bonus at each rank. This has also been reported. Making Savant (and arcane debilitation) both one point nodes would be massive for the tree in freeing up options.

Looking over the changes as well, I do think Spellfrost Teachings was doing quite a bit in AOE for both specs, but nerfing the damage of it for Arcane means that again, it does very little in terms of interactions in single target. There is less incentive to do anything but blast or missiles.

I do like that you are moving cleave earlier. But again just make arcing cleave passive and move charged orb back to where it was

2 Likes
107

Arcane

Why do we provide feedback about how absolutely crap this spec tree feels? What is the point? The Arcing Cleave change is possibly the worst change you could have made out of an array of bad choices to make. This is completely out-of-touch with the feedback you are getting over how the spec tree feels to build and play with. Additionally, the spec is still painfully crying out with a litany of other issues:

  • Still stuck with 2-point nodes that have no business being 2-points, Prodigious Savant and Arcane Debilitation.
  • Still stuck with utility in the spec tree, Chrono Shift, Slipstream, and Presence of Mind are all at risk of just not being picked.
  • What was us sacrificing Arcane Orb in AOE and feeling bad has now become yet another point tax on our already strapped cleave/AOE builds. The tree is simply garbage, there’s not enough to feel good picking and we are actively being forced to sacrifice fun things because the talents are in awful positions.

This kind of change makes the community feel like feedback is not being valued.

22 Likes
108

Arcane

  • Feedback: The biggest nerf I see here is the Spellfrost Teachings chance to reset decreased from 3% → 2%, especially from an M+ perspective. Similar to what Eila wrote a couple of posts ago, I do wonder if you would be willing to consider making Spellfrost Teachings’ Arcane Orb reset guarantee 4 Arcane charges on your next Arcane Orb cast so that the reset would gain value in single target. Just something to think about. Obviously the number tuning on Orb and Splinter damage is based on performance (although Frost’s nerfs seem very sharp, but we’ll see).
  • Switched the position of Arcing Cleave and Charged Orb
  • Feedback: I don’t know that this changes anything, you’re still guaranteed to have access to both for both Spellslinger and Sunfury given Prodigious Savant is mandatory to pick up for Leysight (NP does 10% more damage increase talent). Maybe I’m missing something here? This feels like if you switched the positions of Arcane Orb and Nether Precision (i.e. wouldn’t really change much)
  • Improved Arcane Missiles, Crackling Energy, Chrono-Shift, Presence of Mind and Slipstream
  • Feedback: I do kind of agree with a lot of the posters here that you could definitely remove Improved Arcane Missiles and Crackling Energy and replace them with 2 of the 3 talents listed above (maybe Slipstream and Chrono-shift?) This would make those talents mandatory, given Arcane significant utility and feels-good-ability. Note that giving us these two utility nodes would not impact damage output to any significant extent, but it would make our rotation feel so more better. Come on Blizzard, I know you can do it!
  • Sunfury damage (in Dungeons)
  • Feedback: Ok, I will admit that Spellslinger damage was a little steep in dungeons; fine; it needed the nerfs. But I don’t think Sunfury does enough damage for Arcane at the moment. I was wondering if you were willing to look at Sunfury’s damage in dungeon settings specifically. Something like maybe increasing Mr. McNugget’s (the bird)'s AoE damage spells? Or maybe buffing Arcane Harmony? Just a thought
4 Likes
110

Just wanting to highlight this again… Mixing Hyperthermia into Sunfury with the awkward clash it brings with Sun King’s Blessing adds unnecessary friction to the rotation and impacts our ability to be flexible with our talents.

When the Sun King’s Blessing / Unleashed Inferno choice node is the main determining factor in our playstyle and damage profile, it feels especially bad being forced into picking one or the other due to a massive damage difference (as there has been historically), or due to awkward interactions such as HT and SKB.

5 Likes
111

My arcane mage rotation is Arcane Missiles for single target. For multiple targets I use arcane orb then use arcane missiles then use arcane barrage. I will also use arcane tether sometimes. The beta changes change everything about arcane mages in my opinion.

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Arcane Talent Tree Feedback pt. 2

Did the development window for Arcane end with the start of beta? Before a significant number of people could give feedback due to no access? It seemed there was intent to finish this rework, but it feels like Arcane will come out half-baked at this rate.

There is no reason for Crackling Energy and Improved Arcane Missiles to exist. They take up pseudo-mandatory node positions for pathing that could be dedicated to core abillities for Arcane, such as Slipstream and Presence of Mind. Crackling Energy and Improved Arcane Missiles could be placed anywhere on the tree, and they would still be mandatory. What is the point?

Even if Crackling Energy and Improved Arcane Missiles have to exist in the tree, it can still be improved by reducing Arcane Debilitation and Prodigious Savant to 1-point nodes. This change would serve the same purpose of removing Crackling Energy and Improved Arcane Missiles by allowing for picking the more niche nodes that are currently not selectable in any content for any reason. These talents include:

  • Slipstream
  • Arcane Tempo
  • Chrono Shift
  • Mana Adept
  • Presence of Mind (assuming it gets untangled from Wizined Wit)
  • Time Loop
  • Leydrinker
  • Concentration

We are practically already halfway there because the Prodigious Savant node still requires a 2-point investment despite the second point still not doing anything other than tax Arcane mages a talent point for no reason if they want to get to Leysight and Leydrinker. Arcane is also still unnecessarily taxed with utility nodes in its tree that somehow have to compete against other nodes that enable Arcane as a specialization to function. Why can the lessons for utility nodes in other specialization trees, learned over two years of having these trees, not be applied to Arcane?

Presence of Mind is still dead on arrival for The War Within as long as it is a choice node with Wizined Wit. Presence of Mind is a utility spell, and Wizined Wit is a (strong) throughput effect. How is Presence of Mind supposed to compete? If Wizined Wit is the “less complex” but “slightly worse” alternative to Presence of Mind, it has completely missed the mark. The consequence of this decision is that Arcane will lose an iconic spell for the specialization for almost 20 years.

It is great that Charged Orb was moved to Gate 3 to replace Arcing Cleave, which I even suggested. However, placing Arcing Cleave in Gate 1 is stupefying. Charged Orb is not a fundamental node for Arcane AoE to be functional. Arcing Cleave is. The primary problem of Charged Orb was its position, and now Arcing Cleave, a much more fundamental effect for Arcane, has inherited that problem.

How are we supposed to make a build that goes all in on an AoE build? There are simply not enough points available after getting taxed by four points with Crackling Energy, Improved Arcane Missiles, Arcane Debilitation, and Prodigious Savant. Why is the functionality of Arcane Barrage split into three different nodes (Arcing Cleave, Mana Adept, Resonance) and spread all over the tree?

Unsorted Comments:

  • Aether Attunement is still not properly increasing the damage of Arcane Missiles on neither the primary target or the secondary targets.
  • There is still no reason for the Improved Touch of the Magi version of Nether Munitions to exist. Just pick Enlightened instead and you get a stronger effect.
  • Mana Adept, Slipstream, Presence of Mind, and Arcing Cleave should all be baseline or be required for pathing in the tree.
  • There has to be a more inspired alternative to Time Anomaly than Inspired Intellect, ironically.
  • Swap the positions of Cryo-Freeze and Frigid Winds.
  • The Mage class as a whole needs defensive parity between the three specializations.
15 Likes