Hello all! This post is dedicated to providing feedback and suggestions about Mage’s general talent tree in War Within.
This tree got better after several reworks, but still has some issues - lack of anti-ranged tools, pathing issues, not competitive enough talents, unaddressed bugs etc. These will be written in separate sections with suggestions and possible solutions provided, but if Blizzard would have better solutions or ideas, they could implement them instead.
Unlike other posts, this one will have 3 subsections - PVE, PVP and general, since some issues overlap or affect both PVE and PVP scenarios.
General issues and suggestions
- Lack of anti-ranged or just ranged tools for a ranged class
Mage has an unaddressed design issue where it is positioned as a ranged class that should stay away from enemies and blast them from afar. At the same time, most of its general crowd control or utility tools are close to melee range - Blast Wave, Dragon’s Breath, Cone of Cold, Frost Nova and even Mass Polymorph all have almost melee range. That creates a design contradiction that in order to use them offensively, Mage himself has to close the gap with enemy and behave in opposite manner to its kiting / staying at range based design and this design contradiction could be addressed.
Suggestions:
- Increase range of Dragon’s Breath and Cone of Cold to 15-20 yards - that both helps address the mentioned issue and makes their actual range more in line with their animation, especially for Cone of Cold, where animation can be deceptive. It also brings their area more in line with standard AoE abilities (which have 8-10 yds radius = 16-20 yds diameter area, which is comparable or even larger).
- Turn Mass Polymorph into 30 yds ranged ability, reduce its base cooldown to 45 seconds (to match Ring of Frost’s cooldown) and make it a choice node with Supernova from Arcane tree. This would make Mass Polymorph more competitive (it would get a niche of reliable ranged AoE CC that does not necessary need other CC cover like Ring of Frost does, but still can be counterplayed by interrupting / disrupting it) and would also give people who still don’t want to take it, but want to path through its node an alternative to take and an anti-ranged tool that Mages currently lack. It also would help Supernova to become more competitive too, since it would compete with other CC / utility in general tree instead of with throughput nodes in Arcane tree.
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Tree pathing issues
General tree has several tree pathing issues that could be looked at. Biggest contenders here are 3rd row talents and talents starting from Frigid Winds that lead to Ice Cold.
3rd row contains talents with different talent point cost and niche applications, so often people can just prefer to take the cheaper middle 1 point talent to progress down the tree even if they don’t actually need it. That could be improved to allow people take the talents they would prefer without worrying about reducing number of talent points in further parts of tree in one of two ways:
Option 1 - reduce all talents in 3rd row to 1 point investment and if needed tune their value to compensate. Winter’s Protection could be 1 point investment for 45-60s CD reduction (which is actually in line with other specs, for example Paladin’s Improved Blessing of Protection provides similar 1 min CD reduction for 1 point invested), Tempest Barrier could provide 5-6% value for 1 point (so that it is more valuable for point invested, but its maximum power is similar), Incantation of Swiftness could have 50-80% value for 1 point (since it is applied to a 2 or even 5 min CD, that would make its point value comparable to Temporal Velocity, which buffs 2 abilities that are usable more frequently, but for less bonus value and duration) and Arcane Warding could have 3-4% value for 1 point (since it affects magic damage only and for comparison other classes have talents that provide 5% or more total health for similar 1 point invested, like Warlock’s Demonic Fortitude).
Option 2 - keep them as 2 point investments, but if needed buff them and create paths from them to 5th row talents below them. That would allow to progress down the tree through them with similar cost to middle path and would also create some thematic tree paths, like Ice Block related path of Winter’s Protection into Cryo Freeze and defensive path of Arcane Warding into Diverted Energy.
As for Frigid Winds to Ice Cold path - it contains too niche talents and they provide little to no actual choice. Here is why and what could be done:
Frigid Winds - a talent that boosts snares, which have low value against ranged enemies and no value against CC immune enemies like bosses. As a niche talent, it should be an optional talent and not required to unlock some talents in 9th and 10th row.
Suggestion: Make Frigid Winds into a 1 point investment (which would better match its total value) and replace Improved Frost Nova with it. As for its node in 8th row, it could contain a generally useful talent that would be fitting for all game modes. For example, it could be a modified Accumulative Shielding - 2 point investment talent that would reduce CD of Mage’s Barrier and Mass Barrier by X% per point invested (without current barrier present condition, which is unreliable). Such talent would both have value in all game modes and give Mages a choice in 8th row between survivability boost (Accumulative Shielding), mobility boost (Temporal Velocity) and mobility frequency (Flow of Time), allowing them to pick the preferred option(s). As for Accumulative Shielding current node, it could be replaced with some other survivability boost.
Ice Ward and Freezing Cold - two talents that provide additional root effect with different nuances and conditions. Since root effects apply diminishing returns to each other anyway, these two make much more sense as just a choice node. As for freed node, it could contain a talent or choice node that would help with non-melee enemies - that would allow Mages that progress Ice Cold branch to pick between anti-melee options and anti-ranged option(s). Such option could be for example Sharp Mind, which could allow Counterspell to be used while casting without breaking the cast and provide some benefit for the Mage if cast was successfully interrupted by Counterspell. Such talent would fit the anti-ranged niche and be helpful for heavy casting reliant specs like Arcane to become more reliable at interrupting without potentially harming their damage output.
Even with such changes, these talents would remain niche and conditional, so Ice Cold could also get other pathing options to it, for example from Time Manipulation. That would allow people to take it even if they don’t need additional CC options or get no value from them, for example against bosses. -
Time Anomaly
Temporal Warp is being removed in The War Within, but Time Anomaly can be a problematic node too. It is very unreliable as it has both RNG when it procs and RNG what it procs and it is the only throughput capstone talent left, making it pretty much mandatory. Consider just removing it too and replacing with some utility or defensive node. If for some reason it should stay, it could be improved, for example always proc a Time Warp / major CD for several seconds and a charge of Fire Blast / Fingers of Frost / Clearcasting instead of either to make it more predictable and reliable. -
Undertuned / underused talents
Mage general tree has several talents that aren’t picked much (if at all) and they could be looked at. Aside from mentioned above these include:
Reduplication / Reabsorption - their value is too low for PVP and they usually don’t even trigger in PVE, since enemies there usually attack images instead of the Mage himself. Both could be improved.
Suggestion: Make them trigger when Mirror Images are destroyed for any reason, buff healing from Reabsorption and change Reduplication to summon X additional images instead. That would allow Mages to pick between additional healing and longer uptime of distraction in PVE / damage reduction in PVP and make both options decently competitive.
Mass Slow - its radius is too low to be reliable, especially in PVP, where enemies prefer not to stack. It is also not needed much by Frost and Arcane Mages, who have access to ranged AoE snares already. It could both use a boost to radius and an alternative upgrade that could be picked by specs that don’t need another AoE snare.
Suggestion: Increase radius of Mass Slow to 8 yards (which is about standard radius for AoE spells) and make it a choice node with Greater Slow, which could add damage reduction or attack / cast speed reduction to Slow’s effect (similar to what it had in earlier expansions).
Improved Frost Nova - provides too low value in PVE, where roots are frequently broken before even 6 seconds expire, let alone 8 and should not even work in PVP, where there is a 6 seconds duration cap for most roots. As such, it could be just integrated into base Frost Nova (like it was pre-talent trees) and replaced by other talent, like suggested above Frigid Winds.
Rigid Ice - usually does not make much difference to justify spending a talent point on it, especially after its PVP nerf - freeze roots get quickly broken by damage or shattered with and without this talent. Could use a boost to make it more useful and impactful.
Suggestion: Make it affect all freeze roots and additionally extend freeze roots grace period (when roots are not broken by any amount of damage) by X second(s). That would keep it niche, but sometimes useful, for example for situations where allies break Frost Mage’s roots by damage before he / she can shatter them, like Mythic+ and mass PVP.
Mass Invisibility - while has its uses, it is quite niche and has to compete with generally useful Mass Barrier. To make it more viable, it should just become a separate talent or a choice node with other niche talent, for example with Ice Cold. -
Remaining bugs
Several talents from general tree still have bugs and potential oversights that might need fixing:
Frigid Winds - does not affect Flamestrike and Chrono Shift snares.
Shifting Power - does not reset cooldown of Mass Invisibility (neither initial nor PVP talented).
Time Anomaly - does not summon Water Elemental for procced Icy Veins (might be intended though).
Displacement - its healing is not affected by Versatility (might be intended though).
PVE specific issue(s) and suggestions
Mages can have issues in open world PVE when fighting strong enemies that cannon be crowd controlled and / or deal ranged damage. Mage’s kiting and control tools don’t work against them much and Mage does not have access to much self-sustain or tanky pets that other classes have, so is disadvantaged compared to them. That could be addressed.
Suggestion: A solution for that issue that would affect only it without affecting other game modes much could be buffing health of Mirror Images - they would become a longer distraction for strong enemy, giving Mage time to burst him down or recharge some of their defensives. At the same time, it would not affect Mages much in neither instanced PVE (where images are not attacked much) nor PVP (where enemies can distinguish and attack the actual Mage and that would cause images to dissipate regardless of their health).
Additionally, Mirror Images is a bit underwhelming defensive CD (for a 2 minute CD) in general, so could use a small boost, for example drop enemy’s target like it did in earlier expansions.
PVP specific issue(s) and suggestions
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Susceptibility to dispels
Biggest issue with Mages in PVP is their susceptibility to dispel classes, who can remove most of their defensives with a spammable ability and sometimes even their Ice Block. At the same time, some of their defensives can be very strong against non-dispel classes, so addressing dispel issue might require some trade-off involved. There is a solution for that.
Suggestion: Make Master of Time into choice node with Stable Alteration, which would make Alter Time undispellable, but reduce its duration by X seconds to compensate. That could be a decent compromise - Mages would have an option to get a bit of dispel protection, but same option would require sacrificing CD reduction from alternative upgrade and some of its duration as a trade-off. -
PVP modifiers
Some of general tree talents have PVP modifiers inherited from earlier seasons or even expansions that can be too big or no longer needed - PVP nerfs to Tempest Barrier, Diverted Energy, Dragon’s Breath duration and so on. These could be looked at and considered whether they are still needed or needed in such extent.
This is the list of suggestions. You can add your own if you would want to and thank you for reading!
