Completely agree.
I think the developers just don’t understand what was asked when people wanted to go back to the larger trees. We want options, not a dozen required abilities to manage to be competitive.
We want to mix a key power with another key ability or two. Not mix glacial spike, ray of frost, ice nova, shifting power, cone of cold, blast wave, and dragon’s breath into the same build. Heck, the current tier set forces glacial spike…literally didn’t want Blizz to force choices on us.
Unfortunately, to an extent, forced choices in Tier sets are likely going to happen. In order to continue providing sets to us, they will occasionally have to incorporate a talent that may not always be taken or a rotation that isn’t common. It can provide a healthy change to what could be an otherwise static game.
Tier sets will probably force a talent for a season and then move on to something else. What concerns me are the hero talents that rely on other talents - especially under-utilized ones. Since those are supposed to be “evergreen” it effectively means that you absolutely must take specific talents to make the tree work - which, to me, feels like it defeats the purpose.
But I do agree that Blizzard’s vision for “new talent trees” did not align with player expectations. I’m not sure I’ve seen a single person say “this is exactly what I was hoping for.” A lot of “better than what we had” or “better than what it could have been” but certainly not what we wanted.
Except that we’ll have the same one for 2 seasons in a row because Blizz was too lazy to design something new for Season 4 this time…
I for one won’t be participating in this so called “season” at all. This rehashing of every previous raid of the expansion in the final season may have worked once in SL because so many players gave up on that terrible expansion and it gave them a chance to catch up on what they had missed if they wanted to. However, making it a permanent feature of the game as a bookend to every expansion going forward is an awful, shortsighted and, yes, lazy idea.
Copium mode on: It’s to make War Within amazing. Right? RIGHT???!
Omg, you shouldn’t be huffing that stuff, it’s bad for you! 
P.S. DM me your copium dealer’s digits because I have a feeling I will be needing them! 
On one hand, I agree with you, but on the other I don’t. I won’t count it as content, but it might at least be better than 6-12 months of sitting around doing nothing.
Certainly, the idea that this counts as “content” is a meh idea, and the fact that they just rehash old raids with a slight difficulty bump, with reused tier sets etc just screams of being lazy. It isn’t enough to tie people over, and realistically the majority of people will run things a few times then go into their usual lull before a new expansion. This will be doubly true due to having very small raids, and fewer new dungeons.
To counter that though, I think most people would prefer this over the standard content drought that we see every expansion. With a short raid tier, it’s been a long time since most raiders got AOTC (in part because as usual, m+ spam allows you to outgear the raid quickly) and those doing m+ were generally geared out halfway through the season. Having no content would cause the usual issues where players unsub to go do other things for 6 months. Even if this content only keeps people interested for a few months, that might be better than nothing, and it might even encourage some players to try new roles etc with less pressure.
Well in my case that’s exactly what happens in spite of these pseudo seasons, lol. I’ve long since outgrown WoW as my only/main game and frequently ditch it for months at a time in between major patches to play something else. Especially in recent years when we’ve been spoiled for choice with quality games.
But yeah, I suppose it’s better than nothing. I just don’t appreciate the implicit pulling of the wool over the eyes that comes with calling this content when it’s really not. I also don’t like that it’s now a precedent and not just a one off with SL.
This is a fair point, in addition to issues with the base spec. It feels like mage has a lot of utility spells that aren’t actually applicable in a lot of cases, or have weird overlap.
If I want to play arcane mage, I want to play arcane, not arcane + have every single CC From every other element. To be fair, having some stuff helps sell the class fantasy, and you’d expect an arc mage to know how to cast a frostbolt, but I would definitely like to see things trimmed a bit - make whatever CC we get more impactful, but a choice between the options instead of getting all of them.
I agree with the person who made this thread and with you.
I enjoyed my frostmage (on EU servers) for many years, but since the rework its no fun for me anymore.
Its totally overloaded with spells and that is no fun for me. Its pure stress. Esp. the awful glacial spell 
i have still ptsd from BFA. Remember when we could 1shot us at that 1 boss? 
Playing mage just isn’t fun anymore. I tried the 3 specs, none of them are enjoyable at all to play. They’re stressful, and mostly feel like they should be played by bots. I don’t know where this idea came from that mages should be this complicated. They never were. But suddenly in Dragonflight, the class went from being a good choice for slower and more methodical players to a class that’s all about being in an absolute rush.
The gameplay doesn’t feel smooth or natural; it’s almost like you’re fighting the flawed, incoherent game mechanics more than playing the actual game.
The proof to that statement is that it’s nearly impossible to play this class at a reasonable level without external addons. Even with them, it still feels off. You’re just being asked to think of too many things at the same time, without really being rewarded for that insane amount of work required to pull it off.
It’s just so tiring. I’d rather troubleshoot a printer than play my mage longer than 15 minutes.
That’s exactly what it is. The only workable mage builds are cobbled together by theorycrafters from a hopelessly outdated toolkit that has itself been cobbled together by the devs from nearly 20 years worth of haphazardly added spells, talents and mechanics that don’t work well together and in fact often have counter synergies.
This has been a long standing issue that has progressively gotten worse over the years and went completely off the rails following SL and the DF talent tree rework (which was completely mishandled). Unless they devote a great deal of time and resources to correcting this course in TWW things are likely to get even worse, Hero Talents not withstanding.
You have the choice to not take them. In pvp all these abilities are usefull. There is no way we lose all CC’s while other specs retain them.
Problem caused by the new talent trees. Every class got a bunch of CC spells, before you have to choose which to take.
Oh yeah, of course. It’s not just mages that need pruning. Virtually all other specs do as well.
I haven’t PvPed in a very long time but I actually question the validity of that. First off, all of these CC abilities have long cooldowns and it’s not like you can chain them because your target will become immune. Besides, being stunlocked is no fun and PvP shouldn’t revolve around who has the most CCs. Maybe in BGs with objectives these would be more useful but does anyone do anything besides Arena these days?
I mainly do BG’s, I’m bad at arena 
. I think BG’s will be even more relevant next xpac if Battleground Blitz becomes rated.
You can and you do, for example: Ice Nova after Blast Wave, to get some space from melee (too many gap closers, it’s so annoying).
Icy veis dps ranking dont agree with you
Say again fire make being s tier and both arcane and frost in A tier seems mage are doing very well.
I never said mages weren’t doing well. On the contrary, we’ve almost always had at least one spec that has been a top performer. But that comes at a cost because each of the three specs have various rotational and/or mechanical difficulties that most other casters don’t and none of the other ranged or melee specs have to deal with those either. The level of skill required to perform well with a mage is far greater than that of almost any other class for little to no additional benefit. On top of that mages, just like the other original classes, are also terribly dated and bloated.
I think almost every spec feels this way. we need a max of like 12 - 24 buttons per spec or some sht. 30-40 keybinds is too dmn much
This and atleast two different playstyles each spec, that would rly be nice and fun.
And tier-sets that does NOT only buff 1 ability, thats just bad design.
I will say that I find mage to be the most difficult class to level as a new alt. I’m trying, but I found it much more natural and simpler to level warlock alts (probably due to the built-in absorb shield/health regeneration abilities and the pets).