Feedback: Mages

Kartaríus-stormrage · June 25, 2024, 10:49pm

One notable bug that has yet to be resolved:

If you play Time Anomaly and get the Icy Veins proc… all of the frostbolt talents work perfectly. However, if you use your OWN Icy Veins during this window, none of the frostbolt talents will work for the entire window (30 sec)

Tuckyfried-argent-dawn · June 25, 2024, 10:52pm

I suppose it also matters as to whether ‘damaging an enemy with Frostbolt’ triggers when you hit something with the splash from Frostfire Empowerment. Could stack up quick in that case. I can’t test it tonight, unfortunately.

Kartaríus-stormrage · June 25, 2024, 10:56pm

I’ll test that out rq (I’m Adraxus, forgot to switch character). I’m loving Frostfire and I wish I could love Spellslinger, but it drains me looking at dps recaps and seeing 3% of my damage is the sum of every splinter talent (even with the new mastery inclusion). I hope it gets some well deserved buffing

Edit: Death’s Chill does NOT proc from frostfire empowerment AOE

Spicymilk-hellscream · June 25, 2024, 11:00pm

Also, please revert the Ice Nova/Ring of Frost choice node. Frost mage will lose ring of frost and it serves no purpose.

Lucidness-thrall · June 25, 2024, 11:00pm

Arcane Feedback 06/25/2024

In general, I think we may have gone a step back here. Some nodes are interesting, and baseline orb is an okay thing to make baseline, but much like the first iteration of fire there are so many things and a lot of them seem redundant.

Gate 1 Problems
Currently we’re going to need to take 9 points minimum in the top gate in 90% of situations, if not more talents in the top gate. Again, making cleave baseline or removing the 3% blast/mana talent and making it so 8 points is what we want is better. Tempo and 2nd orb are really strong and great talents.

I’ve also noted this before, but Arcing Cleave really should be baseline.

Gate 2 Reorganization
There are some talents here I just don’t think make a lot of sense with how arcane functions.

Dematerialization

I don’t mind this, but I don’t think that this is what arcane needed . It didn’t need a dot, it doesn’t need ignite or serpent sting, it’s not it’s identity as a spec for the last few expansions. If it’s tuned well, we’ll take it. I’d rather have the spells be buffed accordingly and have the talent point, or drop the point and put it somewhere else. I get the idea behind it, it just seems different to what arcane was before and what it is trying to be.

Big Brained

Feels a bit odd considering we’re meant to rain in clear casting, and be focused on our burst. It’s a fine talent, but just seems tacked on to the side of the tree without any other supporting talents around it. Neat idea, but not a fan of it in the arcane tree overall.

Energy Reconstitution

This talent seems really out of place. Dematerialized is cool, some lingering damage (again, an odd thing for arcane), but having an explosion which does middling damage at 50% effectiveness just feels not worth it.

Static Cloud

Arcane Explosion is used as a filler, and is not a fun button to press. I get that this talent is meant to make it better, but spamming explosion for damage is not fun.

Crackling Energy/IAM

Again, these are decently strong nodes but not fun to take. With how many new nodes added, I’d be fine if these nodes were cut and the other nodes added to replace them. That would at least free up some talent points for more fun talents.

Resonance vs Familiar

Reverberate would be in more of the AOE part, which seems to the the right hand side. Why not move it where Big Brained is? That would also make it not in competition with Arcane Famililar. I did like the old routing where familiar was always taken. I like the bird just from an aesthetics point of view, but now it won’t be chosen if it’s not a DPS upgrade, which is a shame.

Chronoshift, SlipStream, Mana Adept

Our utility is still competing with throughput, and we won’t be able to pick them with the bloat we have in the middle section. That was the main complaint people had, was that things were too competitive for our utility, not for more talents to compete with them.

Concentrated Thoughts

This talent is still bad, giving 5% increased chance to a small chance is bad, and this talent should just be removed.

Gate 3
It’s now harder to get to harmony and debilitation and prodigious savant are still 2 point nodes, and previous mid-tier nodes were moved down. Rather than make more interesting cap-stones, the old ones are harder to get and the new ones are old talents we had prior. With how everything is positioned, we have to spend at minimum 6 points at the first row of this gate, which makes the actual talents below it hard to get and feels bad, as Porom said below.

Debilitation/High Voltage/Time Loop/Harmony Line

Arcane Harmony is a great capstone, but Debilitation, voltage and time loop are not great talents. Debilitation is fine, but 2 talent points is a lot. And 3 total points to get to harmony is a huge investment to what was going to be a very interesting portion of the Sunfury Hero Spec
Initially I had doubted High Voltage, but it has grown on me. It’s one of the more interesting talents. Time loop is still bad though and an RNG proc on an overpriced talent (debilitation) is bad. I do think time loop should be changed. But High Voltage is improved form where I had it before.

Enlightened/Aether Attunement

It feels bad that these were mid nodes now capstones. They were strong but not buffed to compensate. With how tight the points are it’s hard to take them. Consider moving them into the harmony side and making debilitation 1 point, and replacing Time Loop/Attunement.
Missiles is also very weak in comparison to the other spells which have gotten substantial buffs to the point where I’m not sure it’ll be worth it to spec in to any Missile talents in keys, making Aether Attunement worthless. This is a shame. This would be much better buffed, and not as a capstone. Perhaps where Improved Arcane Missiles was?

Magi’s Spark/Munitions

Magi’s spark has a cool animation and rotation, but doesn’t feel great in AOE/Keys. Likely won’t be played. Nether Munitions likely won’t be used either as it is outside of the burst/ToTM. Consider reworking them or buffing accordingly.

Bombardment/Orb Barrage

This is probably fine. Bombardment was a very strong talent and previous capstone point

Prodigious Savant

This is a very strong talent. I like having mastery matter more, but having 2 points here, much like 2 points in debilitation feels bad. We have a lot more talents to choose from now rather than before. Consdier making it 1 point.

Leydrinker and Concentration

Both of these talents are still undertuned. Leydrinker is a proc off of a proc which feels bad and undertuned. Concentration is more or less meaningless when mana is not an issue, and should likely be removed.

CONCLUSION

The tree feels like the first iteration of the fire tree. There’s a lot of bloat, and a lot of ideas that just seem unfinished and odd. A lot of nodes need to be pruned, and points free’d up.

Again, like the first rework, I feel like we took a step back from the last tree. Sometimes stuff was okay with the previous iteration. There was tension within the previous tree, but at least it had more cohesive ideas than this. We still lack chrono shift, are forced to pick slipstream.

There was a lot of feedback given during the last build, and it seems rather than take it in to consideration, it was more or less discarded. Rather than focusing in on passive talents and making QOL better or giving more meaningful choice, there’s random AOE talents that don’t make senseor Missiles or explosion talents added in, and point taxes in the last gate making an already cumbersome tree that much harder to navigate, and we lose fun talents because of it.

I see some of the things that they were going for, but much like the initial arcane rework, I’m disappointed.

Thëodorus-sargeras · June 25, 2024, 11:01pm

Regarding the latest Arcane changes (having tested several different builds and done a couple dungeons):

Overall, these changes are good, and the newest talents introduced today are (mostly) on the right track. I am having a lot of fun playing Arcane now, especially AoE-wise. However, the talent tree is still very bloated and disorganised, (both of) which this build exacerbated, unfortunately. Moreover, it really needs pruning and several talent redesigns. If these issues are corrected, then Arcane will be in an excellent spot for TTW (note that the following adhere to no particular order):

Talents

1.) I am pleased that Arcane Orb is now baseline, which frees up an additional point. The irony, though, is that the incentive to select the new talent Resonating Orbs is high enough, so that we effectively do not gain the extra point at all. Flat damage increase talents are boring and unnecessary in most cases, and Resonating Orbs is an egregious example of one. Please just remove it.

2.) On the subject of flat damage increase talents, I am truly perplexed as to why Crackling Energy and Improved Arcane Missiles not only remain in the tree, but were also nerfed this week. I understand that the affected spells might otherwise be too powerful if the bonus stays at 10%, but this is really not the issue; rather, the problem is that these talents should NOT exist under any circumstances. Just taking these out would very much improve the talent tree bloat situation. Now nerfed, they serve even less purpose than before.

3.) Arcane Tempo is still as dead as before. At this point in development it should just be removed.

4.) Dematerialize is brilliant: Arcane has long, long needed a DoT and this fulfills that need perfectly. Please keep it but buff its damage. As for Energy Reconstitution, this is likewise superb (though it needs to do more damage and proc more often; I would also like to have some control over it). Big Brained is OK at best; I do not care for talents like this and would prefer to see it pruned.

5.) Static Cloud is great: Arcane Explosion finally feels meaningful to press. My only suggestion is to make the talent also increase Arcane Explosion’s casting speed by a small amount with each successive cast, as AE casts are too slow at the moment.

6.) While I understand the intent, High Voltage is nonetheless niche and should be redesigned.

7.) Prodigious Savant really needs to be one point or changed: it’s lacklustre and extremely dry.

8.) Leydrinker is still in need of a buff, and Nether Munitions is both underpowered and poorly designed: it occurs after the burst window. Please replace it with something much more powerful and interesting. Talents of this kind are boring and subpar.

9.) Magi’s Spark now functions correctly and deals good damage. In my opinion, though, it would be best to buff it more, given its capstone position and its being tied to a 45 sec CD.

10.) If the utility nodes are here to stay (even though they shouldn’t), then at least allow Chrono Shift to be baseline, so that we have yet another much needed point.

11.) PLEASE, PLEASE just make one of the Arcane Barrage nodes baseline. There is simply no point in having three separate talents.

12.) Finally, Evocation should be baseline and Siphon Storm removed. The latter’s presence is stifling build diversity, and the former is so fundamental to Arcane that it has no business being a talent, especially not so far down in the tree.

Spellslinger

1.) Unerring Proficiency needs a buff: increase the stack count and make reaching the maximum stacks reset the CD on Supernova.

TLDR: consider the above suggestions and prune unnecessary, flat talents (straight damage increases, especially) wherever possible. It’s disappointing to have to pass up particularly fun options because I have to pick certain arid, but mandatory, talents. Even with this new build I still feel starved for points.

Aedred-stormrage · June 25, 2024, 11:02pm

Arcane Talent Tree … you’ve possibly made it worse.

Why would you change it to have 5 capstone talents but lock them behind 2 mandatory 2 point talents, 1 mandatory 1 point talent, AND Siphon Storm (strangely ending a branch on it’s own where the opposite side ends one talent sooner).

You leave us with 4 points to use on Capstones and the talents leading to them.

Quick and easy semi-solution: REMOVE SIPHON STORM ENTIRELY. It’s completely out of place now and would free up at least 1 talent point towards the capstones.

Tuckyfried-argent-dawn · June 25, 2024, 11:25pm

Bummer. Would have been a neat interaction with Frostfire. I imagine it would also be nearly instant in big enough packs, so maybe a balancing choice?

Norri-nazjatar · June 25, 2024, 11:41pm

I must say I’m really unhappy with the Frost changes. While the new cap on Death’s Chill most likely guarantees that spamming Frostbolt the entire Icy Veins duration is bad (though Frostbolt still gets a lot of power from Fractured Frost and Cold Front), increasing the per-stack effect by 100% really pushes us towards at least some Frostbolt spam.

As I see it, there are two possible outcomes:

Scenario 1

The talent is entirely passive and we just take whatever benefit we can get from the Frostbolts we cast naturally. As mentioned previously, this makes the talent quite bad. Both Hero trees push us away from Frostbolt (through the Excess buffs, Splinterstorm and Spellfrost Teachings) and sometimes you just end up with 2-3 stacks of Death’s Chill when Icy Veins expire.

Scenario 2

We actively want to cast Frostbolt to trigger the talent. To maximize the effect, you want to ramp first and then start doing damage. So we’re looking at casting up to 10 Frostbolts at the start of each Icy Veins before using procs and other cooldowns. Besides being tedious and just plain boring, it goes against many of the effects that were added to Icy Veins:

You cast Icy Veins
You immediately get Brain Freeze from your water elemental
Your hero trees also give you immediate benefits through Splinters, Splinterstorm, full Fire/Frost Mastery stacks and Excess buffs
You ignore all this and spam Frostbolt

The development notes seem to imply that scenario 2 is the intended gameplay, which kinda scares me. I don’t mind ramping effects in principle, but I really dislike that the only way to ramp Death’s Chill is through Frostbolt spam.

Poram-area-52 · June 25, 2024, 11:45pm

The new Arcane design changes are disheartening and about 15 steps in the wrong direction.

Giving Arcane ignite was absolutely senseless, we already have an accumulator that is bugged and worthless frequently due to this, on top of that this is design for Fire, if I want Ignite I can spend 10 seconds changing specs.

High Voltage is a terrible design for arcane missiles functionally, I understand the attempt here is to generate a real use case for Clearcasting in AOE and also provide an AOE-at-ranged option. This is absolutely the wrong way to accomplish that goal, we have Arcane Orb, we have Arcane Explosion, we just need them improved to actually work well. Replacing them with Arcane Missiles is going to make the spec feel degenerate even when it isn’t.

The gate 1 choices contain almost nothing in the way of quality of life or utility, meanwhile those are all STILL at-risk talents in gate 2. Gate 2 is miserably bloated with, again, quality of life and fun taking a backseat to boring % damage talents. This has been a trend with Arcane since the start of Dragonflight, quality of life and fun are back-seated for REALLY boring talents that do % damage or some boring proc you don’t pay attention like Impetus.

There are 5 points invested in the first row of talents when you enter the capstone tier, not including the VERY powerful (and probably always take) Siphon Storm. This means you have 6/10 points spent before you even consider anything remotely fun or interesting in the capstone talent arena. I cannot stress enough that this SUCKS. And this isn’t even factoring the point that Charged Orb is now as absolutely screwed as Arcing Cleave has been the last 3 builds.

Every build you guys put forth feels worse and more disconnected from feedback than the one before it. I am demotivated to provide feedback at this point as it seems to be going completely unheard or its being handled with little care and intention. Again, this tree is worse than it was in Dragonflight, at this point I would take Radiant Spark, Mana Gem, and the complete lack of build diversity over the entirety of this rework. I am not being hyperbolic here, you have completely ruined the Arcane spec tree.

Degenhours-zuljin · June 26, 2024, 12:52am

I’m really just echoing Poroms thoughts here, but this update to the arcane tree was a misstep. The feedback we’ve given repeatedly throughout the Alpha and Beta has been very focused on the disparity between Arcane and the other specs and having to choose between utility and throughput in the tree; and every step along the way has made that friction point hotter.

We’re spending all our points on an hide-and-seek adventure across the talent tree to pick out the required nodes for the profile we need, navigating a mine field of boring 5% passive amps to get to where we need to be. The core structure of basically every foreseeable build desiring Siphon, Totm, NP and Leysight means we’re spread thin on that front. The tree is now very wide, but it isn’t cohesive.

If you wanted to put together an orb and barrage focused AOE tree, you quite literally need to go to the four corners of the tree to get the required supporting talents. I’m actively contemplating dropping capstones to pick up talents like arcing cleave or charged orb because they either make the spec more fluid or are absolutely required to make the build function. Then I need to somehow budget for Gate 3, where Arcane Bombardment, Leysight, and Siphon are all but mandatory for this concept. Now I can’t go pick up fun rotationally impactful capstones like Harmony.

It just feels bad. There’s no organization, there’s no fluidity. If you look at the fire tree, you start off with Lit Fuse and cruise right down the side of the tree picking up all these fun modifiers to buff it. Arcane lacks that to an extreme.

Thëodorus-sargeras · June 26, 2024, 2:15am

As for Arcane, I agree that the tree is severely bloated, disorganised, and in need of redesigns in places, and I certainly appreciate (and largely share) the frustration. Arcane’s redesign has been tumultuously difficult and hit-and-miss. Even so, I do believe that the current tree will be viable/enjoyable with the necessary pruning, reorganisation, redesigns, and tuning.

If it were up to me, I would return Arcane to its Legion iteration (with the appropriate adjustments and elaborations), which was the best it has ever been, and I think that would solve so many of the spec’s problems. Alternatively, I would consider overhauling the entire spec and coming up with a new version of Arcane altogether. But, after I and many others have proposed restoring Legion Arcane repeatedly over the last several years to no avail, I think it is fair to say that Blizzard has no interest in going back to Legion-style Arcane. What we have now in the Beta, though, has significant promise, as long as the right changes and redesigns are made in the end. Keeping the DF tree would be a mistake.

Lanfear-tichondrius · June 26, 2024, 2:46am

Heat shimmer procs way too much. it makes improves scorch a near maintenance buff in single target. Strong dislike.

Manather-stormreaver · June 26, 2024, 2:53am

Frost will have mastery seriously devalued in TWW. A significant portion of our damage coming from hero talents and our tier set is entirely unaffected by our mastery (Enhanced Ice Novas, Meteor, Living Bomb, Frigid Pulse). Worth noting this wasn’t an issue with our prior cleaving tier sets because they cleaved a % of the spells damage, rather than the ice lance tier being a wholly separate effect. Going back to the Frostburn mastery (mastery increases damage to frozen targets) would be a good evergreen effect.

Also pls change the Ice Nova and Ring of Frost choice node, it makes no sense and only serves to hurt frost over the other two specs.

Arittamordio-sargeras · June 26, 2024, 5:46am

Each week when more changes come out and the feedback that the players are given is completely ignored, it becomes more and more worrying. Even looking at this last batch of changes to Death’s Chill. The overall view is that spamming frost bolt is not a fun play style and it still does not work with Hero Traits or anything else in frosts kit.

It feels like we are rapidly approaching the point in which there wont be the drastic change we need to fix these talents, and we will be left with poorly designed talent because they “ran out of time” when in fact its that feedback isnt being taken into consideration or they are overly committed to the idea of this mock deathfrost trait.

Brainard-area-52 · June 26, 2024, 6:50am

Bugs (Arcane only):

Consortium’s Bauble is increasing the mana cost of Arcane Blast by 3%, not reducing it
Volatile Magic isn’t scaling with Mastery: Savant
Dematerialize DoT does not proc Arcane Echo (might be intended; I’m not sure)
Dematerialize DoT does not scale with Mastery (this may be intended to prevent double-dipping, although this talent can only proc from Arcane Blast and Arcane Barrage which don’t have as good mastery scaling as other Arcane spells even with Prodigious Savant talented)
Dematerialize does not apply to all targets hit with Arcane Barrage when consuming Nether Precision (and sometimes the DoT doesn’t apply to the main target hit). This has significant implications given that in AoE, having 5 targets with Dematerialize on them can proc a lot of Arcane Explosions with the Energy Reconstitution talent.
Invocation: Arcane Phoenix: the bird’s spells are not proc’ing Arcane Echo (might be intended; I’m not sure)
Energy Reconstitution: Arcane Explosions from this effect does proc Arcane Echo (might be intended; I’m not sure)

Arcane Spec Tree Feedback

Overall Feedback: I am happy that Arcane is getting so much attention (definitely was not the case 2 expansions ago), and while this newest iteration has some issues that I’ll discuss further, I think the ideas are interesting and worth exploring.

The biggest problem I see with all these new talents is that there is a lot of bloat that makes it quite difficult to pick DPS talents like Energized Familiar (which I liked!), Illuminated Thoughts, Eureka (especially with how much weaker Arcane Missiles is now relative to Arcane Blast d/t series of buffs), Concentration, Time Loop and sadly Chrono-Shift is now even farther away from being pickable d/t the severe competition with the sheer number of DPS talents.

I think I know why you’re doing this: you don’t want us to have everything; you want to incentivize choice (i.e. you can’t get Arcane Harmony and Orb Barrage without dropping Evo/Siphon Storm or Prodigious Savant/Leysight/Leydrink or Magi’s Spark). I’m not against this idea per se, but it does feel bad for talents like Chrono-Shift (which will now only likely to get picked in PvP), and doubly bad given there are raw throughput talents that are essentially mandatory like Improved Arcane Missiles and Crackling Energy taking up some of those mandatory points.

I do think some of the talents given immense DPS values in some (or all scenarios for some talents), and could probably be reworked to be a little bit more interesting or removed to provide an opportunity to select some of the cooler talents you’ve been working on that unfortunately likely don’t give as much DPS value (i.e. Energized Familiar, Arcane Tempo for AoE (competes w/ Charged Orb), Static Cloud, etc.).

Because we are now in a situation where we have too many talents and not enough points, I’m going to discuss all of the talents that I think have some quirks or minor/major issues and what could be done to address this to make the Arcane tree feel good to talent into (except Leydrinker).

Individual Talent Feedback

Dematerialize + Energy Reconstitution + Static Cloud

Dematerialize (New Talent): Spells empowered by Nether Precision cause their target to suffer an additional 8% of the damage dealt over 6 sec.

Energy Reconstitution (New Talent): Damage from Dematerialize has a small chance to summon an Arcane Explosion at its target’s location at 50% effectiveness. Arcane Explosions summoned from Energy Reconstitution do not generate Arcane Charges.

Static Cloud: Each time you cast Arcane Explosion, its damage increases by 25%. Bonus resets after reaching 100% damage.

Feedback: I like the idea of Ignite for Arcane, and although I love the idea of Energy Reconstitution, those are basically just damage procs with little interactions with the rest of your kit. Trying this out in single target, Dematerialize was ~2% damage overall, which is pretty good considering Arcane Blast was ~20% and Arcane Barrage was ~12% (although dummy was in execute range; was running M+ build w/ Arcane Bombardment). This talent stands to give roughly 100% more value than Crackling Energy with these kinds of numbers, given Crackling only increased Arcane Blast damage by 5% (and thus accounted for only ~1% overall in that fight since Arcane Blast was ~20%). In practice (i.e. dummy not in execute range), this difference would probably shrink, but will likely still heavily favor Dematerialize over Crackling Energy by all metrics. You did introduce an AoE application for this talent in the form of Energy Reconstitution, which is definitely very cool, but lack in two departments. The first problem is that the DoT lasts only 6 seconds, but with this talent you actually want the DoT to last as long as possible (even if the ticks do no damage) since you want to keep proc’ing these Arcane Explosions. The second problem is that with Arcane Barrage, the DoT does not apply to all targets hit by Arcane Barrage. This could provide significant AoE damage to the buff, which may be necessary given Energized Reconstitution only does ~1.4% of my overall in keys when I tried this out. The other problem is that the Arcane Explosions do not grant Arcane Charges, which makes this buff purely DPS-based. Although I can understand the reason why you didn’t want to have these grant Arcane Charges, it does limit the playstyle impact of these two talents. I do think this idea is very unique and cool, and I would love to see it expanded, but as it stands, it may need so more flushing out to make it work. Lastly, Static Cloud is a cool idea that could’ve worked with these other two talents given the Arcane Explosions give you Static Cloud procs, but the problem is that the stacks reset after 4 stacks, and these are easily consumed by random Arcane Explosions proc’d from Energy Reconstitution, which you don’t want given these only do 50% of normal damage. However, I do think you’re on to something with this talent combo; I have an idea below that you can consider that could make this talent trio more interactive and explosive (pun intended).

Suggestions:

Dematerialize: Deals 8% of the target’s health over 15 seconds (up from 6 seconds)

This is to maximize uptime of the DoT to get more Arcane Explosions out of them in AoE

Dematerialize: Allow the DoT to apply to multiple targets when hit by Arcane Barrage (maybe cap DoT application at 5 targets?)

This is to increase the value of this talent in AoE due to having multiple targets now popping Arcane Explosions randomly, which doesn’t do much damage on its own

Static Cloud: Arcane Explosion casts and procs from Energy Reconstitution grant 1 stack of Static Cloud. At 20 stacks, your next Arcane Explosion becomes Arcane Nuke, which deals 400% increased damage, generates 4 Arcane Charges and applies Arcane Surge for 4 seconds.

This is meant to incentivize using Arcane Explosion in a tactical and methodical way, where you build these Static Cloud charges using these little explosions from the DoT on Dematerialize w/ Energy Reconstitution to generate this giga-Arcane Explosion.

Putting some hard numbers on this, with Clearcasting proc’d, Crackling Energy, Eureka and the Arcane Surge buff, this would do (673% Spell Power) Arcane damage w/ 9.6% mastery (baseline), or roughly 7% more damage than Arcane Surge, which currently hits for (628% Spell Power) when factoring the 35% buff from Arcane Surge and 8% damage from Mastery it benefits from (talk about a nuke)

Big Brained

Big Brained(New Talent): Gaining Clearcasting increases your Intellect by 1% for 8 sec. Multiple instances may overlap.

Feedback: What a name for a talent; I love it. Regarding the actual effect, it’s a little bland, basically Ironfur but with a minor intellect buff. It does gain value during CDRs because Evocation and Arcane Surge are guaranteed to generate 2 CC procs. It also slightly raises the value of Illuminated Thoughts. Overall, this is one of those buffs that we’ll pick if the simbot tells us, and won’t if it tells us not to. Not very interesting, similar to Crackling Energy, Improved Arcane Missiles, Surging Urge, Resonant Orbs, Eureka, Consortium’s Bauble and Improved Touch of the Magi (where these are all just % damage amps w/ no real rotational difference). It’s fine to have a couple of nodes like these in our tree, but as you can see from the list above, it’s a little excessive for Arcane.

Crackling Energy + Improved Arcane Missiles

Crackling Energy: Increases Arcane Explosion and Arcane Blast damage by 5%.

Improved Arcane Missiles: Increases Arcane Missiles damage by 5%.

Feedback: Please remove these talents Blizzard. Arcane is currently looking to be overperforming currently in keys, and likely in single target as well (pending raid testing). I think if you choose to nerf Arcane by removing these talents, these would likely be the some of the best received nerfs in living memory since it would free up the mandatory talent points to something more interesting.

Resonant Orbs

Resonant Orbs (current): Arcane Orb damage increased by 10%

Resonant Orbs (suggested change): Arcane Orb’s cooldown is reduced by 2 seconds every time you use Arcane Barrage.

Feedback: Similar to Improved Arcane Missiles and Crackling Energy in single target, this talent provides a massive amount of damage in M+, increased in large pulls. Given Arcane Orb currently does 20-30% of my overall depending on the key (higher in SV and Necrotic Wake, lower in City of Threads), this talent provides 2-3% overall damage in a single point for keys. But like Crackling Energy and Improved Arcane Missiles, I can’t feel any of it. Numbers are going up, but just like the Shards of Domination in Sanctum of Domination, I can’t feel any of this damage because it is not interactive with my kit. The example I gave above would probably give you the same amount of damage in keys, but in a much more interactive way than the current talent.

Time Loop

Time Loop (current): When you apply a stack of Arcane Debilitation, you have a 10% chance to apply another stack of Arcane Debilitation. This effect can trigger off of itself.

Time Loop (suggested change): After applying 24 stacks of Arcane Debilitation, your next Arcane Missiles will fire all of it’s Missiles instantly. This effect can stack with Aether Attunement.

Feedback: Time Loop applies a surprisingly higher amount of stacks than I thought, somewhere on the realm of 1-2 additional stacks for every Clearcasting proc consumed. The problem is the duration of Arcane Debilitation (only 6 seconds) and how hard it is to get 3 CC procs without spending a single one (since Arcane Debilitation incentivizes spamming Arcane Missiles to stack that Vulnerability as high as possible). I like the way Arcane Debilitation works currently, but I don’t want to play around RNG procs randomly giving me more vulnerability. I don’t feel that increased damage because it’s completely passive. I would like for something a little more active in my kit for Time Loop. With the effect listed above, your 3rd Arcane Missiles (applies with Aether Attunement) would fire off its volley instantly, effectively acting as a 25% DPS increase for your 3rd Arcane Missiles (2 second channel → 1.5 second GCD instant cast), and would likely look visually stunning as you fire off 8 to 40 missiles instantly (with Aether Attunement).

Consortium's Bauble

Consortium’s Bauble (Current): Reduces Arcane Blast’s mana cost by 3% and increases its damage by 3%.

Consortium’s Bauble (Suggested Change): Reduces Arcane Blast’s mana cost by 15%.

Feedback: This talent is currently bugged (it is increasing the mana cost of Arcane Blast by 3%, not decreasing it). More importantly, I would like for this to focus more on the mana cost reduction over the damage of Arcane Blast. a 3% mana cost reduction is equivalent to 1 free Arcane Blast every 33 Arcane Blast casts. Comparing that to real world values: the current top Volcoross Arcane mage log (Player = Lencely, Volcoross as an example of ST fight) casted 96 Arcane Blasts. This would mean he would get 3 free Arcane Blasts. That is completely insignificant. Because you uncoupled mana cost from CC procing in TWW, you can now get away with talents that reduce the mana cost of spells, allow us to get more haste while not being punished as much. I would like for this talent to lean more into the mana cost reduction over the damage buff, since it will always be taken over Arcing Cleave in ST (where Arcane Blast matters more).

Concentration

Concentration (Current): Arcane Blast has a small chance to make your next cast of Arcane Blast free. (2+Haste ppm)

Concentration (Suggested Change): Nether Precision can now stack up to 3 times, but Arcane Missiles now only grants 1 stack of Nether Precision. Arcane Barrage can now consume up to 3 stacks of Nether Precision in a single cast to gain their additive effects (i.e. +60% or 90% damage if Leysight talented).

Feedback: Similar to Consortium’s Bauble, the mana gained from this talent isn’t much. In that same log I used on Volcoross, Lencely casted 28 Arcane Blasts per minute. Concentration would mean that 2 of these would be free, which equates to a ~7% mana cost reduction on average for Arcane Blast. That’s so low and uninspiring for a near-capstone node, I think we can do better here. The talent I suggested here is meant to give synergy with the Arcane Harmony build, where you would cast 3 Arcane Missiles to get to 20 stacks of Arcane Harmony in single target, get 24 stacks of Arcane Debilitation by doing so and be able to expend all of the Nether Precision stacks accumulated into the big barrage.

High Voltage

High Voltage: Damage from Arcane Missiles has a 20% chance to grant you 1 Arcane Charge. Chance is increased by 5% every time your Arcane Missiles fails to grant you an Arcane Charge.

Feedback: Fantastic talent, don’t change it. Fits in amazingly with Arcane Harmony. The only thing I need you to figure out is how to make this work with the Sunfury tree (i.e. how to get enough CC procs in that tree to make this CC-spam happen, how to get Spellfire Spheres using CC procs, etc.)

Chrono-Shift + Impetus

Feedback: Please flip the position of these talents. The only way I see us play Chrono-Shift is if it is in a spot where you have almost no choice but to select it in order to gain access to the whole rest of the tree. I think you could swap it with Impetus and that would meet that goal well.

Surging Urge

Surging Urge (current): Arcane Surge damage increased by 5% per Arcane Charge.

Surging Urge (suggested change): During Arcane Surge, 50% of your Mastery stat is converted to Haste.

Feedback: I’ve been omitting this talent for a while now just because I wanted to help out with Sunfury feedback (since the tree still isn’t working great w/ Arcane Harmony), but I think it’s time I address this here. I like the idea of having some kind of boost to Arcane Surge, but 20% additional damage at 4 Arcane Charges is just boring. One of the things I’ve noted while playing Arcane in keys and raid is that I’ve always wanted PI during cooldowns (like most specs of course), but if I were to retain the Haste buff outside of cooldown, I would run the risk of going OOM. Given that Arcane already runs high mastery, and your risk of going OOM during Arcane Surge is almost zero, I was thinking about a way to given Arcane some kind of haste buff during its cooldown. You could do a flat “+10% haste during Arcane Surge” or something, but something like this feels better (even if the number ends up the same or lower), similar to Fire mage’s Improved Combustion talent w/ Crit.

Sunfury Arcane

Spellfire Spheres

Spellfire Spheres (current): Every 6 times you cast Arcane Blast or Arcane Barrage conjure a Spellfire Sphere.

Spellfire Spheres (suggested change): Every 6 times you cast Arcane Blast or Arcane Barrage, or every 3 times you cast Arcane Missiles, you conjure a Spellfire Sphere. Consuming Burden of Power generates a Clearcasting charge.

Feedback: Spellslinger is fantastic already (maybe a little overtuned in AoE), but Sunfury is not. It is having an identity crisis of which route it wants to go down, especially on the thematic end of things. I’ve stated before that this tree should HARD focus on the Arcane Harmony build and not the Orb Barrage build because it fits thematically to have an explosive cooldown window with this tree, unlike Spellslinger’s constant barrage of spells (i.e. Orb Barrage). Unfortunately, it ain’t working chief, at least not well in AoE. I want to use Arcane Missiles to get Arcane Harmony back, but I can get these damn Spellfire Spheres (and Burden of Power) to line up with Arcane Harmony. Please find a way to get the Spellfire Spheres to fit with Arcane Harmony, it would be so nice for this tree to have a working nice in both ST (which already works) and AoE (which does not work; at least not with Arcane Harmony as far as I tested it)

Zommoros-azshara · June 26, 2024, 10:23am

Continuing the discussion from The War Within Beta Development Notes:

This has NOT been fixed for Arcane specialization, after a while in combat Splinterstorm will again double down until it starts triggering from only 2 embedded splinters.

Kuni-ghostlands · June 26, 2024, 10:49am

Mirroring this, I managed to bug it on Frost as well. It’s a lot harder to do, but I got it firing early again.

Other bugs remaining:

Controlled Instincts is working cross-mage and cross-spec.
Elemental Affinity is reducing same-element cooldowns.
FFB snapshotting on cast rather than impact, which breaks Frost’s Winter’s Chill mechanic.

Feedback:

Death’s Chill being capped is a good start, but it’s still encouraging Frostbolt spam. BOTH hero trees discourage that, the general idea of Icy Veins discourages that via Thermal Void. Like you give up so much extension time to cast 10 Frostbolts it’s insane.

Fractured Frost really shouldn’t increase Frostbolt damage even further. That entire quartet really needs to be re-evaluated. If you want a simplistic Frost option you need to lean on frozen Ice Lance hits. Nobody liked Shadowlands S3/4 Necrolord Frost, and it only worked because Deathborne lasted like 1:20 after procs and could stack to absurdity. It wasn’t fun, it was strong.

I still really don’t like spell alert on Excess procs, it tricks you into casting non-buffed Lance or sits there and taunts you with Flurry on cooldown. Given the changes to Frostfire Infusion’s proc rate and the Mastery stacks, I feel you could probably replace their stack count with the Excess buff on the personal resource bar instead and that would cover the loss of the spell indicator?

Speaking of, given that the general goal is to throw Flurry then Comet Storm, it really feels bad having the Excess proc for cooldown reduction that just gets completely wasted as you have been sitting on Excess and Comet Storm being available just waiting for Brain Freeze. Dunno what you can do there given this is the opposite side of the GCD from the usual Brain Freeze issues we encounter.

Controlled Instincts on Frost still sucks. Between the actual Splinter damage being next to nothing, and the active Blizzard ticking requirement that scales inversely with Haste, this feels extremely bad. You can make the argument that most of SSFrost’s contribution is through Orb, but Arcane gets a hefty boost in AoE via Orb as well. Buffing both the method in which it procs, preferably by making it linger after a Blizzard damage event, and the percentage of the Splinter damage would be nice here.

Chillproof-moon-guard · June 26, 2024, 11:33am

From a novice Arcane mage’s perspective:

I really appreciate the efforts to make Arcane more approachable for new mages and, overall, I’ve enjoyed playing around with Spellslinger Arcane. However, the Arcane tree has a lot of %dmg talents which don’t allow much room to play around with different builds. I’d like to see some of these baked into the base spec so we have a few more points to move around in the tree.

Vlsal-tichondrius · June 26, 2024, 12:16pm

There is a lot of feedback to be done about latest changes and Mage specs, so I’ll split it into specs with their hero trees posts again. Here is feedback about Frost and its hero talents including latest changes.

Frost Mage feedback:

Frost changes feedback:

Changes to Fractured Frost / Death’s Chill completely missed the mark - they don’t address any issues with this playstyle that were mentioned in this thread and had opposite effect - now you are even more incentivised to spam Frostbolt during Fractured Frost (at the very least till you stack Death’s Chill) and ignore Flurry and Brain Freeze procs, Ice Lance and Fingers of Frost procs and almost all other procs and effects. That is not good and should be addressed.
Suggestions:

Redesign all 4 talents that are related to Fractured Frost. Sample of such redesign was given in this post.
If you don’t have time / wish to do such massive redesign, there should still be tweaks to existing Fractured Frost related talents to make the playstyle less disruptive and more synergizing with remaining parts of Frost tree. Something like:
Fractured Frost - now also affects Flurry (to provide value for it and Brain Freeze procs during Fractured Frost window and give means to shatter cleaved Frost(fire) Bolts against CC immune enemies that cannot be AoE frozen) and makes Frostbolt consume stacks of Fingers of Frost to increase its damage by X% only while Icy Veins is active (to open synergies and use cases for Fingers of Frost procs during Fractured Frost phase, but only then to keep Ice Lance relevant enough outside of this phase).
Slick Ice - include Flurry into the list of spells that stack Slick Ice.
Death Chill - reduce number of stacks to 5 and tweak their value if needed (to reduce ramp-up and align them with Slick Ice) and maybe make it triggered by Flurry too (to avoid possible countersynergy and keep synergies with Cold Front and potentially Slick Ice / Fractured Frost).
Fractured Frost period could also use a way to participate in Thermal Void extension for Icy Veins to avoid losing its uptime.

Fractured Frost tooltip in spec tree is bugged and states 0% damage increase.

Frost spec main remaining issues:

Choice between Ice Nova and Ring of Frost harms all 3 specs, but Frost Mages most - Ice Nova is pretty much a rotational spell for them that is used to (AoE) shatter big hitters like Glacial Spike and Comet Storm and likely will be picked most of time leaving Frost locked out of its main utility spell - Ring of Frost. It also causes a choice between throughput and utility for Frost in general tree, which is not good and should be addressed.
Suggestion: Split them and either make Ring of Frost replace one of the rarely if ever picked Frost Nova talents below the node or if you want to still keep similar number of CC / utility options available for Mage to current beta number - make it a choice node with Mass Polymorph instead, which would make much more sense, since they have much more similar niches with different pros and cons. Mass Polymorph itself after nerf to its duration could also use a boost like getting selectable 8-10 yards radius area within 30 yards range and 45 seconds base CD (which matches Ring of Frost).
Addition of Permafrost Lances was good, but since it moved Ice Caller below it created other issue - now AoE builds have to spend 1 more point to take required nodes (which reduces build diversity) and ST builds have to spend 1 more point than AoE builds to reach capstone central talents in 3rd part of tree. Both issues could be addressed simultaneously:
Suggestion: Reduce Wintertide to 1 point investment with full current value. That would make its value better align with its cost, address the different pathing cost issue and could help with excess talent point spending.
Frost still has unaddressed issue with output against enemies that can and cannot be frozen - former can be affected by Subzero buff and shatters from freeze effects and latter don’t get value from them at all, which can make Frost too strong against enemies affected by CC, too weak against CC immune enemies or even both simultaneously. That also can create balancing issues in future and should just be addressed.
Suggestion: Reduce Subzero to 1 point investment with full current effect (to have value better matching the cost after the nerf and similar cost to Comet Storm on opposite side of tree) and make it also cause Glacial Spike and Ice Nova apply 1 stack of Winter’s Chill for the duration of their root (or usual duration of Winter’s Chill) when hitting enemies that are immune to crowd control effects. That would address multiple issues simultaneously - significally reduce the gap in Frost’s output between enemies that can and cannot be frozen, make Subzero provide value against CC immune enemies (currently it is sub zero, pun intended) and make paths at left and right of Frost tree have similar talent point cost.
Other unaddressed issue is with Frost’s AoE placement, mostly Frozen Orb. It was called a skill expression in one of earlier interviews, but it is actually just an unnecessary handicap that forces Frost players to play in close to melee range (while being a ranged spec) and can spoil AoE rotation with just 1 mob untimely aggroing on other ranged DPS nearby or 1 random add appearing in wrong position. It should be finally addressed.
Suggestion: Create a new capstone talent to the left from Coldest Snap and accessible from Freezing Winds that would allow Frost players to customize placement / movement pattern of Frozen Orb if they would want to. For example, that could be such a choice node:
Concentrated Coolness - Frozen Orb’s damage is increased by X% and is castable at a location with 40 yard range, but no longer moves (based on an existing PVP talent).
or
Drifting Coolness - Frozen Orb rapidly moves to a selected by player location and starts its slowed movement from it (instead of current slowed movement starting from first enemy hit). Frozen Orb also explodes when it expires, dealing X% of Spell Power Frost damage to enemies within its area.
Such choice node could address most issues - players would be able to pick preferred movement / placement pattern between 3 options (Concentrated Coolness / Drifting Coolness / current if this capstone is not taken), it also has some throughput value so can compete with other throughput talents in 3rd part of tree and it would cost a 1 talent point, which is a fair trade-off for its effect. And don’t worry that removing Concentrated Coolness from PVP talents would require inventing a replacement - even with its removal Frost would still have access to 9 (minimal required number) of available PVP talents.
Splintering Ray is simply not competitive enough and needs a boost or redesign.
Since you are also actively looking at PVP talents, there are 3 Frost PVP talents that should be looked at. Snowdrift is a CC tool that forces ranged and kiting based spec into getting and staying in melee range, which is a literal design contradiction. Ice Form replaces a much more generally useful major CD and is too niche (Frostbolt damage increase does not matter much since Frostbolt itself does not do much damage and even Fractured Frost synergy does not compensate for that enough) and on top of that is easily dispellable. Icy Feet is also too niche - it affects only some freeze effects and its effect is easily counterable - immune to snares Frost can still be easily crowd controlled by other effects to negate its value entirely. All these PVP talents should be looked at.
Suggestions:

Replace Snowdrift with Deep Freeze - single-target and ranged stun that still has condition for activation (target being already frozen) and still can be countered (via removing / dispelling the freeze effect while GCD from applying it is active to prevent being consecutively stunned). That would still keep Frost’s stun counterable, but make it much more usable and less contradictory to its ranged and kiting based design.
Make Ice Form instead increase all Frost damage while active and undispellable like Icy Veins, but remove stun immunity to compensate. That would make it much more generally useful as a replacement for Icy Veins in 1 min CD window comps and a decent PVP slot option while also removing stun immunity which can be quite overtuned against specs that don’t have access to dispel effects.
Revert Icy Feet to a talent that caused freeze effects deal damage when expired / removed with increased damage when dispelled and just make it affect all freeze effects and tune to have meaningful enough value. That would give Frost a tool for some dispel protection (useful against root break / dispel heavy classes and comps) with reasonable value and its own niche.

Frostfire feedback (from Frost POV):

Change of Frostfire Mastery to 6 stacks has both pros (you are now much more likely to successfully stack both Excess Fire and Excess Frost within its window) and cons (you get less secondary stats when fully stacked). That is still probably fine if compensated in other areas of hero tree if needed. Only suggestion here is to increase duration to 15 seconds - that would make Frostfire Mastery cycles much better aligned with other cooldowns like Flurry (30 seconds CD), Frost Bomb (15 seconds CD), Ray of Frost (60 seconds CD) etc.
Spec is still buff and proc heavy and its UI visuals for Frost overlap with Brain Freeze and Fingers of Frost, making it confusing, especially for new players. Its UI visibility should be improved.
Suggestion: Make Excess Fire / Frost no longer highlight buttons for Flurry / Ice Lance and instead have a visible UI element near player that clearly states that you got their or Frostfire Empowerment stack. For Excess Fire that could be a large fiery arc to the left of player (distinguishable from Heating Up / Hot Streak and Hyperthermia), for Excess Frost that could be a large icy arc to the right of player (distinguishable from Fingers of Frost) and Frostfire Empowerment could create a large UI arc consisting of fire and ice above your character similar to existing Frostfire Bolt Brain Freeze UI effect that is currently used in Cataclysm Classic. Such change could help with both proc visibility and readability (you would know when you get a proc and which proc it is without checking 2-3 lines of buffs or potentially confusing them with Brain Freeze / Fingers of Frost).
Frostfire Bolt damage over time buff is nice, but did not achieve much - it became more competitive with Frostbolt / Fireball in PVE, but worse compatible with Fractured Frost builds that will spam it and refresh its dot every 1-2 seconds. As such, consider also buffing its direct damage or redistributing some of its damage increase back into direct part.
Frostfire Bolt still did not inherit Frostbolt’s PVP modifier and that makes it worse than Frostbolt in PVP - you both deal less damage with it and get locked on 2 schools if interrupted instead of 1, so it is strictly worse there than Frostbolt. That should not be the case for an “upgrade talent”.
Suggestions:

Make Frostfire Bolt inherit Frostbolt’s PVP modifier.
Additionally increase Frostfire Bolt’s damage in PVP only to provide decent enough reward for risking getting locked on 2 schools when casting it compared to Frostbolt’s 1 school lockout.

Elemental Affinity for Frost still does not affect Fire Blast (Fire spell) and affects Ice Nova, Frost Nova, Cone of Cold and Ice Floes (Frost spells).
Flame and Frost is simply not competitive enough with Elemental Affinity and needs a boost. For example, its CD reset could be tied to Icy Veins instead - that would provide around similar amount of Fire spell usages to Elemental Affinity with different pros (on-demand resets) and cons (less usages of low CD Fire spells).
Fire Blast now is even more undertuned for non-Fire specs and not viable even for Frostfire Mages - its damage now can be lower than non-shattered Ice Lance with high enough Mastery (despite Fire Blast being a CD based ability), its stack of Fire Mastery might be not needed anymore and it simply has close to no purpose. However, from what I saw there are currently 2 camps of Frost Mages - those who want to use Fire Blast to match the Frostfire Mage theme and those who don’t. There is a way to provide options for both camps that don’t force them into a playstyle that they don’t want - via adding choice node options.
Suggestion: Buff base damage of Fire Blast and tweak Thermal Conditioning into also upgrading Fire Blast into Frostfire Blast (as Thermal Conditioning now could use an additional boost to be competitive enough with Severe Temperatures) as an additional effect, making it deal X% additional damage as Frost damage and provide both Fire and Frost Mastery stacks when used. Such tweak serves multiple purposes - making Fire Blast relevant for people who want to use it (and people who don’t want to use it can take the alternative option in choice node), giving an additional Frostfire themed spell for people who want them and helping Fire Mages with stacking Frost Mastery (since it should also affect their off-GCD Fire Blast and make it also add Frost Mastery stacks). Frostfire Blast could also have synergies with Fire and Frost trees to make it more relevant like being cleaved by Fractured Frost etc.
Excess Fire Living Bomb is still undertuned for Frost, who lacks upgrade talents for it that can significally buff it like Fire has. Consider buffing value of Excess Fire’s Living Bomb for Frost only.
Frostfire Empowerment was tweaked, but still has contradictions in tooltips and actual effect. Its tooltip in hero tree states 50% damage increase and 80% damage cleave, buff tooltip states that it is also guaranteed to crit (not mentioned in hero tree tooltip) and actual effect also cleaves for 100% of damage instead of stated 80%. Buff stacked to 2 also doubles values in its tooltip (stating 100% damage increase and cleave for 160% of damage) when their actual values remain the same. Please bring tooltips and actual effects in line.

Frost Spellslinger feedback:

Frost Splinters being affected by Mastery is nice, but that also should be stated in Mastery tooltip for Frost Spellslingers (currently it is not). Even then they still deal abysmal damage (less than Icicles with no Mastery stacked) and the reason for their previous nerf might have been already addressed (bugged interactions with Winter’s Chill from other Frost Mages). As such, they need a boost.
Suggestion: Buff their damage to around Arcane Splinters value and then tune from there if needed.
Frost’s Controlled Instincts is much worse than Arcane version - it is tied to an ability than needs to be maintained, can expire right before you launch your Splinterstorm making cleave from it wasted and on top of that does not affect main target when Arcane version does. All of that should be addressed.
Suggestion: Make it trigger for X seconds after using Blizzard and hit main target as well (to bring it in line with Arcane version). That would make them more in line and remove current Haste countersynergy with it for Frost (as Haste reduces duration of Blizzard and increases chance of Blizzard expiring right before you launch your splinters).
Splintering Orbs is much worse fof Frost compared to Arcane as well - it requires Frozen Orb uptime to launch 4 splinters when Arcane version conjures them instantly (which affects timings and also can be harmful in single-target situations if enemy moves out of its area) and these splinters are launched at random enemies nearby, including those that are not even within Frozen Orb’s area and reducing viability for priority damage situations even more. That should be improved.
Suggestion: Make Frozen Orb instantly generate 4 Frost Splinters and launch them at the main target if any is picked (pretty much in line with Arcane version).
Volatile Magic is undertuned for Frost (deals half damage of Arcane version) and should be boosted.
Unerring Proficiency both provides low value and requires using a rotational / utility ability to activate it, which can make it being on cooldown right when you accumulate 30 stacks. That could be improved.
Suggestion: Buff stacks value and make 30 stacks both reset cooldown of Ice Nova and highlight Ice Nova button (currently it is not highlighted like Supernova button is when fully stacked). That would address these issues and make Unerring Proficiency immediately usable when you stack it to full without harming other usages of Ice Nova.
Phantasmal Image does not correctly adjust tooltip for Mirror Images - it states correct damage reduction (25%), but wrong number of them (3 instead of 4).
Look Again is not competitive enough with Slippery Slinging both because Displacement is frequently not taken in PVE because of hard accessibility in general tree and because its effect’s value is much more niche that simple movement speed increase. All of that could be addressed to make Look Again more competitive.
Suggestion: Move Displacement to more accessible spot in general tree (for example it could swap positions with Accumulative Shielding) and make Look Again provide additional benefit - movement speed increase after using Displacement or making Displacement off-GCD or something else.
Shifting Shards are still too chaotic - they can aggro enemies that are not in combat in PVE, break breakable crowd control effects in PVP and launch splinters at wrong targets (not stacked in Blizzard for synergy with Controlled Instincts or not the priority target that should be killed as soon as possible). That should be addressed.
Suggestion: Change its targeting pattern to prioritize current target if any, if there is none - enemies hit by Shifting Power and if there are none - only then random enemies within 40 yards. It should also not target enemies affected by breakable crowd control effects in all these cases.
Spellfrost Teachings could use a form of bad RNG protection, as currently there can be large windows without its procs, especially in single-target situations.
Suggestion: Add a mechanism like “after conjuring X Frost Splinters without getting a proc, next Frost Splinter is guaranteed to trigger Spellfrost Teachings”. That would not affect much good and average RNG windows and would simply help with bad RNG windows.
Passive Splinterstorm can be good and convenient, but some players could still prefer manual control over it to avoid things like overlapping Winter’s Chill stacks from it and similar issues. That could be addressed via simply giving players a choice between active and passive versions of Splinterstorm in capstone talent.
Suggestion: Make passive Splinterstorm a choice node with active off-GCD ability Splintersurge with similar effect. That would allow players to pick the preferred option and utilize it.