Feedback: Mages

In Development Midnight Beta Test
43

Having had the opportunity to thoroughly test Arcane, I think it is fun and well designed, but I have several suggestions for improvement:

1.) I love the aesthetics and functionality of the new Arcane Pulse, but I think its cast time is too long, especially considering that what it replaced, Arcane Explosion, was instant. I am not recommending that the cast time on Arcane Pulse be removed, which would be unreasonable; rather, the best solution would be to make Arcane Pulse’s cast time correspond to number of Arcane Charges, so that, with each one, the cast time is accordingly reduced (0.15-0.2 seconds per Charge would do, I think). Arcane Pulse’s current cast time needs to be reduced for optimal functionality. The spell’s range should also be increased slightly.

2.) The new Mana Bomb talent is great and I am happy to see it. I have always advocated for a major buff in damage to Arcane Surge, whose output has never really matched its description “annihilate the target”. Mana Bomb (and, if selected, Archmage’s Wrath in the Spellslinger tree) goes a long way in addressing that discrepancy. That said, I think the ability’s damage should be buffed even further (it has a 1 min, 30 sec CD, after all) either by increasing the potency of Mana Bomb or, more simply, tuning passes. This would help to accentuate Arcane’s identity as a high burst spec. If this would be a problem in PvP, then a significant damage reduction in that environment will remove the concern.

3.) I believe that Charged Missiles, as much as I love the concept and wish to see it remain in some form, is untenable in its present iteration, because it is simply too clunky and inconvenient to use. This is particularly apparent when Arcane Orb is on CD. During a Touch of the Magi window, for example, it is very challenging to regain the Arcane Charges (Arcane Pulse’s cast time does not help) in time to keep benefitting from Charged Missiles itself and to pack in as much damage as possible in that short window. In my numerous test runs I ended up doing less damage during such a window with the talent than without it. High Voltage, its competitor, is just so much easier to use, and, it would seem, more powerful. Charged Missiles can be fixed, for instance, by adding a mana cost to Arcane Missiles in exchange for increased damage per Arcane Charge (instead of consuming them), similar to how it worked in Legion (Arcane Missiles had no mana cost at that time, though). This is just an idea - there are several other possible solutions. Please do NOT remove Charged Missiles: I am thrilled to see Arcane Missiles getting the major buff it has long deserved; all the talent needs is simplified functionality and greater ease of use. Perhaps other have had a different experience with Charged Missiles; if so, I am interested to know.

4.) The increased mana cost associated with Overflowing Insight is not proportionate to the damage buff it provides. I find myself running out of mana too quickly without a truly meaningful increase in dps output one would expect from a capstone. A simple ratio change will fix this.

3 Likes
44

Now that I have access to Beta there is one thing I simply must demand.

Meteor having a choice node with itself that casts at the target.

22 Likes
45

I just went to test them on a Delve and they didn’t die on me taking damage. I wonder if it was really a bug?

However one thing that I think it’s broken is that the Look Again Mirror Images spawned after Blinks don’t grab threat at all from you.

If that’s truly intended then that talent is dead on arrival.

46

Yes. I wish I could like this a thousand times over. Blastwave is such an incredible spell for creating distance between you and your target.

Losing Ice Nova, Slow, Glacial Spike (as its own spell and root), and Blast Wave severely hurts our capability to create distance between us and the target and it’ll be absolutely brutal in PvP.

11 Likes
47

Pyromastery increases the size of pyroblast by 15%. In game I can’t really notice the difference.

I say give the people what they want. +50% pyro size.

7 Likes
48

I’m providing the following feedback as someone who has played and enjoyed many different iterations of both Fire and Arcane Mage, from classic through The War Within.

Overall, both specs feel too slow. While a degree of simplification was definitely warranted from the War Within versions, it feels like the changes have overall gone a little too far, and the resulting gameplay feels more like a classic mage than a modern retail WoW mage. This is especially true when compared to other classes, many of which were simplified in various ways but still retained their fast-paced, dynamic feel.

For fire, it just doesn’t feel good to be spamming fireball only outside of combustion windows. It also feels bad to lose scorch, which has existed since vanilla WoW and has been able to be cast while moving since Cataclysm. One thing I do really like though is the removal of phoenix flames.

For arcane, it takes way too long to build up arcane salvo stacks in single target, and the mana management gameplay doesn’t feel fun or rewarding. I agree that there were way too many arcane barrage modifiers in War Within, and I think consolidating those into something like Salvo stacks makes a lot of sense. But the current iteration of the spec, at least in single target, feels slow and clunky – again, more like a classic mage than a modern retail wow mage.

I hope the developers can take another look and make some significant changes to return a more fast-paced and dynamic feel to both specs before launch, while retaining some of the simplification (especially regarding barrage modifiers and phoenix flames removal).

1 Like
49

Here is some quick feedback about the new Frost mage talent Thermal Void (TV hereafter) after playing with it a little bit on the Beta:

Assuming the spellpower coefficient between various Frost abilities are tuned at some point, the current implementation of Thermal Void seems to incentivize Flurry only if there is a Finger of Frost proc present. When you Ice Lance with Finger of Frost, the extra Ice Lance from TV gains the same benefit without consuming Freezing stack. During Ray of Frost window, the difference in stacks consumed seems to be negligible difference by my napkin math, but seems like there is definitely a benefit to combine Finger of Frost and TV proc together. In effect, I don’t believe this creates the desired behavior for pooling freezing stack as much as it intends to.

In addition, the current UI lacks support in terms of predictive stack consumption (as well as the obviously missing Finger of Frost buff in Cooldown Manager), thus making overcapped Freezing stack a common occurrence during my test. In effect, my Ice Lance occasionally consumes 0 stacks, sometimes 6 and sometimes 12, thus making the spec difficult to play without additional support.

However, there IS an interesting niche with Thermal Void: the extra Ice Lance can cleave onto different targets different from the casted ones, thus effectively make the post-Flurry Ice Lance 5T in terms of AoE, for situation where small adds spawn, you can execute a Ice Nova/CoC, Flurry , Ice Lance combo for a quick shatter damage.

1 Like
50

Blizzard can you please bring back Blast Wave? Without it, enemies easily gang up on you and there is no way to push them away.

9 Likes
51

I tested out fire mage.

It felt really bad to play mostly because i feel like something is missing rotationally, 3 buttons is just not enough for single target. Fire mage needs a new spell imo,automatic meteor is boring we need something new\interesting.

It also feels really bad not having blast wave. I love that spell, please bring back blast wave.

It feels so much worse to play i wouldnt play mage next expansion as a existing fire mage. I dont mind the prune of a few spells but i think this is just over the top.

7 Likes
52

I had a feeling it was bad. Tried it in beta… it was worse.

Gosh, I hate it. All of it.

  • A bunch of useless talents, like reducing Hypothermia, increasing duration of procs, or increasing the dmg of Fire barrier.
  • Absolutely gutted mobility, which is supposed to be the defining characteristic of the entire class.
  • No Blast Wave, locking Frostfire frost into Firebreath only, and destroying all delve and PvP potential.
  • Ice Floes and Scorch gone. Casting on the move is infinitely more fun than standing still; and I’d argue even slightly more fun than just spaming Instant casts.
  • Hard casting during Combustion.
  • Fire basically have no spells. Making it extremely boring fireball spam.
  • Comet Storm weirdly tied to Ray of Frost… again messing up with Frostfire frost.
  • Water Elemental no longer an optional thing. My favorite version of this was tying it to Icy Veins. WE is a much better spec CD than Ray of Frost.

IDK… it’s just… lame. Mage being this bad kills all my excitement for Midnight.

Just noticed that as of 11/13/2025… the dev’s post on mage changes is the only one of the class changes that doesn’t have a single like. That should tell you everything there is to know about the mage changes. No one likes them.

22 Likes
53

Here is feedback post about Arcane Mage and its hero trees after more testing.

Arcane Mage feedback

Spec feels simpler to play now that most modifiers for Arcane Blast and Arcane Barrage went away and you just play around mana, Arcane Charges and Arcane Salvo stacks. However, at the same time spec became worse in many aspects too - bad mobility (especially since main AoE spell is now also stationary and hardcasted), bad survivability in solo content (Arcane does not even have any spec specific defensives like Cauterize and Cold Snap, so while Frost has “meh” survivability there and Fire has “bad” survivability there Arcane has “horrible”), low amount of utility (no longer has any ranged slows and spec specific utility since both Supernova and Improved Barrier are now in general talent tree) and lacks spec features compared to other 2 specs (Frost has slows and additional roots, Fire has Ignite with spread and cheat death and Arcane has just purple particle effects as its spec identity). All these issues make the spec feel undercooked, really bad for levelling and open world content / delves and it should receive more work to address these issues. Here is feedback about specific issues / talents with possible solutions and suggestions.

Low mobility

More of Arcane’s damaging abilities are hardcasted now (mobile Arcane Explosion was replaced by stationary hardcasted Arcane Pulse) and mobility was pruned even more (if you want to take Slipstream you need to sacrifice Presence of Mind and vice versa and nerfs to Shimmer / removal of Ice Floes are quite felt, especially in open world content where you need to kite). That combined with general Mage survivability nerfs would cause issues both in instanced content (where any movement fight would heavily punish Arcane Mages with the amount of hardcasting they have to do) and open world (where to deal meaningful damage you have to stand still and cast and soak damage from mob / pack). Mobility pruning went too far for Arcane and should be dialled back.

Suggestions: 1 - Split Presence of Mind with Slipstream and make them separate talents again. That would allow to reduce mobility issues for Midnight Arcane for additional talent point cost.

2 - Buff Presence of Mind to 3 casts and make it also affect Arcane Pulse casts. Such tweak would make it more competitive with throughput talents and help reduce Arcane’s mobility issues for both single-target (Arcane Blast) and AoE (Arcane Pulse) situations.

Low survivability

While Mage in general has rough situation with than in Midnight after all the survivability nerfs in general tree, Arcane is affected the most since it still does not have any spec specific defensive akin to Cauterize and Cold Snap and Improved Barrier that was used as justification for that was moved to general talent tree. It definitely needs a spec specific defensive now to bring its survivability more in line with other 2 Mage specs.

Suggestion: Return Temporal Shield as spec specific defensive to Arcane tree and put it in the middle of 4th row (where Fire has Cauterize and Frost has Cold Snap choice node).

Low utility

Removal of all ranged snares from Arcane (at least in PVE) is very heavily felt, especially in open world where combination of removal of Blast Wave and Slow and nerfs to mobility make melee enemies just stick to you while you hardcast most of your main damaging spells and attempt to kill them while soaking their damage. That does not feel right for a spec and class that uses kiting as one of means of survival and should be addressed.

Suggestion: Put a utility choice node in Arcane tree that would allow Arcane Mages to optionally pick a way to keep one or several enemies at bay. That could be for example choice node between Slow Down and Chrono Shift:

Slow Down - Arcane Blast now applies Slow to target, reducing movement speed by 50% for X seconds. This option would be fitting for dealing with strong and affected by crowd control singular enemies.

or

Chrono Shift - Arcane Barrage slows affected target(s) by X% for Y seconds and increases your movement speed by N% for M seconds. Similar to existing PVP talent, it is long overdue to be returned to Arcane general talent tree (so PVE players can benefit from it as well) and would be useful when dealing with packs of enemies while Slow Down would be stronger against singular strong enemies and would not require using your Arcane Charge spender (and accordingly dumping Arcane Charges) to keep him slowed.

Spec identity issues

Arcane still has identity issue where unlike other Mage specs it does not bring anything special to the party (Frost brings passive slows and additional roots while Fire brings Ignite cleave and cheat death), especially after loss of Mass Barrier that could be used to give allies unique magic dampening effects. Combined with its low target cap for AoE (mainly 5 targets) that would often raise the question why would you even bring Arcane Mage over Frost or Fire Mage if their output is tuned to comparable level. There should be a definite answer to that question and that is spec specific utility that would not overlap with anti-melee utility of Frost and Ignites / better survival against oneshot mechanics of Fire.

Suggestion: Add unique spec specific utility to Arcane talent tree. That could be for example Arcane Vortex as active ability that would pull enemies in selected area to its center and slow them by X% for Y seconds. Such utility is fairly unique for dps specs (only some tanks have something similar), fitting for arcane and space manipulation theme of the spec and is useful enough to justify sometimes taking it over a throughput talent (as it can be used to stack enemies for both party cleave in instanced content and personal cleave from Arcane Barrage / Arcane Orb / Arcanosphere in solo content.

Lack of frontloaded damage and exciting burst moments

For a “burst oriented spec” Arcane very much lacks reliable frontloaded damage cooldowns akin to Meteor for Fire and Comet Storm for Frost. Arcane Orb exists, but it does negligible damage (about half damage of 4 charged Arcane Pulse actually, it is really quite weak) and is mainly used for Arcane Charge generation. Touch of the (Arch)Magi exists, but it is very delayed and backloaded. Arcane Surge exists, but it is “major cooldown” and is available only once per 90 seconds. Arcane could use its own relatively short cooldown frontloaded / exciting burst moment spell and there is already a perfect fit for that.

Suggestion: Move Arcanosphere to Arcane talent tree and make it a choice node with passive effect that would increase damage of Arcane Pulse and Arcane Barrage by X%. Arcanosphere is already implemented as PVP talent, so would not even require much design / implementation work and both its damage and minor knockback effect can be quite useful in PVE too. Such choice node would also allow players that don’t want to play with it to take alternative option as passive boost to their other AoE spells instead (which can be tuned to provide comparable throughput increase) and remain competitive too.

Undertuned / too niche / improvable abilties and talents

There are also several abilities and talents in Arcane tree that are undertuned, serve as point dump or are too odd or could be improved. These include:

Arcane Missiles - with nerfs to their damage and number of missiles full channel that takes 2 seconds of base cast time does comparable damage to a 4 charged Arcane Blast with 1.52 sec base cast time. Since they are supposed to be the burst moment for Arcane they are currently undertuned and could use boosts.

Suggestion: Buff their damage and return Amplification to 3 additional missiles (8 totally). 8 missiles over channel time would make Arcane Missiles much more fluid and their Arcane Salvo generation / Arcane Charge generation from High Voltage much more accountable and reliable.

Arcane Pulse - its baseline area is too low (no other ability has 2 yards radius baseline) and difference in area between 0 charged cast and 4 charged is too drastic (literally 5 times difference) and should be brought more in line. Its cast is also quite slow and could benefit from same cast time reduction from Arcane Charges as Arcane Blast.

Suggestion: Increase base area of Arcane Pulse to 6 yards radius + 1 yard per Arcane Charge (so same 10 yards radius at 4 Arcane Charges as currently) and make cast time of Arcane Pulse reduce with bigger amount of Arcane Charges in similar fashion to Arcane Blast.

Arcane Orb - despite generating Arcane Charges does really too low damage currently for being a cooldown (less than half of damage of 4 charged Arcane Pulse like mentioned above) and needs a damage buff.

Improved Clearcasting - still does not do anything aside from making Clearcasting able to stack and serves as a talent point dump. Consider at least merging it with Illuminated Thoughts (which provide proc chance increase for Clearcasting), so that it would have at least some output increase value and that would also free design space in tree for other additions.

Overflowing Insight - its mana cost penalty (25%) is too large compared to benefit (15% damage increase), especially for a capstone talent. These values should be brought in line and provide similar damage increase and cost increase.

Overnerfed or improvable PVP talents

Arcane also has several PVP talents that are overnerfed now or too niche and could be improved. These include:

Kleptomania - its movement speed penalty is no longer justified after all the nerfs to Arcane’s mobility and this penalty should be removed.

Chrono Shift - after all the nerfs to Arcane mobility could receive a bigger movement speed boost again (it went from 50% to 10% and could be increased to 20-25% now that Arcane Mages can’t even move while casting much anymore).

Bugs / oversights

Several noticed bugs with Arcane mechanics and tree:

  • Nether Flux is not affected by Aegwynn’s Technique (which provides Clearcasting when ToTM is used) and Touch of the Archmagi (which provides 2 charges, should increase its damage bonus like old Improved Touch talent did and should make target hit by Nether Flux boosted spell also pulse some of damage taken to itself and surrounding enemies) upgrades. It replaces Touch of the Magi, so should benefit from boosts to it as well.
  • Tooltip of Overcharged Missiles buff on player is different from tooltip of Overcharged Missiles in talent tree and should be fixed.

Arcane Spellslinger feedback

This hero spec is still decent and just has several mechanical and tuning issues to be addressed. Here is feedback about specific talents:

Shifting Shards - you get Clearcasting much less frequently than every 4 shots of Arcane Familliar (which would provide on average same 2 Arcane Splinters), so is undertuned compared to its alternative and needs a buff.

Polished Focus - current implementation promotes using Arcane Barrage only at 20+ Salvo stacks and is not very compatible with AoE situations where Arcane Barrage can be used more frequently. Consider changing it to just make Arcane Barrage refund 25% of Arcane Salvo stacks spent with minimum of 1 - that would provide same 5 stacks refund when using Arcane Barrage with 20 stacks, but would also allow to benefit from this talent even in cases where you can’t wait till you accumulate 20 stacks and need to use Arcane Barrage earlier.

Look Again: after more testing I discovered that this Image is unlike usual and does not immediately disappear when you take direct damage… but it does not distract enemies either, so still provides little to no value. Still needs a buff.

Arcane Sunfury feedback
Unlike Spellslinger this hero tree both still has serious issues (like behaviour and immobility of summoned Phoenix) and was made much less reliable with changes to Spellfire Sphere generation becoming RNG based and likewise. It also has several serious bugs that should be addressed. Here is feedback about specific talents:

Spellfire Spheres - being RNG based can no longer be played around and there can be periods of time where you don’t get Spheres and their bonuses for extended period of time or in time. Consider either reverting it back to generation based on number of Arcane Blast / Arcane Pulse / Arcane Barrage casts or at least providing a form of bad RNG protection for it. Consider also providing an option to make Spellfire Spheres visible only in combat for players who don’t like their look when just roaming around.

Arcane Phoenix - is still immobile and if enemies move out of its range (which especially happens in PVP or with mobile tanks in PVE) it just floats there menacingly. That is a major oversight that should be fixed - Arcane Phoenix should become capable of moving and chase its targets if they outrange it or follow the Mage if there are no valid targets.

Lessons In Debilitation - remains extremely niche and undertuned, since 2 additional Spellsteals every 90 seconds (which also have very large delay between them) often don’t provide much value and can be even harmful if Phoenix steals a beneficial effect that Mage could want for himself / herself. This talent should be either redesigned or provide something in addition to current effect.

Explosive Potential - one additional mini-Blast Wave that has pretty much no knockback every 90 seconds does not provide much value either. Please just remove this talent and restore Gravity Lapse - it is very thematic for Kael’Thas / Sunfury theme, actually useful (and requires sacrificing Dragon’s Breath to pick, so even has a major tradeoff) and if needed its target count and cooldown can just be adjusted to appropriate level. It can also provide extremely missing and needed for Fire and Arcane Mages unbreakable by damage crowd control effect that could be used to cover some of their hardcasting in PVP (which they got a lot more in Midnight) and accordingly if returned should be changed to stun primary target in PVP instead of just rooting it like in War Within (with secondary targets still being just rooted in PVP or even PVE too if that would be needed for balancing purposes).

Ashes of Inspiration - currently is bugged and does not provide Lesser Time Warp when Phoenix expires.

Memory of Al’Ar - is also bugged and does not provide Arcane Soul buff when Arcane Phoenix expires.

This sums up my feedback about Arcane Mages and their hero trees in Midnight for now. Thank you for reading!

5 Likes
54

Feedback on mechanical changes from me will have to wait until I’ve played around with them more.

One immediate feedback item, however, is the permanent, passively present icicle visual effect over frost mage feels like a major appearance change to your character, that’s forced on your character without any way out of it (at least while keeping your spec). That part feels undesirable to me, especially with how visually jarring the icicle VFX is (they’re not exactly small and unobtrusive). It’s one thing during combat when you’re probably always going to be zoomed out to max zoom, but roleplaying out and about on an RP server, or in your character’s house doesn’t seem like a good fit for forcing 5 large spinning icicle graphics over each frost mage, full time.

6 Likes
55

Frost feedback

I was initially welcoming of a Frost redesign in theory but my first impressions of actually playing it in Beta in questing and dungeons is that this new Frost… isn’t fun.

Freezing

In current Frost, IL usage is clear and reactive, cast it when FoF or WC active. These binary cues create a straightforward, predicable, high-clarity loop where players instantly know that pressing IL will hit hard and feel rewarding when they see that FoF overlay or do Flurry > IL > IL. I know exactly when and how many IL I need to cast at any given moment.

With Freezing, that clarity and agency is lost. Because stacks accumulate unpredictably from many sources (Flurry, Water Elemental for SS, Splinters, Blizzard, etc.), IL timing becomes uncertain due to the continuous variance. Players must constantly check and mentally calculate Freezing stacks to decide if casting IL or FoF is worthwhile. This turns what was once a clear, reactive decision into constant debuff number-checking. The FoF overlay is now an ambiguous icon of unknown scale of Shatter damage, if any Shatter damage at all.

While playing, I have been staring at the Freezing debuff in cooldown manager rather than focusing on the fights or world around me. The result is a loss of intuitive flow, agency, and overall gameplay clarity. I’m just doing non-stop mental calculations of whether it is best to IL or not at any given moment based on Freezing stacks:

  • Do I have the bare minimum Freezing stacks to cast IL to Shatter?
  • Is the target dying too fast and do I need to spam IL before it dies and Freezing stacks are wasted?
  • I need to switch targets ASAP but should I try consume all these Freezing stacks on my initial target or will they get wasted?
  • How close am I to capping Freezing stacks?
  • Does this target have enough HP for me to build up Freezing stacks in at least 3 globals so I can use IL before it dies?

FoF needs to deal damage as if the target has 5 (or 6 with Heart of Ice) Freezing stacks even if the target has zero Freezing stacks. It would make it much easier to justify using FoF at any moment on any target and reducing the cognitive load calculation. Flurry also needs to grant 5 (or 6 with Heart of Ice) stacks of Freezing so we have some semblance of the Flurry > IL combo.

The current format of buffs on nameplates and cooldown manager also makes it really difficult to properly track stacks of Freezing across enemies; Freezing feels like it really needs a WA with alerts to properly play. The straightforward and clear loop of Frost is gone. This debuff playstyle just is not fun at all. I don’t think Freezing works.

This redesign went overboard to what needed to happen to fix Frost’s problems; which was mostly just remove the Winter’s Chill debuff mechanic, put more spells that consume FoF, and have a simple better scaling Mastery with damage to frozen targets. But now we’re likely stuck with this new debuff Freezing design for an entire expansion as a minimum, ergh.

AoE:

The AoE rotation feels disjointed and bloated. Blizzard and Frozen Orb don’t have much interaction with each other anymore, but both generate Freezing stacks separately (when talented). Why do both of these spells need to exist now if they’re just doing the same thing? Tbh you could just get rid of one of them (imo Blizzard), or make one of them passive that procs from something.

IL now only consumes Freezing from a max of 3 targets with Fractured Frost, so I found myself sometimes target swapping to maximise Freezing consumption. Outside of the rare Comet Storm, there’s no real easy way to consume Freezing stacks across mass enemies. Flurry and Cone of Frost just don’t give enough Freezing stacks to go straight into IL, this feels slow and bad.

On group packs that died quicker, I actually felt useless in the group. By the time I spent globals casting Blizzard, Frozen Orb, Ice Nova for Cone of Frost, just to get maybe a minimum of maybe 3-5 Freezing stacks to even warrant casting IL, the packs were nearly already dead and I hadn’t even felt like I properly started playing yet because there was just so much set up to get the minimum Freezing stacks to justify casting IL in the first place. I’m not sure what the intent for this AoE rotation is meant to be.

The AoE rotation just doesn’t feel fluid, intuitive, or works well; it feels like needing to do the ST rotation but having to fit in extra spells that don’t contribute enough.

Niche:

Frost doesn’t have a strength compared to Arcane and Fire, that are stronger in cleave, execute, funnel, etc. What reason is there to bring Frost over the other specs? Please give Frost a niche for once, we’ve been begging for it for expansions.

Ray of Frost:

It needs interrupt and knockback protection otherwise Frost is severely punished.

If you’re sticking to this as the major DPS cd now, then it needs a new updated visual cause the existing one is not up to par.

Improved Ice Barrier:

This talent is pretty weak compared to Improved Prismatic Barrier. Unless I’m reading them wrong, taking these talents would lead to:

  • Ice Barrier: 10% physical damage reduction, +5% additional shield absorb.

  • Prismatic Barrier: 25% magic damage reduction, 40% harmful magic effect duration reduction.

The value that Prismatic Barrier provides with the improved barrier talent is just wild compared to Frost. Baseline Prismatic Barrier is stronger than Improved Frost Barrier. It’s already a struggle to justify Frost compared to Arcane, please buff Improved Frost Barrier so that there’s some modicum of parity.

Bugs:

Cooldown manager: Freezing Rain is missing. Augury Abounds is missing. There are also a few spells in there that don’t exist anymore.

Comet Storm! Buff. Tooltip says ‘Your Blizzard is replaced with Comet Storm.’ It’s RoF now that’s replaced.

7 Likes
56

I love this period in beta/PTR where they ask for feedback that goes ignored for years if not decades but is archived as a perfect reference for later to remind blizzard how tone deaf they can be.

With that out of the way, the current changes to fire and frost are absurd.

Giving frost what is essentially combo points on target instead of on player is giving us an 8 year out of date mechanic. The fact that frost could easily play as one of the easiest dps specs in the game (depending on build) since the DF work up means this redesign was very clearly ill thought out. Icy veins removal and making ray of frost our dps cd is also about the most clunky NON intuitive thing they could do but then they had to top it off by making ray of frost turn into comet storm?? Everyone saying “frost feels super intuitive with the redesign” seems to then follow up with a book on how it’s clearly NOT intuitive.

Fire has been spoken about a ton. I actually like the fact that phoenix flame got taken out back to the barn but removing the likes of scorch which was an ability in vanilla is insane. The hero talents especially feel ridiculous since you made the fire tree about as basic as classic while the hero talents add a bunch of passive, tracking-required, complexity that does not allow you to actually interact with in any meaningful way.

Absurd redesigns all around. Needs to go back to the drawing board or just re implement where we already are in TWW.

P.S. I’ve seen what “constructive” feedback gets blizzard player base over the last 2 decades. No real changes are coming for at least a couple of patches if not expansion. If we want real changes we need to go to social media.

17 Likes
57

Frost and Fire feel awful. Honestly, several specs feel awful. I expected Blizzard to follow up on design shifts to several specs including Fire and Frost and they have failed those specs miserably.

I am greatly disappointed in both of these specs’ current designs. They feel bad to play and my Mage will be collecting dust in Midnight. :frowning:

9 Likes
58

One thing I want to bring up about Frost is the lack of rhythm.

Flurry and Lance Freezing rates have been decoupled, and that means that there’s no combos, no rhythm to how the spec plays. It’s just slop of “hit whatever sim amount we say is good of Freezing and hit Lance”. It was fine in Alpha 1, Flurry granted 3/Lance consumed 3. Ignoring the +Shatter count talents for a moment, there’s rhythm here. You can feel a nice little payoff for pushing your spells in the correct order.

We’re nearly back to it with Improved Flurry, but you changed Lance to consume 5 instead. I’d like to see this back down to 4, for the sake of moment-to-moment rhythm, and ease of tuning Ice Lance.

Additionally, Heart of Ice should not increase the Freezing consumption rate, but do something in a similar vein. I am unsure what at the moment, hopefully Blizz can design something in this space.

Thermal Void kinda fits into all of this, where the expected design goal is just “Frostbolt 12 times then hit Lance once”. I see the desire for some form of pooling gameplay, but I do not think that this is a viable method, at least not yet. A lower stack consumption will break up the rotational boredom of going up to max*2 Lance cap, dropping the cap from 12 to 8.

I see the single target design goals, they’re kinda shaping up. Keep Freezing >=Lance cap, FoF as they come, Flurry as they come, naked Lance at >=2*Lance cap. Hand of Frost/Polished Focus/FFE/Frozen Orb/Frostbolt crits/GS all add an element of rng in the moment-to-moment. I see the design, it can potentially feel nice. I just believe that Flurry>Lance is a nice feeling combo from live, and should be maintained.

Contrary to that: AoE. I still want a design goal statement on this, because it feels like with Splintering Ray and Comet Storm, and to a lesser extent Cone of Frost, you want to go in on some AoE Freezing mechanics. But you’ve just neutered Lance’s AoE on it. Dev note? Give us a design goal here, I want to see what you see.

You’ve also kinda nuked your “don’t want you to have to tab for Lance on AoE” goal here.

6 Likes
59

Did Blizzard remove the frost bolt/Frostfire effect of slowing down enemies? I was playing on the beta and they weren’t slowing down at all.

60

After testing midnight frost for a while, my blunt feedback is that it is just not fun. It lacks any coherent rhythym, any reasoning behind most of the ways one would sequence their spells, and it has removed most of the things I originally loved about frost. It is in every way worse then the spec we already had in the war within. My best, honest feedback is to rollback this entire redesign back to current war within frost, to then standardize travel times of all frost spells to remove a lot of the annoying cases, and leave the spec alone.

15 Likes
61

frost mage is worst imo the frostyfingers buff got moved to the target as a debuff making it ridiculously hard to track and now you have to watch stacks because it’s made it where each missile eats 5 stacks and its ridiculous that yall actually made it more difficult and annoying to play now and omg the channeling frostbeam thing omg… /delete mage seriously messed up so hard

4 Likes
62

I can’t believe we have to try and save our characters just to wait and see them not listen and just ship it ngl thats what their gonna do

edit: I am serious I am very worried for this game

3 Likes