Lonely Winter / Summon Water Elemental should return, without changing the current version of Icy Veins

Classes Mage
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I’m going to suggest (and plead) that Lonely Winter/Summon Water Elemental be brought back as an optional talent. Leave the current Icy Veins Elemental in the game. People really love this reworked Icy Veins, so taking “Lonely Winter” should definitely allow people to continue using Icy Veins in its current state. From everything I’ve read, from all the feedback I’ve gathered, the main reason people detest the idea of the Perma-pet returning is because “they don’t want to play like that” and “I like the new version of Icy Veins!” So I think the solution is just to 100% make sure the current version of Icy Veins is untouched, and always superior as an option. That… is how it’s always been balanced in the past anyway.

In detail, the idea goes like so:

  • If you select Lonely Winter, the playstyle stays identical as it is on live. No perma-pet, Frigid Empowerment applications still exist, and the pet expires along with Icy Veins. Everyone stays happy.

  • If you do not select Lonely Winter, and instead opt in for Summon Water Elemental, you now have “Summon Water Elemental” giving you access to a permanent Water Elemental companion, similar to the one implemented back in Wrath of the Lich King along with the Glyph of Eternal Water. (As a reminder, this Glyph allowed Frost Mages to turn their temporary Water Elemental into a full-time pet.) This permanent version does not apply Frigid Empowerment. If you activate the new reworked Icy Veins while this pet is spawned, it acts like a Bestial-Wrath style ability, it changes your pet into a Greater Water Elemental (using the Glacial Tidestorm mount) buffs your pet’s damage and durability, and lets it’s attacks apply Frigid Empowerment. The longer you keep Icy Veins going, the longer this Bestial-Wrath style buff lasts.

Seeing the new Trading Post armor include a Water-themed mage set makes my heart hurt knowing that I can’t stand stylishly alongside my Water themed pet any longer since Dragonflight needlessly took away the ability to have a permanent companion.

This has been a class-defining ability for over a decade. Not meta-wise, but class-fantasy-wise. Why do all of the lowly NPC mages in the Stormwind portal room get the optional of a permanent servant? https://i.imgur.com/p1rS30v.jpg Why does Jaina have a permanenet pet sitting in her room? ‘https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uxi6_5cFqw’ Because it’s a key integral part of the Frost Mage mythos! It’s a power that we used to have access to for 14 years straight. We’re the hero of Azeroth. Surely should be able to have access to such an ability instead of a flimsy pet that expires after a few seconds?

All expansion I’ve been watching other classes like Evokers, Druids and Warlocks gain so many aesthetic and gameplay additions. New Druid Forms, a Demon Barbershop for Warlocks, a new spec for Evokers, but the perma-pet removal just closed a hundred doors for Mages. All of those Water Elemental aesthetic glyphs are so much less impactful now that our pet can’t walk around town with us. I farmed really hard for that Grey and Deep Blue color Water Elemental glyph, and I farmed for ages to unlock cooking recipes, like Kibbler’s Bits that let you cook meals that alter your pet’s aesthetics. I even resubbed at one point to specifically go for the Glacial Tidestorm mount so I could ride around town on a mount that matches my pet. But now all of those customizations, toy, matching mounts/tmogs have no use anymore. And we’ll never get a cool barbershop, or pet customization on the level of Warlocks because the permanent companion has been axed, along with a dozen opportunities to add personalization to our class/spec. And there’s nothing to replace them with, and it feels like Mages are losing more and more ways to personalize themselves, especially Frost which has a very homogenous build and capstones.

I participated in the original thread 14 years ago where the community asked for a glyph that gave mages access to a permanent Water Elemental pet. The developer in the thread was nice, communicative, and asked for suggestions about how to spice up the pet (leading to the birth of Water Jet and Frostbolt-pet-healing in a later expansion). I’d love to have that same level of back and forth open conversation, to hash out new ideas for a new and better option for a companion pet.

I would like to see this option restored to mages without disrupting the fans of the current Icy Veins. Just an option for those who’d like to take it. For those who felt attachment to their companion of 14 years. If I could redeem one WoW-wish, this would be it, because I really miss my Bubbles. He was as important to me as a Hunter’s first pet and I just want him back.

Thank You

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The other 14 threads about this topic weren’t enough for you?

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No because we can make our own and it’s our right in a public forum for the video game.

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I know you will read this and I have one more thing to add. It is not peoples job on these forums to give you ‘‘new’’ content to read that is interesting.

If you want to sit in the forums and read though them often that is fine, but don’t treat people as if they need to give you a fresh new topic every post and make it seem people can’t post about a topic if others ‘‘already’’ talked about it.

We are allowed to post about issues or problems we have with the game and we can all post about the same issue if we wish. Even more so when we’re talking about our feelings and it’s not even the same post just a similar topic.

We’re not your content, this isn’t your social media, thank you.

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Personally I don’t like the water elemental. I don’t like pet management unless I’m playing my demo lock and the pets do important damage

This current version of icy veins reminds me a lot of BC frost mage.

HOWEVER, if blizzard were to add the elemental as an option that was not required (either by design or by superior damage) then I wouldn’t care. As long as I’m not forced into a perma pet I don’t mind.

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Well here’s an easy brain dead way to bring it back and always have it equal or very close to equal with lw:

Have the perma pet mirror all abilities affected by lw: hits the same targets, etc, for the lw bonus on the original ability. Make the auto attack damage really low or non existent . That way, the elemental is more of a mirror than an actual pet and it scales the same as lw. There might be some tinkering that would need to be done on frostbolt because there are cases where it’s st and cases where it’s not, but the balancing could be braindead if someone hacks out some numbers and pays attention to aoe scaling on the lw affected spells with talents. Have it morph as op states during icy veins so there’s no wonky code needed to accommodate 2 elementals at once.

Then the lw vs elemental choice becomes more about flavor than about numbers like it was previously. And our dev can go back to only thinking about pew pew like they like to.

A gotcha would be that the mirrored bonus would have to take into account the full damage of the ability after all bonuses. Eg. Your elemental casts its mirrored ice lance with matching shatter state damage. That shouldn’t be too bad if lw damage is calculated after all other bonuses, and the 15% is transferred to the elemental after it’s dealt.

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Creating Duplicate Threads

This category includes:

  • Creating threads about existing topics
  • Creating a separate thread about an existing topic for further discussion in more than one forum

If a player is found to have participated in such actions, they will:

  • Be given a temporary ban from the forums, depending upon severity
  1. This is not a public forum.
  2. Doing so violates the forum CoC. I would suggest not doing that.
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Thank you. This is my goal and I do NOT want to force my playstyle on anyone else. I just want to fight and get it back for fans of the old permanent pet. 14 years is a VERY long time and a lot of players built their identity/playstyle around their pet. It’s as important to them as a Hunter’s pet. There’s a Youtuber who used to always use a thumbnail of her and her WE on all of her videos. Blizz has destroyed her image now. We just want it back without disrupting the current happy mage players.

I’m fully aware of that rule, but I want to argue that it’s rather arbitrary. Like one of the threads on the front page is asking about stat priority for Arcane Mages. There’s a thousand threads like that already. Are they breaking this rule for asking that question? I don’t think so.

IMO, if there is no active thread on the topic, it’s fair game. Nothing wrong with revitalizing a long forgotten conversation. They didn’t provide a definition on when its okay to bring up old discussion topics, so I’m just assuming it’s fine to revive the conversation since the original huge Ion thread sunk to the bottom of the forum a while ago. if this rule were to be taken literally, there would be no more discussion at all, because nearly every idea has already been discussed. (Barring questions about new content/dungeons/pvp metas.

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I don’t know why the devs forced us to have an elemental in the first place. I liked Lonely Winter because it involved fewer keybinds; now they’re forcing several more that are difficult to get used to since said elemental isn’t permanently there.

I wouldn’t say I like the current design direction. The devs are awful and can’t help but make things worse with every new addition.

Don’t mind that guy. He’s a worthless troll who holds no power anywhere in his life. Therefore, he’s so miserable he has to pester people on a video game forum.

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Are there several threads on the front page asking about arcane mage stats already? Is it the same person making the same thread every few days? I don’t think so.

And you’ve posted in all of these threads before.

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Yiu have 5 or 6 active threads alone. It’s over let it end. .

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I don’t even read the posts because I have several people on ignore because they contribute nothing to any conversation, however I would argue that the reason the 14 (yes there are actually 14 threads on the topic, several created by OP) threads aren’t active is because no one cares.

There’s no discussion to be had. The pro-pet people, similar to flat-earthers, anti-vaxers etc present the same easily disputed opinions each time and just go around in circles, while the other players provide logical counter arguments for all of them, or simply don’t care. After 6 months, there’s nothing more to contribute to the pet/anti-pet conversation. It’s a dead topic, and there’s no reason to bring it up ever again. Creating new threads because no one is posting in the other ones is spam.

By the way, a lot of the consistent pro-pet posters who threatened to quit wow because of it, are still here.

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Pro pet or non pro pet is not logical: it’s flavor differences. That’s a straw man. Liking fantasy in a fantasy RPG makes you a flat earther. LOLOOLOLOL. Please keep talking.

That being said, I’m not sure much will change unless:

  1. Someone realizes that fewer people are buying the next expansion and surprise suprise it turns out to be mages that liked welly and refuse to keep playing retail but are playing classic versions that support it. If this were to happen, Ion would force the dev to bring it back.
  2. Or people decide they like welly from IV and request it permanently en masse.
  1. [Doubtful, given singular specs being broken doesn’t usually get fixes, just look at surv hunter lol] Arcane and fire are so much better no one is playing frost so they think by changing the flavor it’ll get more traction.

@OP: just be proud of yourself for realizing that the devs were in control and not being easily brainwashed about the non-choice given the numbers differences. Not sure this community deserves any more of your energy. The sad irony is that the people talking you down could end up having to deal with similar “data driven decisions” in the future. They’re literally building their own dumpster fire. Grab some popcorn and watch the show.

One of the people talking us down has already gone to his rogue and here’s a smattering of titles:

Frost mage Struggling

Arcane Tier Set Bonus Maintenance

Arcane Struggles

Welly is a drop in the bucket of a bigger problem. And popcorn is definitely warranted.

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But amusingly the OP (or the other vocal poster on this topic who tries to pass his alts off as different people and thinks we can’t tell it’s him) will bump 2-3 of those threads every few weeks and then talk about how the devs need to listen because it’s the most popular topic on the forums. At this point it has become laughable.

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Is this really what i said? It’s been 6 years that welly has been shafted and it’s been ages since i’ve bumped a thread from oblivion. I usually only respond when it flies back up. I suspect most people have moved on and without popular support I don’t expect a change. Popular support probably won’t ever happen given the devs have spent 6 years kicking we lovers out of the class. And is it so hilarious i have an army of alts i post on as i look for a new home? Came in handy though. It’s amazing what you can do with an army of alts.

I find the guy defending the new status quo from his rogue main far funnier. If you love it so much, play it.

Also you’re playing fire now. If frost is so great post rework, why aren’t you playing it?

Nom nom nom.

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There’s literally just two people who keep bringing this up and not only clogging up the forums with duplicate threads but also taking the oxygen out of completely unrelated threads by derailing the discussion.

They even had me in their corner at the beginning because I have always been a fan of Bubbles the Water Elemental but it’s getting out of hand now and it’s just annoying. Especially when there are so many other more important issues facing mages atm and the elemental hasn’t even been completely removed! I mean for crying out loud they even left the glyphs that customize it and you can now apply them to Icy Veins.

Chill!

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I agree with the sentiment. And it takes 2 to tango. I only responded to 1 of the 3 threads bomb recently bumped. The trolls do more bumping by engaging with False narratives and straw men, etc in every thread when they could respond to real threads.

And of the 3 of them on this thread in recent history, only 1 actively plays frost so it’s kind strange as far as spec representation goes for these trolls to be hammering for a design they don’t want to play.

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It’s just one of the ironies is the change to the Elemental interaction was exactly what the perma-pet needed to be viable vs Lonely Winter.

I have a grand feeling it became permanent for the exact reason they removed it’s permanence; the vast majority of Frost Mages were using the Glyph of Eternal Water in PvE content.

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why is my post about frost mage struggling on this list? i only mythic three characters my shad priest wellnto this season my hunter and this one…

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As long as no one’s playstyle is impacted, having a more diverse set of options on how to customize and play your Mage shouldn’t harm anyone. It can only do good.

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