I am disappointed with lack of Mage changes as well.
Not happy to see Deathborne either. If you implement it, at least make it thematic, like Iceborne (turn into Ice Elemental) or Archon (turn into a being of Arcane energy).
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Worth noting that builds are typically a week ahead, so itâs not surprising that there werenât any immediate changes. Iâd expect a large number of changes next week though, or at least a blue post saying theyâre working on addressing the feedback, otherwise Iâd start to get quite concerned if nothing changed next week.
Also not sure why theyâre considering bringing Deathborne back. It thematically does not fit at all with mages. Plus itâs the baseline spell with no conduit and no Unity legendary, meaning itâs pretty trash as isâŠ
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You turn into a bone mage. Howâs that not thematic? Youâre like a Walmart Lich.
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People complain the tree has way too many modifiers and we get another one.
The lack of new spells for all specs and the base tree is really disheartening. Almost every other class is getting new toys but we can barely talent into the kit we already have.
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Most of the covenant abilities that are staying for DF make no sense thematically to a lot of the classes, they really need to update the visuals if they are so adamant in keeping them.
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Iâm extra salty about Deep Shatter because it got a biiiiiig nerf in its implementation as well. While it will be nice having yet another open PvP talent slot, at this point frost is running out of relevant pvp talents anyways. Like, now we can use concentrated coolness, wall and like netherwind armor and swap out concentrated sometimes for prismatic? Those are not worth Deep Shatter losing 35% of the bonus damage it provides.
Just doing the math based on frostbolt (and assuming that the 100% pvp bonus damage on frostbolt is still in for DF) frostbolt hits for really bad damage already. Taking 35% more away hurts my soul.
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I too would love to see a huge over hall of the Class tree. Here are my suggestions:
Row 2:
Cone of Cold - Not sure what to do with this talent as it does basically no damage even with the blizzard modifier in the frost tree. Consider making this a base line ability or give it an additional passive like always proccing the Frostbite root.
Row 3:
Rigid Ice - Change to Eternal Ice. Targets hit by Frost Nova are given a debuff of Eternal Ice. The next spell or ability your target uses is increased by a 10 sec CD.
Grounding Surge - Change this to a choice node. Keep the current 2 points, but you can choose either Grounding Surge as is or Improved CS with a 2/4 sec blanket silence with the current 24 sec cd (maybe 30 sec ?)
Row 5:
Reduplication / Reabsorption - Remove this node entirely and bake it into the regular Mirror Image spell.
Tempest Barrier - Swap with Temporal Velocity and change to a choice node. Pick between Temporal Velocity (as is) or Blazing Speed: Suppresses movement slowing effects and increases your movement speed by 150% for 1.50 sec. Castable while another spell is in progress and unaffected by global cooldown.
Row 6:
Tome of Rhonin - If you have to keep this, change it to a 1 point talent that gives you a stacking buff for 1% Critical Strike change for each offensive spell stacking up to 5 times. Buff lasts for 10 seconds.
Arcane Warding - Remove this. We donât need mages to be tanky.
Tome of Antonidas - If you have to keep this, change it to a 1 point talent that gives you a stacking buff for 1% Haste change for each offensive spell stacking up to 5 times. Buff lasts for 10 seconds.
Row 7:
Ice Nova - Replace with a new talent Worm Hole to compete with Master of Time. Worm Hole causes you to swap places with your current target. Does not work on Raid Bosses. Uses 1 charge of Blink/Shimmer 1.5 minute CD & 30 yard range.
Accumulative Shielding - Change to new spell Triune Repulsion. Buffs your barriers to have an addition affect based on your spec:
- Prismatic Barrier: Your shield explodes and targets within 5 yards are slowed by 50% and silenced for 2 seconds
- Blazing Barrier: Your shield explodes and targets within 5 yards are knocked back (similar to Blast Wave, but does not break CC)
- Ice Barrier: Your shield explodes and targets within 5 yards are rooted for 4 seconds.
Shimmer / Ice Flows (choice node) - Reduce the CD of Shimmer down to a 20 second recharge.
Row 8:
Frigid Winds - Make this a 1 point talent and replace it with Soothing Voice from the Night Fae covenant.
When your roots, stuns, and incapacitating class effects expire or are dispelled, your targetâs movement speed is reduced by 90%, decaying rapidly over 2 sec.
Row 9:
Ring of Frost / Ice Ward choice node - If Frigid Winds was changed to Soothing Voice, Ice Wards would be a much more appealing talent, but if not, replace Ice Ward with Deep Freeze so we can choose between an AoE CC or frozen stun for 4-5 seconds.
Dragons Breath - Reduce CD to 30 Seconds. The current 18 seconds on live is incredibly strong, but 45 seconds completely kills this talent.
Row 10:
Shifting Power - Even with the removal of conduits, CD reduction is still incredibly powerful. However, for a quality of life change this should have the Unity ability and make this able to move while casting and drop Field of Blossoms from the current Dream Weaver Soulbind Tree - Activating your Night Fae class ability puts flowers at your feet for 12 sec that increase your Haste by 15% while you stand with them.
Time Anomaly - While it can be fun to get a random proc, adding more RNG to rotations does not feel good. Maybe change it to something like "After doing 20% of your current targetâs health (5% on Raid Bosses), you gain the previously listed buffs and they cannot be dispelled. Cannot proc more than once every 30-45 seconds.
Meteor - Change to a choice node. Dragons Breath is reduced by 5 sec CD (assuming the above change was already made to Dragons Breath) / Meteor also causes an impact stun of 3 seconds. Against targets below 35% HP, Meteor always critically strikes and does an additional 75% damage.
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Wins: freezing rain/splitting ice no longer mutually exclusive. Freezing winds restores frozen orb to its Legion state.
Losses: Icy propulsion continues to wreak havoc on the spec, blizzard/frozen orb interaction is still nerfed, it takes 4 talents to make flurry functional and about 5 or 6 for Icy Veins, Wintertide is a total waste of 3 points as balancing will eliminate any benefit that it confers.
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Snares donât work on the classes in the game which you want to snare as a mage, all have immunities and counters that provide obscene uptime.
Watch Twitch and try to find an example of meaningful kiting.
When melee decides to train a mage they achieve nearly 100% uptime.
The only method that works is DB sheep, which is getting nerfed into the ground in DF.
Normal snares and kiting do not work. Take frost nova for example, you nova and blink and before you even cast one spell the nova has broken and melee has used a gap closer and is continuing to train you. This is what makes frost and arcane toxic to play, in addition to the need to hard cast and being easily interrupted.
Other ranged classes will put out damage more quickly, easily, and without requiring setups that Frost and Arcane need.
Blizzards answer for Frost was just to add a hundred modifiers to frost bolt with necro frost and make them turrets, this is also toxic gameplay and was almost immediately nerfed despite not being a meta play style.
Their answer for arcane has been to buff missiles slightly, lol???
Arcane is still grade A trash in pvp and I donât think blizzard cares about pvp balance in general.
The mage trees in DF and Season 4 changes show this.
Some very skilled players will make frost and arcane work with sympathetic team mates, but the classes are very toxic to play in pvp for the mage.
Fire mage will shine in RMP which will cause the community to sperg out about any changes that would help frost mages and arcane mages because apparently Fire Mage = Mage now.
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The fact that you have charges with brain freeze will make it so frost mage will most likely be better than fire since theyâll also have access to dragonâs breath. You canât dispel flurry charges, but you can dispel combust.
Access to blast wave will also be very good at keeping melee away from you. Itâs not a perfect talent tree, but itâs not horrible either. Iâm curious to see the PvP talents.
I encourage you to take a look at both Warrior and Rogue talents and then tell us again youâll be able to keep melee away from you lmao. Donât forget [Blast Wave] knock back is also very minimal.
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80% slow isnât. But the melee characters will probably dispel it instantly ^_^. But if you survive long enough, I imagine youâll eventually get some control.
I just feel that even if it only costs them one or two global to get back to you. youâve also already lowered the impact of an interrupt by a fraction, which is better than nothing.
Having seen the warrior tree, I predict they will trash most of us who arenât Xaryu in DF.
100% agree with this. If they want to keep the Shadowlands covenant effects they should either bake them into existing class abilities or make brand new abilities with the same effect that fit the class thematically. Makes no sense to bring the covenant powers as they are into future expansions. And on top of that I donât think the majority of players want to be reminded of Shadowlands every time they fill out their talent trees for expansions to come.
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Mage trees look underwhelming compared to say warrior or evoker or other classes. How can they hate us so much 
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Nothing personal itâs just no personnel.
The talent that gave frostbolt a 50% chance to cleave is being changed to Deathborne, and will have a 50% chance to cleave⊠lol
Donât push that evil on us!
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Really?! Whyy, fractured frost made more sense. 
Lazy design and rhey are out of ideas with mage. They are featuring Evoker. Mage is a second class citizen now.
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Sadly.
The Devs in charge of mage should speak with those who worked with warrior talent trees.
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