Checked the PTR, and holy crap. Didn’t realize they changed so much stuff. Where have I been??? lol
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AoE will be stellar. So much so that Arcane will go from one of the worst M+ specs to one of the best, if not the best on Fortified weeks.
On the other hand, almost nothing was done to our ST rotation and everything still very much revolves around the TotM burst window coupled with RS, which I personally detest.
Ideally, what I would have liked to see is RS replaced with a single target nuke and an alternative charge spender that would be the clear go to for ST situations. For the short term I would have settled for replacing it with Mark of Aluneth and changing Arcane Harmony to buff it instead of ABarr. Alas, it didn’t happen.
I will take what I can get at this point. Maybe I will shift my focus on M+ now that having an Arcane Mage isn’t the equivalent of an extra affix, lol. But that game mode has way too many problems so idk. Frost is also looking really good and I might give that a try, though I have always been an Arcane Mage so I am not sure about that either.
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Do you happen to have the notes? I couldn’t find them on WoWhead
The changes aren’t new. OP just happened to discover them today, lol.
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yeahhhh, lol. been working so much that I missed the changes. I like the changes to the talent tree. Wished Nether tempest was buffed. Like why can’t it hit hard as a dot?
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MAGE
- Take a look at the developer’s notes in the Mage feedback thread .
- All ability damage increased by 15%.
- Invisibility is now learned by all specializations at level 16.
- Incanter’s Flow now replaces Invisibility in the Class tree.
- Shifting Power has been moved to Incanter’s Flow previous location.
- Rune of Power and Meteor have been removed.
- New Talent: Ice Cold – Ice Block now reduces all damage taken by 70% for 6 seconds but no longer grants Immunity, prevents movement, attacks, or casting spells. Does not incur the Global Cooldown.
- Ice Cold is located on Shifting Power’s previous location on the talent tree.
- New Talent: Mass Barrier – Cast Prismatic/Blazing/Ice Barrier (based on your specialization) on yourself and 3 nearby allies. 2 minute cooldown.
- Mass Barrier is located as a choice node with Mass Invisibility.
- New Talent: Mass Invisibility – You and your allies within 40 yards instantly become invisible for 10 seconds. Taking any action will cancel the effect. Does not affect allies in combat.
- Mass Invisibility located as a choice node with Mass Barrier.
- Developers’ note: The PvP Talent for Arcane will be updated in a future PTR build.
- Accumulate Shielding is now a 1 rank talent (was 2). Barrier cooldowns now recharge 30% faster while the shield persists at rank 1.
- Accumulate Shielding now connects to the Time Anomaly/Temporal Warp choice node.
- Time Manipulation is now a 1 rank talent (was 2). Now reduces the cooldown of your loss of control abilities by 2 seconds at rank 1.
- Time Manipulation now connects to the Time Anomaly/Temporal Warp choice node.
- Displacement now heals the caster for 20% of their maximum health when returning to the Blink location.
- Winter’s Protection now reduces the cooldown of Ice Block by 30 seconds per rank.
- Displacement is now located after Flow of Time.
- Greater Invisibility now replaces Invisibility when talented and is located below Temporal Velocity.
- Mass Barrier is now cast on yourself and 4 allies (was 3).
- Fixed an issue with Prismatic Barrier applying to more than 4 allies.
- Mass Invisibility duration increased to 12 seconds (was 10 seconds).
- Diverted Energy’s barriers now heal you for 20/40% of the damage absorbed (was 10/20%).
- Flow of Time reduces the cooldown of Blink by 2/4 seconds (was 1/2 seconds).
- Temporal Velocity’s movement speed duration increased to 3 seconds and 5 seconds after using Blink and Alter Time, respectively.
- Temporal Velocity’s movement speed after Blinking increased by 10/20% (was 5/10%).
- Incantation of Swiftness now increases movement speed by 40/80% for both Invisibility and Greater Invisibility.
- Ice Cold can no longer be dispelled.
- Fixed an issue that caused Displacement to replace Invisibility and Greater Invisibility.
- Incanter’s Flow damage now flows between 2% and 10% (was 4% and 20%).
- Mass Barrier now always casts on nearby players instead of pets or summons.
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Developers’ notes: After several rounds of updates to the Fire and Frost talent trees, each tree has seen a significant boost in power, which in turn has put their overall throughput quite a bit higher than their live counterparts. While some gain in power is to be expected due to these changes, their current tuning has them quite a bit higher than we intend. Due to this, in the latest build we’re reducing the damage of many of their spells to get us a better baseline to work from for the two specs. This should make it easier for us to continue to iterate on tuning based on internal and external testing as the Fractures in Time PTR continues to develop. The intent with these tuning changes is not to disrupt the current flow, playstyles, or talent builds that have arisen with the updates but rather keep the relative balance and breakdown of abilities similar as the are now but with just a bit less output. Thank you for the great amount of feedback and testing during the Fractures in Time PTR. You’ve been instrumental to development of the Mage updates.
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Arcane
- Arcane Power has been removed.
- Arcane Surge duration has been increased by 3 seconds and now increases spell damage by 35% (was 10%).
- New Talent: Concentrated Power – Clearcasting makes your next Arcane Missiles channel 20% faster or causes your next Arcane Explosion to echo for 40% damage.
- Orb Barrage has been redesigned – Arcane Barrage has a 10% chance per Arcane Charge consumed to launch an Arcane Orb in front of you.
- Clearcasting no longer makes Arcane Missiles channel time faster.
- Arcane Barrage is now learned baseline at level 11.
- Clearcasting is now learned baseline at level 12.
- Reverberate is no longer a choice node with Nether Tempest and is located directly after Arcane Missiles.
- Siphon Storm no longer grants Arcane Charges and now halves Evocation’s channel time.
- Nether Tempest now connects to Chrono Shift and Supernova in the Arcane tree.
- Improved Prismatic Barrier reduces magic damage taken by 10% (was 5%) and reduces harmful Magic effect durations by 15% (was 10%).
- Improved Prismatic Barrier no longer connects to Touch of the Magi.
- Arcing Cleave no longer connects to Touch of the Magi.
- Arcane Barrage damage increased by 6% and no longer has a 3 second cooldown.
- Resonance now increases Arcane Barrage damage by 12% per target hit (was 15%).
- Arcane Explosion damage reduced by 6%.
- Arcane Orb damage reduced by 6%.
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Arcane
This is one of the most impactful changes they made along with removing ROP. Add to that the reworking of Orb Barrage, and I for one can’t be happier.
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PVPwise - Honestly, with no defensive buff changes. I feel that it don’t really matter.
Are we getting Cold Snap? No.
Are we getting cauterize? No.
Are we getting temporal barrier where Cold Snap and Cauterize are on the tree for Frost and Fire. No. Why. Because only other specs get our best defensive (alter time)…
I see Arcane Orb been nerfed 6% in damage. Why? Was our 26k arcane orbs doing too much damage? That’s like 2/3 of 1 rapid fire hit.
But maybe, I am wrong. All I got to say is…ARE YAL READY FOR ICE COLD??
Give up your immunities for a 70% reduction in damage but you can move and cast now!!!
lmao its w/e. I am trying to be happy for the attention but…as an arcane mage, we need more defensives in PVP. Period. All these hybrids are straight up casting heals and also using instant self heals with no reduction in dps output…make it make sense.
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What they got was Greater Invisibility. Alter Time was never Arcane exclusive.
That’s because of new Orb Barrage and Arcane Orb being one of the few actually uncapped AoE spells in the game.
I see you missed the barrier talent in the general tree. Another 2 min defensive cd
No, I was saying…arcane have to share it with other specs but they don’t share cauterize or cold snap. We should be getting temporal barrier in our tree where cold snap and cauterize is for fire but no…blizzard went a different way with us on defenses for some reason.
Are we talking about mass barrier? I can bet you a dollar its dispellable but, sure, I’ll be sure I use it for the group before I die after the hybrids heal themselves to full.
I believe they raised the healing from diverted energy from 10 to 20% i think. That will help some. I remember that being pretty good in SL.
Here are the most current notes for the PTR update of 10.1.5
Member when they said that mage changes were going to be primarily for Arcane then did one round of changes followed by twice as many for fire and frost.
I member.
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I’m used to this sort of abuse by Blizzard. Mass Invisibility is still bugged, 2 months later.
Broken talents, like Nether Tempest and Super Nova still exist. It’s ridiculous how much more love fire and frost get, but hey… At least there are some mage updates 
At this point it’s amazing that Blizzard still remembers arcane exists, so we just take what we can get.
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- Fixed an issue that prevented staves that were transmogged into the Mage legendary, Aluneth, from occasionally transforming into a sheep when casting Polymorph. It’s baaaack!
This was nice to see, but it would be even nicer if I could apply Aluneth transmogs to the crafted wand.
Blizz just doesn’t know what to do with arcane. It has kind of always felt that way.
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Pepperidge Farm remembers!
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They really backed themselves into a corner with the lore. Arcane used to be a corrupting force pre-Legion. Post-Legion it became the power of the Titans, the manifestation of the primal force of order. What are the Titan’s known for? Ordering the cosmos. What class specialization fits this cosmic theme? Balance Druid.
Removing RS and Shifting Power would be a start. Covenant stuff should have never moved forward.
Talent revamp was a massive waste of developer time and resources in my opinion. Classes need work and they wasted time designing a new talent system with what I view as having all of the same flaws as the old one but now with the problem of players feeling their kit is constantly incomplete. It’s a nice idea to have talent points to invest every level but this is not the way. You should have had a complete kit for your spec and then got talent points to spend on modifiers. MAYBE with an occasional ability unlock. Like at most one in a spec.
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