I used the water elemental in Burning Crusade.
Man, all of that from one side comment. Jaina and Khadgar both summon constructs. One Arcane and the other Water (or Tide if you rather). General Wizard lore and, in this case, Warcraft Lore. The point I was making was Wizards, mages whatever you want to call them do summon things.
I do not think Khadgar’s Shattrath pet was a ‘Light’ construct; though he may have gotten some enlightenment from the Naaru, he is still an Arcane caster.
You do not know if Jaina’s water elemental is a permanent summon or not. I would argue that it is. You have to dps it down to proceed in the fight, it does not just disappear after a time.
“Incorrect” is a bit of a heavy handed answer. If it swims like a fish, tastes like a fish and smells like a fish it is probably a fish. After the short stent where it was a temporary summon, it became a pet. You could direct it to pull mobs, work as a distraction and several other tricks.
You had full control over the pet, regardless of how powerful it was. Call it arguable if you want. In my eyes, if you control a permanent pet, it is a pet class; in this case it was a pet spec.
Pro water elemental or not, its removal in this fashion goes against the principles they have behind the talent system. I suppose in the end it is all subjective and this discussion pointless, as Blizzard will probably not consider reversing the change but I can share my discontent as much as I like.
Given it was one of the major dps cooldowns I’d be surprised if you didn’t. It was still a cooldown though, much like it currently is.
Warcraft Lore has been changed so heavily over the 30 years that it’s almost irrelevant at this point. It would literally take 1 patch to introduce BBEG who says “all these years you thought you were summoning allies, but the reality is that I, the master of the elements, was granting you that power to mess with you”. They’ve done it a dozen times in the past few expansions, and realistically even in vanilla there were that many changes from the RTS that they might as well be set in different universes.
I think it’s also worth noting that, according to lore (which seems to be the only argument for even having a summon), WE are subjugated. Unlike other elementals for Shaman, they don’t offer their service willingly and are instead called upon then shackled and forced to serve. I suspect that even if a fantasy setting, enslavement of any sentient being might be seen as problematic.
As for Mages summoning things, yes some do, but not all. In fact, aside from the two you mentioned, most major lore Mages don’t. Some of the Dalaran Mages do, but again that was always implied that summoning was a specific specialisation and those Mages weren’t much good at anything else.
All said and done, I think a wise move from Blizzard at this point would be to allow Frost to summon a cosmetic pet that uses glyphs for those players who still want WE to run around next to them. Adding it back as a dps option will never happen with gigantic changes to every other aspect of Frost.
This pass kind of goes to show how little, it seems, the new class designers really know how the Frost Mage was designed and/or should be designed. Something I’ve touched on multiple times in other posts. For a bit of history, BC was the first iteration as a CD for it, it got a perma option via glyph in WotLK; which ultimately caused it to be permanent going forward, Cata onward, because a majority of players were using it(including me). Honestly, while there were naysayers, having it as a pet wasn’t a huge issue to the majority, and the only issues it had were the AI that everyone dealt with. It’s only more recently, and pointed out by OP, that it’s been an issue because the developers just can’t seem to figure out how to balance it with LW. Causing the statistics to show: “Players aren’t taking the pet. They must not want it.” Even when, throughout the years, players have been offering ways to fix it, saying they want to keep it.
Honestly, the fix was pretty simple. Make Lonely Winter work exactly like Lone Wolf. Then just need to balance it out by making the Ele do a lot of damage and, when it’s not out, making Frost Nova have a 30yrd range.
Mage isn’t a pet class sure, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be a class that has a pet. Hell, Mage isn’t supposed to be a DoT class(quoted way back in MoP), but look at what they did with the Fire spec. It’s about it’s DoT: Ignite. So, while I understand you may not like having the pet, I do. I loved having the WE by my side.
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I still haven’t touched my mage since the change, which isn’t easy. This is an old old old character. It’s not one I want to give up on. But taking away something as personal as a permanent companion that’s been around for about half my life just makes it too hard to play again.
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Yet water elemental wasn’t originally a permanent pet
Mage has never been a pet class
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Unholy DK raise dead wasn’t permanent either yet somehow it became permanent and minions an actual part of the spec and class. it’s practically a pet spec now. Leaning into class lore?! What a concept!
If mage wasn’t ever a pet class then re-adding the permanent pet doesn’t make it one. Ironically this change moved it further in that direction for mages that didn’t like we.
It’s also logically inconsistent for the devs to buff underutilized ineffective d3 wizard abilities because of low usage and then mostly remove iconic pieces of class fantasy that have low usage due to also being ineffective. It’s also basically class fantasy terrorism. What even is this class? It has the least connection to its fantasy of any class i’ve played in addition to it not being iterated very much on at all. Druids never summoned fairy dragons in the past and now my boomkin can!
If i could sustain 3 simultaneous water elementals like the wc3 archmage could, i wouldn’t give a hoot if it wasn’t permanent as long as the glyphs and thorghast powers affected it and it was a viable build. Lonely winter wasn’t optional at all in SL if you were serious about doing damage. Archmage was practically a pet class and it’s one of of the things this class is based on.
The only thing i agree with about the change is that they need to stop holding the class in the middle. But giving us 3 sparkle throwing specs feels really bland. If it was me, i would have added a talent that converts fire spells to frostfire into the fire tree perhaps with an interesting effect, mechanic or buff for the sparkle throwing mages who like frost and then converted frost into a pet tree. All the legion companions that were frost used we.
Jaina heavily uses we in wc3 and all throughout bfa. Inside every frost mage that’s actually been featured in lore WE has been a major part of it. Not to mention the water elementals in our class hall. Pretending there was never any indication of water elementals being a huge part of frost is rewriting history and it’s absolutely bizarre the first serious rework we’ve had in 6 years does that.
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If memory serves me correct unholy was the only spec it was permanent. Unholy has always been a pet class with AoTD, summon gargoyle, ect.
It was added as an alternative and it wasnt ever used.
Elemental would have to be broken strong to be taken over lonely winter just due to how pet mechanics work on fights
That’s in current wow. It had a 3 min cooldown in wotlk. Just like in bc we had a a cd.
Because no one serious about fulfilling the class role in pve would use it because of how undertuned it was. I already addresses this. It was at least a 15% dps decrease when i simmed it. All throughout SL i used LW to do my role. I chalked we being undertuned to dev incompetence, not as a booby trap to gaslight me out of my favorite ability. I fully suspected it would be buffed when we finally had a serious dev. In legion our aoe outside 2 targets didn’t even scale with mastery at all. That’s the backdrop image i had from the devs. It’s also why so many mages coming back after the rework are like wtf happened to my pet?! We had alot of posts like that after the rework. Many of us expected it to be fixed not thrown away.
There’s a number of ways they could handle this. They’ve done it for other classes.
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I come here to once again ask mages all around the world to have a heart and ask for a harmless option to have a permanent buddy travel alongside ourselves as we explore the world, walk through town, and adventure to new lands. A pet is more than just some DPS increase and its sad the devs have forgotten some of those more lighthearted fun parts of the game.
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It’s crazy how many people forget that permanent elemental was available all the way back in WotLk, and was a dps increase.
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Yeah the water ele should at least come back as a glyph, if not a permanent dpa option.
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People also forget that no one played Frost in WotLK because it did half the damage of Fire in the first raid. Fire only scaled higher than that, and Frost was virtually deleted from PvE until the fix in MoP.
Wendel the Water Elemental is gone. He might come back eventually as a cosmetic ability, but the devs have better things to do at this time. Suck it up and deal with it, or go play a pet class.
Negative. Not all specs of a class must be a pet or no pet class. Does not hunter have or had a spec where they dont have a pet in exchange for more damage? Thus mage can have a spec that has a pet and ones that do not. If someone doesnt want to play a pet class as mage then they would still have 2 specs to choose from.
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Exactly dk is that way and unholy is practically a pet spec now.
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People didn’t forget Blizzard threw their spec under the bus and made Fire their pet spec. They just defied the meta and played what they wanted. Besides, it may have done half the damage of Fire in the first tier, but it was still at least 80% as effective by the end.
And this can be said in the reverse. They made Frost a pet spec, should have just sucked it up and switched to a non-pet class.
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Turning Frost into a pet class would require a full rework of spells and talents. Like deleting half of them and making them interactive with the pet. That isn’t going to happen considering the new talents have only been in effect for 12 months, and they just did a rework on the spec a couple of months ago. Maybe in 10 years time they’ll consider it, but I suspect they’d lose considerably more people who don’t want to play a pet class than they would gain from making it one. Also, do you trust them to make a pet class work? Just look at the shenanigans Demo has been putting up with for a decade.
So the 2% of players who weren’t Arcane or Fire had fun. Good for them, but it doesn’t mean Frost was worth playing. I’d also like to purchase whatever drugs you’re on if you think Frost was doing 80% of what Fire or Arcane was in ICC. 40% maybe.
Blizzard made the right choice. Better to make 100 RP and open-world players salty than make thousands stop playing the game (because both Arcane and Fire are garbage to play for most Frosties).
It’s hard playing another class but it might be the most effective option for communicating distaste. That or lapsed subs with the feedback.
I just wish the devs were way more forward about their intentions, i may not have given wow much thought if they were when i came back in legion. This sneaky “we’ll make this thing unviable then kill it” is gaslighty bs. I just assumed their terrible balancing was due to neglect, not malice and fully expected it be viable once we got a genuine rework(seriously, our legion mastery didn’t scale past 2 targets in aoe). Hence all the shock and anger.
Except you didn’t have to use water elemental before the rework and now you do? What kind of garbage are you pandering defending this rework wheb you hate bubbles so much?
From the dev justifications for removal to this quote i just can’t comprehend this nonsense. They should delete gs too because apparently alot of people are complaining about having to use it in 10.2.
According to you the mage community would be quitting if they had to use bubbles, yet here they all are happily chugging along summoning him every time icy veins is up.
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Silly me, I wasn’t just refering to the top 100 fire players, though, by that logic Blizzard made “frost not worth it” in WotLK. And us 2% fought back, got us a permanent elemental along with it. Now you newbie Frosts want to come in and ruin the hard work we’ve been doing since the beginning.
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