This ability is so annoying. Am I supposed to be casting this in the middle of a fight to help lower some cooldowns or only when going to the next pack?
5 Likes
It is annoying and you want to cast it pretty much every time it’s up to reduce the cooldowns on your major abilities (Arcane Surge, TotM, Evocation). They really need to do away with the cdr aspect of this ability and just make it a simple AoE spell.
3 Likes
Honestly, I stopped overthinking the ability.
If I really, really need the AoE damage, I’ll use it— but if not, I just use it as a way to lower the cool downs on Icy Veins, Mirror Images, Frost Barrier, Frozen Orb, (and to a lesser extent, Comet Storm) mostly.
Once you stop thinking about it as “something you need to do”, it becomes a useful little helper spell.
3 Likes
Never use it during a trash pull. Things will be done by the time it ends and youll do basically no dps.
You want to evo pre pull and surge right away, blow all cooldowns and nuke until everything is dead.
Shimmer to the front of the group in the direction youre heading. Use shfting power. As your group catches up and starts to pass you, shimmer again during the channel. Finish the channel next to the tank ready to go.
During a boss fight, at the start, its always on cd for me. Ill time my cooldowns before a boss. Use cooldowns on trash, kill the group, then use shifting power as described above. Go to the next pull with no cds, kill them, then head to the boss.
Evo and surge will be just coming up, shifting power will have 20 seconds or so until its up. Do your normal rotation. At this point it time you wont really need to use it on bosses since they die so fast. During a long boss fight, where im absolutely sure ill have two big burn phases, ill use shifting power right as I come out of big burn phase 1.
1 Like
Yeah just feels like an unfun ability, why keep it at all.
Is anyone playing mage like « heck yeah my shifting power is up, dope, so fun »
1 Like
Right… that’s why I’ve shifted my mindset to “this is just a neat little perk”. I honestly really like it to refresh my Ice Barrier CD faster if I’m about to die. Other than that, (unless you’re hardcore min-maxxing, or playing Fire— sorry Fire players) the spell feels really meh.
2 Likes
I actually kind of do like it. I love the cooldown reduction on my major dps spells, but it’s also nice to see the cooldown on shimmer, mirror images, prismatic barrier, etc., get reduced.
When the tanks about to pull a boss but your evo/surge is 20 seconds on cooldown, its nice to smash shifting power and get your pre pull dps spells off cooldown. Maybe ive been conditioned to like the spell because of this effect, but yeah… I like Shifting Power
2 Likes
If you’re Spellslinger Frost, it’s basically pressed on CD (after Icy Veins). Pretty much triggers a Splinterstorm on its own. Not sure about the hierarchy for Arcane.
1 Like
What it really needs is the arcane missiles buff, only castable with a clearcasting proc.
I joke. It needs to do more damage and be castable while moving. Always use an ice flow with it, otherwise you’re a sitting Sexy mage and a tempting target.
I would love if each pulse slowed enemies by like, 15%, effectively an AoE cone of cold.
1 Like
Or as I was telling a friend of mine, who was asking what the “incredibly shiny spell that pulses like the sun” does…
It’s a cooldown to help cooldown my other cooldowns… 
Thanks.
2 Likes
Easily the worst ability for mages, should be removed and something else introduced to help with cooldowns, like a passive.
3 Likes
The splinterstorm it triggers as spellslinger is kinda awesome…the delay between pressing it and the amount of damage it does in the next few seconds feels good imo
This is more or less how I treat it too but this line of thinking then begs the question of why SP exists at all.
Don’t get me wrong I don’t mind SP, but let’s also be honest: SP is just there to give us something to press and give them an ornament to hang on the talent tree. The aoe is negligible and they could just as easily reduce the baseline CD of the affected spells and remove the hoop for us to jump through.
Again it is what it is and it’s fine and it’s not particularly difficult to use, but in a perfect world it probably wouldn’t be here.
5 Likes