barrage and fireblast are my “tag” spells in arcane.
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Arcane Spellslinger Feedback
Before giving criticism, I would like to say what I like about Spellslinger so far.
My praise is for the visuals of Spellslinger. Now that Arcane Splinters interacts with Arcane Echo, my favorite part of Spellslinger is when I cast Arcane Surge → Arcane Barrage, consuming a Nether Precision stack, spawn 12 Arcane Splinters, and press Touch of the Magi as the splinters impact and procing Arcane Echo 12 times. Albeit entirely passive, it is very satisfying.
It looks cool, but I am dissapointed with the gameplay implication of Spellslinger, or to be more precise, lack thereof.
Spellfrost Teachings: This effect was an attempt at creating an active component of Spellslinger. However, it does not hit the mark as it does not change how Arcane uses Arcane Orb.
In a single target scenario, if you have enough mana, it is not worthwhile to cast Arcane Orb over casting your regular rotational spells, even with a 50% modifier. If you are low on mana, you cast Arcane Orb rotationally to conserve mana and regain Arcane Charges after casting Arcane Barrage. In either case, Spellfrost Teachings does not change how Arcane uses Arcane Orb. In AoE, you cast Arcane Orb rotationally as a primary damage spell, and Spellfrost Teachings will not change how you use Arcane Orb. It does help prevent scenarios where you are stuck casting Arcane Explosion (the least impactful AoE spell for Arcane), which feels pretty good.
A way to make this proc more impactful on single target could be by making Spellfrost Teachings also double the number of Arcane Charges generated by Arcane Orb. That way, you can cast Arcane Barrage → Arcane Orb on single target at any time without having to be stuck casting Arcane Blast at low Arcane Charges. This would also not buff Spellfrost Teachings in AoE, where it is already powerful.
Unerring Proficiency: First of all, this talent is fundamentally unplayable in M+. Not only are you forced out of the better AoE disruption spell in Dragon’s Breath, but you are also incentivized to cast Supernova into each Touch of the Magi window. This will not happen in a M+ setting as you need Supernova for the AoE disruption, not the damage.
Secondly, in a scenario where you do not need the AoE disruption, Unerring Proficiency is too weak. At 30 stacks, it does not overcome the opportunity cost of casting Supernova over casting any other rotational spell that generates and spends resources, such as Arcane Splinters, Clearcasting, and Nether Precision. As it stands, I do not see a situation where Volatile Magic will not be the default choice.
Splinterstorm: I do not have any criticism for the mechanics of Splinterstorms, only its visuals. It is disappointing that the Splinterstorm shards and animations are indistinguishable from regular Arcane Splinters. It does not currently feel like a pay-off moment of generating sufficient Arcane Splinters, because it is impossible to tell visually that a Splinterstorm is happening.
Also, there is a bug where if you spend enough time in combat, Splinterstorms just start to occur periodically regardless of how many active Arcane Splinters you have. This bug causes an overflow of Clearcasting procs, skewing testing of Spellslinger Arcane.
Controlled Instincts: A recent development note stated that Controlled Instincts will no longer cause damage to the primary target. This change is currently not in place, and I would implore you to let it stay this way. There is currently little reason to cast Arcane Orb in single target, as previously established, and this change would double down on that. This change has the consequence of making Spellfrost Teachings even more irrelevant for Spellslinger Arcane. I think Controlled Instincts could be a cool way to incentivize casting Arcane Orb against a single target by, for example, doubling the damage of Controlled Instincts if it only hits a single target.
Unsorted Comments:
- The pay-off from completing Magi’s Spark does not feel satisfying enough. Visually it looks good, but the numbers are not.
- What is the point of Nether Munitions with Improved Touch of the Magi? Getting a 6% damage modifier after your damage window is over is pointless.
- I still cannot grasp the point of Surging Urge when Arcane Surge deals very little damage with max mana. This node feels like an attempt to lure Arcane mages away from selecting Slipstream, crippling them in the process in all content.
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I use Fire Blast, Ice Nova or Supernova for my “tag it” spells since they are instant and have no travel time. I can’t tell you how many times I failed to get a tag with Arcane Barrage due to the mob dying before it actually landed.
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MOP Frostfire bolt look 10x better than this new one blizz. I was excited and thought we were getting that back. Just bring that back and update its resolution to modern day. You’ll make probably everyone happy. Probably.
Having Arcane Missiles require clear casting limits the possible attacks for Arcane Mages because you can only use it every once in a while. Removing spells like Arcane Tether and Supernova also limits severely limits the spells Arcane Mages can use to attack. Blizzard has basically gutted how I play Arcane Mage making the class spec unplayable in my opinion.
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To my understanding, you already were typically using Missiles with a Clearcasting proc in retail.
What is this?
Supernova does still exist, it’s a choice between it or Dragon’s Breath. It pulls Supernova out of the spec tree and offers an alternative to Dragon’s Breath instead of taxing you in the spec tree.
Arcane Tether - Maybe it has another name but it make arcane streams come out of the target and hit other enemies. Currently Arcane missiles don’t require clear casting. Isn’t Supernova the one that is an interrupt spell that make targets jump in the air?
Ah yea, Nether Tempest. I think that one got turned into a passive effect. I understand not liking the button going away, but I absolutely loathed pressing it, I’ll be honest.
It doesn’t require it on Retail, but pressing it outside of Clearcasting is an incredible loss of damage currently on Retail if memory serves correctly. The version on Beta is actually very reminiscent of Cataclysm Arcane, which also saw Arcane go from Missiles being available at all times to only usable with a proc.
Yeah. Personally I prefer it to Dragon’s Breath anyways since I don’t need to get close to targets to use it and can target allies with it.
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Overall Spellslinger Frost Gameplay Feelings/Issues/Discussions
Gameplay Overview:
Spellslinger Frost plays a lot like retail version of Frost but artificially injected with a lot of Frozen Orb cast via Spellfrost teaching. As a consequence, this also floods us with a lot more Finger of Frost procs via the Freezing Wind talent. Initial impression pointing toward that increased FoF procs being of low consequence due to FoF munching is already very much present in retail Frost, although this does seem to be mechanically unsound as we should not be encouraged to munch any spec procs.
In addition, I also tested an alternate version of Spellslinger Frost without GS, and it seems to be about on-par on dummy testing. Gameplay flows nicely between Orb and Ice Lance to use up FoF or WC stack during CD, and when not in CD, defaults back to Frostbolt>Flurry>IL IL while waiting for Orb. I can see this rotation being the build that takes advantage of the new Tier set effect the most.
On the AoE side, I tested out retail Frost rotation vs Fractured Frost/Cold Front (aka Deathborne) rotations. Despite initial impression that Deathborne style works better with Frostfire, I had mild success with DB Spellslinger. Out of the several rotations for DB frost that I experimented with, I had the highest output by spamming Frostbolt between Orb resets. While still spammy, watching Orb resets did make it seem less degenerate, while outside of CD we default back to retail Frost AoE. One interesting observation here is that the Frostbolt spam does actively consume the WC put up by Splinterstorm, and continues the feedback loop that generates more Splinters, which leads to more Orbs and WC via Splinterstorm.
Regarding retail Frost AoE as a Spellslinger, the frequent Orb reset did have me question a little bit about the value of Blizzard/Orb CDR interaction during IV, although it seems to maintain its value outside of IV window.
All Things About Splinters
As many have mentioned about Spellslinger, Splinter visual effects are a big part of this Hero class. Having spent at least several hours in total with Spellslinger, the Splinters are feeling not too bad as a Frost mage. Although they are still very visually similar to icicles, they do differ in the way they launch at enemies in that Splinters wobbles along the path more like Arcane Missiles does (although I hear Arcane mages might have issues with that). I will also note that Splinter stays at the location when they are created, and doesn’t follow the Mage when my character moves, which is visually kind of cool when you happen to move and create a lot of Splinters at the same time, and makes a neat little line of Splinters.
I do think the location of Splinters relative to the mage could use improvement to reduce crowding. This is especially prominent when playing with a GS build where Icicles also hang above the mage for a significant amount of time.
Also, as others have reported, some abilities that generate Splinters shoots them wildly, and as far as I can tell, does not care whether the target is in combat or not. This could create issue in group content, or in any content with high mob density.
Splinterstorm
After playing with it first hand, the Splinterstorm is not as jarring as I imagine it’d be. During IV cooldown, we get constant Splinterstorms, so the WC is more like a passive effect; outside of CD, we have a lot more time to react to Splinterstorm so it isn’t as mentally tasking to check a Splinter tracker WA once in a while.
There is potentially an issue with Splinterstorm where you can generate Splinters, and not trigger Splinterstorm by not selecting a target. For example, popping Icy Veins and Frozen Orb without selecting a target will shoots Splinters out, but will not trigger a Splinterstorm until a target is selected. A slightly related issue is that perhaps there is an unintended opportunity to optimize by immediately tabbing to a new target keep triggering Splinterstorm on targets without WC to increase output in an AoE situation.
Spellfrost Teaching
As a straight 3% chance per Splinters, I have observed both extremes of the reset chance, where Orb immediately resets upon launching, and what seems by comparison, dry spells, where 20 seconds pass without a second Orb in Icy Veins. Having instant resets where one can miss an Orb without the opportunity to cast feels bad, so does having extremely below average number of Orb during CD. I think the talent could use some mechanic to rein in the extremes a bit. Typically this was done with ICD for the high extreme, and some kind of bad luck protection for the low extreme, but maybe there are other creative solutions that can achieve similar effects.
Time Anomaly Interactions
Due to Augury Abound, Time Anomaly proccing Icy Veins also provides a burst of Splinter generation. This may or may not leading to holding Orb or Flurry for an Icy Veins proc, depending on how it maths out. I think some other mage specs also has this issue where TA procs specs cooldown like Combustion and granting effects that only happens in Combustion.
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It’s dumb that arcane missiles require clear casting in beta. It ruins my rotation.
If you were casting Arcane Missiles outside of Clearcasting procs on live, you were losing DPS. Returning Arcane Missiles to being used only during CC only was a great decision that makes it easy to balance Arcane Missile versus Arcane Blast damage, whereas Missiles were only used and immediately clipped just to enable Nether Precision on live.
Nether Tempest was only used to allow for more Arcane Echo procs during Touch of the Magi. It wasn’t even worth its GCD it outside of cooldowns.
Picking Supernova was also a DPS loss because that talent point was worth more being spent elsewhere, but Supernova was just moved to the class tree, although arguably it’s not in the best place it could be and should be a choice with Blast Wave instead of Dragon’s Breath.
The Arcane tree does have problems, but these aren’t them.
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That could be cool.
What do you think about the idea of also having Orb Barrage talent consume Clearcast (if available) to guarantee 1 Orb proc from Barrage? You would do the following in ST:
Have CC proc in ST → Arcane Barrage → (proc guaranteed from above change and this orb generates 4 arcane charges) → Arcane Blast (both NPs used, the first in that initial barrage that spawned the orb and the second in the Arcane Blast).
How does it do that? You use Missiles more actively on Beta right now than you do on Retail even with the Clearcasting requirement, lol.
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Here is feedback about Fire Mage in general in The War Within.
Spec feels much better - tree now provides a lot of choices, resource flow is much smoother especially with Spontaneous Combustion that allows you to freely spend Fire Blast / Phoenix Flames charges before Combustion, Living Bomb can do meaningful damage and has synergies with other tools via Sparking Cinders and overall Fire spec feels significally improved.
However, there are still issues with the spec both in PVE and PVP and unaddressed bugs. They will be mentioned below.
Fire Mage PVE issues
- Scorch and its upgrade talents issues
Scorch was improved and now even has its own good instant proc, but base spell remains undertuned. Its role in earlier expansions was spammable cast on the move to use when mobility is needed but you don’t have instant spells and currently its base damage in PVE is so low than it can be better to use spammable AoE spell Arcane Explosion for such cases, which is just wrong. Even though Scorch can have usages in execute phases and with its proc, baseline spell should be useful too and not require upgrade talents to get usage outside of Combustion.
Suggestion: Buff its base damage and if needed reduce the PVP modifier and / or Down in Flames modifier to compensate. The goal should be to have Scorch still be a dps loss to Fireball (to justify usage of latter at all), but good enough for the niche it is supposed to occupy.
Second issue with Scorch is related to its upgrade talents - combination of Improved Scorch and Heat Shimmer can create a situation where you get a RNG based damage increase and it is optimal to play, which is not good, since it can make your performance based on luck and not on your own actions and adds another maintenance buff to track (now even outside of execute phase) when rework goal was to reduce their amount. As such, maybe Improved Scorch should be removed or at least do not require 2 stacks.
- Blazing Barrier
Blazing Barrier is the weakest of all 3 Mage spec shields by a large margin and after buffs to both Ice Barrier (more absorb value) and Prismatic Barrier (Improved Prismatic Barrier baseline) the gap is even larger. Some people might think that Fire having Cauterize is enough to justify that, but it is not - Frost has Cold Snap as analogue to Cauterize and much better barrier and Blazing Barrier being weak significally reduces value of both Imbued Warding and Meltdown, making them inferior to talents like Reactive Barrier which can provide both bigger increase value and bigger uptime of more valuable secondary effect. That could be addressed.
Suggestion: Buff Blazing Barrier’s backlash damage at least to the level of upgraded Lightning Shield / Blistering Scales (other effects that trigger melee attack backlash) to make it meaningful enough and add an additional effect like reducing physical damage taken while active like it did in Legion. Such addition would make it in line with shields of 2 other specs that already have 2 additional benefits each (Ice Barrier has biggest absorb value and passively snares and Prismatic Barrier reduces magic damage taken and duration of harmful magic effects) and still have its own niche. Additionally please remove its PVP nerf modifier - it was caused by a talent Blazing Soul that is no longer present in the game, so the nerf is no longer justified.
- Undertuned / underused / too niche / overpriced talents
Reworked Fire tree still has several talents that are too weak / too niche / too expensive and could use work. These involve:
Inflame - 10% boost to Ignite damage that affects only Hot Streak boosted spells is very low, especially compared to talents like Intensifying Flame and Master of Flame, which both provide bigger benefit and more frequently. Consider boosting its value.
Alexstrasza’s Fury - after latest changes it is not competitive much, since Dragon’s Breath both is available much less frequently than in earlier expansions (45 seconds base CD), is used for disruption purposes mainly and on top of that competes with Supernova, so might even not be taken. This talent could use some boost.
Ashen Feather - its efect is good, but can be easily wasted by any unsuspected or RNG add spawns. It could be a bit modified to address that and for better scaling.
Suggestion: Make it have mechanic of removed Focused Fury, where Phoenix Flames would deal increased direct and Ignite damage the less targets it hits, up to 50% increased direct and 100% increased Ignite damage if hitting only 1 target. That would both improve its scalabitiy and make its bonus much less wasted in situations like mentioned above.
Controlled Destruction - after latest nerfs this talent can be too undertuned now, especially in shorter fights where it could even not be stacked to full.
Suggestion: Reduce number of its stacks and increase stack value to compensate. That would allow to get good enough value from it even if fight is not very long or has invulnerability periods.
Improved Combustion vs Spontaneous Combustion - them being a choice node is not good, since it forces Fire Mages to pick between massive QoL feature of Spontaneous Combustion in form of possibility to freely use Fire Blast / Phoenix Flames and throughput, especially for Sunfury Fire Mages. A talent point cost for a QoL feature is already enough of a price and should not punish you with additional potential throughput lost.
Suggestion: Split these choice node options and make them into separate talents.
Fevered Incantation and Fire’s Ire - both talents provide quite weak effect for third part of tree, are unnecessary expensive that also leads to reduced number of choices and can make part of capstone talents underplayed, since players would likely not wish to spend 3 total talent points on weak effects just to access them. Also for some reason both talents currently provide only 1 point investment value even if 2 points are spent on them - maybe it is a sign or preparations to reduce them to 1 point cost already.
Suggestion: Reduce both to 1 point investment cost with full current effect - that would make them both better match value to cost ratio for 3rd part of tree talents and make capstones gated behind them more accessible for different builds.
Pyromaniac - decent, but potentially undertuned (about equal to 8% damage boost to Hot Streak affected only Pyroblasts and Flamestrikes), not reliable (low chance to proc) and not synergizing with the talent that is gated behind it (does not affect Hyperthermia affected Pyroblasts and Flamestrikes) talent. Might need a proc chance boost and should also trigger from Hyperthermia affected spells to improve their synergy.
Hyperthermia - is both not reliable enough and has bad synergy with both Sun King’s Blessing and Unleashed Inferno, as it cannot proc during Combustion windows. To address most of its issues it could just become an active ability with X seconds cooldown - that would make it more controllable and reliable, allow to use it to hasten either Combustion CDR for Unleashed Inferno or generation of next Sun King’s Blessing and turn into a competitive capstone.
Firefall - is used, but has a conflicting design - it is positioned in AoE part of tree and triggers an AoE ability, but stacks and triggers exclusively from single-target abilities. To address that and make it more synergizing with AoE situations too, it could get stacks and trigger from Flamestrike as well.
- Remaining bugs and oversights
Here are some of remaining found bugs / oversights with Fire tree in beta:
- Sparking Cinders buff on character has no tooltip.
- Controlled Destruction debuff on enemy has wrong tooltip and states 0.0% increase no matter how many stacks it has.
- Fevered Incantation and Fire’s Ire provide 1 point investment effect even if have 2 points invested.
Fire Mage PVP issues
- Reduced survivability without enough justification.
Fire Mage both has PVP nerf to Blazing Barrier that is inherited from Shadowlands and is not justified anymore and needs to play Glass Cannon and sacrifice both a lot of survivability and a PVP talent slot to do competitive damage to other specs and get modifiers to his spells that specs like Devastation Evoker and Destruction Warlock get for simply existing. These combined lead to Fire Mage having quite low survivability in PVP and cases of frustration both for Fire Mages that can almost melt a moment the enemy ranged spec pays attention to them (especially Hunters) and for healers than need to heal them, especially in uncoordinated environments like Solo Shuffle. That could be addressed.
Suggestion: Unnerf Blazing Barrier, remove Glass Cannon and tune Fire Mage’s damage to be competitive without it. If needed, also remove health boost from Flamecannon to compensate and to keep their survivability in line.
- PVP modifiers that might no longer be needed or justified
Fire Mage tree talents have a lot of PVP modifiers applied during different periods that might no longer be needed or justified in The War Within. Please take a look at Unleashed Inferno, Sun King’s Blessing hardcasted spells, Fiery Rush, Wildfire and other nerfed talents and consider whether their PVP modifiers are still needed / should have current value.
- Underused PVP talents and possible improvements
Fire Mages have several PVP talents that are not played much and could use boosts or changes to make them more competitive. These include:
Greater Pyroblast - has outdatedly long cast and travel time, which both gives enemies a lot of time to disrupt it and a lot of time to react to it that exclude it from most competitive environments. Its effect can be strong, but other classes often have tools that can deal similar damage and have lower cast time (like Ruination) or even are close to instant cast (like Decimation affected Soul Fire). As a result, it could be boosted a bit.
Suggestion: Reduce its base cast time to 3.5-4 seconds.
Improved Mass Invisibility - while it is not used much by all 3 specs, Fire Mages have weakest Barrier and accordingly Mass Barrier and some long cast times so could be the most likely to take this talent. They do not however and main reason is that Improved Mass Invisibility costs both a capstone talent point in general tree and a PVP talent slot while also removing one of defensives of already squishy enough spec. That could be addressed.
Suggestion: Make Mass Invisibility PVP talent usable even without Mass Invisibility taken in general tree, but if needed reduce duration and / or increase cooldown of PVP version to compensate. That would give this talent value for all 3 specs and make it more competitive.
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I usually just Arcane missled despite not min maxing the DPS because it was fast, so I could get several hits in before something went down.
If it was just myself, my rotation changes but Arcane missle was my goto forever.
I will have to see if the new setup works for me, but at the moment not liking it much at all, but that is just initial impression.
At the worst, my Arcane mages get parked and I play some other class, though not entirely a fan of their direction of druid at the moment either.
what happened to our ranged spells I have to get almost within melee range … I keep getting that I’m too far away ? …
The visuals of sunfury combust meteor rain + living bomb going off with blast zone on a huge pull will literally never get old. Might be the most visually satisfying cooldown press ever.
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On the subject of new spell visuals, my impression is that the new visual for Frostfire bolt is generally disliked. I will not, however, comment on that here, but instead use it as a spring board to discuss the animation for Arcane Missiles (AM). Its animation is terrible. I have written extensively against it since it was first introduced in the second half of Legion. While I am not calling for a return of the old AM animation (though I would not object to it), the current one is completely unbecoming of Arcane’s cosmic fantasy. Equally important, the visual in no way matches the power level of AM themselves, which promise to be very strong in The War Within. They should look impactful and “punchy” - right now they look so weak and pack little punch at all. This point (and a corresponding request to change the new AM animation) was made by a great many in the visual feedback forum back in Legion, but was seemingly ignored. Although the AM animation does not destroy my ability to enjoy Arcane as a spec, which is one of my absolute favourites, it certainly does detract from it. The AM (or Arcane Salvo, as it’s called) animation for certain Dragonflight NPC’s is actually quite cool, and I would definitely support that becoming our AM animation. Honestly, any adjustment to improve the visual and “punchiness” of the AM animation would be most welcome - just please something, as the current animation is truly terrible in my opinion. I would love to hear others’ opinion on this; if you agree with me, please like this post, as I know Blizzard is paying special attention to spell visuals right now (with the Hero Talents and otherwise), so that change to the animation is possible at this current stage of development.
I like the Missiles as they currently look, but that’s just me. Maybe a glyph to alter them would be the best solution?
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That would be a great solution - I’m just as open to that. In fact, I think allowing glyphs for other classes’ abilities (like Shadow Bolt, whose animation could not be worse) would be a fantastic idea. That way everyone would be happy. Why Blizz has not introduced such glyphs already is very odd to me; although not quite the same concept, Warlocks got the ability to change the look of their demons, in a few cases dramatically so (e.g., Infernal to Abyssal, which used to be a summonable demon back in WoD).
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