So, made 72 on my Arcane Mage. Started Spellslinger Hero Talents. Didn’t get very far though. Apparently one of the talents gives you a choice, but you either have to have Alter Time chosen or Displacement. Two talents I do not pick. Otherwise the talent is red and does nothing even though it also affects Evocation.
Now, I knew Arcane talents were pretty much locked in despite Blizzard saying they wanted us to have choices (Yeah, right!!), but I figured at least my Mage talents would be choices. Apparently Blizzard’s definition of “choice” is some new variant of the word I have not previously encountered before.
So, guess I have to take a look-see at Sunfury even though I do not relish looking like the villain Kael’thas Sunstrider. But before I invest any more time or research I thought I would reach out and ask if there were any more talents in the Mage Hero trees that were also false choices? I.E. you have to have one Mage talent chosen or another for them to work? Wowhead doesn’t show that the above talent requires one of the two Mage talent choices for it to work so I thought I would ask people who are already leveled.
Also, if anyone has any direct communications to Blizzard can you define the word “choice” for them, please? They apparently do not have any dictionaries or Thesauri available to them at the office.
Alter Time is a god-tier ability, provided you know how and when use it. I recommend taking it, especially when you’ve familiarized yourself with encounters.
Displacement is an ability I never really got used to using in the past. I don’t see myself ever taking it unless I have a good enough reason to.
I mean this sincerely when I say you really simply NEED to be using Alter Time. I hate telling people how to play and I don’t believe in that, but seriously. Alter Time is one of Mage’s most powerful abilities once you get the hang of it. Even soloing a strong rare mob out in the open world. Alter Time at full HP when you don’t have your Barrier off cooldown, run away a bit (maybe you’re down to 30% HP now), then you hit Alter Time again and you’re back where you started at full HP and the spot you were originally standing.
Disclaimer that I don’t presume to know your skill level, but I really just believe Alter Time is an exception to always take on a Mage.
Back when Alter Time snapshotted your health, mana, buffs, etc. and returned you back to that starting snapshot it was INDEED a god-tier ability. Not so much now…
Pass.
I used to use the ability and loved it when it first came out. I even continued using it after it was nerfed into the health snapshot it currently is. The issue I have with it is that Blizzard has continued down the trend of “hard mode = as many multiple colored swirlies of death on the floor as the game engine can possibly sustain!!”.
So, after keeping track of the number of times my “return” ended up being my death because it put me back in one of the hundred thousand or so swirlies on the floor, I stopped using the talent altogether in advanced dungeons and raids. I know you can “stop” it from using the return but that means you wasted a spell using it in the first place and keeping track of a ten second window on top of my rotation, the infinite sea of death swirlies on the floor, any other mechanics Blizzard has thrown in for fun, crowd control and/or counterspells, etc…
Let’s just say I don’t do multi-tasking that well.
In instances such as these, I agree it is a great ability especially to help you solo Elite MObs. If only Blizzard weren’t so in love with their swirlies.
only noobs forgo altertime. You are a liability to your healer if you dont take it.
It’s literally the strongest defensive cooldown in the game besides maybe pally bubble.
I can think of hundreds of scenarios last season where I used Alter time, and I already have dozens of scenarios this season where i’m using it.
beyond saving you from huge damage mechanics and bringing you back to full health, its amazing for positioning. If you’re targeted with a mechanic that drops a pool of bad Altertime+shimmer+altertime will get the bad out of the group and return you to full health. This was amazing for bosses like the first guy in HoI or RLP last season.
Altertime is also amazing for solo content, like delves. If a boss is charging up to hit you you can alter time and cheese the entire mechanic.
Blizzard does occasionally need to force certain talents in certain ways to make their designs work. Any tier set that buffs a specific talent is going to force that talent to be mandatory. If Blizzard had to design a class / spec / tier bonus / hero tree using only the abilities we are granted as we level, their ability to make anything even half-decent would be completely gone. Even Surge and TotM are technically talents that we could “choose” not to take. Sometimes we need to play the way Blizzard wants us to.
It sounds to me like you’re not actually interested in learning how to play, but in case I’m wrong or you decide to change your mind, even though AT is a fragment of what it once was, it’s still immensely powerful. It’s power is lessened by 1) the preemptive nature of the ability and 2) the fact that we have a lot more defensives than we should. But it’s still an absurdly strong ability in just about any content.
For me personally, I rarely use it to snapshot my location - but I do use it snapshot my health. Plenty of bosses have a “here’s a lot of incoming damage that will hit you no matter where you stand” mechanic and Alter Time can be used to mitigate a lot of that - especially if you’re quick enough to activate it before the damage then reactivate it once the damage is out. You don’t need to wait (which means you’ll probably “snap back” without actually moving). Even with all those swirlies on the ground, a combination of Greater Invisibility and Alter Time can let you survive a mechanic you shouldn’t have survived and do so at full health, without using Ice Block. (And yes, I know a lot of guides recommend using Ice Cold, but I can’t personally justify the talent point investment needed to take it when we already have so many defensive tools at our disposal)
As an extra note, I have a /cancelaura macro set up so that I can cancel my Alter Time should I think I either activated it when my health was too low or the position I was in is now dangerous. It only snaps you back when either 1) the time runs out or 2) you reactivate the spell. If you remove the buff (via /cancelaura or a right click or, I think, getting purged) it’ll dissipate completely and you won’t get snapped back. This means you can use Slippery Slinging’s movement speed bonus to just move faster, then cancel the buff before it snaps you back.
All that said, Alter Time is probably the hardest spell in the mage kit to manage, and it’s probably one of the most commonly posted about topics on the forums here. But even still, just because one Hero Talent isn’t going to do anything doesn’t mean that the whole tree is dead. I’m also not a fan of the aesthetics behind Sunfury, but I definitely think I’d rather have a “less-favored” aesthetic than the essentially no visuals that come with Spellslinger, and I certainly wouldn’t give up on either just because one node doesn’t do much for me.
Everybody ganging up on the OP because he doesn’t want to use Alter Time is missing the point that not everyone plays this game (or games in general) to perform optimally and, in fact, I would argue most don’t.
So when you look at it from their perspective, yes, forcing certain talents is incredibly jarring. Especially when Blizzard have done nothing but go on and on about how the whole purpose of switching to talent trees was to enable players choice and the “play your way” philosophy. So from those players’ point of view they were straight up lied to by Blizzard and, frankly, you can make a good case for that.
It really helps to try and walk in another person’s shoes every once in a while instead of piling on and beating the “git gud, you filthy casual” drums. Not every comes to the forums looking for advice on how to perform optimally. Sometimes they just want to air out their frustrations.
Lastly, speaking about Alter Time in particular, just because something is good or “god tier” as some of you love calling it, does not mean that it’s designed well or fun to play with. In fact, I would go as far as saying that most so called “god tier” abilities have a flawed design and that’s precisely what makes them so good. But not everyone enjoys abusing those convoluted mechanics so try to keep that in mind.
Choice: an act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities. Alter time and displacement are two choices, hope that helps
Altertime not being designed well or not being fun to play is where I disagree, big time.
Most abilities in the game are not unique. Other classes have versions or abilities that do something similar. Thats not the case for altertime. Its very unique.
Its also different from other abilities because you can get creative with how you use it.
For example, the chain boss in neth last season was annoying. When you get targeted with the spear you could altertime and blink. The spear would drop and you would take high damage. You can then use altertime to snap back to full health to where you were before you blinked. The chain will be filly extended and youll be full health. In this example you not only negate the full damage of the spear dropping, but youre also in a good position to break your chain.
My point is that its not just a defensive that you can use to cheese any amount of damage up to 99% of your health, but its also a good tool for positioning.
The same is true for ruby life pools and halls of infusion. The first bosses target a player with a debuff. When it expires it does big damage and drops bad. You can alter time, blink away, let it drop and hurt you, then alter time not only back to full health but away from the bad
Once I learn bosses, i learn the dungeon route and how to time cooldowns. Once I have an optimal route of when to use my cooldowns to the point where its auto pilot, i spend most of my time learning fun and creative ways to use altertime.
Not only is it an amazing defensive and positioning tool, its also totally unique and adds a dimension to learning your toolkit that no other class has.
I am not disputing that it has its uses and that it can be really good. My point is that it requires way too much effort to use it optimally and I am long past carrying enough about performance in this game to bother with it. I was just giving my perspective, one that I suspect is largely shared by most mages, and indeed most players because very few of us play the game anywhere close to optimally. I sweat enough irl with the global warming and all that, I don’t need to get sweaty in my downtime too, lol.
If alter time triggered on death, I’d like that way more.
using fight knowledge to cheat death is cool and I’d prefer to have that.
Pressing it knowing a big mechanic is coming but then getting one shot by said mechanic making the action used for said mechanic useless… not fun.
If a player has already made the decision that they aren’t even going to attempt to play the game optimally, then any “forced” talent is irrelevant anyway. If a player made the choice to just do whatever they want and not worry about their performance, then what does one “forced” talent really do anyway? I know there were quite a few people who refused to use Radiant Spark through the last two expansions simply because they didn’t like it, and at least one of those players is still here commenting on the forums. Clearly that “force” didn’t stop them.
Even still, this provides the player with a choice. They can A) Learn how to use the talent they don’t want to use B) Select the hero talent that causes the force and ignore it altogether C) Switch to a different hero tree D) Switch to a different spec E) Switch to a different class F) stop playing altogether (and probably a few more that I didn’t think about - I’m not QA).
Assuming they don’t quit / change specs or classes, there’s still a choice in the matter: Do I use this as an opportunity to learn the spell I don’t like? Do I pick that hero talent and just continue to ignore the spell that I don’t like? Do I swap to a different hero tree altogether just because one utility hero talent is useless to me despite the fact that I’ve already elected to not even try to play at an optimal level?
When someone says “You should learn how to use this spell” and the response is:
it should be a clear indicator that the player in question only wants to play the game their way. At that point, they’re actively choosing to not use the tools that Blizzard (and the community) are recommending they use. That’s their choice - and they are allowed to do that. But just because they’re choosing to not use the tools at their disposal does not mean that it’s somehow Blizzard’s fault. I will happily blame them for a lot of things (and that list grows faster than it shrinks), but a forced talent for a small degree of utility that most players probably won’t even notice in the first place isn’t something I’d get worked up about.
I guess I just dont really consider it min/maxing. Its not like you’re siming and calculating the best rotation. Finding creative ways to use altertime is fun, its not work like other ways people optimize their play style.
At the very least its a button you press when the boss is about to do a big unavoidable group attack, then you press it right after and go back to full health. Like at the very least its just a big defensive. You dont even have to move.
At its peak you can use it to kite, to position for boss mechanics, to survive if a tank dies.
I view altertime as a fun tool to use creatively in order to look flashy, postion better, and negate as much damage as possible. I wouldnt catagorize that in the same way i would leaning an optimal rotation or having the best simmed gear.
Well, I checked with my healer (who is also my wife and has been playing with me since Wrath) and you are wrong about that.
But hey!! It just wouldn’t be a forum post without someone coming along and missing the entire point of the post just to troll it with what they’ve read on Icy Veins and/or Wowhead.
But then those should be baseline abilities/spells. “Talents” should be a choice. If there are talents that Blizzard considers baseline as part of their design then those should be removed from the talent tree and placed back as baseline abilities.
You mean, “Learning how to play the way YOU do”. I.E. what you’ve read on the Internet as the “optimal” way to play.
You are somewhat correct in that statement. I have been playing a Mage since the game came out and unlike the majority of those who play the class I am quite capable of thinking for myself. My post wasn’t about the “right or wrong way to play a Mage” as I already know how to play my class quite well. It was about talents being choices rather than not. As an example that I am sure will be wasted on you…
See, personally I have always been a fan of Ice Block and I do take those talent points in my build despite what any guides say. That’s a choice.
Oh awesome!! With two troll responses it is now an official forum post! Nice to see you can still rely on some things in the Blizzard forums after all these years.
Someone who gets it. I knew there would be at least one person out there. I do prefer to think for myself, which I know is a foreign concept for many. As I stated, I did use Alter Time back in “the day” before it was nerfed. And I know that there are players who use it quite well and enjoy it. More power to them!! I am just simply not one of those players and in my opinion talents should be choices, not forced baseline abilities that MUST be chosen.
I knew at least one person would understand and that most people would simply try to impress upon me just how much better they are at the class than I am. Some things just never change on the Blizzard forums.
As an aside, I have tried the Sunfury Hero Talents and they do appear to be fun to use. Still not a fan of all the Kael’thas references, but at least the balls aren’t green and as one of my friends has put it, “Moar balls, moar power!”
I still think talents should be a choice and not a mandatory part of Blizzard’s build for a class but apparently my critical thinking in that matter is clearly in the minority. I knew it would be, just thought it might be good if anyone out there who reads this post and has a means of direct contact with Blizzard could explain to them the difference between a choice and a mandatory baseline ability.
Ain’t reading all that. 5 paragraphs to say why alter time is bad meanwhile nobody with a lick of sense agrees with you. Take alter time or quite frankly your opinion on the hero talent associated with it is the opinion of someone who does not understand their spec and therefore is uninformed whining at best
That’s OK. The post wasn’t meant for you and wasn’t about the good/bad/right/wrong of the Alter Time talent, so I don’t expect you to understand it. Reading comprehension and critical thinking can be difficult concepts for many people.
why don’t you use your superior critical thinking skills to answer your own lazy questions? You made a forum post to save what? 30s of reading an alternate hero talent and cross referencing it with your base talents?
Whoa!! A troll post from an actual troll character! Epic!
But to answer your obviously uninformed question, neither Icy Veins nor Wowhead show any required talents for any of the Hero talent selections. Hence why I was caught unawares when I leveled to 72. Second, as previously stated I am only level 72, so I cannot select any talents higher than that to see if they also turn red upon learning.
So, I figured I would ask here as I know there are people who have already leveled past me and might be willing to share any information about any other “gotchas!” that may await me down the line. Asking questions is one of the many ways to obtain information when your own researches have hit a wall.
I was also interested if there were any other mandatory talents for other classes’ Hero talents, even though I know this is the Mage forums. That’s called curiosity.
