This is the only talent in the class tree that has throughput attached to it and it sucks when you are the only lust or you don’t lust off pull. Having soooo much damage tied into lust sucks honestly. I think most mages would much rather have that damage baked into the specs to make up for it or buff some of the spec talents. Put cauterize down there so all specs get it or something I don’t know. But this definitely feelsbadman.
10 Likes
Not the only one, but certainly the most prominent. And yeah, I agree they should be removed.
3 Likes
I agree. Time Anomaly is not that offensive but it should go too.
3 Likes
YESSS! Arcane feels so bad without double lust. It even feels bad with just single lust. Its horrible.
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I will also echo my agreement. The entire concept of messing with Hero/Lust and turning it into a pseudo personal cooldown which you can’t even use when you want to is just a terrible design choice. I don’t think I know of any mages who ever thought it was a good idea going back to when it was first introduced towards the end of Legion as a legendary ring.
The only reason we keep using it is because we have no alternative and they keep pushing it on us. Something which is sadly true for a number of unpopular borrowed powers which keep making a comeback, most recently as talents in DF. I honestly don’t understand why they keep doubling down on these things when we’re very vocal about our dislike for them. I still get PTSD/war flashbacks when I remember that it took more than a decade to finally get rid of RoP!
4 Likes
Temporal Warp causes social friction and nukes the value of the haste stat for frost and arcane. Time Anomaly is ridiculously rng and not enjoyable. Nuke em and throw Cauterize/Cold Snap as a choice node there (with the spells being removed from being baseline).
6 Likes
When they added the double lust option I was happy, because I thought it would be most useful as a lust extender (meaning we lust for 30 sec, then I hit l"personal lust" to grab another 30 seconds after, so I could stay in the heat longer. What ended up happening (like everything else in the arcane toolkit), was we stacked them on top of each other for super-super-super-once-every-2-minutes burst. I’m not saying we did this intentionally, it just only made sense to stack-stack-stack as much as possible into tiny window because that was the design. And they balanced us around that playstyle (assuming there was ever any real balancing).
One option is to not let us use it while Temporal Warp is currently active, only allow after it fades, meaning it becomes a “second lust” not a stackable one. Give us some across the board damage increase to accommodate. In short, we stack because we can.
Another option, as you suggest, remove them.
I think that is true for nearly every issue we complain about, JUST GIVE US SOME BASELINE DAMAGE!!! Stop hiding our damage behind five to seven hurdles. Running some dungeons this week (trying to get all my 20s in on Fort week), and realized my thought process often hesitates to use any ability when it’s up until I check if other buffs are up and IF I am targeting the right mob. Example, when arcane battery is ready I can’t just hit it, oh no, I have to wait until I get another CC proc (RNG based for those extra missiles) AND until I have ToM back up (for the spread) AND possibly until Radiant Spark is back up AND until there is a mob with enough HP to soak the whole burst (few things more frustrating than pumping it all into a guy that dies the second you press the button). So I wait…fishing for procs or timers…then if I wait too long there isn’t a mob left with enough HP to make the combo worth it, so I arcane explosion this pack and setup the whole thing for the next pack and cross my fingers that the tank doesn’t hesitate between pulls until all of my damage has faded into the nether…OH AND if I’m too quick on the next pull because my timers all ticking down, I pull aggro from basically the entire pack because I’m max damaging them all…so next is invisibility to save my skin…anyway…
Truth is they DON’T LINE UP! The timers, the RNG proc, the mob health, maybe throw in an evocation or mana gem in the mix as well, it’s all an illusion of “possible” damage that makes the arcane playstyle very frustrating.
I can see why highly coordinated teams of pro players want a mage in the group, because the ‘potential’ is excellent if the whole team is synced around it…but I live the PUG life man and it’s not there.
Long rant to agree: Increase the Baseline - - Cut the Juggling.
2 Likes
I hate how when it procs, it screws up my globals and sheep timers so I never know if I need to be resheeping with 1 second left on poly or .8 seconds and with icy+hero proc its like .6. Like of course I could just be more aware of it proccing, but that is a lot of different break points to remember for resheeps. Like with icy its .8, with hero its .7, with icy+hero its .6, with out any of them its 1 lol.
Time anomaly should not go.
I like the double lust burst and would prefer they keep Temporal Warp around. The current implementation has a lot of problems that could be solved if it was just made a separate button and didn’t conflict with regular time warp.
I worry that removing it will make the specs less fun to play. Ret went through something similar in its rework in S1. The flatter damage profile and move away from a massive stacked burst phase made the spec a lot less fun to play in my opinion.
I think ideally we would keep TW/TA around and just buff TA to be more competitive in cases where a flatter damage profile is preferred.
1 Like
I completely disagree but that’s a personal preference so I get it. I am just not a fan of burst damage profiles because it’s too much pressure, especially on bosses with the ever increasingly complex raid encounters we’ve been getting with each new expansion. I don’t enjoy getting sweaty palms for a few seconds every other minute and struggling to stay awake the rest of the time.
2 Likes
Honestly, burstier profiles are almost always less fun as far as i’m concerned.
Because really high burst always requires you to give up certain designs.
Like cdr, which means less cd uptime, which usually is the most fun part of your rotation, it usually requires the removal or certain procs, like sun king’s blessing, because that also promotes sustain damage.
Ill say it, i think that burst profiles are almost always garbage gameplay.
Take away SKB, kindling, etc, and you have a spec that has not enough interactions, no flow, and is actually fun only 15% of the time.
They took away the dynamic cdr on grand warlock design, and the class suffered for it, especially destro lock, if they were to remove deepening shadows from sub rogue, i would probably just stop playing it.
High burst is bad gameplay 90% of the time.
But i’m fine with giving people who want burst the option to talent into it, for example, unleased inferno should be significantly buffed. But anyone who wants to see things like skb, thermal void, time anomaly, kindling and similar effects removed from the game have a big nope from me. I will fight you to death on that.
There are a few instances of badly made cdr/cde mechanics, but honestly, the good is more than the bad, and the bad is usually because of conditional cdr/cde, like old icy propulsion in shadowlands which would only work during icy veins, the dragonflight version was actually fine. Or breath of sindragosa because it has no upfront value, it doesn’t work like old voidform, and everything is dependent on uptime, so if you lose it, you effectively are sol.
But honestly, that point about ret is not really correct, ret burst is about the same, but they did remove certain mechanics like seraphim proc on art of war, and woa proc, which were both bad changes. Especially the removal of the woa proc. But yea, ret just drags along, it doesn’t really flow nicely. The woa removal really impacted it in a very negative way.
In its current design it should, it is incredibly rng.
1 Like
I honestly don’t really mind it, i don’t even mind the combustion procs because they are quite apparent.
When it procs well its fun, when it procs surge right before I have to cast my own and completely wastes it, not nice. The way the proc is designed to trigger is horrible.
1 Like
What if they just made it so same cds only stacks in duration and never reset it? This is the same thing with SKB for example. You have to lengthen combustion with skb, but if you skb and then combustion you waste skb.
It’s weird too because meta doesn’t work this way for example, you can cast eye beam and then press meta and the duration will add to the original demonic.
I suggested it a few times during Beta, but I think that if Time Anomaly granted the spec’s proc (Brain Freeze/Clearcasting/Fire Blast) + Time Warp or the proc + the main cooldown instead of one of the three, it would be a lot better. There’s still the issue that Manather mentioned though, which is indeed very bad.
I don’t think extending cooldowns would feel very good. People are against Icy Veins still extending through Thermal Void after all, so maybe if the extension applied only to the proc + manually activating the cooldown (in that order, just so the proc isn’t wasted), I would be OK with it, but not if it randomly extended during the buff already.
It would be weird with Icy Veins + Time Warp though, since it lasts for such a long time due to Thermal Void and both would be active at the same time if it followed the logic of my first suggestion.
Some people are against thermal void because they can’t get over that not every design choice should cater to burst.
But yea, i can see that working instead of proccing your cd directly, it would be more controllable and not as reactive, which is a problem for combustion more than the other 2.
I agree with this. The only other fix to it, is to give us a personal lust button, that doesn’t affect the other raid members. It always feels like they balance our class around the Time warp button, when we never really get to choose when to use it. I would rather they take it away, and buff us.
On the icy veins, thermal void note. I actually liked that play style of trying to maximize that. To me it’s better than counting icicles. Which I knew would be a thing when icicles originally came out, and people thought I was crazy. Before the mage rework, I actually enjoyed the mage specs other than the ROP.
It is a fix, but then it’ll not be an interesting button, just another Haste buff for 40 seconds every ~5 minutes (Shifting Power) and if you’re playing Fire or Arcane, you’ll just macro it to Time Warp anyway.
It was worth a try but the experiment is over and most people don’t like it, so it’s better to just remove it. Replace it with Cauterize/Cold Snap like we’ve been asking them since forever.
1 Like