That’s exactly why I offered it as an option - I’m just not sure if there are good arguments to made for keeping the non-upgraded blast wave.
My main argument was that Blast Wave + Supernova + Dragon’s Breath (plus Ring of Frost) feels excessive to me in the CC department and I doubt we’d get all of that at once in the general tree. And if they were okay with it, they probably shouldn’t be. So given that, I would make the case for choosing between either Supernova (ranged AoE interrupt with minimal knockback) or Blast Wave (WITH the talent that gives it a hefty knockback).
It would prune arcane of an undesirable talent, increase the usability of the spell, provide more of a choice in the general tree, AND save us a talent in the general tree. The only real downside is that it’s potentially one less fire-themed talent to take in the general tree. I’ve felt through all of DF that fire (which is my least-favorite of the specs, mind you) is underrepresented in the general tree. It’d at least be nice if some of the existing arcane talents could be rebranded to at least look more fire-centric (even if they function exactly the same)
That is exactly the case - making Supernova into a choice node with Blast Wave can potentially make even less Fire utility taken in the tree, when currently there are only 2 options to begin with. So, to keep their goal of giving access to spells from multiple schools, they should keep utility from different schools available separately - Ice Nova from Frost school, Blast Wave from Fire school and choice between Mass Polymorph and Supernova from Arcane school.
I’m not against merging Blast Wave talents into 1, but that is unlikely to happen - for 2 points it currently gives similar power level to Typhoon, which with upgrade costs 2 points too.
And Arcane currently already can theoretically have Dragon’s Breath + Blast Wave + Supernova, so Blizzard can and already allows to have them all, so they are unlikely to be against that.
Want to also point out that in a recent video about hero talents Max wondered aloud if mages were getting the better end of the deal because of how good our forum discussions are. Called out feedback posts with bullets and structure (that’s all you!) and it’s pretty true that we have some good and consistent content and contributors whether or not we think anyone actually reads this. (We did get RoP removed, after all…)
I don’t really think that’s really a problem. You’d still have Dragon’s Breath and Blast Wave could be situational against stuff that needs to pushed (i.e. Sanguine and melee in PvP) and Supernova for knock up/interrupting from range.
I guess the best arguments are that Supernova feels extremely bad in the Arcane tree and that having both for all 3 specs could be considered too much.
10 years. It took 10 years. They might be reading it, but it certainly takes a long time to process.
On the other note, Arcane can have all three (blast wave, dragon’s breath, and supernova), but taking Supernova gives up a lot more throughput than taking blast wave or dragon’s breath. The heavy weighting of throughput in the spec trees means that unless the tree finds a way to force you take a utility spell, you’re almost guaranteed to take throughput instead.
Since Temporal Warp is about to be gone, maybe it is time to get rid of Time Anomaly too (since it is too unreliable with both when it procs and what it procs). If it is to stay nonetheless, it should be made more reliable, for example always trigger X seconds of major CD / Time Warp and a spec’s major proc / spender.
While they said that they intend to focus mainly on spec trees, Mage’s general tree needs some work too. Talents like Rigid Ice, Mirror Image upgrade choice node, Improved Frost Nova, Mass Polymorph, Mass Slow and even Frigid Winds etc are either too niche or too undertuned and could use boosts or being replaced.
Ice Cold should become accessible from more nodes (for example Time Manipulation), so that it is not locked behind 3 very niche points that have little to no value in many situations (like against bosses in both dungeons and raids). There was a suggestion to just make it a choice node with Ice Block and it is a decent option too.
And since I currently can’t add new posts to Arcane thread, here are also suggestions for Arcane tree:
Nether Precision could get some AoE applications to both make Arcane tree more compatible with Splintmaker (aka Spellslinger) tree and give it more universal use cases. For example, it stacks could also buff damage of Arcane Explosion.
Like Frost tree, Arcane tree could use freeing of some talent points to get access to both potential new talents and utility. For example, that could be achieved via merging Arcing Cleave and Mana Adept, making Improved Clearcasting baseline, reducing number of talent points for or entirely removing Improved Arcane Missiles and Crackling Energy with damage of affected abilities buffed baseline and so on.
Please create a small corner in the talent tree for our : Summon Water Elemental. Top right corner would be nice. So everyone who loves it, can put points into it there. To have it as a tank pet at the outdoor-world would be super and have it some nice dps talents for dungeons+raids. Maybe something like a enhanced version of it when you press IV´, it could duplicate your spells e.g. there are so many creative options and it would be rly innovative
Please tune fractured frost. Atm its too weak with only hitting 2 other targets with frostbolt. 5 up to 8 would be nice, esp. if you plan to bring back the Deathborne gameplay from Shadowlands!
Hopefully there will be atleast 2 gameplay-styles in the next addon. Not only glacial again :<
I really hope Time Anomaly is either getting a lot more streamlined than it currently is or going away along with Temporal Warp. Temporal Warp has a lot of problems we all know all too well about but it’s not like Time Anomaly is any better with its extreme randomness. Like seriously, how is getting a Fingers of Frost, Fire Blast or Clearcasting proc anywhere in the same dimension as getting a major cooldown or Time Warp proc? I still maintain the same position I had when I gave feedback about it on DF Alpha/Beta that it should be the spec proc + spec cooldown or spec proc + Time Warp if it’s even going to remain in the game.
Also really hoping that they don’t stop at just removing Temporal Warp. The Mage class tree still has a lot of problematic talents. Having Greater Invisibility, Cold Snap and Cauterize in the class tree would also be perfect. Make it two of them share a choice node so we can’t get them all, but put them in there, please!
I’ll die on the hill that it should be a choice node with Ice Block. It just makes sense.
Time Anomaly has to go. The RNG (somewhat obviously) just makes it impossible to really react to or reap the benefits of. With Temporal Warp going away this should just be a utility node (though I’m not a huge fan of the Cauterize vs. Cold Snap option - Cauterize just seems a lock-in any day, though it should be in the class tree in general.)
All mages should get double frost nova and removal of ice nova. One of the charges could be used at range every 30sec. If one of the charges is used at range, it should be on separate DR like ice nova currently is. This could remove some button bloat. It’s not ideal but it can help a little bit.
The barrier removing snares can be placed where ice nova was.
No alter dispel can be placed where barrier removing snare was.
Double nova can be dispel protection(a couple options):
Your barriers now deteriorate linearly to absorb 0 damage after 30 seconds of not being dispelled. Casting a frost nova refreshes your barriers absorb or provides one if you don’t have it. If you are dispelled at all, arcane intellect is automatically refreshed or provided if you do not currently have it.
Call of the Garden/Grove: Call the power of the night fae transmuting shifting power into a nature spell, which now provides a plethora of hots that heal the mage for 25% over 30 seconds if the cast is successful. Less time and less healing if the cast is interrupted or stopped early. This helps as dispel protection too.
Also because frostfire is both fire and frost, it will help having shifting power as a nature spell. Getting locked on fire/frost both in PvP for casting FFB would be the pits! So it’s good to get kicks out of the way while you can.
Currently regular blink without ice floes is only good if your barrier provides 200% armor like glacial insulation did. This is because with regular blink you are tanking a lot more damage and are in melee range a lot more.
With sunfury stun, regular blink and reg blink with ice floes might become better for arc/fire because we won’t need shimmer to setup polymorphs.
Would be cool to make shimmer baseline and regular blink grant 3 stacks of ice floes. Too often at high MMR my ice floes will be instantly purged. If I even play it, I actually hate its play style a lot! Ice floes is also on a long recharge rate. Making blink provide 3 stacks of ice floes will also free up the ice floes bind.
My takes on what I’d like to see in the general tree:
Temporal Warp being removed is a good change. Either remove Time Anomaly too or make TA a choice node with Shifting Power and then tune them equally. TA could use some QoL improvements to how/what it procs exactly to make it better. I’d prefer to have a passive option over SP to reduce unnecessary button bloat. Or as others have suggested, remove SP all together. I don’t think they will do that considering they just invested in giving it a new animation.
There are too many freeze buttons: Frost Nova, Ice Nova, and Freeze by Water Elemental. For Frost in PVE, all these are used to achieve the exact same purpose, to Shatter a target. Cull the 3 spells down to 1. If talented, just make Ice Nova replace Frost Nova and grant an extra charge, then tune damage, freeze duration, and other affecting talents accordingly. Just make it Water Elemental grants a charge of Ice Nova to you periodically instead of having Freeze as a separate spell.
Hot take but remove some of the defensives Mage has. There are just too many currently. We’ve got our Barrier spell, Ice Block/Ice Cold, Mirror Images, Alter Time, Greater Invis, Mass Barrier, and soon to be Displacement with Look Again (yuck). We don’t need that many and defensive bloat overall in the game is a problem. Cut a couple of these defensives out or make them choice nodes with each other.
A lot of these choices are needed against difficult comps as holy+frost or sub+frost in 2s. Like going against war or hunter or dh or lock or anything where I need to live a long time, I need all of these to secure the win.
Pet nova is off GCD with virtually limitless range. Just move your pet. One thing they could do is make an all-in-one frost nova like you are saying. Ice nova talent node would add a “ranged” charge to frost nova. Double nova talent stays the same(1 extra normal frost nova charge) and then an additionl ranged frost nova charge with pet out whose range is bound to pet. When pet is out, your ranged novas are off GCD. You would need a press mechanic. Press down and release to drop novas on yourself(normal frost nova charge). Press down for green placement circle, use mouse to position and release to drop(ranged charge). The problem with press mechanics is if you need to use your mouse at the same time as your nova, you would have just novad somewhere you didn’t mean to. Many people also use key down and not key up to trigger their abilities with bartender and other addons, so WoW would somehow have to override that for this ability. Obviously the pet would be an extension still and the range of one of the novas would be based off pets position.
You still would have to have a separate macro [@harm] macro so you could use it on rogues when they are targeted when you have eye in arena like you do with ice nova. So you are only saving 1 bind?
The other problem is pet nova does 0 damage so it’s very good for crowd control. Also, pet novas radius is huge and it’s very good for getting rogues out when they are in stealth. Not sure how you would manage this to be honest, other than if your mouse is closer to the pet it’s a big nova and does 0 damage, if it’s closer to you, it’s a small nova?
The other problem is having 1 extra ranged nova, makes it really hard for stealthies. Ice nova works because it’s only 3 or 8 yards or something(rarely breaks CC) and requires a target to use at range. So it can’t be used to get stealthies out too easily.
None of this an ideal solution in PvP to only save 1-2 binds. Probably why it’s never been done.
I’d like to see them remove some but give us talents to make the remaining ones more powerful - especially if they can organize the tree in such a way that you have to spend more points choosing WHICH of your defensives is boosted.
We have a lot of defensives spells and talents, but because we have so many, they can’t make them too strong. There are a lot of little shields and tiny heals that are easy to forget about because they aren’t really that impactful. It’d be nice to be able to have a bigger Tempest Barrier if you want it but have to sacrifice Diverted Energy for it (or vice versa).
A Different Hot Take: PvP has it’s own talent system. It’s not very in-depth, but it exists. But because PvP gets its own system that does not affect PvE, there shouldn’t be any talents in the general or spec trees that exist only for PvP. Put it in the PvP talents and make the PvP talent system better.
Like stated earlier, these buttons do have their separate purpose, at least in PVP. However, I can agree that we could reduce their number a bit:
Ice Nova - does damage, triggers off diminishing return root which can be useful. Should be kept separate.
Frost Nova - getting access to an optional talent that makes it ranged, removes its damage (which is just a hindrance really) and maybe even makes Water Elemental’s Freeze just grant a charge of it (additional if you did not spend your base charge(s) ) could work. This way people who want all 3 can still have them and people who want less buttons can have that too.
As for defensive removal - it is indeed a hot take and could be done only if 1) they would buff other Mage’s defensives or 2) they would nerf defensives of most other classes too. I doubt they would do that with their Mythic+ focus though.
Agreed, they probably will nerf that though, since one of the hero talents automatically calls down an ice nova. I hope they don’t put it on the same DR as frost nova. :’(
That is unlikely, since 2 seconds root affected by root dr that would also put all other roots on half / quarter duration would be just silly.
As for Excess Frost, while it theoretically is available every 12 seconds for Frost, Flurry itself is not always (at least not without procs / Water Ele), so it would be less frequent than in theory. Additionally, Flurry on its own already applies pretty much 70% slow for 2 seconds (each bolt applies 1 sec and last bolt hits about 1 second later than the first) and Winter’s Chill stacks that are almost equivalent to shatter (besides Subzero damage bonus), so it applying a 2s root should not be that big of a deal, even if root is AoE. With the amount of root breaks and mobility / CC immunity many melee specs are getting in TWW, that should not be much of an issue even in PVP.
