Should Mage Shields be a Talent row choice?

Classes Mage
1

Each one does something different than the other, Fire does damage, Arcane Reduces Magic Damage, and Frost slows.

Being able to swap and choose when the situation demands it would be neat.

Plus it would give more fantasy to being a mage, when you can use an Arcane Shield on your Fire Mage.

2

I remember when all specs had an ice barrier, but then as part of “class fantasy” they decided that each spec had to have its own shield. Personally, I don’t like Blazing Barrier for a Fire Mage because I think it can potentially cause problems with the Firestarter talent. I would rather have a straight ice barrier for a fire mage.

1 Like
3

That’s a good idea. What if there was just one spec called the mage and the talents determined what it could do

1 Like
4

That was done in vanilla.

5

I’m pretty sure that was his point. Sarcasm doesn’t read well

6

Personally, I would like an overhaul on shields to begin with. I enjoy the spec variety when it comes to the utility of the shields, but I don’t like having to spend the global to keep it up in a fight, don’t like looking at it, and having a button that tanks huge amounts of damage doesn’t feel very mage-like. I’d prefer a merge with the old armor- one-cast passive which sits on you until purged or removed. Just some vague ideas:

Frost Armor -

  • Armor increased by 30%
  • Slows on melee attacks

Ethereal Warding -

  • Incoming spell damage reduced by 5%
  • DoT damage and duration reduced by 15%

Blazing Visage -

  • Small thorns effect on a melee or ranged hit
  • Small, ticking chance to remove harmful magic debuffs.

Of course, this is in a perfect world where fury warriors can’t regen to full health in a few button presses. As it is now, I’ll take my big damage absorb.

To elaborate on OP’s post, I’d enjoy a small amount of spec diversity when it comes to spell schools, at least so we aren’t just sitting there umming and erring when we get spell locked. However, as Blizzard seems to be sticking to mostly singular magic schools for mages, this doesn’t seem likely.

1 Like