Without being fixed or changed
This one’s another head scratcher to me. Sure, the DR is nice, but there really doesn’t seem to be any thematic connection to a flat DR and conjuring images of yourself. Seems it would make way more sense if they each redirected/absorbed a single direct damage ability (like grounding totem) up to x% of your health, or something.
Or better yet, how did Shifting Power make it another expac without just being removed entirely?
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I desperately wanted for one of the talents that modify Mirror Images to turn into a version of the Tome of Unstable Power trinket proc from the Azure Vault but alas it’s still a terrible ability.
I actually never disliked it, and I played Nightfae in SL. It’s especially nice now that they gave it new arcane visuals but the cooldown reduction component is just too problematic. It needs to be turned into a straightforward AoE ability cooldown, which is something that mages, and casters in general, have always lacked in their toolkit. Why should all the medium length AoE cooldowns only be reserved for melee DPS anyway?
It also did meaningful damage in Shadowlands, AND you could move while casting it.
They definitely needed to bake in the cast-on-the-move legendary belt effect when they made it into a talent, completely agree.
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Mirror image is still very useful when you accidentally pull threat on a mob and don’t want to pop a major defensive. I’m thankful it survived another expansion so that when I burst too hard (or, more honestly, mess up) I have an extra get-out-of-jail-free card in my pocket.
The talents that modify it, however, leave a lot to be desired. It irks me that those talents are effectively PvP talents at best and have to sit in our general tree while highly desired utility talents like Chrono Shift get moved to PvP talents for reasons unknown…
Regarding Shifting Power, I don’t think it deserves to be in the game anymore. When we had to choose between covenants, it made sense that one of those covenants was “you get cooldown reduction!” but now, because of its location in the tree and its lack of competition, it’s almost like a permanent CDR talent - which is about as interesting as the Tome talents.
Given how it will desync rotations from trinkets and the fact that there’s no real alternative to it, I don’t think it needs to exist. Just balance mages around having slightly longer cooldowns.
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Or just lower them at baseline! 
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The only reason I’d rather go the other route is because of trinkets, unfortunately. Unless they start putting in trinkets that have 78 second cooldowns, they’ll still be desynced because your baseline cooldowns are shorter.
And I’d imagine that if they went the third route of letting Shifting Power reduce the cooldown on trinkets we’d find some bizarre trinket to exploit that would cause general problems with the game as a whole.
Except that it dies in one hit. Having 10% of your health is junk. Look at treants, wolves, kung-fu summons, etc. They all last much, much longer.
Our images are junk. They need a damage and hp buff.
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I should be more clear - I’m referring to group play, not solo. If I accidentally pull threat on something, popping mirrors effectively removes me from the threat table and gives the tank enough time to get it back. If the entire duration of mirrors isn’t enough, invis and Ice Block are viable alternatives.
Maybe I’m spoiled by the fact that I do my runs with people I know, but the only reason I ever need more than a couple of seconds on mirrors is because the tank is dead.
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Ice Floes all day!
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I didn’t think of it from the leveling aspect they definitely need a pvp version it cause it’d absolutely dog crap