Feedback: Mages

In Development The War Within Beta Test
253

I have some Frostfire Mage suggestions which can be implemented to improve this spec in a future.

Frostfire hero spec will have additional energy bar called Frostfire Power. It will work as Spriest insanity.

Fire PoV:

As Fire mage if you cast any frost spells it will contribute to the Frostfire Power bar.
if Frostfire Power reaches 100% energy, energy will slowly starts to drain to 0% and while doing so:

  • You will gain free Icy Veins for 20sec,
  • Your Pyroblast will turn into Flurry and your Phoenix Flames into Ice Lance,
  • Instead of Hot Streak you will be able to proc FoF if you cast Frostfire Bolt.
  • Every single frost spell used during this “drain” phase will give you stacking buff, increasing your damage with next fire spell by x%.

Frost PoV:

As Frost mage if you cast any fire spells it will contribute to the Frostfire Power bar.
if Frostfire Power reaches 100% energy, energy will slowly starts to drain to 0% and while doing so:

  • You will gain free Combustion for 15sec,
  • Your Ice Lance will turn into Phoenix Flames, Your Flurry into Pyroblast,
  • Instead of FoF you will be able to proc Hot Streak if you cast Frostfire Bolt(or PF/FBlast).
  • Every single fire spell used during this “drain” phase will give you stacking buff, increasing your damage with next frost spell by x%.

When energy reaches 0% your frost/fire spells returns to normal rotation and you can spend your stacked “bonus frost/fire damage” buff.

254

Arane feedback

I feel there is way to much passive stuff that is happening with arcane in the beta. For spellslinger random orbs flying around looks cool having no control over them feels bad. I preferred having the cooldown of the orb reset over it just sending out random orbs.

Now there is a talent that procs arcane explosions means even more rng procs that cast abilities I have no control over.

None of the main issues are being addressed. Touch of the magi last 12secs and still not having a manual detonation option is still problematic. And evocation being used as a dmg buff feels weird.

Despite it’s problems I still much prefer the dragonflight tree of the war within. There is more spells to cast and I feel like a mage vs a slot machine. I feel like every talent tree change things get worse.

2 Likes
255

I’m not sure why we would ever take any of the living bomb talents now. Gutted it twice in a row where it’s not worth the investment in points to get something that’s gonna be 3rd or 4th overall in my damage profile when I could put those points in another part of the tree and just rely on ignite (as always)

256

Arcane Talent Tree Feedback pt. 4

I will focus on the parts of the tree where I believe these new additions have downgraded it and made it bloated, as well as the aspects that continue to be problematic.

Gate 1: It feels awful that we must spend nine talent points in Gate 1 to pick up all the pseudo-mandatory nodes for pathing. These are Arcane Surge, Impetus, and Improved Clearcasting. This is once again placing an unnecessary point tax on Gate 2. Arcane Surge and Improved Clearcasting are mandatory based on their strength, whereas Impetus is a required node to get to Siphon Storm.

The single change that can happen to make Gate 1 make sense is baking Concentrated Power into Clearcasting baseline. This new placement is a prime example of an unnecessary tax node. Even Improved Touch of the Magi can be categorized the same way.

As for Arcing Cleave, it is disappointing to see that it is still not a baseline effect, but it is a consolation that it is now competing with a much weaker node. At the very least I will feel slightly less awful making Arcane AoE functional.

Impetus: Continuing with Impetus, why is this effect specifically selected to be the pseudo-mandatory node for pathing? Yes, it is mandatory as long as Siphon Storm exists, but I will elaborate on Siphon Storm later.

There are so many other spells and effects that I would consider more core and flavorful to Arcane that would fit perfectly in this placement and help Arcane have a solid foundation after Gate 1. These could be Slipstream, Arcing Cleave, Arcane Familiar, or even Enlightened.

Siphon Storm: The problem with Siphon Storm, both now and in Dragonflight, is how overwhelmingly strong it is. Because of how strong Siphon Storm is, it warps the tree such that everything that precedes it becomes mandatory, and the nodes that become accessible from picking up Siphon Storm and the path to it become incentivized.

I enjoy Siphon Storm, so I have not minded this in the past, nor do I mind it now. Truthfully, I enjoy it even more now that Evocation grants Clearcasting. But with how bloated the tree has become, I think many of these new additions to Arcane will be dead on arrival for The War Within in no small part due to Siphon Storm.

Evocation (and mana in general): Evocation is iconic to Arcane but is currently on life support due to Siphon Storm. On a high level, mana as a resource is not meaningful.

On my suboptimally geared character on beta equipped with the default equipment it came with, mana is not something I have to worry about while playing. Casting Arcane Barrage to spend Glorious Incandescence, channeling Arcane Missiles, etc., I do not run out of mana once Arcane Surge becomes available again. In real scenarios, you will also spend globals to cast non-offensive spells, such as defensives, contributing additional passive mana. At this point, Arcane Surge does what Evocation does but better, and you pick Evocation if and only if you pick Siphon Storm.

This is true for any talent that involves saving or generating mana, such as Mana Adept or Concentration. These talents do not offer anything that cannot be fixed by simply playing better and more efficiently. The positive to this is that I can safely ignore Mana Adept and pick Slipstream instead to get to Touch of the Magi, but I am unsure if this is the intended design goal.

I am conflicted because I like Siphon Storm but it is also obvious how detrimental it is for the tree. Siphon Storm by itself puts a 3-point tax on Gate 2 and a 1-point tax on Gate 3. Is it too much to ask that both Evocation and Siphon Storm just become baseline? This would also solve the aesthetic issue that Siphon Storm is the one node that makes the tree asymmetrical.

Utility: Briefly, and to re-iterate, there are still utility nodes for no reason all over Gate 2. Chrono Shift is dead on arrival, Presence of Mind is on life support thanks to Siphon Storm, and Slipstream only directly competes with Mana Adept. Why must Arcane be stuck in the Stone Age when it comes to specialization tree design?

Arcane Harmony: I like Arcane Harmony. Last week, Arcane Harmony felt so good when it only required Arcane Debilitation. Now, there are two nodes in the way, of which I care about neither.

Just to put some numbers on it, Time Loop has a 43% chance of doing nothing when you cast Arcane Missiles. Around 34.4% of the time it provides 1% increased damage for 6 seconds. Time Loop is pathetically weak and is not worthy of being a Gate 3 talent.

As for High Voltage, it is a meaningless effect. In the Hero talent trees, there is more than enough Arcane Charge regeneration to support an Arcane Harmony build. Sunfury has Glorious Incandescence, Spellslinger has Spellfrost Teachings, and both have Arcane Orb and Touch of the Magi.

To me, the only thing Time Loop and High Voltage accomplish is making Arcane Harmony worse, which is counterintuitive to the fact that they are required for pathing to even get to Arcane Harmony. This is overcooked. There is only one talent that already exists in the tree that I can envision between Arcane Debilitation and Arcane Harmony, and that talent is Aether Attunement. You got it right weeks ago.

This issue exists for a couple of other nodes as well where I have to pick something that feels bad or meaningless in order to access the effect I actually care about. Examples:

  • To get Resonance, I have to pick either Dematerialize or Big Brained.
  • To get Prodigious Savant/Leysight/Leydrinker, I have to pick either Crackling Energy, Static Cloud, or Resonant Orbs
  • To get Aether Attunement, I have to pick Enlightened.
  • To get Siphon Storm, I have to pick either Reverberate or Arcane Familiar.

There is no rhyme or reason to these restrictions, and they force us to pick a bunch of nodes we do not want to access the nodes we do want. I think Arcane still requires a significant node reshuffling.

My feedback on unnecessary tax nodes remains the same as before and has only been exacerbated with the additional bloat. All of these nodes can be removed and it would improve the quality of the tree instantly:

  • Crackling Energy
  • Improved Arcane Missiles
  • Concentrated Power
  • Improved Touch of the Magi
  • The second point in both Prodigious Savant and Arcane Debilitation
  • Big Brained and/or Dematerialize
  • Time Loop and/or High Voltage
  • Resonant Orbs

As it stands, none of these nodes feels good to pick.

Unsorted Comments:

  • Aether Attunement still does not increase the damage of Arcane Missiles against neither the primary or the secondary targets.
  • Splinterstorms are still bugged and will begin to periodically occur regardless of the active number of splinters.
13 Likes
257

Casual mage here. I love arcane, the aesthetic and the feel and want to play it. My problem with it in DF was how complicated the rotation felt (apologies to any legit mages if this is off base). I really enjoyed the previous version on the beta but this version just seems too complicated (re talent selection and overload of choices). As others have stated some of these talents can be made baseline and others baked into each other. Lastly as a shameless plug, siphon storm just seems too powerful to be left out of any build but there are other more “fun” talents I’d rather take (harmony, spark, attunement). With it being two points and out of the way of these other talents it feels like I will have to chose the more powerful option just to stay viable in keys. I really appreciate the iterative thinking but I feel like we’ve taken a couple steps back. Again apologies to any legit mages out there if I’m wildly off base.

Also, I love the idea of a “missile build” with talents buffing that line of thought and love spamming missiles into a buffed barrage. I agree with others in the sense that we already have enough charges so while High Voltage is interesting in theory, we could move aether attunement to its spot and get rid of it [to be specific get rid of High Voltage], in the name of simplifying the tree.

258

Magi’s Spark has a gorgeous if not the best arcane animation and it feels terrible that it’s been made a capstone that’s likely not going to be competitive in M+.

Please move it back to an earlier node, impressive class/spec visuals should be easily accessible as they enhance the play experience far more than any boring bland passive does.

The new arcane familiar just looks worse than the original one. I get you were going for the Medivh crow theme, but this holographic, very small transluscent bird looks cheap and dated.

The previous arcane familiar looked like it was made of arcane energy. This one is lacking the energy palette and instead looks like some random toy you’d summon from the toybox.

Ad for Sunfury Arcane, the visuals for the Phoenix are entirely fire focused, and this makes me not like the hero talent for arcane. For arcane, we should be getting purple/blue/magenta motifs even if you have to fix them with some fire.

So far, it’s only fire spells. I far prefer spellslinger for this reason.

The bird also looks really dumb just flapping its wings while standing on the ground. It should be hovering and casting the spells while hovering.

I’ll say it again, these spellfire orbs are so much worse than the Felo’melorn fire artifact orbs. They’re static, they don’t orbit or are dynamic around the mage, and have worse visuals.

Please give us our gorgeous Felo’melorn orbs back even if it’s as a glyph.

3 Likes
259

Feedback for Arcane:

  1. Slipstream and Impetus should swap positions.
  2. Crackling Energy, Improved Arcane Missiles, and Resonant Orbs should be removed.
  3. Arcing Cleave should be baseline and Mana Adept moved to it’s place.
  4. Siphon Storm should be removed.

For Hero Talents of all classes & specs:

Any hero talent that requires another talent to be chosen (even the initial one where the whole tree focuses on another talent like Archon) should have alternative options that don’t require specific talents. Being pigeonholed into selecting talents we don’t want/enjoy sucks.

4 Likes
260

Frostfire Empowerment’s AoE burst probably shouldn’t be allowed to crit again itself. It’s already gaining the increase from the FFB itself critting.

2 Likes
261

Also was there any particular reason for dropping SPELL_AURA_REMOVED_DOSE from Mirror Image’s DR? Can we get the damn thing visible to the player? It’s made auras to track this extremely stupid.

6 Likes
262

Agreed. As for Siphon Storm, its removal is imperative, now more than ever before. It is utterly stifling build diversity because of its sheer power and, equally important, it is completely antithetical to Evocation’s inherent identity and purpose. Why should we be incentivised to cast a spell that restores mana at full mana? This makes zero sense. Evocation itself should be baseline and Siphon Storm (if not removed altogether) should be replaced with something to this effect: Evocation’s cast time is reduced by X seconds, now triggers an explosion, dealing X damage, after fully channeling, and grants X% increased Intellect based on the AMOUNT of mana RESTORED (all with the appropriate tuning). This way the spell would be used at the end of the Burn phase and grant extra power (but not excessive) to the Conserve Phase, so that Evocation’s true identity is maintained. It would also be another useful AoE tool. The talent would be nice to have, but not required.

2 Likes
263

Hi team, just a quick one:

I love the new change of Clearcasting for Arcane where you need a proc to cast Arcane Missiles. I think a similar trigger should be implemented for Pyroblast for Fire when you have a Sun King’s Blessing or Hot Streak proc active. This would completely remove the need to strafe/jump to avoid hard casting Pyroblasts. Would make the gameplay much better, without any negative impact (the only time you really want to hard cast Pyro outside of SKB is pre-pull in PvE).

Thanks!

264

It would break the whole queueing system for fire, as Hot Streaks are gained upon spell impact but we queue it in advance, knowing that the crits will chain.

So you’re wrong, it would bring massive negative impact

3 Likes
265

Adding my own agreement to some others above that the new Arcane Talents miss the mark. There is some that I like of it, but there is more that I don’t.

First, the tree feels very bloated. Not only are there a lot of talents, very few of them offer any sort of situational benefit. I’m not going to drop this one talent to take another, because it would work better on A fight over B fight. Talents should offer choice in this way, and shouldn’t be do I want to take this talent that makes my arcane blast 3% stronger or this one that makes it 5% stronger.

I am going to go through talent by talent to provide feedback. The first 3 talents are fine enough. Quite a few of my comments will be “Boring DPS increase”, this is to emphasize how much of the tree is % damage increases over something that actually affects play.

[Charged Orb] - This is fine
[Arcane Tempo] - Not a huge fan of this talent, as you want to build this up before your burst and it just doesn’t feel great to play around.
[Concentrated Power] Boring DPS increase
[Consortium’s Bauble] Boring DPS increase
[Arcing Cleave] This position is better than before. I think this really just should be baseline, though.
[Impetus] Boring DPS increase
[Arcane Surge] Bread and butter ability, good position
[Improved Clearcasting] Nice QoL
[Reverberate] Seems fine
[Arcane Familiar] The familiar is cute, but the talent is a boring DPS increase
[Mana Adept] This talent seems useless as we generally are not having mana issues
[Surging Urge] Boring DPS increase
[Slipstream] Placement is better in that we need it to take Touch of the Magi, especially as Mana Adept is useless. Would be better baseline.
[Dematerialize] Boring DPS increase - also we don’t really need/want ignite
[Big Brained] Great name, Boring DPS increase
[Presence of Mind] Seems fine
[Energized Familiar] Boring DPS increase
[Chrono Shift] With the plethora of boring DPS increases, this will never be taken
[Touch of the Magi] Bread and butter, good position
[Eureka] Boring DPS increase
[Energy Reconstitution] This doesn’t make any sense, it procs a weak AOE ability at weakened power on a single target rotation effect. Also boring DPS increase.
[Resonance] DPS increase, but a little less boring than others
[Evocation & Siphon Storm] These are really one talents in two - and it should be central in the tree as it’s central to every single Arcane Build
[Illuminated Thoughts] Boring proc generator - seems useless as one the value is insanely low (A 5% increased chance on 10% is 10.05% chance… yay?) and we have plenty of clearcasting.
[Improved arcane Missiles] Boring DPS increase
[Improved Touch of the Magi] Boring DPS increase
[Crackling Energy] Boring DPS increase
[Static Cloud] I am not really sure the point of this. Arcane Explosion is for generating arcane charges, to send out Arcane Barrage. This seems to have a ramping up damage on AE which seems weird.
[Resonant Orbs] Boring DPS increase
[Arcane Debilitation] Boring DPS increase
[Arcane Echo] Boring DPS increase
[Prodigious Savant] Boring DPS increase - this may have had some play if we at all played around arcane charges, but we don’t. We sit at max.
[Time Loop] Boring DPS increase
[High Voltage] This talent is dead on arrival. Why do we want to generate charges with missiles? I can see this as maybe something to help raise the skill floor - but the damage loss by not taken (boring DPS increase talent) will outweigh anything this gains.
[Enlightened] This seems fine
[Arcane Bombardment] This seems fine
[Leysight] Boring DPS increase
[Concentration] This seems relatively useless. As said above, mana is generally not an issue.
[Arcane Harmony] This is actually fun to play with, but is nearly impossible to pick with the new tree.
[Aether Attunement] This is fun to play with
[Magi’s Spark] I like this change from Radiant Spark
[Nether Munitions] Kinda boring, but an OK alternative to Spark. I don’t feel that the Magi’s Spark is hard to play around, though.
[Orb Barrage] I love this ability.
[Ley Drinker] Boring DPS increase

If my count is correct of 45 talents listed above, 25 of them are boring DPS increases. I think it is fine to have some boring DPS increases, but this is too many. We currently get to pick 30 talents (minus the 3 at the top that I skipped) so having 25 of the options be boring DPS increases I think is a bit much.

Personally, I would love to see far less Arcane Blast does 4% more damage talents and more talents that impact how you play. They do not even have to be damage oriented. I’m totally fine with things not being baseline that I said should be above, if we had free talents to actually move around.

I’d recommend at minimum pruning 5 of the boring talents out. I’d suggest rethinking some of the remaining 20, so that they actually provide impact on gameplay. I’d reorient the tree so that it makes sense to swap talents out to address different encounters or situations. I’d put things that will be always picked (looking at you siphon storm) in the middle, so that adjusting talents for different scenarios is easy to path.

Final remarks, reiterating my original feedback.
Shifting power desyncs cooldowns from trinkets and is very frustrating on Arcane. Please remove it.
Cauterize makes Fire the go-to prog and M+ spec regardless of tuning. Please add it into the class tree.
(Un)inspired Intelelct is boring, and Time Anomaly is meh, put Cauterize there instead.

1 Like
266

I don’t think that’s true. Magi’s spark is currently doing ~ 6% overall in keys for me. See the following overalls and logs (overalls bugged in logs; I think it’s counting every second of the dungeon as combat for some reason). By comparison, Touch of the Magi’s explosion (including the Improved TotM talent) is doing somewhere around 7.5% overall.

Overalls + logs: https://imgur.com/gallery/overalls-following-logs-xsFvvoZ

As a side note to Blizzard: besides Prot and Holy Paladin Lightsmith being completely bugged / broken (doing more damage than most DPS, sometimes shooting up to 12 mil DPS in AoE w/ Sacred Weapon, see logs above), Arcane (when played well) is clearly overperforming in M+.

I would recommend a numerical nerf to Arcane Barrage (i.e. just number stuff) so that the playstyle remains as good as it is in keys, just with lower numbers. The other nerf you could do is to delete Crackling Energy and Improved Arcane Missiles, which would nerf the overalls there by ~0.9% (based on Arcane Blast/Missiles/Explosion damage done), which I know isn’t enough to nerf Arcane in M+ but would feel better for talents.

  • Talents for the 2 MoTS (+10): C4DAaGQqb59At4GVYDyJ3d+mIOzYxsNLYGmZWMwMzYMNGzAAAAAAwAAmZm2mttZmZmlllZmYBAAAAAgNAmFMmZMDzYmxMzMDzMzMzYwA
  • Talents for the NW (+10): C4DAaGQqb59At4GVYDyJ3d+mIOzYxsNLYGmZWMwMzYMNGzAAAAAAwAAmZm2mttZmZmlllZmYBAAAAAgNAmFMmZMDzYmhZmZYmZmZGzwA
  • Basically I just swapped Energy Reconstitution for Leydrinker.
    • Leydrinker overall: 2.0%
    • Energy Reconstitution overall contribution: 1.2% - 1.3%
      • Seems like Energy Reconstitution isn’t doing much in keys, which is to be expected given it only gives a 50% AE proc every couple of seconds
267

I am going to complain yet again about Controlled Instincts on Frost.

The SEVERELY nerfed damage on Frost Splinters already makes this node kinda bad, but attaching it to a spell that doesn’t even barely last the duration of the Snap combo is just kicking dirt in its face. The fact that Blizzard’s duration scales inversely with Haste means that this is going to get more and more painful to deal with as we gear up.

It would not take much to make this effect linger after Blizzard, much like Arcane has attached to Arcane Orb. It does not need to last as long as Blizzard has duration itself, but I would at least like to see this attached to the Blizzard slow debuff duration rather than active ticking ground effect. This also covers the annoying situation of a misclick or tank movement somewhat.

3 Likes
268

Echoing what others have posted above but in my own simplistic way:

You could do a lot to prune by just making it baseline that Arcane Barrage hits up 4 targets, Missiles fire 5 not 3, and Evocation and Missiles are castable while moving without talents to make these things happen. It’s long overdue and wastes talent points on things that should really be baseline (and used to be).

Also, as echoed by others, Siphon Storm has been my least favorite thing about arcane for 2 expansions (I’d even rather have Rune of Power back instead of Evocation turned into a dps CD). If mana isn’t an issue or managing mana the focus of Arcane anymore then just get rid of Evocation and Siphon Storm at this point.

I applaud the work and intention but the new talent tree is too much. It needs pruning of boring “increases damage of x by y %” and better pathways of clear interactions between talents to smooth it out.

The work you’ve done so far shows you’re committed but PLEASE listen to the feedback. I haven’t mained an arcane mage since BFA (I left arcane for fire then frost and relegated my mage to alt status) and I’m hopeful that, if feedback is actually listened to and acted upon, I’ll FINALLY get to return to maining my favorite spec thematically in War Within.

5 Likes
269

Excess Frost and Flurry interactions

There are a few important issues that I feel like should be addressed when it comes to consuming Excess Frost with Flurry:

  1. Having Excess Frost buff but no Flurry charges to consume it.
  2. We want to always be casting Flurry before Comet Storm, so it feels bad if for some reason (happens often) we get Excess Frost while Comet Storm is off cooldown, effectively wasting the cooldown reduction since we still want to cast Flurry first, consuming Excess Frost.
  3. If casting Flurry at less than 6 stacks of Frost Mastery and reaching 6 stacks before the third Flurry bolt hits the target, it automatically consumes Excess Frost, effectively also sometimes wasting the cooldown reduction and consuming it unintentionally.

I don’t know what could be done to solve problems 1 and 2, but I ask that for helping with problem 3 that Flurry only be allowed to consume Excess Frost if cast after reaching 6 stacks of Frost Mastery.

4 Likes
270

Regarding this issue - what if Excess Frost would increase damage of next Comet Storm and its Meteor by X% instead of reducing their CD and stacked up to 2 times? This way:

  • Using Excess Frost before Cometeor (Comet + Meteor) like already intended would be rewarded.
  • Even if you get 2 Excess Frost consumptions before Comet Storm they would both provide value (via stacking to 2).
  • Excess Frost will provide value no matter whether Comet Storm is on CD or off CD.
  • This change will align Comet Storm recharge with Flurry recharge again (via both having 30 seconds CD).

Thoughts?

271

Feedback on Mage Changes 2024/06/26

Frost Changes

Death’s Chill has been updated – While Icy Veins is active, damaging an enemy with Frostbolt increases spell damage by 2%. Stacks up to 10 times.
Developer’s note: We’re increasing the ramp of Death’s Chill and giving it a stack limit so that you can comfortably switch off of Frostbolt after reaching max stacks.

Fractured Frost has been updated – While Icy Veins is active, your Frostbolts hit up to 2 additional targets and deal 15% increased damage.

I think it’s important to note that in normal ST rotation, we would never get to 10 stacks of Death’s Chill. In several sample runs I’ve reached between 4 to 7 in an Icy Veins windows. If I opt to spam Frostbolt/FFBolt to start, I end up with reduced Icy Veins window with less than 10 seconds left at max stack. Both of these situation feels unsatisfying in different ways, knowing that I have failed to maximize the use of some part of my talent kit.

The optimal use cases is in low-target cleave of course, where we launch 3 sets of Frostbolts to ramp before we get into our regular rotation. In that respect, the change did curtail the trend of Frostbolt spamming to victory. On the other hand, I urge you to re-consider how has the frost changes achieve the original stated goal of having a different rotation that reminiscent of Deathborne; we have added 3 sets of Frostbolts before we settle back into our regular AoE rotations that just now deals 20% extra damage.

On the other hand, change to Fracture Frost increasing Frostbolt damage by 15% are incentivizing the opposite approach. I am not sure if how to view these 2 changes combined together. The only reasonable train of thought I can think of is “we are going to make sure Deathborne can only exists as a sub-optimal playstyle, so we will kneecap the ramping to make sure it doesn’t get out of hand, but here’s some more damage to compensate”.

I suppose in that aspect, we accept Frostbolt spamming as “bad”/“degenerate” gameplay-wise but only suboptimal in terms of actual performance and we can call it a day for Frost.

272

I actually like the cooldown reduction when it works properly. I don’t really know what they could do make it better but I would prefer if they leaned more towards it than just increasing damage, unless that’s not really a way to fix it.