Can’t overemphasize how important this is. Regardless of how good the tree gets mechanically it will be DOA for most players just because it’s not visually satisfying. In fact, all of these hero trees will live or die based on their aesthetics which is why they need to be at the forefront of the development process.
There is an incredible treasure trove of assets that already exists in the game and sometimes it’s just a simple matter of replacing the spell ID in the game code with something that looks better or has more updated VFX that makes all the difference. This is especially true for arcane abilities. The ones available to the player have not be touched in more than a decade whereas ones used by NPCs get updated with every expansion. That makes absolutely no sense to me.
I haven’t had a chance to play with the tree, and others here have analyzed it six ways to Sunday, but I just wanted to say that surely, surely you can come up with something more epic of a word than “splinter.”
Who has ever used that in fantasy DnD, other games, etc.? Even if they somehow did, it has no gravitas - there has to be something else to call them that is cool.
Arcane mage visuals didn’t need to get a facelift. It already looked great… Frost mage is getting no love. Fire mage and Frost mage are the specs that needed a visual update… Blizzard is so tone deaf.
It doesn’t though? At most all you can see is the splinters being launched at the target. This video has nothing to do with Spellslinger and everything to do with the visual updates for Arcane mage.
Venruki is lucky he’s cute, I had to fast forward through most of that just to get to the part where he showcases the visuals, LOL!
I couldn’t disagree more! Arcane Orb has not been updated since it was first introduced in WoD over a decade ago! Meanwhile the updated version of that spell has been used by various bosses and NPCs since BfA. Just go run through the Azure Vault or the Kirin Tor camps in the Azure Span to bask in the glorious VFX their arcane spells have. Arcane Missiles, Explosion, and Blast were also not updated for over a decade before they got a facelift for the first time ever in Legion. If anything Arcane is once again overdue for another visual update!
Hits it on the head for good design. No two mages are the same, we get to use the tool kit as we see fit, if we like missiles or orbs or elementals, or whatever else you can imagine for the class/spec, you pick it up.
Attempting to implement every possible concept that can be imagined is decidedly NOT good design.
Contrary to the common logical fallacy that “more options are always better” is the notion that it’s better to do a few things well than a hundred things poorly.
Hmmm,
Shard is probably overused in WOW already…
Spine is ok…
Sliver, rhymes with shiver…
Spike, maybe…
Fractal, maybe harder to say…
Fragment, not bad…
Frag, short for fragment, and we get to say “frag-ing” enemies like back in the Quake days…
Rail, little arcane rail gun (Quake)
Lance, but already used…
Pike, idk…
Nail…
Shimmer, more mystic…
Cicle, short for icicle…
Spark, used already…
Static,
Crackle,
Chip,
Filament,
Fissure,
Bit,
Slice,
Shred,
Spear,
Mage manipulates arcane magic before anything else. Arcane manipulates it in its pure state, ice manipulates it to control the ice element and fire manipulates it to control the fire element.
Arcane magic needs to always be at the center of the magi class.
I’m still not sure how i feel about frost in the context of spellslinger. On the one hand, the footage makes it seem like the splinters are frost based, which is good. I was worried it would just be purple. On the other hand, it’s like getting more icicles so it’s nothing new.
Unfortunately, the visual concept they adopted for Spellslinger is very similar to the ice mage’s mastery. I think the solution to this is to either change the visual effect of the ice mage’s mastery, or have the Spellslinger change our spells that fire the shards instead of them being triggered by them passively.
For example, instead of splinters being launched after using Arcane Barrage with Nether Precision active, Arcane Barrage itself would have its appearance changed to have some aspect of ice and would stick to the target that was hit, maintaining the same aspects of the Spellslinger, but without any slivers floating around us.
I would find this visual aspect much more interesting and we would also have this fusion between ice and arcane much more represented in the tree.
That would only help a little imo. It’d be nice but the fantasy of a spellslinger is someone hitting with alot of spells, right? Frost was already packed full of instant casts. The feel already matched what they wanted and the icicles are so visually similar, i imagine this tree only getting high usage from people who don’t like frostfire or who really like icicles. It adds almost nothing, even with some visual tweaks to frost. It definitely feels like it adds more to arcane.