I really like the “Vampire Mage” aesthetics, my always go-to combo in the Elder Scrolls IV and V and hey, my Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines character was a Tremere after all.
Anyways, the mirror thingy covenant spell looks great on PvP but I fail to see how useful it’s going to be in PvE, not many bosses have cast abilities and sometimes part of the mechanic is letting the boss cast it, so I am not exactly sure what to do here or what covenant to pick I guess.
It procs all the time in raids and in higher keys will proc 3 times on trash. The Siphon conduit is rather potent too.
I’m also interested in watching this spell develop, because I may have to take Venthyr for my m+ team.
If the spell had something like ‘explodes on death of mob or expiration of dot for a bit of aoe damage’ that might make it fantastic. As reads right now, I feel like you’re going to get a ton of scenarios where it just doesn’t get its full value.
Honestly, who came up with these abilities? I want new stuff to be fun, not annoying, and the only one that seems to be fun as written is the Necrolord.
You get the full value quite often unless you poorly use it
From what I’ve seen in Altered Time and the research thread there, it seems like Venthyr might be one of the strongest overall options for all the mage specs. It’s not the best on a per spec basis (for example, Kyrian sims higher for frost and Night Fae edges it out for Fire) but if you’re like me and open to playing multiple specs then it’s a great middle ground.
I also love me some vampire edgelords. Bring on the parties! 
Good to know. I guess my main concern with 3 of the spells is that they don’t synergize well with the specs. (edit. in my thinking of how i currently play) I want to be casting blizzard and orb right away on every pull that I can and then trying to get procs with frostbolt.
Wasting a global on a mob that uses abilities for a single target piece of damage just doesn’t seem like fun. On the bosses, maybe it feels ok. But even then, every global I spend NOT trying to get some procs is a bad global as far as I’m concerned, unless the ability feels amazing and has superior damage to anything else in my kit.
edit: it’s good to hear that there is positive feedback about the covenant so far, though. Makes me feel better about possibly needing to take it on.
Once you learn the mobs and bosses right if using the Siphon conduit you will get 10% SP from the first pop for 10 seconds, then 20% from the second and 30% from the third. So if there is a slight gap between abilities lets say 5 seconds, thats a nice chunk of spell power to have ramping up over 15 to 20 seconds. the 10% to 30% is of course the base conduit and will increase as you get the higher ilvl ones.
The strength of the covenant ability in pve is not the ability itself. it comes from the conduit that gives u 10% spell power per mirror used stacking up to 3 times. so if u can get to the 3 stacks u having 30% spell power bonus for 10 sec.
the good thing about the ability is that the time refreshes on mirror used so you get 10 sec of 10% so realistically you will get 25 sec of the buff ranging from 10 to 20 to 30% spell power bonus. by rank 15 you can get 30% per mirror and a total of 90% spell power
That is fantastic news. Thanks for the info
Ah, I see, I am not exactly sure how to feel about this, I don’t know, kinda wanted for the ability to be slightly “flashier”? If that makes any sense, compared to the Night Fae’s it just looks way more unimpressive.
Anyways, I am still glad that the ability actually has potential, I can just go Venthyr with a clear conscience then.
This. Venthyr is going to be great. Kyrian will also be nice.
It does put up three spinning red mirrors around the target
From what I saw it kinda looked like three red orbs flying around the target. I mean, you compare to the energy wave of the Night Fae and it’s a bit boring >.>
Nonetheless the main thing is it’s damage and utility anyway, just a small personal gripe.
Honestly so far according to sim the covenant abilities is within like 3-5% of each other or being dead on within your class on pretty much every class
Well, it looks like they just killed the conduit that made playing venthyr mage worthwhile. Here’s hoping they are either making major changes to the ability or are just being naive when it comes to tuning the damage.
Update from wowhead:
[Siphoned Malice] (Potency Conduit) Each time a Mirror of Torment is consumed your spell damage is increased by 10% for 10 seconds1.0% for 10 sec, stacking 3 times.
Rank changes:
1.0% 1.0% 1.0% 1.0% 1.0% 2.0% 2.0% 2.0% 2.0% 2.0% 2.0% 2.0% 2.0% 2.0% 2.0%
The rank changes do suggest they will need to change the numbers at some point though.
Edit:
The numbers from the soulbind calculator on wowhead are (they must round in the patch notes):
1.0% 1.1% 1.2% 1.3% 1.4% 1.5% 1.6% 1.7% 1.8% 1.9% 2.0% 2.1% 2.2% 2.3% 2.4%
Meaning the initial rank is +3% damage after 3 stacks and goes up to 7.2% at max rank.
Perhaps they mean it to eventually get up to 10%. But yea… this does not look great.
I personally hope they make a significant change to the ability, so it is not based off of what the mob is doing to make the damage occur.
I don’t know that they will. Right from the get-go, the ability screamed “pvp.”
Given that they want us to make “meaningful choices,” I have my doubts they ever intended Venthyr to be a PVE top choice for covenant.
Yeah I understand that completely. Just wishful thinking on my part for selfish reasons because of a selfless choice I may have to take for my mythic plus team.
Even after the conduit nerf, Venthyr is still a pretty strong option from the sims coming out of Altered Time. It’s a pretty comfortable #2 option for all three mage specs.
Arcane: Night Fae #1, Venthyr #2
Fire: Night Fae #1, Venthyr #2
Frost: Kyrian #1, Venthyr #2
Also keeping in mind the variance between covenants is like less than ~2% overall damage for mage, it’s basically come down to pick which you prefer. Which is kinda ideal. 
Ive been saying this until I’m blue in the face. A lot of the covenant abilities are so close to each other for so many specs that people still scream “I’M FORCED!”