If they devoted half the frost tree to doing cool things with the water elemental instead of lame AoE talents…
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They could just left Water Elemental there and buffed its threat and tankiness, and there you have a good justification to leave WE alone as a soloing tool.
Mages are at a huge disadvantage when it comes to Elites that can’t be kited, unless of course, you’re willing to wait for Cold Snap, Time Warp and Mirror Images to come off cooldown with every single kill.
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I hate water ele, hate the pet micromanagement. If i wanted that i would play warlock.
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Soloing Kael’thas as we speak. Water Ele let me AFK the fight, which is good since I listen to this 5 minute RP 6x times a week.
Ian is right! most mage players cant stand a dps loss pet.
ice form now linked to pet totally destroying the once cool spell!
If they buffed it and made it good, you could make the exact same argument that it was only chosen because it was good, not because people want to be a pet spec
Personally I don’t like frost having a pet. Mages aren’t a pet class. That’s warlocks vibe
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I think most people playing Frost would abandon the spec because people don’t play Frost to play a pet class. They can play BM or Demo if they want that. If you want a pet spec, go play one of those, and the rest of us can continue to play the good version of Frost.
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Yep, they are really out of touch. They don’t even realize the water elemental was under performing. lmao.
I am curious, how is the addition of Water Elemental to Icy Veins “destroying” your enjoyment of the cooldown? The addition of the pet changes absolutely nothing about the way the spell worked. If you don’t want to micromanage the pet you can just totally ignore it and treat it as a passive damage increase.
Also, since you keep saying “Ice Form” which is a PvP talent that alters Icy Veins, I am assuming you mostly PvP in which case you should be glad of the change because pets are actually decent in PvP. Especially in 1v1 scenarios where the mediocre pet AI can’t really screw up since there’s only one target. The pet also acts are a turret that keeps damaging your target while you kite around them.
There are a lot of complaints about the change, mostly from those who are upset that the option for a permanent water elemental was removed, but you’re the only one I’ve seen being upset about Icy Veins somehow not being a good cooldown anymore. Unless you’re in the group that completely objects to the idea of having to deal with pet AI (even for a temporary guardian) on principle.
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I wouldn’t have a problem with frost mage being a pet spec, there’s no way the frost mage with the water elemental and being the only pet spec of the mage can compete against the warlock and the hunter.
Personally I think that the 3 mage specs are very similar to each other and that being frost a pet spec would make it more unique and would help each mage spec feel more unique. The mage spec is not even close to having the level of identity that each warlock spec has for example, or so it seems to me.
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I completely agree. If this dev did such a good job swap them out with a dev that works on pet specs for frost and give them an rdps responsibility on a different class.
It’s absolutely strange that ice lance, comet storm, glacial spike and ray of frost got buffed because they weren’t used enough, but water elemental, the more historied of all of said abilities just got overlooked then marginalized altogether. You pet spec suggestion is also way more consistent with mage lore as archmage wc3 hero could have up to 3 out at once.
And many of us taking lonely winter were waiting for a serious dev to fix welly. I seriously was for the last 6 years. Before this it felt like welly sucked because no devs seriously looked at the class, now it seems it’s because our dev literally hates our lore and would rather we play a diablo esque wizard that’s homogenized with the 2 other specs.
Also permanent welly was gold in bgs. I never pvped much before df but was massively sad when i saw that they removed it in the ptr notes. Because i learned in that 2 week period when i tried it that welly ranged freeze is gold at ruining the day of the opposing team.
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I was JUST thinking that a few days ago.
Look at Hunter. 3 DPS specs that are 100% unique.
You got the summoner/pet playstyle spec, the petless archer/gunner/marksman spec, and the melee ranger spec. Each one is entirely recognizable just at a glance and there’s a clear class fantasy.
Meanwhile mage is just a mage that shoots blue, purple or red spells.
In a better game, Arcane would have been a melee spellbreaker, frost would be the summoner subclass, and fire would be the traditional ranged caster. But in this one it’s a bunch of arbitrary differences like “this spec has slightly better burst, and this one has a little more AoE dmg, and this one has a tiny bit more CC… but not really.”
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It’s a problem with how certain people engage with the game - and it’s especially big problem with mage players specifically, because of the class history though expansions and patches.
Mage always was and probably always will be one of the most popular classes due to how versatile it is - it has lots of utility to bring to both pvp and pve, it’s a ranged class with 3 ranged dps specs which usually means that atleast one of them will always be viable at high end spectrum of the game. Which in turn means that a lot, a lot of mage players are people like Fryed above - “IF I wanted a pet class, I’d play warlock”.
And people like this view this game - I don’t know, like an advanced training dummy simulator/second job - they play for a few hours a day, grind their gear, see their numbers of ILVL/Mythic Score/Gladiator Score/Whatever go up and they are happy. That’s it, they don’t care about anything else - and are unable to comprehend that some people play this game for different reasons.
I always played this game either as a Warrior or as a Mage - because those classes felt most immersive to me, it was enjoyable to interact with the world using this classes, it’s enjoyable for me to see the animations of arcane magic rippling around mobs, I can’t get tired of seeing the same Rampage/Blizzard animation I saw thousands of times already. I would not trade it for anything. I like how magic portrayed in WoW - Ulduar, Eye of Eternity, runes flying around, I like how algebraic and calculating it looks and feels - and I believe that people who made highly praised portrayal of magic in Arcane tv show were inspired by WoW too, although it’s only my opinion.
And this is why it’s so baffling to see an argument “If i wanted to play with a pet, I’d play warlock” - I never would. I actually like demonology/unholy gameplay in dragonflight, DK is especially flavourful with 10 ghouls running around you - but I would never main those classes just because their lore, their atmosphere is not something I can feel immersed into.
And it’s especially funny with the mage - as a warrior player, I’m pretty happy with how my class feels, looks and plays when playing in open world/dungeons - gameplay is fast, smooth and simple, animations are superb, atmosphere and flavor of the class is top notch and it was like that from Classic to Dragonflight.
But mage - mage was only truly “somewhat” enjoyable class in classic, with his aoe farming being a very unique playstyle and utilities class was providing were sought for edge for players - now it’s the least enjoyable class to play in WoW - all of it’s combat utility is useless in open world, polymorph is almost never used, roots and slows are rarely used because your damage is either enough to kill a mob without them or mob is immune/resistant anyway, portals are nice gimmick, but 3 cloaks are good enough option for all other classes, spellsteal/curse are unused in open world, slow fall is good, I guess, but I prefer heroic jump because of how much more interactive it is, should I even mention food - invisibility and double blink are nice, but not nice enough when compared to any other class cool things. Gameplay wise only the fire spec is enjoyable, hot streaks being a very engaging and fast way to play - reminds me of fury, just a bit more difficult - but, unlike fury, it doesn’t have self heal, shield is not a substitute for that - so while fury can take elites and large packs with ease, fire can only do that in high enough gear. Frost and Arcane are just really boring and really slow. What I wouldn’t give for a melee mage spec - that at least would force developers to give the class some form of reliable sustain, maybe rework shield to a completely new mechanic.
I will agree that blizzard has an issue with confusing “popular” with “well tuned”
Some ideas sound fun and interesting but there isnt much time to put into balancing it
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I am not sure why they put my post under a Classic try-out toon I don’t even play, in fact thought it was deleted. My reply as a mage is this:
I am a max level blood elf frost mage and have used water elemental (my main and for years my only) since day one. For those of you who didn’t use it it’s not a big deal to you so stop arguing with the people who did use it or defend the idea of WE. There is no reason for those of us who chose to use WE to have to justify it. I used it, I liked it, and I want it back! I think the devs should have considered the frost mages (especially those who main one) before they just ripped it out from under us. Yes, I have tried other classes, but found that frost mage is just right for my gameplay and enjoyment of same. Enough said.
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Welly didn’t exist at day one. It wasn’t permanent until Wrath, and even then it was 5 years from that point before Frost was used in PvE. The fact is that Welly has been used for less time than it hasn’t.
But much like ROP, no one has come up with a good reason to keep it. There’s some nonsense about “but I always used it” or RP, but at the end of the day there’s no actual reason to keep it, especially as a choice node. I’d rather the devs not have to worry about code that provides nothing to the game.
Is that the same Frost mains who have, for several years, not used it? Or is it the same Frost mains who rejoiced when we didn’t have to take it? It was a bad talent and works better as a cooldown.
They kinda decided to make it worthless then claim it was worthless. Essentially gaslighting anyone that liked the ability. i ran lonely winter because I thought our devs just didn’t care and was holding out hope that one day we’d get one that realized how imbalanced the two were. Instead, when a dev decided to competently look at and balance our class they were like “gee no one is using this deliberately underpowered ability. Better remove it”
Ignoring any and all content that was previously balanced around it and the fact it’s been in the class for over a decade. And RP is a legitimate reason. it’s a gameplay reason that perhaps you as a decently strong M+ don’t understand, but it’s a reason.
Fun detected, fun nerfed.
Also I find it kinda hilarious how many complaints from Anti-WE mages there are about pets but WE is actually more useful when it’s up, so you’ll feel all those issues more acutely. Like those pathing issues, etc you’re now forced to deal with if you want its IV damage bonus. It was a sub-optimal solution that made no one happy. There was so much broken though that’s fixed is why I think there’s less uproar. It still feels wrong. We shouldn’t accept bad decisions because we’ve been historically treated terribly and this is only 20% bad when in the past everything was 80% bad.
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As a Fire Mage I don’t have a horse in this race but serious question: if we’re strictly talking about role playing, wouldn’t the various Water-Elemental-looking battle pets also serve RP purposes?
Seriously, I usually have the phoenix pet from Magister’s Terrace summoned when I play. Doesn’t do anything gameplay-wise of course but in my head canon it’s my Mage’s companion and goes with my aesthetic. Seems like a WE battle pet would fill a similar need for Frosties.
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- it’s tiny
- the glyphs built for it don’t work with battle pets. Or even cd last i checked.
That being said, i have 0 clue why they made this choice to begin with. As i’ve stated previously, the anti-we crowd should be furious their burst window damage is reliant on all those annoying pet things.
Also a battle pet doesn’t trigger runes on our mage tower either.
Pet biscuits. Still not as big as the combat pet, but less tiny anyway, and again we’re talking about RP.
No but there are multiple flavors of WE type battle pets, many of which are very similar to the glyphed versions of the combat pet. Plus some additional colors you couldn’t get with glyphs.
Well I think this was covered and we’re in non-RP territory now. You can disagree with their reasoning (as people are disagreeing with yours), but their reasons are no less legitimate.
What does that have to do with RP?