Edit: Good news everyone! Your eyes need not bleed anymore due to my poor photoshop skills thanks to Sgt_Bash in the Mage Discord for letting me know there was a talent editor out there.
The editor is developed by Tobias Mielich.
First of all, I believe [Shatter] should either be baseline or exclusive to Frost in addition to the barriers specific to each spec.
The tree is centered around the 3 main elements of the Mage class, with the left side representing Frost, middle representing Arcane and right side representing Fire.
When a specialization is selected, the first point of the first row of talents is awarded for free to the respective specialization, like many other class trees have it. Selecting the Fire specialization would award [Fire Blast] for free, for example.
https://imgur.com/srqCWDD
1st row:
- [Cone of Cold]: Targets in a cone in front of you take (37.5% of Spell power) Frost damage and have movement slowed by 70% for 5 sec. Instant. 12 seconds cooldown.
- [Invisibility]: Turns you invisible over 3 sec, reducing threat each second. While invisible, you are untargetable by enemies. Lasts 20 sec. Taking any action cancels the effect. Instant. 5min cooldown.
- [Fire Blast]: Blasts the enemy for (100.2% of Spell power) Fire damage. Instant. 12 seconds cooldown.
2nd row:
- [Ice Block]: Encases you in a block of ice, protecting you from all attacks and damage for 10 sec, but during that time you cannot attack, move, or cast spells. Causes Hypothermia, preventing you from recasting Ice Block for 30 sec. Instant. 4min cooldown.
- [Mirror Image]: Creates 3 copies of you nearby for 40 sec, which cast spells and attack your enemies.
While your images are active damage taken is reduced by 20%. Taking direct damage will cause one of your images to dissipate. (2 seconds internal cooldown). Instant. 2min cooldown.
- [Blazing Soul]: Gain a shield that absorbs 5/10 % of your max health in damage for 10 seconds when you [Blink] / [Shimmer].
→ This is basically [Tempest Barrier], but Fire themed and costing less points.
3rd row:
- [Cryo-Freeze]: While inside [Ice Block] you heal for 45/90 % of your maximum health for the duration.
- [Rigid Ice]: Frost Nova can withstand 70% more damage before breaking.
- [Slow]: Reduces the target’s movement speed by 50% for 15 sec. Instant.
- [Incantation of Swiftness]: Invisibility increases your movement speed by 40/80 % for 6 seconds. (15/30 % for Greater Invisibility)
- [Spellsteal]: Steal a beneficial magic effect from the target. This effect lasts a maximum of 2 min.
- [Blast Wave]: Causes an explosion around yourself, dealing (47.25% of Spell power) Fire damage to all enemies within 8 yards, knocking them back, and reducing movement speed by 70% for 6 sec. Instant. 30 seconds cooldown.
- [Blazing Speed]: Increases de caster’s movement speed by 100% for 2 seconds. Can be cast while casting other spells and is off the global cooldown. Instant. 30s cooldown.
→ This used to be a talent, but was removed at the start of Legion with the spec reworks and incorporated into [Cauterize].
4th row:
- [Winter’s Protection]: Reduces the cooldown of [Ice Block] by 30 / 60 seconds.
- Choose one:
[Ice Ward]: [Frost Nova] now has 2 charges.
or
[Ring of Frost]: Summons a [Ring of Frost] for 10 sec at the target location. Enemies entering the ring are incapacitated for 10 sec. Limit 10 targets. When the incapacitate expires, enemies are slowed by 65% for 4 sec. 2 seconds cast. 45 seconds cooldown.
- [Slower]: Slow also reduces the target’s attack and casting speeds for 15% but is now limited to a single target.
- [Alter Time]: Alters the fabric of time, returning you to your current location and health when cast a second time, or after 10 seconds. Effect negated by long distance or death. Instant. 1min cooldown.
- [Thrift Thief]: Reduces the mana cost of [Spellsteal] by 20/40 %.
- [Fired Up]: After casting Fire Blast your next Frostbolt, Arcane Blast or Fireball in 8 seconds has its cast reduced by 20%.
- [Hot Feet]: Increases the movement speed bonus granted by [Blazing Speed] to 150% and suppresses all slow effects for its duration.
5th row:
- [Frigid Winds]: Increases the effectiveness of all your slow effects by 5/10 %.
- [Shifting Power]: Draw arcane power, dealing [(53.04% of Spell power) * 4 / 1] Arcane damage over 4 sec to enemies within 18 yds. While channeling, your Mage ability cooldowns are reduced by 10 sec over 4 sec. 1min cooldown.
- [Master of Time]: Reduces the cooldown of Alter Time by 10 sec. Alter Time resets the cooldown of [Blink] (1 charge of [Shimmer]) when you return to your original location.
- [Remove Curse]: Removes all Curses from a friendly target. Instant. 8 seconds cooldown.
- Choose one:
[Grounding Surge]: Reduces the cooldown of [Counterspell] by 5 seconds when successfully interrupting an enemy.
or
[Focused Counter]: The cooldown of [Counterspell] is increased by 50%, but also silences the target for 3 seconds.
- [Meteor]: Calls down a meteor which lands at the target location after 3 sec, dealing (260% of Spell power) Fire damage, split evenly between all targets within 8 yards, and burns the ground, dealing [8 * (8.25% of Spell power)] Fire damage over 8.5 sec to all enemies in the area. Instant. 45 seconds cooldown.
- [Tome of Fire]: The magic schools of Counterspell and Blink are changed to Fire. The magic school Frost Nova is changed to Frostfire.
→ This should help Arcane with its problem of a single magic school without being too aggressive. It should also help Frost a tiny bit.
6th row:
- [Wizardry]: The effects of [Shifting Power] are increased by 50% and it can be channeled while moving.
- Choose one:
[Incanter’s Flow]: Magical energy flows through you while in combat, building up to 20% increased damage and then diminishing down to 4% increased damage, cycling every 10 sec. When casting [Icy Veins], [Arcane Surge] or [Combustion], supercharges the cycle, locking it at its maximum value for 15 seconds. Afterwards the cycle resumes as normal.
or
[Rune of Power]: Places a [Rune of Power] on the ground for 12 sec which increases your spell damage by 40% while you stand within 8 yds. Casting Icy Veins, Arcane Surge or Combustion will consume one charge to create a Rune of Power at your location. 1.5 seconds cast. 45 seconds recharge. 2 charges.
- [Mass Extinction]: [Meteor]'s area of effect is increased by 20%. It no longer splits damage but no longer burns the ground either. Cooldown increased by 15 seconds.
7th row:
- [Tome of Rhonin]: Increases Critical Strike chance by 2/4 %.
- Choose one:
[Ice Floes]:
Makes your next Mage spell with a cast time shorter than 10 sec castable while moving. Unaffected by the global cooldown and castable while casting. (100ms cooldown). 20 seconds recharge. 3 charges.
or
[Shimmer]: Teleports you 20 yards forward, unless something is in the way. Unaffected by the global cooldown and castable while casting. Replaces [Blink]. 25 seconds recharge. 2 charges.
- [Tome of Antonidas]: Increases Haste by 2/4 %.
8th row:
- [Flow of Time]: The cooldown of [Blink] is reduced by 2/4 seconds or the cooldown of [Shimmer] is reduced by 2.5/5 seconds.
- [Temporal Velocity]: Increases your movement speed by 5/10 % for 2 seconds after casting [Blink] and 20/40 % for 5 sec after returning from [Alter Time].
9th row:
- [Cold Snap]: Resets the cooldown of your Barrier, [Frost Nova], [Cone of Cold], and [Ice Block]. Instant. 5min cooldown.
- [Greater Invisibility]: Makes you invisible and untargetable for 20 sec, removing all threat. Any action taken cancels this effect. You take 60% reduced damage while invisible and for 3 sec after reappearing. Replaces Invisibility. Instant. 2min cooldown.
- [Cauterize]: Fatal damage instead brings you to 35% health and then burns you for 28% of your maximum health over 6 sec. When activated, resets the cooldown of [Blazing Speed]. This effect cannot occur more than once every 5 min.
10th row:
- [Deep Freeze]: Stuns the target for 5 sec. Only usable on Frozen targets. [Ice Lance] direct hits may interrupt the effect. Instant. 40 seconds cooldown.
- [Displacement]: Teleports you back to where you last Blinked from and resets the cooldown on Blink. Only usable within 10 sec of Blinking. Instant. 1min cooldown.
- [Dragon’s Breath]: Enemies in a cone in front of you take (58.25% of Spell power) Fire damage and are disoriented for 4 sec. Damage will cancel the effect. Instant. 40 seconds cooldown.
I wasn’t a fan of the current Alpha Mage tree and wanted to share my thoughts of how I’d design it if I were in charge of the Mage class. I wanted most of the tree to be centered around utility with some defensive options and a little sprinkle of throughput, but giving a lot more freedom in how to build your class with lots of connecting nodes that don’t make you feel like you are selecting the least bad option to get what you actually want.
Of course, it might not be perfect and the idea is that it’d only be possible to select up to 2 final capstones but a lot would need to be sacrificed to get all 3 defensive cooldowns at the bottom.
If I didn’t count it wrong, the tree should have 53 points total, including the one you get for free for selecting the respective specialization.
Here are the previous versions of the tree for anyone that’s curious:
Version 1: https://imgur.com/HmbJfQ1
Version 2: https://imgur.com/yisP306
13 Likes
It’s definitely an improvement over the current iteration. But some key things I would like to see changed from what you have is:
-
Ice block shouldn’t be blocked by cone of cold only. There are many instance where a non-frost mage would want ice block, but cone of cold would be useless. I think linking invis to all 3 of the row 2 talents would be good.
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Everything from remove curse down that middle path to RoP should be more horizontally aligned, with diagonal and vertical paths. It’s nice that you can get to ROP from some of the other paths though. But stuff that is very commonly used, like alter time, shouldn’t be blocked by abilities that may never be used in certain circumstances. I want to be able to chose to give up another ability to get remove curse when needed. Not be forced to always have it so I can have alter time.
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Also, need some more paths for fire to get down the right side, instead of being bottlenecked thru remove curse and spellsteal.
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The 2 tome just need to be removed. A lot of people are suggesting cool, new talents that can fill these slots. I personally really like someone else’s idea of moving the arcane mage’s new ability, foresight, over to the class tree.
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Is your suggestion for mass extinction implying that it will hit all targets for the full amount, but not leave a flame patch?
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I do like the change to incanter’s flow you suggested. I could see something like that being able to have a chance to compete with ROP.
I think the main thing that sets the good trees apart from the mage tree is overall just having more bridges and routes through the tree. Being forced to select utility abilities that won’t ever be used in certain encounters seems like the opposite of what the new design philosophy is supposed to be.
3 Likes
In my opinion, your tree is a much better starting point than what they currently have.
I’m 100% behind you on the idea of making us choose between Cold Snap, Cauterize, and Greater Invis through the different branches. I just want to point out though that if capstone talents are not impactful dps-wise, then people may find it optimal to spec into all three defensives and skip the capstones. Tree should be set up in a way that doing this comes at a high DPS cost.
2 Likes
That’s is damn close to what we need, nice work. That is closer to what I thought we would see, especially the bottom.
1 Like
This is certainly an improvement in terms of position of talents and connections. Just noting that all trees go by a 4/3/3 (or in the cast of Rogue, 3/4/3) design. That is, 4 rows above 8-required, 3 rows middle, 3-rows after 20-required. You’ve got 2 too many rows of talents in this, so there’d need to be some shuffling.
Just noting that in Alpha atm, if you pick Invisibility and also Greater Invisibility, using one will put the other on cd for the same duration. I think this is bad design, given we are nearly forced to spec into Invisibility and we all want Greater Invisibility, so tbh they should just make Invisibility base-line.
3 Likes
Mostly liked your tree design. Several notes:
- You need to make it into 10 rows. All other class / spec trees are 10 rows and Blizzard is unlikely to make Mage’s ones an exception.
- Focused Counter should silence in addition to interrupt. Locking a school can sometimes be more beneficial than silence, as silence can be removed by trinket and kick cannot, so interrupt should be still available. Increased CD is already enough.
- DB is better with 30s CD. Priests can spec in melee range AoE 6s disorient with 30s CD. DB is melee range AoE 4s disorient with small damage attached to compensate, so should have similar CD.
- Alter Time should not be hidden after Remove Curse, RC should be entirely optional.
- I agree with poster above - Ice Block should be the starting talent of Frost branch and Cone of Cold should be an optional branch after it.
- 1 min CD for Displacement might be too much. Don’t forget, we are losing Soulshape / Door of Shadows and could use a mobility compensation (other classes as well). 30-45s CD seems more fitting for it.
2 Likes
I don’t think the number of rows is a big deal. I made it this long purely for aesthetics, so I really wouldn’t mind reducing 1 or 2 rows. It’s really easy to do by just making one of the straight rows split into two options instead and nothing would be lost.
And as always, the numbers, including cooldowns, can be adjusted. I went for a bit longer cooldowns in fear some people would complain that’s too much stuff, but that can be easily adjusted.
For the first few rows, I took inspiration from the Rogue tree which I find one of the best designed ones so far and they basically go the same way starting from a few class-wide defensives like [Feint] and [Cloak of Shadows].
Also, considering how powerful [Greater Invisibility] is, I really don’t mind it replacing [Invisibility], but the other option would be having [Arcane Explosion] in its place at the start and make [Invisibility] baseline, so I feel like it’s better this way. I wouldn’t know how to make a better pathing for [Remove Curse] either.
So, I tried something for the [Remove Curse] and “too many rows” issue and this is what I came up with:
https://imgur.com/xMtfYoN
The rest of the tree remains unchanged. Will update the tree shortly.
The change to Incanter’s Flow sounds okay as an option. I’ve been thinking of ways to beef this up too. If Rune of Power was just 1 charge on a 45 sec. cd, these two abilities would be fine against each other. But by also adding a rune with arcane power, combustion, and icy veins, it’s a substantial increase in value. Here are two things i would add to Incanter’s Flow to narrow the gap:
- Damage does not delay/pushback spell-casting. This is sort of baking-in the old Arcane Stability talent.
- Critical Strikes always apply 20% and reset at 20%.
2 Likes
I’m sorry, I’m afraid I don’t understand this. Why do you mean by resetting at 20%?
Bumping because i really like this.
2 Likes
I really like this design a lot compared to the alpha tree. Idc about Fire spec myself that much but I didn’t like how there was barely any fire representation in the base tree. It was mostly Frost with some Arcane stuff and Fire begging for scraps. Then weird stuff like Slow and CS being gated behind Frost spells.
This mock up is much more reasonable imo.
1 Like
The tree was updated by using a neat tool that helped properly design it and align the rows so your eyes need not bleed anymore. I removed 2 rows from the previous version and moved a few nodes around.
Much better. Still several notes:
- Incantation of Swiftness should be an optional node to the left of Alter Time (which should be accessible directly from MI). I doubt that many people would like to spend 2 talent points on invisibility movement speed boost to unlock it.
- Ice Block still should be the opening node in first row and CoC - an optional branch to the left after it.
- Are you sure Focus Magic should be kept? Very little amount of people like it - it requires somebody else to work, it is dispellable and is not very reliable.
- Improved CS should still silence in addition to interrupting, not instead of it.
- Deep Freeze should be a full stun. If you are worried that it will become a DPS CD for Frost as I can remember, make it breakable only after X shatters and not breakable by non-shattered spells.
1 Like
Based on the updated pathing and connections, from what I can see you actually have the ability to obtain all 3 capstone talents as well as pretty much the majority of dps throughput talents.
If you can get pretty much everything, then the tree doesn’t really mean anything if there’s no meaningful choice. Mages are mostly going to select throughput over utility, which leaves many of utility talents at the top of the tree kinda dead.
1 Like
These ideas are great!
As niche as this spell is, I’d like Ice Nova to remain in the tree (maybe compete with blastwave node for shatter possibilities.
Also time anomaly could be a choice node with focus magic just so it can remain an option.
Incanter’s flow buffed for crits to always be 20% is a great idea I saw mentioned.
Deepfreeze would be a satisfying capstone. In pve it could require 30 shattered spells for a single target nuke. This could spice up the mage rotation to not just be frostbolt, flurry, icelance, icelance.
Also maybe it’s time that we place orb like we place blizzard (pvp talent). The current design to send it forward makes it worthless at range sometimes as it will stop short at the first mob and get less value than intended.
1 Like
I’m still conflicted on this one, but making it undispellable would be a quick fix.
I was going to change it, but forgot. Will update it later.
This is the last available version we had of [Deep Freeze] and I simply copied the tooltip. The idea I had of it in an old post was that it would break on [Ice Lance] damage only. So I’ll probably have that instead. I’m very against it being used for DPS.
I’ll have to look into that. I’d probably need to have a few more 2 point nodes near the bottom of the tree for that. I’d have to come up with something worth of beong near the bottom for that later. Probably something after [Shimmer]/[Ice Floes] or right before each defensive near the capstones.
I’d still change a few things, but I is certainly better. The main issue is how vertical the tree is, and ROP being essentially the core of the tree even blocking Shimmer.
2 Likes
If this is an idealized version of mage, why have ice block as a talent instead of baseline? The ice block talents can be a choose one node between cdr and healing imo.
I also don’t know how married blizzard is to the idea, but maybe those tome talents should be a choice node as well, unless mages want both of them?