Mage class tree feedback

In Development Midnight: Revelations Public Test Realm
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Nothing has changed since 12.0.5, I decided to re-start a thread about why the mage class tree is so tragically bad in its Midnight version.

The general gist of it is that in the great Midnight pruning, the class has found itself with spells that are named identically as in previous versions, except they are far less effective and cost more talent points. I gained ten levels, my character gained nothing fun, and instead it’s just…weaker despite having more talent points invested in the same abilities. That’s not fun. The mage toolkit was bloated and some pruning was needed, but what Blizzard did was far too heavy handed.

There are three main areas in which the class tree completely fails in either providing interesting choice or sufficient power:

Defensives

Going into Midnight Mages lost the damage reduction of Mirror Images (and therefore the related nodes in the Spellslinger hero tree do nothing), the damage reduction on Greater Invisibility (which is now a mediocre sprint, more on this later), Mass Barrier (an entirely warranted removal, especially for Arcane), and a minor passive in Tempest Barrier. Mirror Images is especially egregious, as we now can spend 3 talent points for an ability that…does nothing beyond very minor aggro protection. Which itself is already covered by Greater Invisibility for another 4 talent points. On top of the above, Mages have to deal with having the lowest base HP in the game (10-15% less than a dps DK, Warlock, Hunter or Shaman for example), which is why our active mitigation was stronger than average in the first place. That is no longer the case, and we now have low hp and a weak toolkit on top.

The result is that this class can not survive in challenging content. At the time of writing, Mages occupy 2 of the 3 slots for most deaths in Mythic raid, with Arcane mages dying a whopping 45% of the time they participate in a boss pull. I say at the time of writing because these numbers have gotten worse as the tier continued and players started facing harder bosses, despite the fact that more and more players are swapping to Frost (supposedly, the tankier of the 3) due to the horrific tuning of Arcane and Fire. This same trend of Mages dying more than other classes holds across all skill levels in Mythic raiding.

The most glaring (but not only) weakness in our toolkit is in the ability to survive rot damage. We just sit there and eventually die out, because we do not have the tools to prevent that ticking damage, nor the ability to recover from being at low health. Without having the full DF/TWW toolkit back (because that would be insane), we desperately need Mirror Images and Tempest Barrier to return at minimum. Adding back the MoP era Flameglow, or Legion era Cauterizing Blink, would also be very welcome.
Our active toolkit appears to be designed for a class with a good amount of self sustain and passive defensiveness, and instead we have neither.

Mobility

The other area that was hit very hard by the pruning was our mobility talents. Ice floes was removed, Alter Time no longer provides a sprint, Shimmer had its cooldown nerfed and its talent point cost increased, and the sprint provided by Greater Invisibility is worse despite costing more talent points to spec into.

None of this was positive, fun nor necessary, because Mage mobility had very specific strengths and weaknesses - we were very good at short bursts of quick movement, we were very bad at sustained movement. Now we are still bad at sustained movement but with the nerfs we are mediocre at quick sprints. The removal of Ice Floes is particularly egregious, because while the choice node of Shimmer vs Ice Floes + Blink was legitimately interesting, Shimmer vs Blink alone is a no-brainer. You just play Shimmer every time, despite the nerf to the cooldown. If anything, nerfing the cooldown further incentivizes us to pick the reset on Alter Time over the passive activation, which would help new players in surviving some mechanics. Frankly, all of these nerfs should just be reverted or at least compensated in some form.

Useless talents

The last glaring problem is in the sheer amount of truly mediocre (or entirely useless) pad talents that have been added to the tree to fill it out. It is particularly atrocious that iconic abilities like Shimmer, Ice Block, Greater Invisibility and Mirror Images cost 3, 3, 4 and 3 dedicated talent points to spec into, when basically every other class get their mobility or defensives spells for 1 or at most 2 talent points.

The worst culprit of this is Frost Conditioning. This talent does literally nothing at all for two out of three specs, because they can only Ice Cold once every 3 minutes, so shortening the Hypothermia debuff is entirely useless. It is a minor survivability for Frost, but our defensives right now are so weak that if you have to Ice Cold twice in the span of 30 seconds you will die a couple of minutes from now anyway. A talent that at best just delays the inevitable but generally just does nothing is inexcusable. Dishonorable mentions also go to Captured Thoughts, which at best is situational and at worse does nothing because I use my procs immediately anyway, Mass Invis, which is the worst replacement of Shroud ever and does not allow skips, and Mana Confluence, a talent that effectively reads “minor throughput for one of three specs and nothing for the other two”.

Developer statements

To conclude, I want to go over some of the stated intents by the developers for the class going into Midnight:

Developers’ notes: We’re taking a pass to reduce button and aura bloat in the Mage core tree. We’re also consolidating defensive power to simplify the landscape of Mage defensives and make them more approachable. In Midnight, Barrier spells should be potent, consistent, and reliable. Mirror Image and Invisibility spells should now be able to be used for their utility instead of tacked on defensive benefits.
This was an abject failure. Our defensives are not consistent, because they are not enough to let the class survive mechanics, and this makes the class extremely unapproachable. Our barriers are not potent, consistent or reliable, they are just not good enough. Mirror Images provides extremely limited utility at best and is hardly worth picking, we simply do so anyway because the rest of our tree is dreadful so we might as well.

We’re also reducing Shimmer’s power to help make the decision between Blink and Shimmer feel like more of a meaningful choice. Players who want to maximize uptime and display mastery over an encounter and its mechanics should feel empowered to express that through Shimmer, whereas progression and more reactive Mages should enjoy the increased availability of Blink.
This was yet another failure. The choice was not blink vs shimmer, it was ice floes+blink stun removal vs shimmer cast while casting. Without the cast while casting, that choice is obvious and we just lay shimmer. “Progression and more reactive mages” (whatever that means) just…run shimmer during progression because on its own, without ice floes, it is better. Always.

This redesign was somewhat necessary but it has turned into an abject failure.

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Give us back active damage reduction!

50% of Mythic boss kills end with the Arcane Mage dead before the boss!

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Frost had Cold Snap. Fire had Cauterize. Arcane had Greater Invisibility.

Then Fire and Frost also got GInvis. So Arcane got something else to compensate, right?

No! Arcane got nothing!

Now GInvis has no damage reduction for anyone, but Fire and Frost still keep their original defensives. What exactly is greater about Greater Invisibility anymore?

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Talents & Abilities

  • Arcane Missiles is our very first talent point and we never cast it.

  • Frost Mages can hide their Icicles. Sunfury Arcane can’t hide Spellfire Spheres which have no gameplay tie-in, they’re purely visual clutter.

  • The Sunfury Arcane Phoenix is orange even though a purple version already exists in the game files. It’s right there, Blizzard.

    What IS the intended identity for Arcane other than “more fragile than its alternatives without a compensating upside”?

:poop:!! BUFF ARCANE SINGLE TARGET DAMAGE !! :poop:

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Being passively more squishy than every other spec in the game (no health, no stam, medium passive DR, no heal, no leech no overshield etc) means that mages must press defensives more frequently than other specs to not be in danger of dying. The solution is to have a higher quantity of defensives (need to press defensive more often, therefor can press defensive more often). Baselining 2 charge barrier in the class tree does a fair amount of heavy lifting. A small DR on alter time (ex 20% for 6 seconds) allows it to be used as a gap filling defensive without adding defensive button bloat, as right now it feels common to just get 1 shot through alter trying to use it in high end content.

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If we’re giving small crumbs of defensive power in the class tree, I think some (or honestly all) of Cauterizing Blink, Tempest Barrier and Flameglow would go a long way as well.

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Yeah the mage tree is rough. Defensive are all over the place. Mages are squishy af right now, and thats only because most of them are frost. Arcane mages are like a wet paper bag that’s lets all you groceries fall on the ground before getting to the kitchen (or killing the boss) 45% of the time.

I don’t think the movement talents are doing anything right now. I’m always going to take shimmer, but now I’m punished for it I guess. Oh and also the people that likes ice floes are punished too!
Just don’t make me go further than 3 blinks for a mechanic because my mage legs can run that fast, or at all. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in using Alter 80% of the time for the 3rd blink charge. Which isn’t ideal because it’s also my third defensive.

I think this would be a great change to all mage specs. Alter time is theoretically very powerful but in practical use it’s not as effective as it appears. If you survive a mechanic on any health, it’s likely you have time to get healed to full. Yes you’re saving some mana on the healer/s, but if you survive a mechanic you survive a mechanic.

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It’s time for my regularly scheduled crash out! This is a defensive rant exclusive for now, but more to come!

I agree with everything said in this thread. The overpruning of our defensives left the class in shambles when it comes to surviving content. Even in open world it’s still kind of a slog, especially when the mobs we’re fighting are not kiteable, but in later bosses in Mythic Raiding and +16 and up keys, our defensive options are far from enough and we need to be constantly babysat by our healers when specs UDK for example can just vibe without even need to press an actual defensive most of the time.

We went from plenty of proactive buttons to compensate the lack of passive tankiness to very limited buttons and practically zero passive options. Healing back up was already extremely limited as a Mage, but now it’s non-existent (Temporal Realignment is a noob trap).

Where other classes got to keep their passive options, even gained some more in some cases or got some compensation buffs someplace else when the defensive pruning happened, we got nothing except a bit stronger barriers and an incredulously mediocre capstone level talent for another 30s off Ice Block/Ice Cold that’s a literal copy/paste of a third row talent. Permafrost Bubble is a super lazy talent and it’s just a disguised third point for Winter’s Protection, but takes a ninth row slot instead.

At this point I feel like Glacial Bulwark should take Ice Cold’s place in the class tree and Ice Cold should be properly moved to being a choice node with Ice Block instead, making a talent that’s useless to 2/3 of this class’s specs now less useless, since it’s still bad regardless (guess which one!). I seriously have no idea why Ice Cold isn’t a choice node with Ice Block yet, since that’s literally the point of the choice nodes design to being with. We also urgently need passive defensive options in our tree.

Mass Barrier was easily the most interesting option we had and our only unique group utility. Instead of gutting it altogether, maybe make it a bit of a lesser version for the group or make it not benefit from Improved Barriers for anyone but the caster. That was a cool defensive we had and the leftover alternative is just beyond useless 99.99% of the time. If even Shroud from Rogues, which is the vastly superior version of Mass Invisibility and is barely used for anything nowadays, ours is just taking up space for nothing.

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nothing to add. very well explain.

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Mobility version rant incoming!

So, let’s start with the completely unnecessary Blink and Shimmer nerfs:

  • Blink got it’s cooldown increased from 15s to 20s and Shimmer from 25s to 30s. We do always get the Flow of Time talent, which reduces both of their cooldowns by 3s.
  • We can decrease Blink’s cooldown further by 2 seconds by picking the Improved Blink talent, which is a choice node with Shimmer. So at the cost Shimmer, we spend a second talent point to get Blink to how it was before Midnight.
  • Shimmer lost its second charge baseline, basically gutting it by more than half of what it used to be on its own if we factor in the extra 5 seconds cooldown. You could consider it to be 2 seconds extra since we’re always taking Flow of Time, but even then it’s still a nerf and leaves it in a very weird 27s recharge timer.
  • Our middle capstone talent is now between a second charge of either Blink or Shimmer versus a slightly different version of Displacement. There’s the caveat that Blink can have two charges this way, but Shimmer is left extremely underpowered without it, basically ensuring that Reflection is very, very rarely taken, if at all.

Now how about Alter Time? It used to be two points to unlock its full potential, but now the class is so flooded with filler and useless talents that it was broken down into 4 points! Master of Time used to be a single point that reduced Alter Time’s cooldown by 10 seconds and granted a charge of Blink/Shimmer on returning to the initial position with it. Now Master of Time is 2-point node that reduces its cooldown by 5s each, and then there’s Time Walk (recharges one charge of Blink/Shimmer on returning) versus the new Temporal Realignment that heals for a bit on getting under 25% health and consuming Alter Time’s cooldown (noob trap talent).

I mentioned Reflection (old Displacement) before, but let’s talk a bit further about it. Previously, we were able to talent into and still have either the baseline second charge of Shimmer or a reduced cooldown on Blink. It used to be a bit inaccessible to pick due to pathing and making sure to pick the capstone talents, but still possible to do it. Now I seriously struggle to think of a situation where we’d favor it over the second charge of Shimmer or even Blink.

We used to have a bit of movement speed after casting Blink/Shimmer and returning from Alter Time, but now it’s been removed. Greater Invisibility also used to be a 40% for movement speed increase for each point instead of the now 20%. Now, we spend an extra point to reduce Greater Invisibility cooldown by 60 seconds, but we’re not really using it on cooldown.

I saved the best for last! WE LOST ICE FLOES!!! Ice Floes used to be a choice node with Shimmer, and while it was the least popular of the choices, it was a good one and had its “dedicated” fans, but above all, it worked, whereas Shimmer versus Improved Blink doesn’t. It’s ironic that this is the expansion where it’d see the most use if it didn’t get removed, either because of Pyroclasm or a reliable way to ensure Ray of Frost is protected against movement disruption.

This is an extra paragraph just to compare against the new shining toy: Devourer Demon Hunter.

  • We lost movement speed after Blink/Shimmer, but they still have theirs (Felfire Haste).
  • Their second charge of their main movement ability doesn’t compete with anything. on top of that, the Annihilator hero tree (the dominant PvE choice right now) gets to pick a third charge!
  • Other movement options in Voidblade, Vengeful Retreat and The Hunt (although to be fair, in some builds they are used for throughput, but the current build uses the first two as either utility or movement exclusively).
  • Mastery increases movement speed.
  • Filler is able to be cast on the move.
  • Double jump + glide + 10% extra movement speed on glide option.
  • I know this one specifically is about defensives instead of mobility, but since I’m doing comparisons anyway, their First in, Last Out talent in their class tree is basically Tempest Barrier that got removed from our class tree.
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Please give arcane something to use as another active DR. Being the squishiest of the 3 (already squishy) mage specs is downright diabolical. In mythic raid content I find myself constantly having to use external healing CDs that should be reserved for tanks. Paladins feels downright impossible to do as arcane. I use my pot, lock rock, ice cold, and I barrier then another toll comes out and I fall over. I shouldn’t feel like I have no agency in if I live or die to unavailable damage.

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Now it’s time for the “useless talents” rant!

I guess let’s start with Mirror Image since it’s one of the more egregious changes. Mirror Image is now purely an aggro dump tool that takes 3 points to reach its full potential. It was one of our best defensives because it used to have an inherent 20% damage reduction component and last 40 seconds. Now it’s lost its DR and only lasts 15 seconds instead, so I’d argue that it’s pretty reasonable that we shouldn’t have to spend 2 more points to reduce its cooldown to 1 minute. As a comparison, Greater Invisibility’s cooldown reduction talent only costs one point for 60s CDR, but even that would still feel expensive on an ability that’s been as neutered as Mirror Image has been.

Frost Conditioning. It’s not very useful even for Frost that’s literally the only one that can get anything remotely useful out of this talent, but it’s straight up useless to the other two specs. Like I mentioned on a previous post, it would at least do something for Arcane and Fire if Glacial Bulwark was moved to the class tree from the Frost spec tree, but even then the only reason someone might pick this talent is because of how many useless ones we are flooded with.

Improved Spellsteal and Improved Remove Curse are pretty much equally bad. Why would I want to nerf my utility by this much for so little pay off that’s useless most of the time? I sincerely do not see any situation where either one would be even remotely worth the investment.

Improved Counterspell doesn’t nerf our utility like the previous two, but is it really something that I want to spend a talent point on? Counterspell already locks enemies spells by 7 seconds, so the one extra doesn’t feel very useful.

I’m still mad Frost Nova’s baseline was nerfed in Dragonflight to give birth to Improved Frost Nova talent. No one even picks this, especially when it’s now competing with the second charge of Nova. Seriously, make this one baseline again.

Why does Captured Thoughts exist? We don’t want to hold our procs for extended periods of time in combat. Is this for open world? Even in dungeons it’s very rare that we sit on a proc for that long between packs unless some RP is in the way, and if it is, it’s usually way longer than the time we have to hold them for.

Mana Confluence is quite literally a 1-point tax for Arcane only. This talent means nothing for either Fire or Frost, but it’s mandatory for our purple counterpart.

I’d argue that Time Manipulation was nerfed so bad that it’s bordering uselessness right now. It used to be a really good talent before.

Mass Polymorph, especially now that it’s competing with Ring of Frost. Longer cooldown, requires melee range, only affects beasts, humanoids and critters, and heals our enemies.

I mentioned Mass Invisibility before as well. It is quite an inferior version of Shroud of Darkness from Rogues that’s already lost most of its usefulness. It should at the very least apply Incantation of Swiftness to everybody. This way we’d have some useful group utility now that Mass Barrier is gone, even if it’s not unique.

Honorable mentions to both tome talents and both charm talents. They’re actually quite powerful, but are super boring secondary stat increases and critical damage bonus. If this is the kind of stuff we’re going to fill our talent trees with, I’d rather have smaller and more impactful ones instead.

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At the risk of sounding like an idiot for not reading every post, I’d like to give some feedback beyond specific buttons and talents. The mage tree, compared to every other tree, feels really weird. Shamans, for example, have multiple starting points, and their trees are scattered with strong utility and defensive options you can flex between. Monk is similar—you don’t see a ton of raw damage nodes, just functional adjustments and niche utility.

Mage, on the other hand, is basically Barrier into mandatory nodes all the way down. I think our hardest choice is Spellsteal vs. Remove Curse (?). What I’m getting at is that there’s basically no diversity in the mage tree side of builds. It’s always the same, and it’s packed with a bunch of dead talents.

Ideally, we should have three starting nodes. While I could give my thoughts on what those should be, it would probably be a waste of time given Blizzard’s history. Arcane could be the middle “neutral” line, with Frost and Fire on either side. Make it something dynamic that actually feels good to choose, not “well, you’re going to fill the whole thing out anyway, so just take the strongest options until you end up with everything except the truly dead talents.”

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Personally, I’ve stopped using it altogether, because the last several times I have used it, it didn’t work. I didn’t teleport back, I didn’t heal up and I nearly died expecting it do so something.

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I mostly agree with feedback in the starting post, here are several additions to it:

  • General tree severely lacks representation of Fire based spells and effects resulting in “what Frost and Arcane based spells and effects would you pick” even for Fire Mages and Frostfire Frost being a fraud that while supposedly mastering both Fire and Frost magic to combine them can learn and use exactly 1 Fire spell (and even 0 if player picks Supernova for range). General tree needs more Fire effects and many previously implemented Fire based effects (so they don’t even need much designing and implementation time and can be just tuned properly and reintroduced) can be quite fitting for general talent tree like Cauterizing Blink, Flameglow and even Blast Wave on a choice node with already available second charge of Frost Nova Ice Ward (so you pick element and form of effect to deal with melee enemies, can’t have both simultaneously and have same amount of anti-melee tools as currently).
  • Mobility of Mages provided in general tree was also overnerfed when other mobile casters like Elemental Shamans and Devastation Evokers still have their main mobility tools (Eles can still have 15-19 seconds of fully mobile casting when they need to and Devokers can still have up to 30 seconds of fully mobile casting when they need to without losing anything when Mages to get comparable tool Ice Floes already had to sacrifice Shimmer and Ice Floes got just pruned in Midnight). That makes current Mage have too low mobility for its supposed mobile / slippery playstyle (especially Arcane that has a lot of stationary hardcasts and got even more in Midnight as mobile Arcane Explosion was replaced by stationary Arcane Pulse) and should be addressed via restoring choice node between Ice Floes and Shimmer.
  • Many existing talents in general tree are too niche or even harmful and should be redesigned. Improved Remove Curse allows to affect 2 targets within 28 seconds when basic Remove Curse allows to affect 2 within 8 seconds, so you spend a talent point to mostly downgrade your existing tool. Improved Spellsteal is similar in allowing to remove 2 effects over 4 seconds when basic Spellsteal can do that up to 4 times, so even in cases where Improved Spellsteal was supposed to shine like enemy having several dispellable effects among which at least 2 should be removed it is often better to just use regular Spellsteal X times (and regular version allows to remove them faster and target the most desired effect even if first 2 casts missed it unlike Improved Spellsteal), so you once again spend a talent point to make your utility worse. Talents like these should be among first to be looked at followed by talents with too low value (like 2 points to reduce Mirror Images cooldown by 1 minute when Images got nerfed both effect and duration wise and should have received this cooldown reduction baseline) or too similar effect (like Winter’s Protection and its direct copy in 9th row).
  • Mages lack tools to deal with consistent damage and recent death statistics in high instanced content confirms that. They need such tools back via either on demand healing in combat through existing cooldowns like Cryo Freeze or frequent enough minor healing / mitigation like Tempest Barrier or Cauterizing Blink.
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