Mage base talent tree looks annoying, all other classes feels that u are getting more powerfull than u are in SL, just with more options.
As mage u feel that u lost all ur utility and have to choose just some of them, even getting 2 of the top skills is hard due to the obligatory 3 point skills on the way.
From a pvp point of view its even harder to build something as usefull as we already have now.
12 Likes
I disagree, the only problem to me is where Rune of Power is. If they added 2 horizontal lines, 1 from Mirror Image to Slow, and the other 1 from Alter Time to Spellsteal, instead of having to “use x amount of points” to get to Rune of Power you can use only 2 points, saving you more points at the bottom of the tree if they were to make this simple adjustment + if you were to choose the base Mage tree in a certain way. Im gonna be honest I can careless about the Fire and Frost spec tree, I only care about about Arcane…now that spec tree needs a major rework, but I feel like the base Mage tree is pretty solid. I like 29/31 choices I can do, I just need them to do 2 horizontal lines like I said earlier from Mirror Image to Slow, and Alter Time to Spellsteal, all I would have to do to get to 31 of 31 would be pick Spellsteal or Slow then pick Rune of Power. Right now having to pick Cone of Cold or Shatter + Remove Curse + Slow or Spellsteal THEN rune of power feels bad for Arcane mage specifically. Having to use that many points there at the top plus the other things we need in the middle tree makes the bottom of the tree very slim / close to impossible to get to the bottom. My suggestion with these 2 horizontal lines will make it much easier to do so saving maybe 2 points which a lot more then people realize making it easier to finish and get to the bottom of the tree.
1 Like
The base Mage tree is terrible and needs some major work and I’ll say it’s probably one of the worst ones out yet. Not only are the connecting nodes really jumbled up, we spend almost all of our points to barely get what we already have.
The position of [Rune of Power] and [Shimmer] need to be addressed as well as the sheer amount of multipoint talent nodes. Most of those should’ve been 1 or 2 points instead.
The capstone talents also need some major work. [Shifting Power] is super weak without the conduit to the point it’s a waste to have it as a capstone. [Time Anomaly] has 2 layers of RNG behind it which will probably have the class have a huge variance of DPS overall and feel terrible. [Meteor] doesn’t sound like a capstone at all unless its damage is severely overtuned.
16 Likes
Played around with the calculator for the base tree … didn’t like what I was going to have to give up from what I have in my kit now for what I was potentially going to gain.
9 Likes
Agreed, IMO the last two tiers for a fire are borderline worthless. At best you can shorten your cooldown a few sec or take meteor which hits like a noodle and gives everyone in target ample time to move out of the way.
3 Likes
how about we just REMOVE RoP altogether? It breaks fire spec completely and it’s overall OP for all 3 specs.
The tree is terrible.
I can guarantee it will be the only choice for Fire. Though Arcane won’t need it at all.
Yeah, very much agree.
7 Likes
Won’t lie: the first thing I looked for was if RoP was on the tree and was utterly disappointed it was still there lol
12 Likes
how about we just REMOVE RoP altogether? It breaks fire spec completely and it’s overall OP for all 3 specs.
I wouldn’t be mad if they removed RoP. But they would need to add a passive of some sort to replace it. But that’s not a bad idea.
7 Likes
it’d take anything. Even a 2% Avoidance/Leech talent would be better, just in terms of sheer freedom to finally use ANY OTHER TALENT.
At most, RoP should be moved to the arcane tree, where it’s most thematic and it’s less problematic.
6 Likes
Yeah, it really feels like a downgrade of we already have in SL, even getting [shimmer] feels expensive…
Dont forget for PVPers the tree looks even worse…
3 Likes
I’m not a like… raiding mage so Idk if things I find awful are truly awful, but for a few things:
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Why isn’t shatter baseline? Why do we have to spend talent points on it? Actually this goes for Iceblock and Invisibility too.
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Frost nova, Grounding Surge, Cryo-Freeze Improved Frost Nova, and quite a few other talents don’t freel great in the log run. They’re either worthless in a way that no one will take them, or require too many points to move forward on. One particularly egregious one is Frigid winds, which requires three points as a way to get to shifting power.
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Actually on this front? The entire final row is awful? Like WHAT IS HAPPENING? NOne of the talents leading up to the final ones are all that interesting, except maybe flow of time which doesn’t seem to be working properly on WoWhead. Thematically, Dragon’s Breath/Meteor feel awful for Frost and Arcane, and does anyone like Shifting Power or Time Anomoly?
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You get a few cool new abilites, but this tree feels way moer like SPEND CRAZY POINTs in hoping to get some of the stuff you’d lose.
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Just throw rune of power and incanters flow away.
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A personal woe but… I was really hoping for Frostfire bolt and frostfire orb.
5 Likes
totally agree but its all the tree not just mage trees…
2 Likes
one of the problems i keep hearing is that the mage base tree is too tank / defensive. at least for Kyrian Arcane this needs to be the case because for some reason Arcane Mage is the worst dps spec in the game (close to it), yet every single raid boss in sepulchers targets the Kyrian Arcane Mage before the destro lock, before any other spec in the game even if is bottom dps which makes no sense at all. How can one of the lower dps specs be the biggest threat no matter what? This alone needs a rework.
With that said raiding mage could use a bunch of these defensive choices so a healer doesn’t have to babysit them the entire time.
The best pvp mage players are saying a different story, its too tank/defensive. I think if they were going to be honest I don’t think they’re worried about the mage being too defensive and tanky, they’re more worried about mage getting nerfed again if the mage is good dps wise, while having good tankyness/defensiveness. Best of both worlds will warrant a nerf and the dps side of the mage would get nerfed before the defensive side thats what they’re worried about.
The solution will be to have 3 sides to the mage base tree.
1st side - tanky/defensive/shields
2nd side - more glass cannon style / squishy / bigger dps
3rd side - some type of hybrid or a rework
Im speaking for Kyrian Arcane more then anything, raid wise Mage needs defensives or they just get 1 hit.
Pvp wants to be more glass cannon style big dps.
1 Like
These trees don’t tell us anything about whether we’ll be good or bad. Whether Mages are good are not depends entirely on tuning. The builds I’m making are perfectly capable of being good.
The problem is that these trees are 90% filler. Most of the choices in the current trees don’t matter at all. There are no playstyle differences or interesting choices to make in any of them. None of the builds I make have any identity; they’re just math problems. It’s boring.
When I spend points in the Shaman trees, I’m spending them on things I want to get to to other things I want. I’m a kid in a candy store, and the thing that’s keeping me from getting everything is the fact that there are so many good+fun choices to pick from.
When I spend points in the Mage tree, I’m just trying to find the least-expensive path to the things I want. None of the talents I pick along the way matter or have any appreciable impact on gameplay, so the only thing that matters is how many points they cost me.
2 Likes
That is the very reason I’m going to spec an arcane mage and take those talents, finally I can be a proper “archmage”
They could make the frost and arcane capstones more attractive to their appropriate specs for those who want to keep to their specialized element
But definitely leave the option open for more “hybrid” play styles
I don’t think they would. It wouldn’t be hard for them to just baseline buff all spells to compensate for the loss of RoP/IF damage boosts, and it would make so many Mages happy. At this point I would actually take a passive that does nothing - 50% chance on spell cast to shoot fireworks into the sky. But yes, RoP is just the tip of the terrible iceberg that is all 4 Mage trees.
Yep. It’s all filler or things that should be baseline. I get the feeling other classes are similar, where all they’ve done is take existing baseline spells and added them to a shiny new tree to give the illusion of choice. There will be useless filler talents that so many people won’t use (eg: CoC, when was the last time anyone used this for PvE?) as well as 100% mandatory talents that you have to take such as RoP, Counterspell, Ice Block.
These trees feel like a step backwards, and all 95% of players will do is look at whatever guide that tells them to take the optimal path. It will be the same, dull or restrictive rotations we have now and the specs won’t feel any better to play than they do currently (which is already bad).
Yes please. The overwhelming focus on a single school we’ve had over the past several expansions has grown stale for me. The option to hyperspecialize on one school should be there (as it was with the trees as they were up through Cataclysm), but it needs to be accompanied by the option to widen one’s toolkit to encompass more schools as well.
1 Like
I always wished the mage schools were more magical. Having frost and fire as specs never felt like a real mage to me.
There’s so many other iterations of mages they could have made into specs … Illusionist, Summoner, Time Mage, etc. Playing as a fire or frost mage always just felt like a poor man’s Shaman to me with shammy’s over there accessing fire AND frost spells.
I know it’s similar to Final Fantasy but black mages there cast fire, frost, and lightning spells along with some other mage-like abilities not relegated to an “element.” Always seemed strange to be that fire, frost, and lightning weren’t the 3 specs for WoW mages … cause otherwise, how did they come with Fire and Frost and then think “oh, Arcane for the third spec!”
Arcane was always my fave cause it was the only one that felt like a REAL mage to me. Then BFA ruined it, SL doubled down with the Kyrian crit-or-cry build, and DF doesn’t look to be making it much better with the new talents.
4 Likes
There’s definitely a lot of that going on. In the Shaman trees, which are by far my favorite, a lot of the points are for currently-baseline abilities – Tremor Totem, Hex, Cleanse Spirit, Capacitor Totem, etc.
The difference with those is that each of those abilities is situational – Removing curses only matters if you’ll be encountering curses in the key/raid/arena you’re up against. It feels good to be able to skip those to get something else you want.
The problem with the Mage trees is that the abilities we’re spending points on are required. You can’t skip Rune of Power under any circumstances. You can’t skip Shimmer under any circumstances. You can’t skip Alter Time under any circumstances. You can’t skip Mirror Images under any circumstances.
Every build anyone has ever made is built around taking these. I don’t have a problem with any of these abilities costing talent points, but they make things worse by making these required talents expensive to get to by forcing you take borderline-useless (or extremely situational) talents to get to them.
We’re forced into specific paths and forced into taking things we don’t want to get to the things we need.
4 Likes
I can’t say I’ve had that issue, personally. The distinction of mages approaching elemental magic as a sort of science revolving around the rules of the universe vs. kindly requesting assistance from the elemental spirits as a shaman would is good enough for me, especially since it allows Warcraft mages to wield fire and frost in a way that’s (in my opinion) a lot more badass than how shamans do. It’s hard to imagine a shaman casting Blizzard or Living Bomb for example.
The lack of other types of wizards/mages like you’ve pointed out (illusionist, time mage, etc) has bothered me but I think those would be better as separate classes. The biggest problem is that these variants align better with a class strongly rooted in utility and support rather than raw output and historically WoW players have pushed against those roles being primary character types — it’s a bit of an oversimplification but generally if there’s not any big numbers involved WoW players aren’t too interested. We saw this even in Vanilla where several specs were supposed to be more utility/support/versatility but players insisted on hammering square pegs into round holes and treating them as plain old DPS, tanks, and heals.
Arcane has never really been my cup of tea, I find its shrill sounds and spell visuals grating and the tree has never had particularly strong fantasy.