Laughable 5% buff to Arcane and not a single change or even acknowledgement in regard to our defensives lmao. Devs are brain dead or trolling at this point.
7 Likes
I’d like the damage reduction back on Mirror Images. It was very useful as Arcane in delves last expansion. I’d also like the heal returned to Ice Block.
4 Likes
I’m all for just about everything else, but I disagree with this. The removal of Shifting Power was a good decision all around for mage. If the problem is that our cooldowns aren’t up enough, the solution is to reduce the baseline cooldown of those abilities.
Shifting power also does not reduce the cooldowns of consumables and items (and I doubt they would ever add that in) so it also meant that our trinkets would desync from our kit. Sure, having cooldowns more often was stronger, but being desynced from a trinket that has the same cooldown as my major ability had a really bad feel to it.
An alternative solution would be to make the specs rely less heavily on those cooldowns. If the only reason we need them up is so that we can feel useful, then Blizzard needs to work on the kit so that we don’t feel useless half the time.
2 Likes
Yes bring back mass barrier
1 Like
I’d take any of these suggestions - even half would be a win.
As a fire mage I never had an issue with shifting power - there might be a question there but if we’re brining back shifting power go ahead and bring back RoP.
Preface this by saying strictly for PvE (especially for Frost)
As a starting point it makes sense for all mage specs to get:
- 2 shields
- I further would like to see shields to be equally normalized and useful for all mage specs in all situations. Instead of forst getting 10% physical DR, arcane getting 10% magical DR, and fire getting a minor heal for some of the absorbed damage it gets turned into a flat 10% DR for all specs
- 2 iceblocks
- Alter time for the duration should also give a flat X% DR or have some sort of scaling so that in higher keys/mythic raiding when unavoidable damage is so high Alter retains its efficacy.
Then it makes sense for them passively increase mage survivability:
- Talent that passively increases stamina by X%
- Which is actually more pronounced for mages which rely on their health pool for survivability via shields and namely Alter time.
I was on the fence about Mages getting a reactive heal again, however as long as they DO NOT neuter Alter time (my favorite mage ability):
- Ice block heal makes the most sense and already has a baked in opportunity cost which leaves it fair and balanced.
Mass barrier I care less about because I think they first need to fix mages themselves not having scalable survivability in higher keys/mythic raiding then we can wory about having added team utility.
Shifting Power was the cause of all the desyncs issue because it did not apply to trinkets. It won’t solve anything. Its removal was the one area in the pruning where I actually agreed with them. If it comes back it should do so solely as a burst AoE ability on a short to medium cooldown which is something we’ve always severely lacked in our toolkit.
All the other defenses could definitely stand to make a comeback, particularly Mass Barrier and the DR on Mirror Images.
But above and beyond the survivability issues there are much more serious and fundamental problems with the core spec mechanics that the Midnight rework introduced and that should be the focus on any immediate future overhauls. I am all for depruning but we’ve got much bigger fish to fry first like Arcane freaking Salvo and the Unholy transplant that no one asked for in the new Shatter mechanic.
1 Like
Wait, bring BACK RoP? Uhhhh….
I’m in no disagreement over changes needing to be made but I refuse to go back to the days of staying in a small circle and having all of my damage being tuned around that god forsaken spell while my mobility is weighed between surviving and being able to do damage. I’m not particularly a fan of how mage/frost currently play but I’ll play what we have now over the first half of DF any day.
That, or make it a DPS cooldown for Arcane if they want added complexity in the form of limited movement. Personally I’m on board with Greater Invis DR being a general-mage tree talent for them, alongside all mages getting mirror image DR back as baseline.
5 Likes
I mean .. in all honesty I don’t see that happening. (RoP is never coming back) purely nostalgic.
I also don’t see them reverting many if any changes because they’d have to admit to being wrong.
There are classes that have passives to boost survivability, that’s their identity .. Warlock for example. They’re built to live through the damage - that’s their identity
That’s far from mages identity.
Blizzard, I’m guessing, presumed removing some active abilities simultaneously removing our active DR (passives) while boosting there performance numbers wouldn’t have been so crippling for mage - and it would simply become a skill issue .. since it worked with other class specializations like Warlock
They were wrong. They were wrong since PTR of Midnight, and have continued to be wrong since it’s release.
Mage identity has never been about sustaining and tanking damage - it has always been about having enough active abilities to masterfully avoid damage while timing greed dps. (rip RoP)
That was our glass cannon identity.
2 Likes
I’ve seen suggestions like this, but I don’t think this direction would actually feel good. Blizzard was — and still is — trying to simplify things. A lot of players want fewer buttons and to press them only when it makes sense, and adding extra charges just makes that problem worse. You could drop Barrier’s cooldown to 10 seconds and people would still hate it, because you’d be constantly breaking your rotation to hit defensives, or be in a global. Then the same players would immediately ask for it to become passive.
We already have an active defensive layer — it just needs tuning through talents or numbers. The real difference-maker is the passive option, not piling on more active presses.
This might work for Frost, but Fire and Arcane need their burst windows. That’s why Frost has historically had double Ice Block, why Fire gets Cauterize, and why Arcane has always been the “middle‑ground” spec Blizzard keeps trying to position between them or at least be different.. And honestly, who even knows what Arcane’s official identity is supposed to be anymore — we’re a long way from the old resource‑management thing..but i guess that is what salvo is…
Defensive kits are/or used to be built around their damage profiles.
One of the complaints of Shifting Power was the desync from trinkets. I don’t think this would fix much, but it did give Arcane a flexible 1:18s burst timing that aligned very well with mechanics last season. It was especially good on Nexus-king and Dimensius.
What I do miss Shifting Power for more than anything is its defensive aspect. It was very powerful because it reduced the cooldown of everything, not just our damage cooldowns.
I heavily disagree with this. Although I do agree they went way overboard with their pruning, Greater Invisibility was the one that made sense to lose its defensive component. The defensive and utility aspects could often clash when dealing with certain mechanics, especially those that would just retarget on another player when using Greater Invisibility, basically wasting the defensive component and making that player deal with it instead.
We do need some defensive buttons back, but Greater Invisibility should not be one of those.
They should just rename Greater Invisibility to Invisibility and keep the instant effect. It only made sense for there to be a Greater version because there was a basic version, but now it’s all one ability.
1 Like
Rest in pyss Shifting Power!
1 Like
I loved when it was still a Nature spell in DF / major PvP kick-bait lol
1 Like
Fire and arcane should be reworked to flow better. Both of those specs have aspects that are very clunky.
For defense, I’d love to see barriers buffed, all three specs getting two charges, short cooldowns and take them of the GCD.
2 Likes
How about changing one of the awful class talents to mimic the Shadowlands Memory of the Triune Ward? I suspect they would not be willing to let us have that all the time, but what if it was combined with another lost ability for a combo effect? Two ideas are:
- Make it a roughly two minute cooldown that grants the Triune Ward effect, and it grants the 65% strength spec specific barrier to three nearby allies. It would serve to give us a stronger barrier, for when we know things are going to get painful, while partially restoring some of the utility we could provide in TWW. It would also give Mirror Images a chance to endure at least a little bit more in solo situations.
- Alternatively make it a two minute cooldown that grants the Triune Ward effect, and damage absorbed by those three barriers does restore a percentage of our lost health.
Speaking of defensives, I want Chrono Shift or Slow with Sloooow Down (8 yard radius rather than 5).
As arcane I miss the visual and sound of Shifting Power along with using it in combination with Ice Floes. I do not for one second miss the desynchronization between cooldowns and trinkets. I wish they could have reworked it to better fit within their new intended design.
A less likely change I would like is to scrap Arcane Salvo for any flavor of Arcane’s play from Dragonflight through TWW.
A more pie in the sky hope is to scrap hero talents, apex talents, the current neglected glyph system, pet customization, and combine the best aspects of them into something that actually feels evergreen. Given this would also require more extensive changes to the talent system I view the likelihood of this happening around that of a snowball’s chance in Texas or Arizona.
You know, Chrono Shift could easily be made into a class tree talent:
- Arcane: The classic Chrono Shift - Arcane Barrage slows targets by X% and speeds you up by Y%.
- Frost: Your chill effects slow your targets by an extra X%.
- Fire: Critical strikes from Scorch and Fireball increase your movement speed by X%.
2 Likes
shifting power is purely RIP bozo, that spell is good riddance.
the core mage problem is you do nothing outside of your big DPS cd for whatever spec you are playing
fire is criminal what the rotation is outside of combust
arcane literally does not play missiles, the most iconic spell in mage history
frostering wounds is its own monster i wont comment on
each spec having what id consider pretty flawed core rotations is the mage identity issue, IMO
3 Likes