Blastwave gone. Icy Flows gone. Ice Nova shared with Cone of Cold. Slow gone. Chronoshift gone. They want to turn mages into warlocks or what? Turrets?
Blizzard (spell) no longer being able to be cast on an area is just so dumb. They are really dumbing this game down. You can’t zone an area with Blizzard to slow targets or bring out stealthies or create a choke-point.
What is even going on? Is this still WoW?
I get the hate towards rng roots, but how the heck is a mage meant to kite now? Even for solo play and not just PvP.
Ah well. There is always Classic I guess – dwindling the player base even more from retail. No wonder they introduced BOT BGs, because that is all we’ll be playing against with the dumbing down of this game.
I have a Mage alt, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. That said, I agree—I really don’t like the changes they’re making to Mages. Fire Mage looks incredibly bad, and the other stuff you mentioned doesn’t sound great either.
For me personally, when it comes to class changes, I have confidence that every class will eventually be in a good spot. My main concern is playstyle—does the class still feel fun to play? Looking at Fire Mage in Midnight, I honestly don’t think it looks fun. I’m the type of player who will play a class regardless of its viability. If a class is bad but still enjoyable, I’ll play it anyway. I realize my perspective might be more nuanced than most players’, but I think fun should be the main focus of game design, with balance coming second. That said, I come from a fighting game mindset, so my view probably differs from typical MMO players
They’re saying that Blizzard is single-target in Midnight, and I just checked—it does seem to be the case. You can’t target an area with Blizzard anymore; you have to target an enemy directly, which really sucks. I’m not sure about Chronoshift though—I haven’t been able to find any info online on whether it’s been removed or not.
I understand. It’s hard to say how good this will be for PvP with mages, especially with all the other changes on top of the mage adjustments. Blizzard did say they want to reduce the amount of CC in PvP, so I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how it all plays out once Midnight comes out.
Even if that were the case, fire and arcane do not currently have a good way to reliably kite. I don’t think we want to see mages become turret casters, do we? Icy Flows was a balanced spell, it competed with shimmer. Seeing it removed makes me sad, because being able to cast Ray of Frost, Glacial Spike or any other spell on the move added more dimension to the game.
Blastwave hits hard too because it was a good way to create distance between you and your target or for some hilarious yeets. Maybe having it be a choice node between Dragon’s Breath would have been the better direction.
Currently, the hero frostfire talent to reduce cool downs for fire (if you are frost) only affects… Dragon’s Breath lol. A little silly, honestly.
First I’ve heard of this. Blink with all the cooldown modifiers is at 15 seconds. No doubt about it though, frost will probably be the preferred PvP spec as they can reliably kite and still dish it.
This had to happen, man. Mage has been the best PvP class overall and that is largely due to the kit being completely overloaded. Mage literally has no weakness.
It could end up working out favorably if other kits are getting pruned too. The game could feel more smooth if you don’t need all of those things and maybe we’ll get to play our characters. I will say, I was watching Kalvish’s stream and he mentioned how mage looks horrible and I consider his opinion to be highly valuable, so mage could possibly be ruined.