Absolutely agree. I can’t stress enough how important this will be, it’s totally a make or break moment. And if these splinters look the same for both specs it’s going to be a disaster. If the splinters for Arcane don’t look like the updated arcane bolts Kirin Tor NPCs in Camp Antonidas and Denizens of the Dream faerie dragons use I am flat out not going to pick this tree even if Sunfury proves to be a worse choice by a mile.
The tree is incredible, serious props.
Design Constructive Feedback
- Force of Will is boring and belongs in the base class/spec tree
- Unerring Proficiency could run into the same problems as Snowstorm for frost currently. As in, it’s only a pad talent and isn’t very useful. Please make sure it doesn’t expire too quickly (or at all).
- Spellfrost Teachings just seems to be glacial assault…? Kinda weird to have two random 6% buff procs
Visuals
I want to echo Manather by saying that visuals will make or break this hero spec. The entire tree is passive, so making the passive attacks look sick is crucial. I have trust in the art team to get this done, but it’s still important to emphasize.
2 Likes
Shifting Shards better not break polymorph…
Actually, all of these talents better not break polymorph. My god.
Themetically, the Spellslinger feels a bit lackluster to me. Based on the hero talent description of Spellslinger, we are expecting a “rapid barrages” of Splinter, but by mechanically tying Splinter generation to Nether Precision and Winter’s Chill makes it feel more like a single-shot rifle rather than a rapid barrage of machinegun. Major cooldowns (Icy Vein/Arcane Surge) generating a bunch of Splinter + Splinterstorm right away are high points for this spec, and similarly for Frozen Orb/Arcane Orb during AoE, and I’d suggest similar treatments to the base Splinter mechanic for better effect: Flurry and Arcane Missiles are both multi-projectile spells that fits this niche and generating 3 or 5 Splinters with one spell would go a long way to satisfying the “rapid barrage” imagery of Spellslinger. Obviously things like the number of Splinter before Splinterstorm have to be retuned based on Splinter generation, but perhaps each version of Splinterstorm can have a different amount of Embedded Splinters limit.
Mechanically, multi-strike mechanics combos well with time-limited vulnerability mechanics and creates synergy. To make gameplay interesting, mechanics like Arcane Echo and Winter’s Chill should interact positively with Splinter/Splinterstorm. Splinter triggering Arcane Echo might sound a bit overpowered depending on Splinter generation, but it sounds like a massive fun time. Similarly for Frost, making sure Splinter/Splinterstorm benefits from Winter’s Chill (but not consume it) would be important. In this respect, Splinterstorm firing automatically and with a delay is problematic. Perhaps Splinterstorm could accumulate damage based on Splinter count and become a rider spell that shoots out automatically when another spell is used? Ray of Frost seems like a good candidate for Frost.
Overall, I enjoyed the fantasy Spellslinger brings to the table, even if not completely satisfied with how I imagine the mechanics played out. Like others have mentioned, visual could do wonders for the Splinters mechanics as well and helps complete the rapid barrage fantasy.
Frostfire seems better but frostfire breaks CC too. 
For arcane, I think the tree looks good. My one concern is proccing Nether Precision in AOE. If orbs generate enough splinters, it may be okay, but making it generate a splinter on NP or on Barrage would be better. Otherwise I think it’s a great tree for arcane.
I said it before with the Frostfire trees, but I’ll say it again here. This seems like an awful lot of work from the devs/design team to achieve absolutely no gameplay. Sure, there are some interesting concepts for passive damage, but at the end of the day it adds nothing other than another layer of tuning that will need to be done, all for the sake of having that next gimmick to add to the “expansion features” list. Also 2/5% crit? Did the design team get drunk and forget they had to release the talent trees the next morning?
Given this is just meh, am I the only one who thinks that this same time and effort should have been spent on the existing garbage talent trees? Even if you didn’t want to tune them, you could add literally half of these “talents” into the spots of existing talents that no one takes and just give us another 10 points to spend…
4 Likes
I don’t see how this represents a combined Frost and Arcane tree at all. It just seems like a third concept entirely (the splinters) bolted on top of the spec that also does nothing to change gameplay.
Frostfire is cool because it combines the visuals and effects of the two elements without overcomplicating the gameplay. Getting meteors of fire and ice together, having frostfire bolt again, cool stuff.
I was expecting like, Arcane Missiles to chill targets or something and have cool ice graphics, let Frostbolt take the place of Arcane Blast in rotations, your Frozen Orb shoots little mini arcane orbs in a spiral lmao. Some fun ways to mix the school together like Frostfire tree. But it seems like everything we actually do is entirely unchanged in either visuals OR gameplay. That is profoundly disappointing.
3 Likes
Feedback from a Frost perspective:
- General:
I don’t really see the difference between Splinters and Icicles. Splinters basically read as Icicles that just do dot damage. There isn’t much of a difference in distinction between these two imo as they seem to effectively work the same way: generate automatically and passively by doing our standard rotation. This isn’t new or interesting gameplay considering we’ve already got Icicles to manage. The entire hero tree is purely passive with no real change in gameplay.
- Conjuring Splinters vs Firing Splinters?
Splintering Sorcery indicates when consuming Winter’s Chill a Splinter will conjure and automatically fire at the target. This makes sense given WC is on the target. But Augury Abounds says casting Icy Veins conjures 8 Splinters. We don’t need to have a target nor be in combat to cast Icy Veins, so what happens here? Do the Splinters conjure and just hang around us like Icicles and then all 8 automatically fire at the next target we damage, which immediately becomes a Splinterstorm? Or if we don’t have a target selected when casting Icy Veins then does Augury Abounds do nothing?
- Volatile Magic
I’m generally concerned on situations where targets have Splinters and die early, wasting the overall dot damage. I hope Volatile Magic is designed where if the target dies with Splinters then it should detonate and deal the sum of the remaining damage of the Splinters dot. Otherwise it’ll just feel like damage is wasted.
- Slippery Slinging and Look Again
Look again, imo, is dead on arrival. Displacement is not taken in PVE at all due to its location and generally isn’t needed on most fights. Please scrap this and replace it with something else.
I personally would prefer something that impacts Blink here. Spellslinger feels about moving and slipping quickly, and being able to Blink more or Blink further than normal seems very fitting.
Slippery Slinging is disappointing. I don’t find this to be particularly helpful and I am really cautious that this is turning Alter Time into a ‘let me run away’ rather than an ability to manage health resetting. Particularly cause in times we want to move fast it’s to get away from that location and a lot of the time to not be auto-ported back to it, which Alter Time is designed for, so it seems contradictory in design.
I personally would have liked this to be something like “Gain X% movement speed for X seconds when you cast your Ice Barrier/Mass Barrier”.
- Reactive Barrier
This really depends on how much extra barrier is provided when cast at 100% HP. In higher end content when such high damage is going out, you want more mitigation upfront rather than at lower HP when you’re more likely to die. I don’t see Reactive Barrier as being good enough as a defensive. Compared to Frostfire where Imbued Warding is just so good.
For Reactive Barrier, I would have preferred something like a reduced cooldown on Ice Barrier, or even something like “When you fall below X% HP, automatically gain Ice Barrier. This can only occur once every X seconds”.
- Spellfrost Teachings
This literally just copied Glacial Assault. This feels super lazy design. Something new should have been made for this.
- What I would have liked to see:
I really thought the Spellslinger idea would let us move faster and throw more spells out faster, and that doesn’t really feel like the case. It’s all just passive that we have no control over and doesn’t really change our gameplay at all compared to what we do now.
I wanted to see things like more Blinks or faster movement (outside of Alter Time), and being able to throw more spells in a gameplay changing way. For example, Flurry hitting more targets, or Ice Lance hitting an extra target. Even the thoughts of that short time years ago when we had Multistrike and it felts like we were a turret pumping out lots of spells; that felt more Spellslinger to me than this tree.
Thematic-wise, I feel like this tree has really missed the mark and is not aligned with Mage fantasy at all. Gameplay design-wise, I can see the Splinter system working but needs tweaks and outstanding visuals otherwise it’ll be a flop. Overall, I’m disappointed and probably will sit my Mage for another class that has more interesting hero trees. In the end, will wait until alpha to see how it plays and see the upcoming changes first.
2 Likes
That’s what most of these Hero Trees are. Frostfire was very much the exception to the rule because it simply lent itself to a merger of the two elements. Virtually all Hero Trees for the other classes have been something like this Spellslinger thing. I tried to warn folks back when the Frostfire tree was first released not to expect the same treatment for the other Mage Hero Trees.
In fact, the only reason these Hero Trees share specs is because it streamlines the process for Blizzard and substantially cuts down on the time and effort needed to design them. It was never done with the intention of merging specs. It’s simply a time and cost saving measure for them.
Unfortunately, it also leads to a lot of problems when they try to shoehorn two very different specs to work within the bounds of the same Hero Tree, as we can see with this one. They say each spec will be balanced accordingly and for right now I see no reason not to take them at their word but it’s definitely something to keep an eye on.
I don’t think any of us do. In fact, I think this entire tree was designed as a sort of offshoot of the Icicles mechanic but adapted slightly to where these projectiles also latch onto a target instead of just doing impact damage.
It’s something that’s very commonplace in a lot of A-RPGs these days and in fact one of the newest ones atm, namely Last Epoch, has the exact same mechanic only they call it a “Spark Charge” and you can make whole builds around it. Of course I can’t know for certain that’s where they got the idea but it certainly isn’t a new or original concept.
It also tracks with the almost inescapable conclusion at this point that the people designing these new systems don’t really play the specs. At least they’re asking for feedback this time which is a step in the right direction but at the end it will only matter if they also heed it and adjust accordingly. Only time will tell if that happens.
If you look closely at a lot of these trees it’s very easy to spot that most of them tend to synergize and generally work better (both thematically and mechanically) with one of the two specs that share them and the other spec seems almost like an afterthought. It’s very obvious here that in this Hero Tree’s case Frost is that spec and Arcane is the afterthought.
2 Likes
Guess I’ll just be playing demo because at least the lock developers actually came up with something half cool. Mages got splinters lol? It’s kind of a joke just reading it. sounds awful
4 Likes
Pretty sure the inspiration for this build is just the needler from Halo. That’s all i can picture in my mind reading the description.
Love the theme that they are going for! Would the name Mesmer be cooler? Hyptotic shards everywhere and an extra illusion fits so well.
Can we get a fricking frost build that doesn’t break CC and doesn’t AoE for PvP? My god!!! Doesn’t even seem good for PvE, what if people in high keys need you to not cleave and break polys. It’s like frost is stuck with cleaving no matter what. Comments, blues?
No. Some of us don’t want another tree mixing magic schools in spells. Being just a sightly copy of Frostfire but for frost-arcane would be boring.
1 Like
Seems pretty good overall.
Not as impressive as frostfire.
If I couldn’t see any other hero talent trees, Spellslinger might seem okay. I can though and Spellslinger is an absolute snooze fest of a tree. The entire concept of splinters is so underwhelming. What kind of hero throws splinters around? What is heroic about this? What part of “Spell Slinging” does a bunch of passive splinters evoke?
Spellslinger suggests a mage throwing spells around like crazy. If I had no other information to go on and just heard the name Spellslinger, I’d think of Druid’s convoke just going nuts blasting spells out like crazy. I’d think of casting on the move and getting procs that speed casts up or reward a long cast with a powerful instant cast. Flurries of spells.
This tree is completely unacceptable. Might even be the worst tree of the lot so far. Should be completely and totally scrapped and reworked. Not trying to be harsh here - just being honest.
11 Likes
Frost splinters sounds good to me depending on how they will look. Like the Velf/Belf casting in the frost spec tree.
This tree is their oportunity to enforce the theme of each spec.
My guess is that Sunfury will be themed around blood elf arcane and fire magic and will change the gameplay for arcane as frostfire spices it for fire and frost.
We guessed that this tree would be themed around arcane and frost, but it’s really only themed around “Frost Icicles 2.0”. There’s nothing for arcane’s theme here, and I don’t expect a tree called “Sunfury” to be very focused on arcane by the name.
The hero tree themes seem like they’ll likely be Frost, Fire, and Frostfire. At the very least, I hope the sunfury tree offers some actual rotation changers for arcane.
1 Like