Think you can still have pet by not taking Lonely Winter, just cant access good talents under it. And i heard you don’t get a 2nd WE when you Veins, or worse yours doesn’t even get empowered,
No it’s gone. Check the PTR talent tree on WoWhead. Even the patch notes said “Summon Water Elemental” removed.
It is an RPG… Them making decisions around role playing is kind of the point of the game… As it is an RPG…
And the quote of “The whole point of RP is that you create your own content without relying on devs, isn’t it?”…
Um… No.
Playing through the game the RPG that the devs made, as the classes they made, using the abilities they made for you to play the Role Playing Game with is role playing… You know how each class has its own unique look, feel, quests, story lines, armor, weapons, abilities, animations? Yeah, all of that is content made by the devs and is role playing content. The fact anyone needs to explain this to you is mind blowing.
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People that play wow for RP is miniscule and even smaller playerbase than 1% of mythic raiders. They shouldn’t be taken in consideration when gameplay and balance changes are implemented.
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You’re the one who is hyper fixating on the “RPing” aspect as the crux of your argument. I said it as one of many reasons why it should stay. And I didn’t even use the term roleplay/RP. I just said my character’s headcanon is dead now. Then I listed a bunch of more prominent reasons why this change is not a good one.
Please focus on those aspects of the discussion instead of aiming at the perceived weakest argument, which isn’t even the main argument.
The main points are:
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There’s no reason to remove this choice. The new talent system allows for WoW the support player choice. Pruning is no longer required. If they want to keep a suboptimal ability in the game as an option, then its fine.
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The ability has legit uses and there is currently no replacement for those uses. The elemental can be used to soak certain mechanics, like in the Mage Tower challenge. A challenge I completed a long time ago using my Water Elemental. It also has an interaction with Mirror Image where it takes aggro away from you and can tank powerful outdoor elites/bosses temporarily. We’re losing things like that in exchange for nothing.
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Everyone suffers from the lack of an opt-in option. Even if you hate pets, you MUST use one now during Icy Veins. And it has a bunch of activatable abilities that you must use. And you have to make a ton of keybinds to accommodate for that. And if it dies, bugs out, or if a boss doesn’t support pets (flying bosses), you lose your biggest DPS cooldown. And you cannot opt out of this. This is bad for everyone.
Please talk about the big issues instead of nitpicking about RPers being a minority, (which apparently means they should be ignored I guess, even though there’s a talent system that allows all parties to get what they want at no cost?)
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I personally haven’t seen a good reason to remove the choice. Rolling it into Icy Veins as well so it gets use from more players? That makes sense. It does not support removing the option for a solo pet. Still waiting for that justification. I’m starting to think there isn’t one, beyond people being petty and taking enjoyment away from other players for no reason. Please, give me a good reason why it should not be allowed as a separate ability. I need a reason to accept the change.
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Might be baseline, lonely winter still says replaces water elemental in tooltip in the new calculator. Soooo… if you don’t take LW…you still have summon WE.
By this logic you invalidate every ‘non optimally meta’ node choices for about every class out there.
It’s not just for RP. The perma Water Elemental has its uses for things other than endgame too. Leveling is one of them. Being an extra target, possibly threat dump after Mirror Images and the invaluable on-demand ranged snare.
Soloing outdoor content as a mage is already a major pain, because not everything can be kited, and the WE helps a lot with that.
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i have never had any issues as a mage in open world. Solo content has been extremely easy for 10 years already. Even rares, unless they are 5ppl elite rares - are super easy solo. And pet without a taunt will not hold anything, one split ice lance and mobs are on you forever
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I have, the Elites in Zaralek for the elite quests, I have no problem soloing them as guardian. But you probably have better gear and skill that myself as a Frost mage. And yes, it can’t hold threat, but it is an extra target for after Mirror images that can buy you some seconds if you’re able to play with distances.
Even if half of the playerbase prefers to use Lonely Winter for meta numbers, doesn’t invalidade letting the perma WE live as an option for people who needs it.
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I’m really mad at this. This feels like them not taking the time to make everyone happy and giving a sub optimal compromise. Mages that didn’t like pet still get it occasionally, mages that want it all the time only get it some of the time. Water Elemental is part of class fantasy. If people haven’t been using it, it’s because it hasn’t been competitive. Almost every time i tracked my dps with my elemental it was sub par to lonely winter. I actually recently decided i didn’t care and would run it anyway and blizzard is just like “screw you dude”
I’m fine with people having the option to not use it. But it was something that made wow mages unique and goodbye class flavor.
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They’ve already released patch notes stating that it is being removed. Lonely Winter will be going as well.
My main is a frost mage and I think the loss of the water elemental and the lonely winter talent sucks.
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main for what? Gathering?
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Mostly questing. AoE mob farming is easy with the pet. Frost nova->comet storm->Ele Freeze->any burst AoE instantly kills any large pack of mobs. It allows you to get the shatter bonus damage throughout the entire duration of Comet Storm.
Certain bosses and the mage tower let you use the pet to cheese mechanics. You can have the pet stand in the mage tower runes to completely ignore the mechanic, only focusing on the best place you as a player needs to be while your elemental runs around clearing runes.
Killing outdoor elites/bosses is easy with Mirror image + Water Elemental. There’s a weird interaction where the Elemental acts as a 4th Mirror Image, absorbing all of your aggro and tanking the Elite/Boss for you for a couple of hits. You can resummon it instantly after it dies too.
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In order for players to choose the pet, it definitely needs to do a lot more. Right now it mostly spams a generic frostbolt for pitiful damage.
Maybe if it randomly cast frost orb and flurry a bit more often it would be viable in more content including pvp. But as it stands, the water elemental mostly adds a few extra keybinds to worry about with very little gain in defense or offense.
Instead of ditching it, they need to buff it with more abilities so people choose it. Perhaps it could offer the raid a haste buff?
I haven’t tried it yet, but if the water elemental is out doing damage and you go invisible, does its damage break your invisibility?
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Nope, love openin* from invis in 2s pet freezing warriors so they waste spell reflect only to come out 4 sec later from another pillar.
I don’t mind the water elemental “existing” but the last thing I want is for it to be equally viable with lonely winter.
Pets have all sorts of problems in competitive content from pathing to bad AOE value to micromanagement requirements. If some clown wants to use it while leveling that’s cool but keep it garbo in raid and m+.
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Water Elemental is a little different in that it’s not totally gone, just summoned now as part of using Icy Veins as opposed to a standalone pet. The standalone pet summon had a very low pick rate to begin with, and thinking through interactions - is this a class we’re trying to shoehorn into being a pet class, as opposed to just a pure ranged caster? Most players prefer to be the pure ranged caster, as we could see from the talent selection. Water Elemental is there as part of the original Warcraft III-era fantasy of what a Mage in Azeroth can bring to bear, and I think moving it to Icy Veins keeps it as part of that fantasy, makes it more impactful when it’s around, but crystalizes Mage as not a pet class in line with how players have largely been playing it.
straight from the man’s mouth in case anyone was curious
Not my water elemental 
This is heartbreaking and I have actually cried over this, lol.
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