Yeah hard disagree with Porom there.
Having to store a bunch of stacks just so you can optimize and use it during CD windows means more CD buttons. Not at all what we need. Firmly disagree with Porom.
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For what its worth, I am not advocating Spellslinger make the spec more complicated - on the contrary, I did say that making Splinterstorm an active should come with making Nether Tempest a passive or something equivalent to eliminate a button and some complexity by proxy. The idea isnât to make things more complicated or to be selfish about the burst damage profile (though I think wanting Arcane to not be burst orientated is the worst take ever), the idea was simply that the tree has no intrigue; the theme is lackluster, the gameplay is lackluster, and putting all your eggs into the aesthetic basket when it comes to throughput decisions is not wise historically.
I do disagree with the characterization of Arcane as a hard spec to play that I see often both here, on Reddit, and in other media. It has some sequences that require a bit of memorization to play as optimal as possible but overall you can play less optimally with a lot of simplifications, like not using macros and just queueing Arcane Barrage during Radiant Spark is not really that much damage lost, even in the worst cases (cleave/AOE).
My issue with Spellslinger as it stands is that it really doesnât seem poised to change many, if any, behaviors we have, good or bad. It doesnât really make things more complicated but it also doesnât add any interest; why would I embrace this poor âheroâ fantasy other than it just being tuned better than Sunfury when it likely changes little with gameplay at all; youâll still AM>AB>AB outside of cooldowns and youâll still play the same baseline talents. The least they could have done was tie this to an unused talent to provide some variance; change Radiant Spark, make AM proc splinters so you have a reason to fully channel it, make Illuminated Thoughts to interact with splinters so we actually have some benefit of pathing to Arcane Harmony.
The reality is that this tree is super risky in both being completely stale as weâve been playing the same way since DF started, more or less, and in having no reason to want to actually pick it other than some graphical effects or tuning. I hate that people have focused on some relatively minor talking points in my article and missed the big picture of the tree being just uninspired all around, but to be fair to those people, I was on vacation when the tree released and maybe my article didnât have the usual time to cook I typically give them.
All of this aside, we may get Alpha and see spells interacting and the Splinterstorms proc all the time and youâre just flooded with Clearcasting and I may love it for single target stuff. My opinions arenât inflexible on things, but right now I just donât see how Spellslinger brings anything at all to the table.
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I think a lot of players conflate difficulty with nuisance. WoW is not a difficult game by design. There are no skill shots, platforming, complex dodge roll type mechanics or anything like that which requires incredible reflexes and superb muscle memory.
Any difficulty in WoW comes from boss mechanics, most of which are movement related, and which disrupt the normal gameplay loop. A playerâs mettle is then tested with how well they can adapt their gameplay to limit DPS/HPS loss while responding to said mechanics.
The problem arises when certain rotations are so needlessly convoluted and bloated that any interruption, however minimal, disrupts the flow of combat to the point where too much DPS/HPS is lost and recovery isnât possible.
Arcaneâs rotation is one of the worst offenders in that regard hence itâs somewhat unwarranted reputation as a âdifficultâ spec. Itâs annoying more than hard and presents the player with added challenges for little to no additional reward, especially when compared to its melee DPS counterparts. And like pretty much all 3 mage specs itâs rather dated, specifically due to the vestigial mana management gimmick and overemphasis on cooldown stacking.
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Totally understood what u were aiming for in your article.
Arcane isnât complicated (tho my guildies like to tease me that I must have a degree in quantum physics to play it).
Itâs just overly bloated with damage modifiers that u cast in sequence for an insane ramp up only to set up 3-4 arcane blasts. I donât find it engaging at all but thematically arcane is my bliss.
I miss missiles being impactful ⌠probably why I went back to arcane this season after avoiding it all DF: that barrage of missiles from the tier set makes an old Legion Arcane Mage like me giddy.
Without seeing the visuals, having Splinterstorm as an active would be great ⌠like when we had Mark of Aluneth. Problem right now is massive button bloat and no idea where Iâd fit another spell on my overly macroâd bars.
On paper, this sounds like an awful idea. Like you said, both Frost and Arcane already have too much clutter on their bars between the 20 small defensives, and the 12 active rotational abilities. We simply donât have room for this anywhere.
However - if they were to say, prune some abilities from both Frost and Arcane then having SS as an active would be quite amazing. Get rid of the majority of the stacking buffs for Arc, get rid of the bloat for Frost, and whittle the defensives down to just a handful with much shorter CDs. Hell, if theyâre feeling adventurous they could even do something about Ray/GS/CmS and ease Frost more into a build/spend spec than whackamole.
But we all know they wonât make those kind of changes. Like the garbage talent revamp, theyâll pool all their resources into this new borrowed power mechanic in an attempt to âfixâ classes, just like they have done since Legion. Why attempt to actually fix the classes at their base level when you can make the new shiny and whack that on your advertisements.
Is that not the entire point of these gimmick trees though? Provide shiny new passive abilities that donât change your rotation in any way, and donât fix the underlying problems with the specs? Theyâll be âcoolâ and âinterestingâ for about 2 months after launch at a guess, then weâll go back ignoring them and doing the same gameplay loop.
Just to clarify - this isnât âborrowed power.â I donât know if the term has just lost its meaning over time or what, but Hero Talents are permanent additions to the Talent Trees - which are also not borrowed power because they are permanent features of our classes.
I think the goal of the Hero Talents is to allow players to experience playing the fantasy of iconic archetypes within the Warcraft canon without shaking up our current rotations too much. They arenât going away at the end of The War Within. Theyâll probably receive further iteration as we go forward because they very specifically have abandoned the âSingle Expansion Borrowed Powerâ mechanic.
And you actually just contradict yourself in your last two paragraphs.
So what is your criticism here? Because you both think these trees are an attempt to âborrowed powerâ fix a class, but then in the very next paragraph admit the point is very specifically not to do that.
Itâs important to provide feedback, especially if the feedback is critical - but donât get lost on criticizing something if you canât be coherent about it. Youâre providing conflicting feedback and muddying the waters.
Itâs not technically âborrowed powerâ because itâs not going away at the end of the expansion, at least thatâs what weâre being told right now anyway, but it is in the exact same vein of borrowed powers past. Whatâs more, even though this new system has the âevergreenâ tag I donât see how they will keep from running into the exact same issue as previous iteration in that they canât just keep adding another one of these with every new expansion.
Ultimately, they have to reconcile two diametrically opposing forces (1) the desire to give us something new with every expansion and (2) somehow keeping it from overwhelming the players and becoming a bloated monstrosity. I honestly donât have a good solution to this but itâs definitely a problem and I understand why people are concerned over it.
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As far as Iâm concerned, itâs borrowed power until it survives the expansion it was created in.
Thatâs a perfectly fine goal for Blizzard to set and Iâm okay with that. However, if that was the goal, âSpellslingerâ still falls wildly short of it. Thereâs nothing iconic about it. Iâd rather take a small boost to my existing spells that take a hero tree that doesnât change anything.
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This, lol! I was trying to be more optimistic and give the benefit of the doubt but Iâve seen this movie too many times before and itâs a struggle not to be concerned about a repeat of the past.
I want to be clear about something: I donât mind borrowed power. In all honesty, I think it can be a powerful tool to maintain a growing and evolving game - but only if done correctly.
Blizzardâs problem with borrowed power has been - in my opinion - that they donât know where to stop. They come up with a good idea, then expand that idea over the expansion to the point where the borrowed powers make up more of a given spec or rotation than it did before the expansion came out.
Then when the expansion is over, they donât keep the powers. So some of the really important concepts that made a spec are suddenly gone - because theyâre weirdly afraid to keep the powers around - and it feels like a major setback to everyone because weâre starting again at square one.
The transition from SL to DF did something right - a lot of things we expected to be borrowed powers actually stayed with us. Maybe too many, actually⌠But it made that transition significantly smoother because a lot of the concepts we got used to over the last 2ish years were still with us.
The decision to create hero trees and decide theyâre going to be evergreen before the players get to see them is a gamble. However, despite my disdain for the âspellslingerâ theyâve come up with, Iâm hopeful that itâs going to help make future transitions between expansions easier.
Thereâs also a part of me that suspects that the concept of hero talents might be evergreen, but the nature, theme, and style might change expansion to expansion. Perhaps if a tree isnât popular enough, itâll get totally scrapped in favor of a new one.
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Speaking of borrowed powers, before they announced the talent tree rework, I was hoping theyâd give us a second MoP-Style talent tree (pick one of three from each row) just for borrowed powers expansion to expansion.
Something that would work kinda like Soulbinds did where you could collect a power, socket it into a certain slot, then have a flexible âquick changeâ set of talents that you could bounce between - forever. You liked last seasonâs 4-set bonus? Socket it and keep it. You liked a legendary power from 3 expansions ago? Socket it and keep it. The spec has changed and the 2 set that youâve been rocking for a few years doesnât work so well anymore? Swap it for something else.
Something like that wouldâve been an interesting way to keep those powers around but still limit us to how many we could take. They could add a row for each expansion so we can keep one power per expansion at a time.
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I guess I understand the hesitation, but Dragonflight is the first expansion with the stated goal âNo More Borrowed Powerâ in the vein of artifact weapons, azerite armor, etc. Correct me if Iâm wrong, but we arenât leaving anything but gear behind with Dragonflight. The Talent Trees are still here. Hero Talents build upon them.
I donât think Spellslinger is iconic at all, but that is my criticism of it. Iâm not going to waste time calling it borrowed power when it explicitly isnât.
I do share the concern that eventually classes will get bloated if they just continue to add and add and add. But Iâve seen it said elsewhere that maybe instead of adding vertical progression, Blizzard could try more horizontal progression. Increasing our options instead of increasing our power.
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Until they decide it was either a failed system and remove it, or remove it at the end of the â3 expansion cycleâ. Based on the last 20 years of development, there is no reason to assume these will stick around. Blizzard can, and probably will, remove these âpermanent featuresâ at some point or simply merge them with the current terrible talent trees.
Note the key word âattemptâ. The criticism is that this is just the usual new shiny that Blizzard touts as a feature with each expansion. Whether it fits an individuals specific definition of âborrowed powerâ is irrelevant, when the issue is that itâs just more of the same weâve gotten for over a decade. Shiny new thing that theyâll use for flavour and to âbalanceâ (because they wonât actually balance specs) the classes, when the issues that the specs have had for the majority of WoWs lifespan go unaddressed. This is an empty feature under the guise of âclass fantasyâ, and in my opinion, doesnât add anything to the game.
This. Remember how with the Cata trees they decided it was too much work to keep thinking of 3 new talents for each spec every 2 years? This will go the same way (also donât forget they promised more frequent expansions when they announced WoDâŚ) While we might get this feature for TWW, what are the plans for the next two expansions in that cycle? Do they add more to it, or are we left with a single (pointless) feature for 6 years?
That was one of my issues with the borrowed power systems in Legion, BfA and SL. The class/spec artefact weapons worked for the most part, and often added to or changed a rotation. We didnât need the legiondaries added to that - those powers could easily have been incorporated into the artefact. Likewise, BfA and SL had too many compounding systems when one would have been sufficient if they needed to have one at all. Previous expansions worked fine in that regard, because rather than tweaks to power systems they tweaked the core gameplay.
To me that sounds almost like the original concept of glyphs (permanent ways to change a spell), or even similar to the SoD rune system. At the end of the day people would just min-max, but a system like that to add new abilities or change existing ones would be preferable to another bloated talent tree.
Iâm 100% in favour of that. Given the specs are already getting bloated, and too complex for newer players (itâs been said many times that players shouldnât have to spend hours on a 3rd party website to know how a rotation/talents work). Iâd almost prefer to see more choice-nodes added rather than a new tree or additional points - give us more options, balance them properly, and give players choice.
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This tree seems REALLY underwhelming at all.
Just some boring passive proc stuffâŚnot thanks!
Please redo it completly around the perma-water-elemental and the arcane familiar and rename it Summoner or so.
That would bring us a total unique and NEW gameplay.
While the water-elemental could be enhanced with IV, the arcane-familiar could be enhanced by some arcane spell and bring some benefits to the arcane mage!
Please reconsider this dear Blizzard 
!
I donât like the Shifting Power talent at all. Its leftover from shadowlands and should of stayed in shadowlands. Tying it to Shifting Shards is a letdown and should be reconsidered. Being forced into a talent from the mage general tree for your arcane/frost hero talent breaks the theme.
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Seeing the splinter animations in alpha today. They look very dull and simple. Pretty disappointing. Hope they can improve and look more magical and interesting.
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Oh man! I was worried about that. Has anyone posted a video yet? Iâve been checking but have only seen Sunfury showcases so far.
Saw some gameplay at Venruki stream.
Looked super boring for frost.
I watched a few streamers play with Spellslinger over the last few days.
Iâm assuming that the visuals are just drafts and arenât finished, like what the dev note said. The current visuals are abysmal, donât sit well on the player, and donât match the existing colour scheme at all for Frost. When the splinters are recalled and sit on you for a couple of seconds, it looks like youâve got up to 13 Icicles, 5 nice ones as our normal Icicles and 8 ugly ones all squashed together hovering off to the side above your head. Ngl, it looks stupid.
From watching the gameplay and listening to the streamersâ feedback, Spellslinger offered no changes in how Frost played. Frost plays exactly the same as it does now but you just passively do the splinter mechanics and donât need to think about it.
Overall, Spellslinger has been a huge disappointment to see in action. To me, it offers no exciting or engaging fantasy, has nothing to do with Mage lore, and offers no new gameplay changes. My Mage is looking to be benched again for another xpac, but lets hope the upcoming class and spec changes make an impact.
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