So I am mostly enjoying my mage but an issue that I have ran into is the lack of mobility. I took shimmer where I can blink 2x but other than that and Alter Time it doesn’t seem to have much movement capability. The other day while at DMF though we were killing Moonfang in a group and I was watching a mage shoot out arcane spells and moving SUPER fast nonstop. I’m not sure what they were using, how or why but I was hoping someone would know, or could give tips, to have more mobility. Thank you for your time and help.
[Chrono Shift] in the arcane tree gives quite a bit of movement, especially when playing the AoE build that uses [Orb Barrage]. You’re effectively spamming (or almost spamming) Arcane Barrage and get to keep up a 50% movement speed increase. This is probably the talent that the mage you were watching was using. Unfortunately, it isn’t as useful outside of AoE pulls as you aren’t casting nearly as many barrages (and sometimes its hard to give up the other talents for a small bit of mobility).
My other suggestion would be to consider [Ice Floes] over [Shimmer]. A lot of players (and I believe guide writers) prefer Shimmer because it can supposedly eke out a fraction more DPS, but if you’re playing a rotation that requires hard casting (like Arcane in single target, without Orb Barrage), I find that Ice Floes can be more useful. If you time it correctly, you can cast Ice Floes mid-cast, start moving at the end of one cast, and still get to cast the entire second cast while moving. You get a lot more control over exactly where you end up, meaning it’s good for micro-adjustments instead of macro-adjustments.
The other things to look out for in the general tree for mobility are [Master of Time] and [Displacement]. I find [Displacement] to be a bit clunky to use these days. I believe this is the first time that it and Alter Time existed together, and what used to be the [Master of Time] talent was baked into Displacement.
Regardless, [Master of Time] is almost like having an extra blink (or shimmer) charge on deck. I don’t take the shimmer talent, so I only have 1 charge of blink. But if I need to move a good distance quickly, I can Blink, double tap Alter Time, then Blink again.
There are a few other mobility-related talents in the tree, but I feel that most of the rest aren’t really worth mentioning. They’re things you may decide to pick up on your way to a more important talent.
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I tested it out and I am moving quicker using this obviously but they were still moving probably x2 faster. So when using this I would stay the speed I am moving now with this talent x2. I mean this person was ZOOMING. I didn’t see them with rocket boots equipped either. So I’m not sure what / how they were moving so fast unless there’s a potion or something you can drink / use to make yourself mover faster?
Edit: Thank you for the suggestions so far. Helps moving speed up for farming old content and old quests most certainly.
Does Arcane still get the talent that allows clearcast AM to be used while moving? I recall that being a thing at one point (I also recall it not working half the time and not getting a hotfix). But yeah, I second taking Ice Floes over Shimmer. Just a massive QoL, though I can see the top raiders preferring Shimmer for Mythic push.
The Chronos ability helped me move faster some, but I still want to know how that mage was still going exponentially faster. It was like they had rocket boots but were just wearing normal level 70 gear with no engineering items on. I’m not sure if it was an enchantment or something else entirely.
Edit: Ice Floes is nice. I do agree with that. I just use shimmer on old content for the extra blink to move quicker indoors.