As many of you probably already know today it was announced that 10.2.5 will release on January 16th.
Among the changes introduced in the patch will be the much requested update to the visuals of all the old SL Covenant abilities that were turned into talents with the talent revamp in DF. They will now have a visual theme more closely resembling their respective classes.
One of the abilities changed will be Shifting Power, the former Nightfae Covenant ability for mages. It will now look like an elaborate arcane rune that will pulse with each damage tick. However, the new visual does not indicate the true range of the ability’s AoE component and it will inevitably lead to much confusion and frustration both in PvP as players get hit by something they can’t see and in PvE when mages accidentally pull mobs they didn’t mean to (or inversely don’t hit ones they intended to) because they can’t properly gage its radius.
This issue was flagged as soon as the new visuals were datamined months ago but has yet to be fixed so I am making this post in a last ditch attempt to try and get them to fix this before it goes live in two weeks time. It’s a long shot and it’s much more likely that this thread will be ignored and only pop up again when angry players take to the forums and search to see if there are already topics about this issue.
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Considering Rune of Power’s graphic was never updated to reflect it’s actual range, I guess inaccurate rune graphics are considered part of the mage’s class fantasy.
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LOL! The tea is scalding! 
You’re absolutely right though. The only thing I will say is that while RoP was fundamentally always inaccurate, Shifting Power’s current animation shows the correct AoE radius. So in that respect this is a straight up downgrade which is the opposite of what they were going for with this update.
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I do hope they fix it. The rune symbol on the ground is fine, but yes it should have an out-aura that extend to the range it’s actually hitting.
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Happy to report that this has now been fixed and the range indicator on the pulsating waves in the live version is much better than what it was on the PTRs. Maybe it doesn’t quite indicate the full 18 yards but you can definitely tell that its much larger than Arcane Explosion for example which has a range of 10 yards.
They’ve also added a lot more flair to the spell’s VFX and if you look at it from a top down view you can even see the arcane runes at the edges of the waves. Overall, I am very happy with this change 10/10!
P.S. Now if they could only figure out a way for this ability not to wreak so much havoc with desyncing cooldowns (specifically Mana Gem and trinkets) it would be /chef’s kiss.
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Seems roughly the same as the old graphic to me. Both versions seem to be hitting mobs even if they are just outside the visible radius, at least to my old eyes.
Agreed. It’s very snazzy.
If only. I guess they could make it reduce CDs for gems/trinkets too but that’s probably a little stronger than they want.