Slow
-Needs to be a more powerful version like how spellsteal is a more powerful version of dispel magic for this to be considered
Suggestion: Increases cast speed as well.
Cryo-free and tempest barrier should both be 2 points
Iām not sure if this was mentioned, but I couldnāt find it. The talent Wildfire increasing your critical strike chance while combustion is up makes no sense since combustion already increases our critical strike chance by 100%ā¦ I hope they change it to increasing critical strike damage instead.
Wildfire: Ignite deals 10% additional damage. When you activate combustion, you gain 8% critical strike, and up to 4 nearby allies gain 2% critical strike for 10 secs.
I think the āimproved barrierā talents from the spec trees should be removed from them and a single āimproved barrierā talent that has effects based on your specialization added to the class tree since every spec mage has a barrier. Then each spec could get something far more interesting added to their spec trees.
Iām in agreement here. There doesnt seem to be anything new or innovative with this iteration of mage talent trees. Outlaw rogue, in comparison, looks like it has new, juicy talents to play withā¦mage looks frustrating right now and i can understand veteran mage players being upset at the moment.
And as far as im concerned, a lot of the abilities in these trees (for all classes) SHOULD BE BASELINE, not reduced to a choiceā¦talent trees in previous versions of wow either padded stats, enhanced baseline abilities, or introduced new abilitiesā¦Itās not that complicated. These talent trees may seem cool to new players coming in, but a slap in the face to veterans who have been wanting something new for a LONG time.
Obviously players are going to go down a talent path to pick their class interrupt/stun or risk not getting invited to groups.
Just looking at the capstone level, I think the class capstone does an okay job satisfying the stated design goal of allowing mages to integrate multiple school of magic into their builds. Meteor is decent with Combustion, but also fits into Touch of Magic or Winterās Chill window, Time Anomaly offers per-spec CD which probably is actually most beneficial to Frost due to Icy Propulsion effect, and Shifting Power/Shatter interacts with CDR effect with Kindling/Icy Propulsion builds, and I could see trying to leverage Shatter for the Harmony Barrage.
Going upward from the capstone level, things gets a bit unfocused. Many people have already mentioned the under-budget 3 points talents, but also besides the 2 Tomes , Rune of Power, and Shimmer none of the other nodes in the mid level really makes me feel good about taking them. Ideally Iād like to see more talents that intersect specs or explore unused utility space, just some example:
Improved Frost Nova: Frost Nova can now be cast while casting other spells, but does no damage and lasts 2 seconds shorter.
Flaming Barrier: Whenever an attack fully consumes Barrier, proc an (auto crit) Fire Blast on that enemy. This Fire Blast contributes toward Icy Propulsion, Hot Streak and Kindling
Mana Shield: Whenever your Barrier absorbs damage, return mana to you, or to a nearby healer if you have more than 90% mana.
Incanterās Flow: you gain 2% haste and builds up to 10% haste, cycling every 10 seconds
Improved Spellsteal: Successfully stealing a buff grants an 1% intellect buff for 10 seconds
Lingering Magic: Slows, roots and other CC effects lasts 1 seconds longer, and Barriers, Mirror Image and Alter Time and spellstolen buffs lasts 5 seconds longer.
Missile Storm: Each Icicle or Magic Missiles projectile has 5% chance of launching another one.
In particular there are some design space for interesting Barrier talents that are more than just healing or more barriers, and also mana support for Burn/Conserve arcane specs. There are definitely some interesting things that can be done with Mana Gem like storing mana used in combat. Frost spec centered around Icy Veins could be an issue, but maybe thatās just how the spec is designed.
Oh, I 100% agree. There will always be those builds that will be stronger than others. In the past however the difference has been somewhat minimised, or falls into niche categories (eg: you swap a few talents around based on whether the fight is ST, cleave, AoE, burst adds etc). The main issue lies where you get talents that are so much stronger than the other options that thereās no point in even having the other talent. Things like RoP where youāre going to see a 10-20% dps increase over IF just makes it feel bad.
Unfortunately that is what they seem to be doing. Instead of reworking the specs that are outdated, stale or have been unfun for some time now theyāre putting all this work into shiny new talent trees that offer nothing. This was their chance to make big sweeping changes to keep the game fresh after 2 disaster expansions but DF is looking like itās just the same food on a different coloured plate.
I really want to be optimistic about Dragonflight, however, I find myself agreeing with this stentiment.
As I was looking over the Mage trees, I found myself asking, āWhat does all this really do for us that the existing talent system does not?ā
If we remember back to the Wrath-Cata talent transition, the reason that Blizzard wanted to get away from talent trees was to get rid of all the extra overhead of cookie-cutter builds and useless (uninteresting-but-mandatory) talents.
Now, much could be said on how successful they have been with that, depending on the class, spec, and expansion. However, right now, as I look at these new trees, I find myself feeling like this is a regression, complete with all the same problems they tried to solve back in 2010 with the then-new talent system.
Iād like to keep an open mind about this system, and I eagerly await their response to the feedback so far. I just have this gut feeling like this whole experiment with talent trees in Dragonflight is ultimately going to lead back to a simplified talent system. The cycle continues.
I think they could have accomplished more with fewer resources if they had instead taken a close look at the existing talent system (as of Shadowlands) and simply reviewed each spec and talent and made appropriate iterative changes.
Youāve managed to articulate this sentiment perfectly.
Blizzard is seemingly walking back on all the reasons they implemented the āsimplifiedā talent trees to begin with. In fact, it just feels like they took all of the passives/abilities that we would otherwise get baseline, and threw them onto talents, alongside the things we would pick from the current āsimplifiedā talent trees, and just put it on a larger talent tree to give the illusion of āchoiceā. But as youāve stated and as many of us already knew for a long time, cookie-cutter builds will always exist.
Exactly. This is what they should have done and I am struggling to understand why they didnāt. It just feels like gross incompetence at this point.