Yikes! I sure hope they’ll improve them before launch. I am gonna have to dig through Twitch to see if I can find one now, my morbid curiosity is piqued. 
Some decent Frost Spellslinger gameplay and testing can be watched here where you can see the visuals.
1 Like
As of right now it’s DoA for me. I was imagining the Splinterstorm would be this cool whirlwind of magical bolts that swirl around you when recalled and then spiral out hitting the target in rapid succession. The current versions are absolutely terrible by comparison to what I had envisioned, jarringly so. They’re just small clusters of low resolution projectiles that sort of just hover to the side (which makes sense for Frost because otherwise they would overlap with the Icicles but looks completely out of place for Arcane) for a second and then auto launch at the target. Incredibly lackluster, imo.
4 Likes
After seeing Spellslinger in alpha, some additional feedback:
- Tree still seems entirely passive, boring and uninspired. Its whole mechanics could just be put into 2 talents in general / Arcane / Frost tree - one talent would create splinters in X conditions and second talent would turn them into Splinterstorm in Y conditions. I hope that it will be changed or at least worked upon further.
- I agree with other posters that visuals are underwhelming, especially for Frost splinters. Could use work.
- Nether Precision is currently consumed mostly in single-target situations, making Arcane Spellslinger not compatible enough with AoE situations.
- Force of Will is much less useful for Arcane than Frost, who has shatter synergies with it. Could be buffed for Arcane specifically.
- Frost Splinters deal significally and likely unjustifyably lower damage than Arcane Splinters, less than half of theirs. Since number of splinters generated is quite similar for both specs - why?
- Unerring Proficiency for Frost is significally worse than for Arcane - you get much lower value from each stack and need to accumulate more stacks. It could be buffed for Frost.
- Greater Arcane Echo for some reason deals much lower damage than proc comet for Frost while having similar chance to proc. Is that justified?
2 Likes
These passives do look very fun to play with, even if benign to the rotation. However, Spellslinger is easily the most lacking tree in the game regarding fantasy, which is paramount to the design goal of hero talents.
It does not appear to take any inspiration from existing Warcraft archetypes where the selection for mages is particularly wide. I was hoping it would allude to legendary mage organizations from Azeroth’s past, like the Conjurers, the Council of Tirisfal, the Highborne, or the One Hundred. Since Sunfury is based on Kael’thas, Spellslinger could even be based on Jaina Proudmoore, who is known for using both frost and arcane magic in a similar way.
All mages “sling spells,” so what makes Spellslingers special?
2 Likes
I saw the video, the splinters look very similar to Icicles. The animations must be improved.
After seeing Sunfury, Spellslinger is very lackluster in terms of fantasy. Sunfury gets Gravity Lapse, a spell used by Kael’thas. The tree is well designed to fullfil blood elfs magi fantasy.
1 Like
I can’t find any footage but that’s kind of hilarious that they’re just randomly to the side for Arcane
The splinters really look very bad. It’s funny how Sunfury does the “spellslinger” name a lot more justice than the proper hero tree, at least as Fire, since the phoenix + the player just keep machinegunning a ton of spells at their target.
2 Likes
It looks really out of place and even overlaps with the Arcane Familiar, lol.
1 Like
LOL it like could not be more of a last minute “welp, gotta submit something” - honestly surprised they even revealed it before Sunfury
2 Likes
For real. The phoenix is like a living gatling gun and the passives provide a number of synergies that allow the player to chain instant spell as well. Unfortunately, it works much better for Fire than it does for Arcane. But if they rework Clearcasting AMs and the Arcane Soul capstone the potential is there for Arcane too.
On one hand I am glad of that, because they could have added 400 more mechanics and “if/then” situations into a game where rotations are already getting silly. On the other, it also means that their big expansion feature does nothing, and we’re left with the same gameplay loop of the past 18 months. What’s more is that Blizzard will look at this as a success, and just add more nothing rather than fixing the specs.
From the looks of it, Spellslinger isn’t bringing the fantasy that Mages want. FFB isn’t looking that much better from a gameplay perspective, though it is at least visually better (loving those 15 year old assets). Shame Fire is such garbage spec to play, because Sunfury actually looks cool.
It seems they are just lazy again.
While the Spellslinger-Herotree brings lit. NOTHING new as a playstyle it would be super boring if its AGAIN the 0815 glacial-gameplay like now.
With the Frostfire-Herotree it +seems+ they want to dig out the Shadowlands gameplay again.
Really…they should just bring some +new+ gameplay and if its not pet-based (i would repeat myself too much) then let it be something totally new. Maybe more around new orb-spells or combining spells from other specs like fire+ arcane. But please…for the love of god NOT again the same gameplay as the last 3 Seasons :<
It’s totally fine to not have any new active abilities. What the new Hero trees need to do is to offer a new way to engage with the specs and to fulfil a hero fantasy, both which are currently a failure for Spellslinger.
I’m tentative on Frostfire meeting this as it’s just introducing new buffs that need to be tracked on top of the standard rotation, and I’m over them adding more and more cognitive load and need for more weakauras to manage these. Sunfury looks super fun so far and totally meets the fantasy aspect, so I believe that is the most rounded of the Mage Hero trees.
Thats the worst possible outcome.
The game does not need MORE weakauras or more buttons to press. It makes the gameplay not feel better at all. We alrdy have to many WA and stuff.
As a Frost mage, I love the effects of Spellslinger. That said, I’ll probably go Frostfire spec for the visual flair.
Wow, really? Well I guess there is no accounting for taste. 
For the first time ever I am seriously considering not maining Arcane. Frostfire Frost and Sunfury Fire just look so much better right now. I am really conflicted.
1 Like
Just a quick review of current Spellslinger based on alpha gameplay footage here (while keeping in mind that this is Alpha, and also there is some pending rework for Mage class in general):
Before we start, let’s note that some talent nodes was changed in Alpha build:
- Controlled Instinct for Frost was updated to trigger while the target is under the effect of Blizzard, instead of under Winter’s Chill.
- Splintering Orbs reduces to first 4 times an emeny is damage by Orb, down from 8
- Unerring Proficiency Supernova reduced to 16% from 18%, and Ice Nova reduced to 3% from 6%, but now stacks up to 60 times, up from 30 times.
The Overview
I think it’s a bit unfortunate for Spellslinger that Mage dev has done such an awesome job with Sunfury and Frostfire that Spellslinger is looking very pale in comparison. When you ask player what is iconic about each hero talents, for Sunfury, it’s the Phoenix; for Frostfire, it’s double Meteors, and currently for Spellslinger, it’s lolsplinters. I don’t want to presume to know what they have intended in store for Spellslinger, but based on Alpha footage, it hasn’t popped out to me yet.
If the high point of the spec is inteded to be Splinterstorm, it needs to be more visually distinctive, or has stronger gameplay implication that plays into spec core mechanics, and just in general, has more impact/oomph associated with it.
Alternatively, perhaps the aesthetic Spellslinger is going for is that of projectile flying everywhere or the machine gunny bullet spray feeling. In which case, we could benefit from either better Splinter generations, or opportunity to spit out more projectiles from the mage. On Alpha, Frost aoe with Orb splinters generation doubled by Icy Vein is very close to being impressive, with Splinters constantly shooting out and retracting every few seconds. If the Frost splinters and Splinterstorm animation was more refined, and with a stronger finish to each Splinterstorm, this spec could look impressive just purely based on the visual spectacles of many things flying across the screen.
Splinters
As many community members have already mentioned, Splinters are currently looking unimpressive. I think this is both due to the animation itself as well as its generation method, particularly in ST rotations. Consuming NP has Arcane shooting out a measly 1 Splinter, while Frost does better at 3 per Flurry shatter combo. Splinter position while hovering above mage preparing to be launched also suffers from visual clutter as both Arcane Familiar and Frost Icicles already occupy similar positions.
Also, I observed that during AoE, occasionally Splinters fly out to dummies seemingly not in combat, perhaps only an issue with target dummies, but might be important for Arcane more than Frost due to Touch of the Magi applying Arcane Echo and accumulating damage.
Splinterstorm
As mentioned before, Splinterstorm animation could use more oomph, but also, when casting Arcane Missiles with Splinterstorm launching at the same time, they kind of just merge together. I think a bit more visual clarity for Splinterstorm launching would also be good. Frost has similar issue with Frost splinter launching looking very similar to Icicles, although less of a problem currently due to GS being dominant currently.
Frost Splinterstorm granting Winter’s Chill is could also be a bit problematic. Due to its automatic nature, not only are we required an WA to watch for it, it also seems like the optimal play would be to wait for Splinterstorm to shatter on the WC stack before consuming it with an actual spell cast. I think we are looking for a short duration Shatter buff that either doesn’t get consumed or that reapplies for the duration.
Splintering Orbs
While primarily for AoE situations, both Orbs are occasionally used for ST encounters. It’s a bit of an anomaly that it loses value later on in the fight. Perhaps a cooldown/reset timer could be considered here?
Unerring Proficiency
Supernova and Ice Nova seems a bit off the theme for Spellslinger (unless this is just an obligatory PvP choice node). This is actually a good opportunity to enforce something more on-theme, whether it be Splinter related mechanics, or just general mass projectile play. Every X Splinter for a 5 target cleaving Flurry could be satisfactory for both, or triggers current Arcane 4 set, if that ability isn’t already slated for Arcane tree in the upcoming rework.
Spellfrost Teaching
Arcane getting Glacial Assault here is nice, so Frost should get something Arcane has for parity, right? A short duration Arcane Echo that pulses damage on-damage seems exactly on theme, and also flavorful for projectile play.
In Conclusion
This ended up a lot longer than I had imagined, but I think that shows there are still a lot of potentials left for this Hero talent to be as impressive as the other two. I suspect Spellslinger arcane won’t really make sense until the Arcane rework is revealed, but there some issues on Frost side that can be improved on.
4 Likes
Just want the new abilities for arcane to look like they are arcane. I have no interest in fire or ice.
2 Likes
Arcane Spellslinger Feedback Post-Rework
Before we start, I just want to mention that a lot of the Arcane spell effect had seen an improvement it looks like, and primary among them, Arcane Splinter got a lot of Bling attached to it. It’s still a bit of an issue that Splinterstorm still merges together when you launch Arcane Missiles but we are definitely seeing improvements.
I spent some time going through the talent calculator and just playing with several different builds post-rework. The good news here is that, depending on tuning, there could potentially be a lot of different build variety for Arcane Spellslingers alone.
Here are several builds that I tried construct and consider in the context with Spellslinger:
ST Splinter build:
Plays just like S4 arcane, except you would modify the Touch of the Magi rotation to trigger Magi’s Spark early to take advantage of Nether Munition for another damage amp.
ST Splinter Harmony build:
Still very similar to current S4 rotation, but with opportunity to dump big barrage during Touch of the Magi window. Taking Orb Barrage also improves Splinter and CC generation via Splintering Orbs.
Cleave Splinter Harmony build:
Foregoes Evocation/Siphonstorm and take more Barrage talents for cleave. Maintain ST rotation on priority target with free incidental cleave from Arcane Echo and Aether Attunement. Also watch for opportunity to dump Harmoy/NP buffed Barrage. Again Orb talents helps with Splinter/CC generation.
ST Splinter Arcane Blast build:
This one is more of a thought experiment; by taking supporting mana talent, try to do a build where we try to keey up AM/AB/AB throughout and try to not run out of mana. Takes Arcane Battery, but not Aether Attunement to keeps up a permanent 10% spell damage buff.
Analysis and Insights
-
The fact that NP now affects Barrage suddenly opened up a lot of build variety and rotational choices. Primary among them is the possibility of cycling Arcane Charge via Barrage/Orb during the cooldown window. Both Sunfury and Spellslinger has interesting synergies here with Arcane Orb, especially during cooldown. As a result, value of second Arcane Orb charge has gone up, and is likely taken once points are freed up from the current 2 pointer talents.
-
It’s a bit funny that we count up to 4 for Arcane Charges, 5 for Arcane Battery/Aether Attunement, and 6 for Leydrinker. But this might be a bit of an issue that in order to maximize the cooldown window, we have to potentially munch charges to have everything ready going into Surge.
-
Arcane Harmony becomes a lot more viable to take because the talent before it isn’t bad, and also has synergy with Harmony
-
Aether Attunement consuming Arcane Battery buff is potentially troublesome. Do you want permanent Arcane Battery buff stacks to be a viable talent option? Either Aether Attunement doesn’t consume stacks, or Arcane Battery only buffs missiles would be viable to resolve the conflicting incentive here.
-
Concentration and Rule of Three still has anti-synergy with Arcane core Clearcasting mechanics. Refunding the mana afterward would do essentially the same thing, but also allow an opportunity to proc Clearcasting. The Rule of Three should also no longer refers to Arcane Missile mana cost with the rework, and possibly more useful as Rule of Four instead, or maybe even a talent option to help with cycling Arcane Charges faster when below 3 charges.
-
Arcane utility talents could use some re-arranging I believe. This is partially due to 2 points talents still pending reduction to 1, but some are at questionable choices or places. In particular the Presence of Mind/Wizened Wit where it’s not remotely comparable choices.
-
Tier 2 and Tier 3 Arcane Blast talents appear at different side of the tree, and similarly for Arcane Barrage talents. It hasn’t been a problem in builds I tried so far, but just an observation that I thought was odd.
-
Supernova: I am a bit hesitant to make comment here because I haven’t used it personally, but based on what I know Supernova haven’t been used much at all. It also occupies a weird space between CC and DPS with the addition of the talent node in Spellslinger. Without knowing the intention, it’s hard to suggest anything for this talent, besides that maybe utility spells that doesn’t interact with the spec should go in the the general class tree.
1 Like