On the base tree, it shows a second ability as “Kleptomania” where it steals ALL beneficial abilities. I’m guessing that is exclusive to Arcane, though it doesn’t say it directly.
Kleptomania is an Arcane PVP talent. It’s probably just there to state that Kleptomania would replace Spellsteal if you took it.
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Admittedly, Arcane is my last spec choice. I play Frost mainly and Fire as an offspec. Arcane is something I dabble with occasionally just for giggles.
The Mage trees in Dragonflight are focused on offering new talents to explore, supporting underrepresented archetypes and builds, and allowing for cross-specialization abilities.
Blizzard stating the above in the Dev notes and then this is barely true.
For class trees, everyone I’ve seen has specced the same way in the class tree, where in the end the only new cross-spec talents we can all access now are Greater Invis and maybe Blast Wave. I have yet to see anyone seriously going to the left or right capstones at all.
The spec trees themselves are currently pigeonholing into the same builds as Shadowlands, for Arcane, Fire, and Frost. There isn’t much new build variety at the moment. However, there could definitely be, but the tree connections need to be adjusted and some talents moved, merged, or removed, to create that flexibility.
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Some of these nodes are choices at all, which then means you have to take things in the previous links. For example, literally no Mage regardless of spec is going to pass on RoP/IF because it is a straight up massive dps loss not to take it. For that matter, assuming RoP still auto-drops, it will be mandatory to run that for another expansion. Likewise, if there are some talents that massively out-perform others then those will always be taken which also means taking the 2-3 links behind it. SP/meteor for example need massive buffs to be considered.
Similarly, I don’t see any Mage not taking the Ice Block, Shimmer, crit or haste nodes. So realistically, of the 31 talents at least half of those are basically required. What’s more, in order to take utility like DB you need to take other talents out of the above sections so you risk losing other utility or damage output to take that.
At the end of the day, the ‘baseline’ row actually looks like it’s taking spells away from us and without major changes or additional links this will be another expansion where we set our talents on launch day and then never change them again. Yaaay.
Also the fact that RoP is now a baseline for all specs is a big pass from me. Yes, IF exists but if they keep RoP to drop on our major CDs (and potentially Time Anomaly procs?) then it’s a no brainer and will be twice the dps gain of IF. Another expansion where RoP is mandatory is a big no from me. I will play almost any other class before I run RoP.
I’ll also admit that I am very confused about some of the talents and whether they are typos. 6000% reduced magic damage taken seems broken, and if that works in raid/dungeons then we’re basically invincible for most bosses. There’s so much useless filler in the trees and most of the time it comes down to having to take unexciting talents that aren’t intuitive before taking the same talent that we currently have.
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Exactly, and the connections to get there aren’t the best either. I get they likely gave you “bleh” choices to get to some good ones on purpose, but those are REALLY BLEH choices.
Agreed. IF needs a buff in order to bring it “on par” with RoP, especially if they are going to share a node. As of now, there are ZERO reasons to take IF.
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As an arcane mage, the choice to pick up Ice Floes is really juicy to me. Depending on the mobility options I can get in the Arcane tree, I would honestly consider taking those lackluster nodes just to get to ice floes.
Rather than buff Incanter’s Flow, I’d prefer to see RoP just removed. We’ve been asking for it to be removed basically since it was added. All they’ve done since then is buff it out of control.
And is Meteor really not that strong? I’m not well versed in fire spells, but “260% of Spell Power + an additional 66% over time” on an instant cast sounds like a pretty strong extra bunch of damage. Sure, it won’t synergize well, but damage is damage.
Right now Meteor, Kindling, and Pyroclasm are all on the same row and Kindling is just a better option.
Considering where Meteor is on the new trees, I’d be hard pressed to take a path in the direction, even as a Fire Mage.
This is the best I could come up with that would include Meteor, and I don’t feel good about it. You completely skip Ice Floes/Shimmer here, but only because I felt that the center bottom is pretty essential for ALL mages. Note there is still a spare point I didn’t spend.
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I really don’t like the Tomes being in there at all. It’s incredibly lazy design and makes me feel like I absolutely MUST go down both sides to get that 4% crit / haste.
The Tomes, Rune of Power, and Time Anomaly feel like absolute must haves for any build. If they were all in a straight line, it wouldn’t be so bad, but as it stands, this current set up gives us remarkably little choice.
Also, anyone else notice that our left, right, and center don’t connect at all until halfway through our tier 2 talents? That’s a big part of the problem with this tree. With RoP in the center and the tomes on either side, we MUST go down all three paths. And they’re not even thematic paths… just random talents strewn together.
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Man, I’m not happy with that Fire Tree.
On the ST side, if you want to target that Legion Fire Mage feel which was one of the best times to play a fire mage, you’re going to have to give up Sun King’s Blessing or Kindling unless you take a point out of Critical Mass, Firemind, or Blaster Master to have the point to float for that second capstone.
On the AOE side, you can still make it down to the Fire Frenzy Capstone, but it’s going to have to come at the cost of Living Bomb or Combustion Duration/Tempered Flames if you want to still keep Firemind and Blaster Master.
Both of these play out this way due to the decisions to make both Combustion a talent in the dead center of the talent tree, and making Flame On a two point talent (ensuring that we spend at least another two years with Flame On being the major element stifling fire build variety). Either Combustion has to go with Combustion Duration taking its seat, or Flame On has to be a single point.
/Preference goes to making Flame On one point for the symbolic victory.
Class tree meanwhile, I don’t think Shatter is really an option for Fire Mage unless we get a Disciplinary Command talent at some point. At least one tome is going to be mandatory which ensures Tempest Barrier and Cryo Freeze are NEVER getting taken. They’re way too expensive and you will not hit a capstone if you do.
Lastly Dragon’s Breath and Meteor are dead in the water where they are. I already need to spend 24 points to get Dragon’s Breath. With a 45 second cooldown, that button’s just dead to me now, and I love Dragon’s Breath. If Alexstraza’s Fury is going to try to be my incentive to grab that talent, it needs more oomph than being another Hot Streak Starter. Especially seeing as Frost’s Snowstorm makes Cone of Cold into a major shatter burst.
Meteor meanwhile is just a button that only Fire Mages are going to get much value out of, so I don’t see why it’s a class-agnostic capstone.
Good things I like:
Well. I love Legion Fire Mage effectively being back. It’s the best iteration of Fire by a long shot. I just wish that it didn’t have to come at the expense of Dragon’s Breath being relevant because that was a big fun button back then, and Alexstraza’s Fury doesn’t do nearly enough to make me want to dig for it. Maybe if it reduced Dragon’s Breath’s cooldown as well that’d be fine.
Shimmer and/or the tomes being gatekeepers for hitting Shifting Power and Time Anomaly is kind of brilliant. That’s a big decision which gives you that sort of progression build v. farm build choice, and that’s pretty cool.
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That is what I came up with as well. Although I feel like we are wasting points having to pick invisibility at all. If you were going to go arcane spec, you would ignore the beginning right half of the tree and still be able to pick up greater invisible with a lot more healing regen. Right now, it does not look like greater invisible replaces normal invisible. No one is going to want to spend points on that since normal has a longer 3 min cd.
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Edit: Got it. I had a talent choice that wasn’t necessary. You can go down the left and middle, but yes, you still lose Shimmer:
I also just noticed something - fire and frost are keeping their spec-specific defensives (cauterize and cold snap) to themselves, but arcane’s greater invis is given to everyone?
Greater invis should be moved out of the general tree and into the arcane tree. It’d also make the regular invis a bit less painful to take.
You don’t need both tomes to make a decent build. Fire and frost already have enough crit build into them through the specialization trees. You just need haste. Arcane doesn’t need haste at all. So they can skip the haste tome and just pick the crit tome.
The real choice, for me at least, is whether to take meteor/ time anomaly build or Shifting power/time anomaly build. Meteor is fun when it lands, but most tanks ruin that feeling because they move a lot. Shifting power can at least be used to reduce the cd on rune of power and give more aoe.
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https://www.wowhead.com/beta/talent-calc/mage/arcane/BMFEmBUHQoGDxBBEOVSZFVQVQRQoQQEBQ
Gonna have to play around with this a bit more. Don’t like how you have to take Rule of Threes in order to advance the tree.
Its not that insane. A mixed fire/frost “elementalist” build was popular in Vanilla
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greater invisibility should be moved out and replaced with supernova, you know, the move that is mostly used as interrupts against a bunch of casters, also known as utility (which is what the general tree is supposed to be)
Additionally, I would say that one of the marks of a good mage prior to MoP tree pigeonholing was knowing where the various secondary and tertiary school spells were useful across the various facets of the game and generally making use of just about the entire class toolkit. Post-WoD mages especially felt very, uhh… “paint-by-numbers” in comparison.
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i take back what i said, i kinda think these frost mage talent trees suck. there’s so much rng and boring % damage increases.
our aoe capstone isn’t even properly controllable.
however, i will make 1 exception, even though ice nine is rng, the ability to generate 30 icicles instantly is a really cool idea for a “machine gun icicle” build.
I’m of the opinion that the pet should have some talents to it which make running a pet build the go-to for aoe. maybe we should have some legitimate aoe capstone talent that heavily buffs our water elemental and gives it huge aoe capabilities for like 10 seconds or something because cold front is stupid.
i think it’s dumb that frost mages have to take cold snap to even have access to their main damage cooldown.
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