Feedback: Mages

Astarael-barthilas · June 20, 2024, 12:55pm

Frost Feedback - Hero Trees – again

After doing some delves at different difficulties, heroic dungeons, and dummy testing here’s some feedback about the gameplay and flow of the Hero trees and how they interact with the Frost spec tree.

Spellslinger

Spellslinger Bugs

There are still situations where Splinterstorm is triggering without having 8 Splinters present. It has been difficult to replicate but it is making accurate testing more challenging and needs to be fixed.

Issues for easier content

In encounters where enemies die quickly, or before you can stack 8 Splinters to trigger Splinterstorm, Spellslinger feels like a very non-existent spec with nothing happening. This was particularly a prevalent feeling in Delves for the trash which is the majority of it (so this would also apply to any solo play). But also in dungeons where enemies died quickly or when Splinters across across targets but then they die too quickly which wastes the Splinters entirely. This may cause Spellslinger to fall into a pit where at certain lower difficulty levels where things die quick enough that the spec fails to actually function because it’s slower or not possible to get Splinterstorm to trigger.

Outside of Icy Veins, Spellslinger doesn’t have a lot going on at all and unless Spellfrost Teachings is proccing rapidly then there’s actually no noticeable gameplay change from base Frost and the Hero tree feels very non-existent.

During Icy Veins – some Spellslinger numbers

When Icy Veins is up and there is no mechanics downtime Spellslinger starts to become rapid fire and it’s causing an overloaded gameplay where we have such an incredibly high uptime on procs and debuffs. This is leading to a situation that is heavily impacting the value of many talents.

Over testing a large number of IV windows with a different ST builds (w/GS and no/GS), these are the current average casts and buff % uptime during IV:

Average	Count	Buff % uptime
Ice Lance	23.44 casts	N/A
Frozen Orb	4.56 casts	N/A
Frostbolt	1.44 casts	N/A
Winter’s Chill	107.22	70.76%
Finger’s of Frost	32.89	66.13%
Brain Freeze	3	50.67%

What this is resulting in:

Getting on average 4 - 5.5 times more Winter’s Chill procs than the amount of Ice Lances that are able to be cast.
A crazy high up-time on Winter’s Chill, which is causing Flurry to not be needed at all, so the only Brain Freeze being generated are from Water Elemental.
Sitting on Brain Freeze procs because there’s no value in casting Flurry, leading to high uptime on BF despite so few procs being generated because the only procs are from Water Elemental.
Nearly no Frostbolts being cast at all during an IV window.
Drowning in FoF procs from Freezing Winds and leading to just an IL spamfest.
The more that Spellfrost Teachings procs the more fun this Hero tree feels, but this just fuels the loop even more. If Spellfrost Teachings was nerfed even more then it would just kill off any fun that Spellslinger had entirely.

Back to Deathborne and health of talents:

Given the above results, this leads to a number of implications for the Deathborne playstyle of Death’s Chill, Slick Ice, Fractured Frost, and Cold Front:

Slick Ice and Death’s Chill are providing extremely low value and often no value for Spellslinger in ST because Frostbolt is almost never cast.
The lack of casting Frostbolt is even more prevalent in AoE, where the already full AoE rotation is leading to zero Frostbolts being cast in the majority of IV windows.
With no Frostbolts being used during IV, the following talents are providing such often no value where they’d be considered dead talents: Slick Ice, Death’s Chill, Fractured Frost.
With Frostbolt and Flurry almost never being cast during IV, that means Cold Front as a capstone is providing zero value during our major cooldown and any stacks that exist going into IV are likely to fall off during IV, wasting any effort we previously had building CF stacks prior. A capstone talent should always provide value, inside and outside our major cooldown.
With Slick Ice, Death’s Chill, Fractured Frost, and Cold Front providing next to no value during IV for Spellslinger, this is causing significantly restricted talent options for Frost. Niche talents like Frostbite and Subzero cannot be taken for raid/dungeon bosses, leading to even fewer options.
With already the lowest number of total unique talents, the lowest number of choice nodes, and lowest total overall talent points, and 19-20 mandatory talents to make the spec function, there are essentially no options for build variety and choice. The ST and AoE builds are almost identical with only 2-3 talents difference, and players may be forced to talent into talents like Slick Ice and Death’s Chill despite them providing extremely low, or zero, value because there just isn’t anything else to talent into that can provide some sort of value. For players who want to opt for a non-GS playstyle there’s even fewer options useful for spend those talent points in. This is seriously critical and needs to be addressed.

Frostfire

Frostfire Bugs

Frostfire Bolt still does not contribute to Bone Chilling.
Hard to replicate but I found that if I’m in the middle of casting Frostfire Bolt and Frostfire Empowerment procs then it will automatically consume the proc when I finish casting FFB. It probably shouldn’t consume the proc in this case and only consume it when we use it for an instant cast.

General Frostfire feedback

The increase in duration of Fire Mastery and Frost Mastery is nice. There were issues in prior builds where Fire Mastery would have a higher chance of dropping off before reaching 8 stacks and that was frustrating, so it’s slightly improved now. Need to keep an eye on this though.

Excess Frost

It’s quite easy to get Excess Frost; however, actually proccing the Excess Frost Ice Nova is more tedious than expected. In ST often Flurry is on cooldown where we have no charges, so we’re unable to trigger this. It’s quite common to reach 8 stacks of Frost Mastery again before even able to trigger the initial Ice Nova because Flurry is still on cd. This is then munching the initial Excess Frost proc, wasting it.

Too often in AoE situations we don’t even need to cast Flurry at all, so it’s encouraging us to cast Flurry when we wouldn’t normally need to.

To maximise shattering, the standard rotation has always been Frost(fire)bolt > Flurry > shatter 2x IL (or shatter whatever). But when we have the Excess Frost buff and also have a Frostfire Empowerment buff, we have to solo cast the Flurry to trigger Excess Frost before being able to use Frostfire Empowerment to gain Excess Frost again, otherwise the initial Excess Frost buff gets munched. This is particularly disruptive to the rotation and flow of the spec and not intuitive at all.

Potential solutions:

Making the Excess Frost and Excess Fire buffs stack would help, particularly when we get Frostfire Empowerment procs more rapidly.
To address Excess Frost and Flurry’s more rarity, either Frostfire needs to generate more Flurries or Excess Frost needs to not trigger off Flurry at all.

Trying to min-max Excess Frost and Excess Fire

Currently, trying to ensure that every Excess Frost and Excess Fire buff is used and not munched is quite cognitively challenging, more so in AoE than ST. It requires heavy buff tracking and more future play planning to anticipate your rotation in advance, rather than Frost’s history reactionary playstyle to procs as they happen. In doing this, I am finding that it encourages me to sit and hold Frostfire Empowerment procs until the time is right (either to not much Excess Frost/Fire procs or maximise Fire/Frost Mastery duration) and ensure Excess Frost and Excess Fire is used by sometimes casting IL without FoF/WC, or solo cast Flurry, or cast Flurry into WC. It’s a very disruptive playstyle to how Frost has historically played and I really hope it’s not tuned to play this way because it is just incredibly unfun and cognitively draining.

During Icy Veins – Some Frostfire numbers

Frostfire Frost plays very similarly to base Frost during IV. From testing a large number of IV windows in AoE and different ST builds (w/GS and no/GS), here are the averages that I got during an IV window:

AoE	Count
Frostfire Bolt	3.2 casts
Frostfire Empowerment	3.6 procs
Death’s Chill (w/FracFrost cleaving 3)	9.75 stacks

ST (w/GS and non-GS builds)	Count
Frostfire Bolt	9.42 casts
Frostfire Empowerment	2.83 procs
Death’s Chill	9.21 stacks

Similarly to Spellslinger, Frostfire is rarely casting Frostfire Bolt during the IV window in the AoE rotation. The majority of the casts of FFB are the insta-Frostfire Empowerment procs. Frostfire benefits somewhat a little more from Death’s Chill than Spellslinger, because of Fractured Frost and Frostfire Empowerment it is able to get a few stacks of Death’s Chill. However, these stacks only occur if FFE procs so the build up of these stacks is slow and not consistent, meaning the overall value is much less.

It is the ST Frostfire rotation that is benefitting the most from Death’s Chill out of every build and both Hero specs. As there are less WC than Spellslinger, there are more opportunities to cast FFB. Noting that when talented into GS, the overall FFB cast during IV is slightly lower.

This is also showing that the vast majority of Frost builds are not benefitting from Death’s Chill, Slick Ice, and Fractured Frost, and even though Frostfire is mildly getting some value it is quite minor overall. This is even more evidence that these talents need to be revised and removed for talents that provide meaningful gameplay to Frost.

General Frost – again

Bug: Time Anomaly is not proccing Brain Freeze at all.

Implications of Permafrost Lances on talent point investment

With the introduction of Permafrost Lances, and Ice Caller now being placed underneath it, this means we are now investing 1 additional talent point into tier 2 of the talent tree than we did before.

Due to so many critically mandatory talents for AoE to play smoothly, and the need to spend an additional talent point to get to Ice Caller, this is now 1 less talent point that we have to spend in tier 3 for AoE builds.

In prior beta builds, when building for AoE we used to be able to have just enough talents to pick up 3 capstones. Now we only have enough for 2 capstones. This is now pushing access to undesirable capstones like Death’s Chill and Cold Front even further out of reach for AoE builds and even harder for players to justify picking up, as in doing so would be sacrificing either a significant dps gain or QoL improvement from another talent. This loss of this extra talent point is further restricting AoE build diversity and variety, so again another call that Fractured Frost, Cold Front, and Slick Ice, and Death’s Chill need significant revisions to be desirable capstone talents that are not problematic for the health of the spec’s gameplay.

Zommoros-azshara · June 20, 2024, 1:19pm

Lingering critical bugs in the Sunfury tree:

Mana Cascade stacks are acting erraticaly and expiring prematurely for a while after exiting Combustion.
Meteorites cast by Glorious Incandescence are not providing any cooldown reduction.
Hyperthermia granted by Memory of Al’ar ignores Combustions extended by Sun King’s Blessing and procs while said combustion is still active.

EDIT:
Latest build re-introduced a old design flaw in the Hyperthermia talent from the Fire spec tree which allows it to proc while any combustion is active. Please fix this and all of the above, ty xoxo

Vlsal-tichondrius · June 20, 2024, 1:55pm

After seeing Astarael’s analysis post - maybe there really should be a redesign to mentioned there capstone talents. However, since there are definitely people who enjoyed Deathborne playstyle from Shadowlands, this redesign could be a compromise one that still keeps some of its mechanics active.

Here is a possible one based on Warlock’s Havoc / Bane of Havoc mechanics (could be something else if Blizzard would come up with better idea but just to give food for thought):

Fractured Frost - While Icy Veins is active, your Frostbolts and Flurries hit 2 additional targets nearby for X% of their damage and Ice Lances, Icicles and Glacial Spikes hit 1 additional nearby target for Y% of their damage. Stacks with additional projectiles from Splitting Ice (to 3 targets totally).
Comment: Altered this talent to also involve usual Frost’s rotational abilities other than Frostbolt. That would allow to keep most synergies with other talents in Frost tree and just turn it into 3 target cleave phase, but since it is quite a powerful effect additional projectiles likely should hit for less than 100% of damage, hence the X%.

Cold Front - Generating X Icicles causes your next Frostbolt or Ice Lance to call down a Frozen Orb towards your target.
Comment: Made several mechanical changes here to make it more compatible with remaining Frost talents. Changing Frozen Orb generation from spell casts to Icicles generated still keeps generation from Frostbolt and Flurry, but also makes Glacial Spike builds and Ice Lance contribute to it too and opens synergies with talents like Splintering Cold. Tying the proc to next cast of Frostbolt (single-target or 3 target cleave situations) or Ice Lance (AoE situations) allows to get a bit of control over it and launch Frozen Orb when and where it is needed instead of potentially missing its position or aggroing unintended enemies by current uncontrolled launch.

Slick Ice - while Icy Veins is active, casting Frostbolt, Ice Lance, Flurry and Glacial Spike increases its Haste bonus by X%, up to Y%.
Comment: A small redesign to make Slick Ice compatible with non-Frostbolt main rotational abilities. Since Haste is a powerful boost, damage bonus should likely be removed from this talent. Haste bonus cap both allows to keep power of this talent in line and avoid requiring some optimization patterns where you would spam as many instant / low cast time spells as possible to stack as big bonus as possible and avoid long cast times like Glacial Spike and Ray of Frost.

Death’s Chill - stacking bonus from Slick Ice now also increases your Frost damage done by X% per stack, up to Y%.
Comment: This will allow to keep all the synergies and limitations created in Slick Ice, but also add additional damage boost bonus to them.

As a result:

Fractured Frost and Cold Front provide viable 3 target talent cleave branch that does not contradict existing rotations (as it affects all main rotational abilities) and synergize with each other - Fractured Frost makes generated by Cold Front’s Frozen Orb Fingers of Frost hit up to 3 enemies and Cold Front’s Frozen Orb provides additional ST / AoE damage from Orb itself and additional Ice Lance procs to be cleaved to up to 3 targets.
Slick Ice and Death’s Chill now synergize with all main rotational abilities for Frost and provide stronger major CD phase, but with limitations to both avoid stacking optimization strategies of using as many instant cast or short cast spells to get as big bonus as possible with avoiding long cast / channel spells and to keep its total power boost in line.

Eila-stormrage · June 20, 2024, 6:37pm

Arcane Talent Tree Feedback pt. 3

It is great to see that work on Arcane is still active. Even though the development states that more is coming next week, it is unclear what the additions or removals will be. Nevertheless, I will give feedback as the tree is right now.

Utility Nodes: One of the main things is that Arcane still has several utility talents all over the tree. These nodes are still bad design because they can never compete with any talent in any Gate you place them in unless required for pathing. It is still the case that every utility node has to be made baseline, required, or removed.

Presence of Mind: It is great to see that Wizined Wit has been removed. However, it is still the case that Presence of Mind, in a vacuum, is not strong enough to compete against any other node in Gate 2 because it is a utility spell, not a throughput spell. However, it will now, similarly to Dragonflight, always be picked because it is a required node to get to Siphon Storm. Presence of Mind is dependent on Siphon Storm tuning, and the Siphon Storm/Evocation nodes will always have a talent point tax in the form of Presence of Mind. It would be great if Presence of Mind was changed to be better as a standalone talent.

Impetus: If the intention is that the left-most column should be nodes that are always picked, then Impetus is the odd one out. I consider both Arcane Familiar and Presence of Mind core and flavourful spells for Arcane. Impetus is not.

Crackling Energy/Improved Arcane Missiles: These nodes still have the same issue. They are boring and mandatory, and put a heavy node tax on Gate 2. The existence of these nodes makes it impossible to pick situationally interesting nodes such as Arcane Tempo, Energized Familiar, Mana Adept, Chrono Shift, Surging Urge, etc.

There are too many boring nodes that are also mandatory for pathing and power. I hope that the alluded-to changes that are coming will address this.

Arcing Cleave: The placement of this node is still worrying. I think it would make much more sense if Arcing Cleave and Eureka swapped positions such that the only path to Orb Barrage becomes:

Arcing Cleave → Resonance → Charged Orb → Orb Barrage

This path makes perfect sense for two reasons:

If you want to make an Orb Barrage build, you also want every node that precedes it to enable it.
If you want to make a mixed build between single target and AoE/cleave, then it is ordered such that you can pick exactly how much you want of each profile.

Unsorted Comments:

Aether Attunment is still not increasing the damage of Arcane Missiles on any target.
When playing as Arcane Spellslinger it appears to be spawning too many Arcane Splinters. Furthermore, after some time in combat, Splinterstorm will periodically begin procing regardless of how many active splinters there are. This bug causes an overflow of Clearcasting and skews testing.

Girthslap-proudmoore · June 20, 2024, 9:29pm

Can we remove Siphon storm in the Arcane tree please and maybe move it to Time anomaly in the Class tree. Instead of Time anomaly granting Arcane surge, make it grant siphon storm by a chance. Siphon storm is a must pick boring talent that no one likes, especially having to use your mana regen ability at the start of a burst window is just backwards and lackluster.

Kauryn-proudmoore · June 20, 2024, 11:24pm

Happy to see some of the feedback for Arcane being addressed. Here’s some more feedback based on the new build

The change to having meteors drop from barrage instead of Orb is great; however, it’s hard to discern whether Arcane Barrage proc glow is telling me that meteorites will rain from the sky, or if it’s from the tier set. It would be great if there was some sort of visual cue of which was which. Weak auras will solve this otherwise, but we shouldn’t rely on that.
Generating spheres with blasts and barrages is much preferred over clearcasting. However, it still feels slow to generate compared to fire. I’m not sure if it actually is slower, or if it’s just the more involved nature of generating and spending hot streaks makes the time fly better than spamming arcane blast, but regardless it feels pretty bad during the opener. This also seems like something that will be much slower in an AoE scenario. Maybe instead of tying it to certain spells, tying it to mana spent may make more sense? Or just add Arcane Explosion to the list of abilities? Or just make it every 6 casts of anything? All I can say is that sphere generation still feels faster and more natural for fire than arcane.
As I said in my previous post - would love Time Anomaly, Inspired Intellect and Shifting Power to be removed, and it would be great to add Cauterize as a replaced capstone.
Arcane Tree still feels very cluttered with little wiggle room. Way too many nodes that are flat damage increases that will either be picked or not picked based on tuning, with 0 difference in changes to playstyle or situation.
Reiterating from my initial feedback that Arcane Soul feels bad as a payoff. The clearcasting is nice, but I think an extra payoff beyond that would make this feel better. There could be a neat synergy with Arcane Harmony by having Arcane Soul not consume the buff, for example.
Spellslinger Spellfrost Teachings change to have shards shoot out an orb rather than eliminate it’s CD sounds neat, but I am not sure I love it. The only situation using orb is useful is for generating charges, but you want to plan generating charges. Having it randomly shoot off means you won’t actually get to spend the charges first. Having it reset the CD means you can at least barrage and then orb (assuming AoE, that’d be not very beneficial in ST). Maybe it’d be better if it shot out an Arcane Barrage instead?

Lahlania-farstriders · June 20, 2024, 11:29pm

Fire Mage
Supernova should not be a choice node with Dragon’s Breath.

Sunfury
Lessons in Debilitation
You forgot to add something back to Lessons in Debilitation. I get that you felt having a CC as part of it was too powerful, but then to leave the talent devoid of anything else beyond the Spellsteal mechanic is not quite enough to carry the point. I can’t foresee a situation where I would now take this over Gravity Lapse.

Ignite the Future
The uptime on this doesn’t seem worth the point. I’d prefer to see something like: “Generating a Spellfire Sphere while your Phoenix is active grants a charge of Fire Blast” or something, or perhaps a charge of Hot Streak!

Datwunguy-sargeras · June 21, 2024, 2:16am

Sunfury Fire AoE & Flamestrike

Addressing game feel of Pyroblast in ST versus Flamestrike in AoE for Sunfury.

TLDR; consider making Flamestrike targetable, buffing Flamestrike and/or providing better synergy (like with Living Bomb), and swapping the talents Pyromaniac & Hyperthermia with From the Ashes & Phoenix Reborn (for Sunfury’s benefit)

So far everything for Fire seems pretty stellar, bang-up job. Players can now drill down to the finer points (aka get nitpicky).
With that, Flamestrike needs some love if you want it to be the preferred choice for Fire in AoE. Sunfury Fire’s ST build is great. The synergy Pyroblast has with other talents is great. But Flamestrike AoE is lacking. Which is sad for such an iconic and classic spell.

Consider making Flamestrike targetable
- The fun of the ST build, and its cousins (Cleave and/or Ignite builds), is the pace of play. Being able to go through your abilities quickly and somewhat rhythmically is a satisfying loop.
- Flamestrike throws that off. Having to think about cursor location takes away from pace of play. I think the use of a target reticle is great for large AoE abilities with a cooldown, but not so much when it’s an ability you’d like to spam.
- If it needs to have prio damage to fit the idea of a targetable spell, with reduced damage to nearby targets, then that would fit with Fire’s m.o. in M+. But anything to make it targetable would be awesome.

Consider providing more synergy for Flamestrike within the tree.
- Right now it’s only real interaction is with Phoenix Flames buffing the next two by 20% through Majesty of the Phoenix. It does reduce the cast time, but inside Combustion you’re not hard casting, and outside of Combustion you might hard cast one and instant cast the other, so that could work for SKB but not much else.
- Whereas Pyroblast can increase Ignite damage with Controlled Destruction, call down a Meteor with Firefall, and provide CDR & damage buff to Phoenix Flames through From the Ashes & Phoenix Reborn. These are all awesome and rewarding in ST/Cleave/Ignite AoE. You’ll notice the impacts these talents have and feel them in your gameplay.
- Same can’t be said for the talents impacting Flamestrike. The two other talents are a choice node for more direct damage // ground effect for more damage, and buffing Flamestrike’s ignite damage. The only way you’ll feel these talents is typically negatively: if you pick Flame Patch and the tank moves the pack out of the effect, that’ll feel bad. The others are just flat damage. So currently there are no uniquely rewarding interactions with Flamestrike.
- There’s a clear lean into Living Bomb for AoE, which is cool. I think if you gave Flamestrike some interaction with Living Bomb, like creating, buffing, being buffed by, or some other fun interaction then that would be big push for Flamestrike in AoE. Or find an unbroken way to tie it in with meteor.

How does it all relate to Sunfury? Hyperthermia! Consider changing Hyperthermia’s position in the talent tree.
- Hyperthermia feels like a core part of Sunfury and Unleashed Inferno. It’s even outright named and provided by a Sunfury talent. It helps with resource preservation, provides more CDR for Combustion through Kindling, and helps bridge the gap between Combustions. It has the added benefit of contributing to From the Ashes & Phoenix Reborn, AND Lit Fuse by generating and consuming Hot Streaks. All in all a super fun talent with numerous rewards in ST.
- It can still provide all those things in AoE, with the exception of From the Ashes & Phoenix Reborn. However, with the previous stated lean into Living Bomb, you cannot currently take the AoE focused talents Explosivo & Blast Zone and still be able to pickup Hyperthermia. A simple shuffling of the talents solves this (switch the Hyperthermia talents with the Phoenix Flames talents).
- To compare to Frostfire: Meteor is a core component of its gameplay (named by two Frostfire talents) and it can be picked up and combined with any capstone, allowing them to mix and match the ability for ST or AoE.
- I’d argue that Hyperthermia is equally as important for Sunfury, yet the same build diversity just isn’t attainable. If the design of the tree is to have essential/core skills down the middle, ST favoring capstones left, and AoE favoring capstones right, then the Phoenix Flames capstones would be more fitting on the far left since the capstone is related to “direct damage” and Hyperthermia feels more core Fire than the PF talents, which are new additions from the tier set.

If Fire AoE in TWW meant buffed Flamestrikes that synergized with Living Bomb (or something fun), being able to proc Hyperthermia while still benefiting from Blast Zone (for Sunfury’s sake), AND that Flamestrike was targetable? Yuge.

Warkkat-proudmoore · June 21, 2024, 3:14am

Heat Shimmer:

There’s really no good reason for this to be instant cast. Scorch can already be cast while moving, is the same cast time or less than the GCD, and this talent can make it so you eat the buff with an instant cast instead of getting a double pyro with Hot Streak active. This makes it a lot more difficult to plan your rotation or get proper use out of Time Anomaly procs.

Vlsal-tichondrius · June 21, 2024, 6:46am

Here is feedback about Fire and Sunfury after further testing.

Sunfury feedback (from Fire POV):

Spellfire Orbs generation is still too slow both in and out of combat. Out of combat they are generated every 50 seconds, which is heavily misaligned with even base 2 minute cooldown of Combustion that is also reduced by CDR effects. In combat generation without Rondurmancy is decent, but with it is still too slow - I tested an execute phase where I had guaranteed crit abilities to constantly build Hot Streaks and even there I was able to build only 4 Spellfire Spheres before Combustion went off cooldown (with Unleashed Inferno). Delaying your major CD until you build all Spheres would feel very bad for both Fire and Arcane, so that should be addressed.
Suggestions:

Reduce out of combat Sphere generation period. For example, it could be 30 seconds without Rondurmancy (so 90 seconds totally that align with both Arcane Surge and Combustion) and 20 seconds with it (so 100 seconds totally that more or less align with major CDs).
Make Rondurmancy also reduce number of Hot Streaks by 1 to generate a sphere in combat in addition to its current effect. That would allow to more reliably get 5 spheres in combat before your major CD comes off cooldown.

Mana Cascade effect is still too weak and unnoticeable for Fire, especially outside of Combustion. Nerf to previous value might have been needed, but it was too big.
Suggestion: Increase buff value to 1% per stack, which would make it more relevant and noticeable and match both Arcane version (which now builds at close pace to Fire version) and Frostfire Mastery value.
Merely a Setback it still a very underwhelming defensive node. Assuming that hero talents would be tuned to be close in damage output, it would be often defensive and utility nodes that would decide their pick rate and this one loses to both Spellslinger’s and Frostfire’s defensive nodes. Even if it were buffed, it is still extremely niche.
Suggestion: Buff its values and make it a choice node with other defensive option (just like both Frostfire and Spellslinger can pick between 2). For example that could be Cauterizing Blink from Legion artifact traits - it is useful and matches Fire + Arcane hero tree, since Blink / Shimmer is an Arcane spell and cauterizing is a Fire effect.
Both nodes between Lessons in Debilitation and Gravity Lapse are currently underwhelming as well. LiD provides 2 additional Spellsteals with 60-90 seconds cooldown and Gravity Lapse while now being affected by Time Manipulation is still inferior to Ice Nova and another root that Mages have plenty of already and is not needed.
Suggestions:

Buff Lessons in Debilitation with either more Spellsteal casts or some additional effect.
Revert Gravity Lapse back to a stun and if needed reduce target count and / or increase base cooldown to compensate. Stun would be much more fitting both for a hero talent and an upgrade talent to existing spell, just like Mountain Thane’s Storm Bolts is an AoE stun upgrade to their existing ability.

Glorious Incandescence Meteorites for some reason no longer reduce cooldown of Fire Blast. Please fix that.
Sunfury Execution is not competitive enough with Savor the Moment that additionaly synergizes with Arcane Phoenix and Memory of Al’Ar, even more so if Rondurmancy is taken. It needs a boost for competitiveness.
Suggestion: Make it also increase damage of Scorch during execute phase by X%.
New Codex of Sunstriders is quite good - when consuming your sphere Phoenix gives you a separate 2% spell power buff for 10 seconds that is refreshed when other sphere is consumed. That allows to spend your major CD without losing damage buffs from spheres during it and is a good solution. Its tooltip in hero tree should indicate 10 seconds duration and refreshment when new stack is applied to prevent confusion though.
With changes to Codex of Sunstriders, Ignite the Future is not competitive enough - it is much more beneficial to take Rondurmancy for bigger damage buffs. Ignite the Future needs a boost.

Fire changes feedback and suggestions:

Nerfs to damage and proc chance of some abilities / talents are understandable. Sparking Cinders tooltip though no longer states its chance and it should.
Spontaneous Combustion as a massive QoL feature still competes with thoughput value of Improved Combustion and that is not good, since players are forced to pick between QoL and performance. Please address that.
Suggestion: Split them and turn into separate talents.
Like stated by other posters above, Living Bomb does not have base Ignite value, so Mark of the Firelord can be confusing. Living Bomb either should be added to Mastery: Ignite or tooltip should be clarified.
Fevered Incantation and Fire’s Ire are still both overpriced and have very low effect for 3rd part of tree talents. Their cost also limits build choices - when you pick central talents and one side of tree, it is very unlikely that you would spend 3+ talent points on mostly weak effects to pick even 1 desired talent in the other side. That could be addressed.
Suggestion: Reduce both to 1 point investment talents with full current value. That would both make their value more fitting their cost and help with build diversity.
Pyromaniac even after the change to its Hot Streak interactions is still undertuned and not reliable enough and could use a boost for competitiveness, for example bigger chance to proc. It also should proc from spells affected by Hyperthermia too for their better synergy, especially since Pyromaniac is its prerequisite talent.
Hyperthermia does not provide enough value and even if it did is still badly compatible with both SKB and Unleashed Inferno, making it underplayed. It could use some changes for better value and compatibility.
Suggestion: Turn it into an active off-GCD ability with X seconds CD. That would address most of its issues - players would have control over it to avoid problematic overlaps / badly timed procs and can use it to hasten Combustion CDR or building of next SKB when needed, turning it into a competitive capstone.
Replacing Flamecannon with Fireheart is very controversial. You both nerfed Fire’s already low survivability in PVP (via removing access to both additional range and maximum health boost) and replaced it with a talent that has extremely low and niche value (you get 60-100k backlash hits against 6-8 million health pools, only against melee hits and attached to a shield that still has its no longer justified 25% nerf in PVP and breaks in 2-3 seconds). This new talent is very bad and likely DOA (dead on arrival).
Suggestion: Remove Fireheart and return Flamecannon, if needed reduce or remove its range increase bonus (which was likely the reason for its removal). If there is a Fire Mage PVP talent that should be removed instead it is Glass Cannon - it requires sacrificing a PVP talent slot and 15% of your health just to deal competitive damage to other specs and makes healers really frustrated when they need to heal Fire Mages, especially in uncoordinated environments like Solo Shuffle. You could just remove it and tune Fire Mage’s damage to be competitive without it. And please finally remove this long overdue (as it was applied in Shadowlands when Fire was much tankier) and no longer justified (Blazing Soul talent that caused it is no longer in the game) nerf to Blazing Barrier in PVP.
There are some other issues with Fire mentioned in this post. Please take a look at them.

Zommoros-azshara · June 21, 2024, 9:30am

Oh yeah, something has to be done about Spellfire Sphere out of combat generation / raid combat start.

Since you prevented them from resetting to 0 upon starting raid combat, this opened the door to extremely degenerate behavior where we’d want to pre-stack the orbs by means of zoning out of the raid or abusing one of the dummy toys.

The only way to prevent this is to either make them always reset to 3 upon starting raid combat, or to drastically increase out of combat regeneration ~ like 1 per 10 seconds, so that 3 can be realistically generated while a boss resets.

Vlsal-tichondrius · June 21, 2024, 12:22pm

Here is feedback about Arcane and its hero specs after latest changes.

Arcane Sunfury feedback:

The changed way of generating Spellfire Spheres is much better - it feels much faster and is not RNG reliant. Its main gripe is that it has much slower generation in AoE situations, so I agree with posters above - stacks for Spellfire Sphere probably should be generated by Arcane Explosion as well. Additionally, such change alongside nerfs to Eureka and Illuminated Thoughts with Spheres being generated only by Arcane Blast and Arcane Barrage increases risk of getting to situation of cancelling Clearcast Arcane Missiles early for dps boost again, so casts of Arcane Missiles could contribute to generation of Spellfire Spheres too to address that.
Burden of Power is still underwhelming for Arcane Sunfury - you buff each 7th Arcane Blast by 15% (2.15% average increase) or each 7th Arcane Barrage by 30% (4.3% average increase) and buff only 1 of them at a time. It is a bit underwhelming and should be boosted.
Change to Glorious Incandescence is nice, but problem with delayed Meteorite fall remains - they can fall when enemies already leave the area. Please hasten the fall to happen immediately when Arcane Barrage hits its target(s).
Issues with Merely a Setback, Lessons in Debilitation, Gravity Lapse and Ignite the Future for Arcane are similar to issues for Fire written in my feedback post about Fire Sunfury above. Would not repeat them, it is just a note for developers that these issues affect both Fire and Arcane Sunfury.

Arcane Spellslinger feedback:

Splintering Orbs is bugged and currently generates only 2 Arcane Splinters instead of 4.
Look Again is much more niche than Slippery Slinging and Displacement is currently frequently skipped in PVE because of hard accessibility in general tree. That together can lead to Look Again being not competitive enough with Slippery Slinging and could be addressed.
Suggestion: Move Displacement to more reachable position in general tree (for example via swapping its position with Accumulative Shielding) and add some additional boost to Look Again - movement speed increase after using Displacement or making Displacement off-GCD or something else.
Unerring Proficiency can be decent, but it is still frequently inferior to Volatile Magic - it requires using a utility ability (which can be on cooldown when you reach 30 stacks if you used it according to its purpose) and it deals reduced damage to secondary affected enemies while Volatile Magic does full damage to first 5 targets. As a result, Unerring Proficiency should get some boosts for competitiveness.
Suggestion: Buff damage bonus from its stacks and make it also additionally reset CD of Supernova when reaching 30 stacks. First change can give it a niche (where it would provide more dps to main target but less dps to secondary targets than Volatile Magic, so both would have pros and cons) and second change would make Supernova accessible to spend fully stacked Unerring Proficiency immediately even if Supernova was used for utility purposes earlier.
Shifting Shards are still too chaotic - they can easily not hit your main target at all and at the same time aggro enemies that are not even in combat yet and break breakable crowd control effects nearby. That could be improved.
Suggestion: Make Shifting Shards prioritize your current target if any, if there is none - prioritize enemies hit by Shifting Power and only if there is none - hit random enemies within 40 yards. In all these cases it also should not affect targets affected by breakable crowd control effects.
Force of Will still provides too low value for Arcane, who does not have same synergies with crit as Fire or Frost. Since this tree is still too passive especially after the change to Spellfrost Teaching to launch Arcane Orb automatically, this node is a good candidate to be replaced with some talent that would involve player interactivity - that would resolve both issues simultaneously.
Change to Spellfrost Teachings is nice, but with 2% chance it definitely needs a form of bad RNG protection, especially in single-target situations. When I tested single-target situation, I did not get its proc for such long time that I started to think that it just did not work and was about to write a bug report and then it finally procced.
Suggestion: Add a form of bad RNG protection, for example “if you deal damage with X Splinters without getting Spellfrost Teachings proc, your next damage from splinter is guaranteed to activate it”. Such mechanism would not affect good and average RNG windows much and would just help with bad RNG windows.
Splinterstorm is decent, but having no control over it can be detrimental - for example it can launch right before you start your ToTM window where it could benefit from Arcane Echo or its delayed launch can break CC. Some people still might like passive launch, so best solution could be to just make passive and active versions of Splinterstorm into capstone choice node and let people pick the preferred option.
Suggestion: Make passive Splinterstorm a choice node with active off-GCD ability Splintersurge with similar effect. That would provide options both for players who want to control it for better usability (and to avoid overlapping of Winter’s Chill for Frost Spellslingers) and for players who don’t want to play with additional management.

Arcane changes feedback and suggestions:

Arcane Familiar and Improved Clearcasting being now mandatory nodes is very controversial, as some people would not want to be forced to take them. Hopefully these positions are just placeholders till new talents are implemented. Improved Clearcasting is also a QoL feature that provides pretty much no throughput increase, which makes it being mandatory even worse. Maybe it should even be merged into baseline Clearcasting just like stacking Fingers of Frost to 2 does not require spending a separate talent point on that for Frost.
Nerfs to both Illuminated Thoughts and Eureka with further Arcane adjustments coming next weeks could make cancelling Clearcast Arcane Missiles early for dps increase possible again, so track that carefully. Illuminated Thoughts also could become not competitive enough without its damage boost and might require returning it or other additional benefit, so track its pick rate too.
Switching positions of Crackling Energy and Improved Arcane Missiles did not achieve much - they are still just tuning knobs and mandatory throughput talents that will be taken in most builds. Consider just removing them and incorporating into baseline damage of affected spells, especially since there are new talents coming to Arcane tree and these talents might need some free talent points to spend upon them.
Change to Leydrinker is good and appreciated, but now it has other issue - it is gated behind 2 point investment into Prodigious Savant that provides very low value for non-Mastery builds. Arcane Debilitation is also overpriced - it is a talent in 3rd part of tree that provides effect similar to old Erosion (which was a single talent). That should be addressed, especially if there will be new talents in Arcane tree that can make spending 3 talent points on a weak effect + Leydrinker / Arcane Harmony not optimal or would simply lack free talents points to be taken much.
Suggestion: Reduce both Arcane Debilitation and Prodigious Savant to 1 point investment with full current value. That would make them better match their value and would help with potential issues mentioned above.
Leydrinker could also use a QoL change via making affected Arcane Blast instant (to bring it in line with already instant Arcane Barrage) and affected spell cast as if having 4 Arcane Charges - that would both make the proc more exciting (which was one of stated design goals for procs) and address issue with getting proc of Leydrinker right after spending all Arcane Charges with Arcane Barrage, which would require rebuilding Charges before you can use it or wasting the proc on a weakened Arcane Blast / Arcane Barrage.
Improved Touch of the Magi provides too low effect on its own and would be taken simply to reach capstone talents. As it is also a talent point dump and a tuning knob talent, that could be addressed. At the same time, currently exists unaddressed issue with Magi’s Spark requiring a cast of Arcane Missiles to detonate and guaranteed Clearcasting generation spells covering 90 second windows, but not 45 second windows, which can lead to simply not having Arcane Missiles available during ToTM and relying on RNG, which can be bad and deny you a Clearcasting proc while ToTM is still active. Both issues could be addressed simultaneously.
Suggestion: Remove Improved Touch of the Magi and bake it into baseline Touch of the Magi and replace with a talent that would make Touch of the Magi generate a stack of Clearcasting (with Clearcasting stack generation removed from Evocation to compensate). That would address most of these issues and allow to have an option to provide guaranteed usage of Arcane Missiles for each Magi’s Spark at the cost of additional talent point investment. This talent should also be optional (unlike current Improved Touch of the Magi), so that people who would want something else more would be able to skip it.
Concentration still has too low effect for a 3rd part of tree talent and is not competitive enough. It could use a boost.
Suggestion: Make it also increase damage of affected Arcane Blast by X%.
Removal of Wizened Wit and freeing of Presence of Mind is good, but I agree with other posters - on its own it is not competitive enough and would be taken only to reach Evocation. That could be improved.
Suggestion: Make it also increase damage of affected Arcane Blasts by X% to provide some throughput value and better compete with throughput talents. Also consider giving its stacks 30 seconds duration and making it trigger CD immediately when used instead of when last stack is used to address its synchronization issues with other 45 seconds CDs.
Charged Orb as a mostly QoL feature being locked behind multiple talents and in 3rd gate is not good - its effect is both often not competitive enough with other talents there and now it is much harder to access. That could be improved.
Suggestion: Make Arcing Cleave baseline (as it is a core part of Arcane AoE toolkit just like Flamestrike / Fuel the Flame are for Fire and Blizzard is for Frost and they are baseline for their specs) and move Charged Orb back to its old position. As for its replacement in 3rd part of tree - that could be a talent that would allow Arcane Barrage to hit 1 amore enemy nearby per Arcane Charge spent, which would help with Arcane’s target cap issues that can make it inferior to other Mage specs at AoE encounters with large number of enemies. If needed, Resonance damage bonus could also be capped at 50% to avoid from getting too high. If this talent still would not be competitive enough with other throughput talents in 3rd part of tree, it could also increase damage of Arcane Barrage by X%.
Orb Barrage could get a form of bad RNG protection to avoid bad RNG windows that would make your AoE dps significally drop without any player’s fault. For example - it could have a mechanism “after spending X Arcane Charges without getting a proc, next Arcane Charge spending is guaranteed to launch an Arcane Orb”. Such mechanism would not affect bad and average RNG windows much and would simply help with bad RNG windows.
There are other Arcane tree issues which were mentioned in this post. Please take a look at them.
There are also issues with Mage’s general talent tree mentioned in this post. Please look at them as well.

Eila-stormrage · June 22, 2024, 12:25am

Arcing Cleave (should be baseline)

It has been discussed a couple of times where in the Arcane Tree Arcing Cleave should be placed, but the more I think about it, I think the effect should be part of Arcane as a baseline effect.

The reason for this is the same as why (I assume) that in the Arcane class set, Arcane Explosion was replaced with Arcane Barrage in both the 2-set and 4-set effects. It was identified that Arcane Explosion is a very minor part of the Arcane AoE kit and that the core of Arcane AoE revolves around Arcane Barrage. But it is also the case that Arcane AoE is not functional without Arcing Cleave. Strangely, the effect that enables Arcane to be functional on AoE is an optional talent in Gate 1.

Fire and Frost get a functional AoE kit through abilities and effects that are either baseline or required for pathing, which can be enhanced further down their trees. For Fire, this is Flamestrike, Fuel the Fire, and Mastery. For Frost, this is Blizzard and Frozen Orb. Making Arcing Cleave baseline or required through pathing would achieve the same for Arcane.

The wrong direction would be to make Arcane Explosion more prominent in the Arcane AoE kit. The existence of nodes like Reverberate exemplifies that the purpose of Arcane Explosion is as a builder spell, and the spender spell is Arcane Barrage. Orb Barrage is an exciting proc because it can circumvent the dull and cumbersome part of Arcane AoE, which is casting Arcane Explosion to build Arcane Charges.

Lastly, Arcane Explosion imposes a practical challenge on Arcane because the mage has to be within melee range for Arcane Explosion to work. Situationally, this challenge can even be impossible to overcome. Arcing Cleave alone provides a functional AoE kit to Arcane in all scenarios since Arcane Charges can still be generated at range with Arcane Blast and Arcane Orb.

For these reasons, Arcing Cleave should be a baseline effect for Arcane.

Tuffsy-malganis · June 22, 2024, 12:51am

Frostfire bolt is a 1sec cast for fire mage. It iss probably a bug, but it feels great

Ravenfell-azralon · June 22, 2024, 1:42am

If you have Flame Accelerant talented, it’s bugged and isn’t consumed by casting Frostfire Bolt.

Brainard-area-52 · June 22, 2024, 1:52am

I think this is a bug related to Flame Accelerant where it isn’t being consumed by Frostfire bolt

Arcane Feedback (post-testing)

Sunfury: The changes to how Spellfire Spheres are generated are nice for guaranteeing Spellfire Sphere procs, but it feels harder to get to 20 stacks of Arcane Harmony. Before the change (when Spellfire Sphere generation and Mana Cascade was based on CC spent), you could spam Arcane Missiles into your target, get your Arcane Harmony stacks to 20, further increase the damage on the target via Arcane Debilitation and nuke it with a big barrage. The problems were the lack of Clearcasting procs, which made it hard to get 4+ CC procs during your Surge window and the overall lack of damage of this rotation in both single target and AoE. Now, the build is smoother, but it isn’t lining up well with Arcane Harmony. You need 6 Arcane Blasts (or Arcane Barrages) to get your Orb, but also need 3 CC procs to get your 20 stacks of Arcane Harmony in single target. That comes out to 6 x 1.53 sec + 3 x 2 sec = 15.18 seconds of casting w/ 0% haste (12.1 sec w/ 25% haste), followed by a Barrage, and note that Touch only lasts 12 seconds. Furthermore, the idea of spamming Arcane Barrage to generate Spellfire Spheres is contradictory to Arcane Harmony, since you would have no way to get those stacks back up to 20 within 1 GCD in single target. Certainly this Sunfury idea works well with Orb Barrage (given the Barrage spam contributing to Spellfire Spheres), but Spellslinger has very clearly claimed the theme of Orb Barrage in its toolkit (weaving spells (arcane orb) within other spells, Orbs generate splinters which feeds into Spellfrost Teachings, etc). I think you should look at making Arcane Harmony work with Sunfury better. I’ve previously suggested some ideas in this thread, up to you what you do.

Spellslinger: While the Spellfrost Teachings change were really nice, it’s very easy to end up chain-Orbing even in single target, and this is with the fact that Splintering Orb is currently only spawning 2 splinters in ST (50% of what it should). I suspect once it spawns 4 splinters, the number of Orbs is going to be crazy, even in single target. While I appreciate this, I worry that this will lead it to get nerfed in a way that punishes it’s AoE use. Furthermore, having done several dungeons, I can say that the previous iteration of Spellfrost Teachings had a lot of benefits, namely the predictability of Orbs (since it gave you a charge back). Now we have to weigh the RNG of Orb Barrage and random SFT procs, creating a playstyle that’s a lot more unpredictable than the previous iteration of Spellfrost Teachings in AoE / M+.
- This one is tough to suggest a change with because the single-target / raid-focused people likely prefer this current iteration, while I suspect the more M+ oriented crowd may grow tired of munching Orbs (i.e. you use Arcane Orb after Barrage in AoE because you didn’t get an Orb Barrage proc but at the same time spawn an Orb from SFT, which feels bad because now you just wasted an Arcane Orb use). The best thing I can suggest is to either make Arcane Orb do more damage in single target, generate more Splinters or grant some benefit to your single target (i.e. Arcane Missiles/Blast damage boost?) so that it feels better to press in ST, while also keeping its consistency in AoE.
- For the Blizzard devs: I would recommend you run a dungeon (ideally M+ so pulls take longer) with the current iteration of SFT, and then try again with the prior iteration. Damage aside, I think you might see what I’m talking about regarding munch Orb procs and how that feels bad.

Thëodorus-sargeras · June 22, 2024, 3:17am

While you are definitely correct regarding Arcing Cleave, I disagree concerning Arcane Explosion. Until very recently, Arcane Explosion was one of the main and most useful AoE abilities in Arcane’s toolkit. That it has become secondary, even tertiary, in our AoE rotation, essentially serving as merely a builder, runs contrary to the original identity of the spell. Its potential is being undeservedly neglected. With successive casts of Arcane Explosion now being slow and underpowered, seeing as it no longer triggers as many Clearcasting procs as it does currently in Dragonflight, it is more difficult (outside of ToTM windows and Arcane Orb “feasts”) to reach four Arcane Charges to expend on Arcane Barrage, which, if Orb Barrage is talented, has a forty percent chance of firing an Arcane Orb that, in turn, allows one or more (depending on RNG) additional casts of Arcane Barrage, etc. Granted, we have access to two charges of Arcane Orb (if Charged Orb is talented), further procs of which are generally numerous with the Spellslinger hero talent tree. The problem, though, is that in this instance there is no bad luck protection against RNG, so that there are not infrequent occasions when using Arcane Explosion is necessary. You are correct that it serves as a builder under such circumstances, but the spell itself deals little damage and feels cumbersome to press. This is not an acceptable state of affairs. I am not necessarily saying that Arcane Explosion should once again become the chief AoE ability in our toolkit; rather, I argue that it should receive a major buff to assume its place as another worthwhile tool for mass AoE damage, and to provide a greater variety of AoE options. There is no reason that a spell like Arcane Explosion (emphasis on the title) should be so underpowered and exist almost solely as a means to an end. It should shine in its own right alongside all our other AoE abilities (with the proper tuning). It is a matter of perspective, of course, but, respectfully, I do not consider occasionally using Arcane Explosion to reach four arcane charges “dull and cumbersome”.

As for the concern of having to be in melee range to cast Arcane Explosion, this is certainly legitimate, but a simple talent that allows Arcane Explosion to be cast from a distance would resolve that issue. This has been a major desideratum of the mage community for a long time.

Vlsal-tichondrius · June 22, 2024, 9:43am

Some additional feedback about Frostfire after further testing (mostly from Frost POV):

Spec can be dynamic and fun, but tracking all the procs can be overwhelming. There were multiple occasions where I took Excess Fire for Fingers of Frost proc (they have similar glow around Ice Lance button) and launched a non-shattered Ice Lance or my Frostfire Empowerment stacked to 2 without me even noticing that, as it was located in 2 rows of buffs that this spec applies. Its proc noticeability still needs a lot of work, especially for new Frostfire Mages that can simply get overwhelmed or confused by all of them.
Suggestion: Remove glow from Flurry for Excess Frost and Ice Lance for Excess Fire and instead add UI elements that will show player that he got Excess Fire / Excess Frost / Frostfire Empowerment. For Excess Fire that could be large fiery arc to the left from player (distinguishable from Hyperthermia though), for Excess Frost that could be large icy arc to the right from player (distinguishable from Fingers of Frost though) and Frostfire Empowerment could be a large arc consisting of ice and fire above your character similar to old Brain Freeze proc UI element for Frostfire Bolt that is currently used in Cataclysm Classic.
Excess Fire can be a good tool to refresh exhausted Flurry charges, but since Ice Lance shatters are tied to frequently RNG based effects (Flurry resets to get Winter’s Chill or Fingers of Frost procs) and bosses are immune to CC based effects (freeze shatters) there are possible situations where you want to use Excess Fire, but have no ways to shatter its Ice Lance and have to wait or launch non-shattered version, which feels bad. That could be improved.
Suggestion: Make Excess Fire also grant a Fingers of Frost stack or make affected Ice Lance deal damage as if the target was frozen. That would allow to spend it immediately when you have it without relying on RNG and since its generation for Frost outside of Frostfire Empowerment procs is already not that easy it could be a good QoL addition. Also consider buffing Living Bomb value from Excess Fire for Frost only, since it is quite low (especially after latest Living Bomb general nerfs) and Frost does not have multiple upgrade talents for Living Bomb like Fire.
Continuing the Excess Fire related issues, while duration increase of Frostfire Mastery to 14 seconds was helpful, there are still situations where you can lose Fire Mastery stacks before you stack them to full, especially if you use longer cast time Frost spells like Glacial Spike and Ray of Frost. That could be improved.
Suggestions:

Increase duration of Frostfire Mastery stacks to 15 seconds. That would both help with stacking Fire Mastery in time and would make sense to better align its cycles with Frost CD based abilities - Flurry (30 seconds CD), Frost Bomb (15 seconds CD), Ray of Frost (60 seconds CD) etc.
Buff Fire Blast’s damage and maybe even reduce its base cooldown to 10 seconds for Frost and Arcane or at least for Frostfire Frost. Then it would become a tool that can be used to help stack Fire Mastery in Frostfire Mastery cycles both without being a dps loss like currently and combined with Haste reducing its cooldown and Elemental Affinity maybe even usable twice each Mastery cycle to give more options for Fire Mastery stacking when needed.

Elemental Affinity for Frost currently does not affect Fire Blast, which is a Fire spell and affects Frost Nova, Ice Nova, Ice Floes and Cone of Cold, which are Frost spells. That should be fixed.
Flame and Frost is still not competitive enough with Elemental Affinity and could use a boost for competitiveness. Potential option - what if CD reset for Frost was tied to Icy Veins instead? That would provide about similar number of Fire spell usages to Elemental Affinity (for example - with Elemental Affinity and 31.5 seconds base cooldown Frost can use 9 Dragon’s Breaths within 252 seconds window (initial + 31.5 * 8 = 252) and with suggested Fire and Frost rework and 45 seconds base cooldown - same 9 within 252 seconds window (initial + 45*5 = 225 + 3 resets from Icy Veins used initially, at 120 seconds and 240 seconds). Such change could make Fire and Frost much more usable and competitive and just have different pros (on-demand resets) and cons (less usages of low CD Fire abilities like Fire Blast) compared to Elemental Affinity for Frost.
Thermal Conditioning is both not competitive enough with Severe Temperatures and can have excess effect with fully stacked Slick Ice - it would drop cast time of Frostfire Bolt to 1.44 seconds, which is below GCD and makes part of its effect wasted. Both issues could be addressed simultaneously.
Suggestion: Reduce its cast time reduction to 5-6% (which would provide 1.5-1.52 seconds base cast time with fully stacked Slick Ice that about matches the GCD) and to compensate make it also constantly increase Frostfire Bolt damage by X% without requiring any stacks. Such change would make it more synergizing for Slick Ice or Deathborne builds and give it a niche even for other builds - a simple fixed boost that does not require stacking and managing.
Frostfire Empowerment still has contradictory tooltips and effects. In hero tree it states that it makes Frostfire Bolt deal 100% increased damage and cleave for 80% of its damage, its buff when stacked to 1 states that it would become guaranteed to crit and cleave for 100% of damage (which matches actual effect) and buff stacked to 2 states that it would cleave for 200% of damage (which is wrong as it still would cleave for 100% of damage). Please bring all these tooltips and effects in line to avoid confusion. If we were to pick one of these effects - i would prefer 100% damage increase over guaranteed crit, as it both better synergizes with shatter in PVE and is not nerfed like crit damage is in PVP.
Flashfreeze Burn’s tooltip should be clarified that it is consuming Frostfire Empowerment that grants these benefits and not gaining it to avoid potential confusion.
Some other issues related to Frostfire were mentioned in this post, please take a look at them too.

Datwunguy-sargeras · June 22, 2024, 4:01pm

Sunfury Rondurmancy & Spellfire Spheres
Is this talent supposed to allow Spellfire Spheres to stack to 5 outside of combat? It currently does not. It does stack to 5 inside of combat, but feels like you should be able to stack 5 outside of combat as well.

And to echo everyone else, please decrease the time it takes for them to stack. Mages will prefer waiting to have max stacks for a pull (after a wipe), while the rest of the group will prefer to get right back to it with minimal downtime. This will once again put the Mage’s preferences at odds with the groups, just like Temporal Warp.

Norri-nazjatar · June 22, 2024, 4:12pm

I’m really happy to see Frost getting some talent updates, with more hopefully to come. The Frost tree still needs more work, but all of the problems have been pointed out before so I won’t repeat them here.

Spec Tree

Regarding the most recent changes: removing Snowstorm is a great change, given that Coldest Snap already exists. I don’t like that Ice Caller is moving into its old position, though. It’s a key talent in Frost’s AoE. You wouldn’t even cast Blizzard without it. So it either needs to be baseline (like Fuel the Fire is now for Fire) or at least easily accessible. Moving the talent further down into the tree does precisely the opposite.

I do like Permafrost Lances. It’s a good talent with nice synergies. I hope that “previous iterations of the tier sets” refers to the current S3/S4 bonuses. The 2piece set bonus (exploding Glacial Spike) is really fun to play with.

Frostfire Tree

Fire Mastery feels nicer now with the extra 2 sec and higher RPPM on Frostfire Infusion. To address some posts above me, I definitely do not want to be casting Fire Blast in my regular rotation. I think it makes sense to maybe use it while moving to build Fire Mastery, but I wouldn’t want to use it elsewhere.

One major problem I haven’t seen mentioned here is that Frostfire Bolt (unlike Frostbolt) snapshots everything on cast end rather than on impact. This means that none of the current combos (such as Frostbolt into Flurry) work. This has further implications for talents such as Subzero or Deep Shatter (which currently doesn’t work with Frostfire Bolt at all).

Frostfire Bolt has enough cast time reduction effects that its cast time can be fairly easily reduced below the min GCD (0.75 sec) with Icy Veins and Time Warp. While Slick Ice does have GCD reduction, it can never reduce the GCD below 0.75 sec. At that point, you’ll simply have gaps between Frostfire Bolt casts, which tends to break stuff like the Brain Freeze delay.