Suggested Mage Changes for 11.0

Classes Mage
1

Hey everyone,

Here I am with another giant wallpost, but this time I decided to make a video about it (shown below). This is so that I don’t physically assault you with the massive amount of writing, like I used to in my previous posts. I’ll also have the list of suggested changes below so you can have them in front of you. Here goes nothing:

Video source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XphxxFVWiW8

:mage: General Class Tree Changes :mage:

  • Ice Floes:
    • Current Version: Makes your next Mage Spell with a cast time shorter than 10 seconds castable while moving. Unaffected by the GCD and castable while casting.
    • Suggested Change: Allows your to cast while moving for the next 3 seconds. Unaffected by the GCD and castable while casting.
  • Rigid Ice and Improved Frost Nova removed
    • Focused Insight (new talent): Increases all physical damage reduction by 3% / 6%. 2-point node, replaces Improved Frost Nova.
    • Mirrored Delusions (new talent): All threat generated while Mirror Images is active is instead redirected to the nearest tank (similar to Tricks of the Trade or Misdirect). 1-point node, replaces Rigid Ice
  • Mass Polymorph:
    • Current Version: Transforms all enemies within 10 yards of you in sheep, wandering around incapacitated for 1 min. While affected, the victims cannot take actions but will regenerate health very quickly. Damage will cancel the effect. Only works on Beasts, Humanoids and Critters. 1 minute cooldown.
    • Suggested Change: Modifies your Polymorph spell to instead turn all enemies within 10 yards of your target into sheep, becoming unable to act but regenerating health very quickly. Damage will cancel the effect. In addition, Polymorph can now be applied to other creature types, including Dragonkin, Demons, Undead and Aberrations. Does not work in PvP. Passive
      • Note: I was recently informed that this would lead to a massive problem, where mages could stun-lock packs in M+ since the healing portion of Polymorph/Mass Polymorph is currently either bugged or delayed. One way to prevent this is to have the Mass Polymorph immediately heal the mobs the moment they get stunned, so that spamming Polymorph won’t actually be beneficial since they’ll instantly be healed for 10% of their health, even if immediately broken out by damage. I didn’t include it in the video because I was informed about this after the video was made unfortunately. Thanks to Porom on Altered Time for helping me with that.
  • Shifting Power:
    • Current Version: Draw power from the Night Fae, dealing (60.996% SP) * 4 Nature damage over 4 seconds to enemies within 18 yards. While channeling, your Mage ability cooldowns are reduced by 12 seconds over 4 seconds. 60 seconds cooldown.
    • Suggested Change: Draw power from the Night Fae, dealing (60.996% SP) * 4 Nature damage over 4 seconds to enemies within 18 yards. While channeling, your Mage ability cooldowns are reduced by 15 seconds over 4 seconds. 60 seconds cooldown. This ability is now affected by it’s own cooldown reduction effect.

:eye: Arcane :eye:

  • Foresight, Chrono-Shift, Improved Prismatic Barrier and Supernova moved to <8 talent point section.
  • Improved Arcane Missiles and Crackling Energy removed.
  • Mana Adept: Moved to Improved Prismatic Barrier’s current position.
    • Booming Surge (new talent): During Arcane Surge, your Haste is increased by 15%. Moved to Mana Adept’s current position.
    • Arcane Batter (new talent): Casting Arcane Orb grants you 4 Arcane Charges. Does not affect Orb Barrage. Moved to Foresight’s current position.
    • Funneled Barrage (new talent): Arcane Barrage deals 25% increased damage to the primary target, but cleaves only 20% of the its damage (decreased from 40%). Moved to Chrono-Shift’s current position.
    • Incandescence (new talent): During Arcane Surge, your Clearcasting Arcane Missile channel 33% faster (from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds; only applies to Clearcasting Arcane Missiles). Moved to Supernova’s current position.
  • Arcane Surge: Cooldown increased from 90 seconds to 120 seconds. Damage buff granted increased (based on tuning, see video for some numbers, in the Shifting Power section)
  • Touch of the Magi: Cooldown increased from 45 seconds to 60 seconds. Damage stored increased (based on tuning, see video for some numbers, in the Shifting Power section)
  • Mana Gem: No longer an item, now just a cooldown. Cooldown increased to 2 minutes to match Arcane Surge.
  • Siphon Storm:
    • Current Version: Evocation grants 1 Arcane Charge, channels 50% faster and while channeling Evocation, your Intellect is increased by 2% every 0.5 seconds. Lasts 30 seconds.
    • Suggested Change: Evocation channels 50% faster and no longer has a cooldown.
  • Evocation: Baseline cooldown increased to 2 minutes to match Arcane Surge.
  • Concentration:
    • Current Version: Arcane Blast has a chance to grant Concentration, which causes your next Clearcasting to not be consumed.
    • Suggested Change: Arcane Blast has a chance to grant Concentration, which causes your next Clearcasting proc to be refunded.
  • Nether Tempest:
    • Current Version: Places a Nether Tempest on the target which deals (22.5636% SP) Arcane damage over 12 seconds to the target and nearby enemies within 10 yards. Limit 1 target. Damage increased by 60% per Arcane Charge.
    • Suggested Change: When applying Touch of the Magi, place a Nether Tempest on the target which deals (60% SP) Arcane damage over 12 seconds to the target and nearby enemies within 10 yards. Limit 1 target. Damage increased by 60% per Arcane Charge. Passive, position switched with Touch of the Magi’s current position
  • Orb Barrage:
    • Current Version: Arcane Barrage has a 10% chance per Arcane Charge consumed to launch an Arcane Orb in front of you.
    • Suggested Change: Arcane Barrage has a 25% chance per Arcane Charge consumed to launch an Arcane Orb in front of you that deals 30% of normal damage.
  • Arcane Harmony:
    • Current Version: Each time Arcane Missile hits an enemy, the damage of your next Arcane Barrage is increased by 5%. This effect stacks up to 20 times.
    • Suggested Change: Each time Arcane Missile hits an enemy, the damage of your next Arcane Barrage is increased by 6.25%. This effect stacks up to 16 times. Arcane Explosion generates 1 stack per target hit. At maximum stacks, your next Arcane Barrage gains 10% critical damage per target hit. Now a choice node with Orb Barrage.
  • Missile Barrage (new talent): Arcane Missiles that consume Clearcasting fire an additional 2 missiles. In addition, Arcane Missiles that consume Clearcasting cleave to 4 additional targets near your current target for 33% of damage dealt. Placed where Arcane Harmony is currently located.
  • Rule of Threes:
    • Current Version: When you gain your third Arcane Charge, the cost of your next Arcane Blast or Arcane Missiles is reduced by 100%
    • Suggested Change: Every 3rd spell you cast is guaranteed to critically strike, but you can no longer crit outside of this 3-spell combo. Your critical damage is reduced by 25% but your critical strike now increases your critical damage instead.
  • Mastery: Savant:
    • Current Version: Increases your mana regeneration rate and maximum mana by 9.6%. Arcane Charges increases the damage of Arcane Blast by an additional 4.8% and Arcane Barrage by 2.4%. Increases all other Arcane damage by 8.0%
    • Suggested Change: Increases your mana regeneration rate and maximum mana by 9.6%. Increases all Arcane damage by 8.0%
  • Prodigious Savant:
    • Current Version: Arcane Charges further increase Mastery effectiveness of Arcane Blast and Arcane Barrage by 20% / 40% (2-point node)
    • Suggested Change: Your Mastery is increased by 5% / 10%. You can 5% / 10% more Mastery stat from all sources (2-point node).

:fire: Fire :fire:

  • Tempered Flames:
    • Current Version: Pyroblast has a 15% reduced cast time and a 10% increased critical strike chance. The duration of Combustion is reduced by 50%.
    • Suggested Change: Pyroblast has a 15% reduced cast time and hard-cast Pyroblast does 25% increased damage. This stacks multiplicatively with Sun King’s Blessing (total of +350% damage on SKB hard-cast from 260%).
  • Living Bomb:
    • Current Version: The target becomes a Living Bomb, taking (58.788% SP) Fire damage over 4 seconds then exploding to deal an additional (32.337% SP) Fire damage to the target and nearby enemies within 10 yards. Other enemies hit by this explosion also become Living Bombs, but this effect cannot spread further
    • Suggested Change: Consuming a Hot Streak puts a Living Bomb on your target, storing the damage done to that target for the next 3 Hot-Streak consuming Spells. After being hit by 3 Hot-Streak consuming spells, the target explodes, dealing 25% of the stored damage to the target and all nearby enemies, decreased after 8 targets. Maximum of 1 target, 45 second cooldown. Passive
  • Convection:
    • Current Version: Each time Living Bomb explodes, it has a 30% chance to reduce its cooldown by 2 seconds.
    • Suggested Change: Increases Living Bomb’s stored damage from Hot-Streak consuming Pyroblasts to 35% and Hot-Streak-consuming Flamestrike to 100%.
  • Unleashed Inferno:
    • Current Version: While Combustion is active, your Fireball, Pyroblast, Fire Blast, Scorch and Phoenix Flames deal 50% increased damage and reduce the cooldown of Combustion by 1.25 seconds.
    • Suggested Change: While Combustion is active, your Fireball, Pyroblast, Fire Blast, Scorch and Phoenix Flames deal 100% increased damage, you gain 30% additional Haste and your Ignite deals 25% additional damage. Combustion can no longer benefit from cooldown reduction effects such as Kindling and Shifting Power.
  • Hyperthermia:
    • Current Version: While your Combustion is not active, consuming Hot Streak has a low chance to cause all Pyroblasts and Flamestrikes to have no cast time and be guaranteed critical strikes for 6 seconds.
    • Suggested Change: While your Combustion is not active, consuming Hot Streak has a low chance to cause all Pyroblasts and Flamestrikes to have no cast time and be guaranteed critical strikes for 6 seconds. Also gains the benefits of Unleashed Inferno, if talented.
  • Flamestrike: Now has a toggle option that allows it to be cast on the target instead of having to use mouseover macros.
  • Meteor: Now has a toggle option that allows it to be cast on the target instead of having to use mouseover macros.

:snowflake: Frost :snowflake:

  • Splintering Ray: Recommend increasing damage, based on tuning.

Also side note: it’s incredibly annoying that you can’t post videos on the forums. This is from YouTube, which can vet said videos in case on inappropriate content.

3 Likes
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That would be a massive nerf, the only usefulness being during double lust where you have 1s or less casts. Unless they made it like hover where the spell you are casting can still be cast while moving when it ends.

A talent to make orb automatically give 4 charges is very weak considering its barely used in ST/2t and at 3t it already gives 4 arcane charges.

If you want better funnel for barrage, suggest buffing Resonance, that talent isnt funnel its just you losing AOE for more ST dmg. Adding targets in that scenario doesnt buff your damage, you simply lose aoe for a 25% barrage buff which is a bit boring.

As for incandescence, this would make arcane missiles channel faster than the gcd in double lust.

If anything for nether tempest rather than just adding it to totm, it should be changed to be a strong spread cleave option since thats a niche not many classes have, that mage currently cant fill, and I believe a prior iteration of nether tempest as well.

RNG is good, no need for this to be 100% chance. In this case you would literally never need normal arcane orb since every barrage would give you one guaranteed. Our current version of orb barrage is fine.

Frost doesn’t have the talent points in the third gate to take this regardless, and its design is the issue, unless you consider not being overpowered poor tuning. Channeling a spell for 4s in AOE is just not synergistic with the rest of frosts kit (in addition to the fact our 3rd gate as mentioned before has too many overpowered talents for this to compete).

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Incoming long response for general and arcane:

General

I like Ice Floes. I like Ice Floes a lot. To me, it feels perfectly competitive with Shimmer as is. I’ve seen plenty of mages go one way or the other, with most understanding why each side picked what they picked. Both choices have their uses and their niches.

This change would make Ice Floes significantly more powerful in some circumstances but significantly weaker in others.

Not to mention, the current wording of “next spell” means that if I start casting a 9 second second spell (I know that we don’t have any), I can walk for the full 9 seconds. With the change you suggest, it’s not clear if I’d be able to cast for the full duration or if as soon as those 3 seconds are up, you have to stop moving or cancel the cast. Knowing Blizzard, this ambiguity is fertile land for bugs.

I think Ice Floes is fine. I wouldn’t want to see it change at all unless shimmer is also changing.

There’s probably a case for keeping Improved Frost Nova around. Maybe not a strong case, but a case. I’d consider combining two or more of the “Frost Nova” talents into one talent. Those talents are Improved Frost Nova, Rigid Ice, and Ice Ward. I could see all three being combined into one, singular “Improved Frost Nova”.

Considering we already have Arcane Warding - which is weaker than your suggestion and applies to magic damage - I’m not sure if this one has a place. It’s thematically a bit off (mages should reduce magic damage) and just all around not an interesting talent - especially outside the first tier of talents.

I really don’t think we need a misdirect. It’s a niche already filled by other classes that I don’t think we need to step on. Mirror Images are a good “protect yourself” spell, but I’m not sure the redirection is necessary. MD and Tricks are also abilities that specifically target a player. Giving it the arbitrary caveat of “nearest tank” could easily cause disruptions in any fight that has more than one tank.

If this were to be added, I’d rather see it replace either Reduplication or Reabsorption as they’re already really under-utilized talents (for some obvious reasons).

Personally, I think Polymorph is a dated ability that needs to be updated. Considering how many other forms of hard CC exist in the game that don’t require a specific creature type OR provide healing, I find that I rarely use it. Mass Poly falls into that same problem.

The one and only reason I’ve found Poly useful in the last ~6 years or so is the fact that we can spam it. So if an add needs to be crowd controlled but somebody accidentally put a dot on it, we can spam poly it and sacrifice our damage to ensure the group doesn’t wipe.

If Mass Poly is to stay, it definitely needs to be made into a ranged ability. More creature types should be added baseline. As it stands, I don’t think I’ve seen someone find a use for this outside of world content for PvE.

Honestly I think we’d all be better off if this was just removed. If “making our cooldowns come back faster” is that important, they should just be reduced baseline.

Arcane

But no changes to any of them? Chrono-shift is probably the only talent of that bunch that sees play, and the only reason it doesn’t see more is because of its position. The rest are… Really not great talents. If anything this will make it harder to find your way out of the <8 talent category because we’ll probably have to take one or more of these talents that people don’t really like.

My opposition to this is that I already feel that Arcane Surge does too much. Adding something else to an already overloaded spell is questionable. I like the idea of it, but only if we can find more ways to improve (or prune) Surge baseline. I don’t think we should have a “does everything” button.

This talent effectively defeats the purpose of casting arcane orb and will create some really terrible use cases to resolve. Because this spell will generate 4 charges and the orb that was fired can also generate charges, it’ll create a playstyle where arcane mages will want to leave melee range, cast orb, immediately barrage, have orb hit 4 targets, barrage again, return to melee for Arcane Explosions.

That’s a fair amount of dancing and, once again, defeats the purpose of Arcane Orb. If anything, just make a talent that brings Charged Up back. It’s a spell that grants 4 charges, it’s just not tied to orb.

Unless you’ve moved more talents around and I didn’t see them, we’d be able to take this talent without taking the talent that lets Barrage cleave. That makes the wording for this all gain, no loss. I very much like the idea behind it, but I think it would make more sense as a talent if Arcing Cleave became baseline (which I think it should).

Though I do also worry that 25% might be a bit too much, but that’s a balance issue.

Potential logistical issue: This talent would technically be selectable without taking Arcane Surge. May need to reconsider its location to prevent that case. I’m not saying it’s smart to not take Arcane Surge, but I think a good design philosophy would be to make sure that if talent A relies on talent B, it’s not possible to have A without B.

I feel like this would help with the issue we have where clipping missiles is better than fully casting them. I like it.

Making our cooldowns longer and compensating for it by giving us a way to reduce them back to what they were before is very much a “this doesn’t feel good” problem. Blizzard did that to us in Shadowlands with Arcane Prodigy and I do not want to go back to that.

We deal most of our damage within our burst window. If you spread our windows out more, we either need to do more when we burst, or more when we’re not bursting. Making us do more damage when we aren’t bursting hurts our role as “burst caster” a bit. Making us do more damage while we’re bursting will overemphasize problems like “my target died too fast” or “mobs aren’t alive long enough for burst to matter”. It’s a double edged sword, but I don’t think making our cooldowns 2 minutes baseline is going to help us, even if you buff Shifting Power (which I still argue should be removed).

Do we really need this at all? It was a cute throwback, but does it really see much use outside of the damage buff it provides?

Fully removing the cooldown of Evocation makes a significant portion of our design moot. If mana matters, this eliminates that. If mana doesn’t matter, we shouldn’t need this. The sad part is that if we remove the buff from Siphon Storm, we will need more buffs to compensate for it - specifically buffs to other buffs since it’s removing a damage-dealing cooldown.

Blizzard does already have a way to make those weird interactions with “consuming” a cast work, they just need to implement it into Arcane Battery like they did with Nether Precision.

Why? What purpose does this spell really serve for us? Is it worth keeping it around just so we can proc Arcane Echo?

I’ve seen this suggested before. It’s possibly one of the worst suggestions for Arcane from a gameplay perspective. Sure, it’ll make us do more damage, but it also means we’ll only cast barrage once AoE starts.

With a 4 target fight, you pop orb to get to four charges, then barrage to clear your charges, which guarantees you get 4 charges (100% chance with your suggestion), so you pop barrage again, which guaran… you get the point.

Although it would be powerful and less random, it’s not healthy for the kit. Randomness is important for all kits.

I get it, but this has a huge potential to create a really terrible playstyle. Being able to guarantee a spell will crit is powerful - especially with our buffed up barrages. On top of all the stuff we’re already keeping track of, I’m not sure “how many crits have I had?” is really one I’d want to add. If I wanted to track my crits, I’d play fire.

It’s likely also going to make some weird breakpoints of “if you can’t get above X crit, you don’t ever want it. If you can get above it, take nothing but it” and I imagine that will frustrate players. It’s not a hard problem to work around, but it’ll be annoying.

It’s also going to make mistakes significantly more punishing if you fail to make your big spell crit when it’s supposed to.

I think doubling the effectiveness of our mastery on Blast and quadrupling the effectiveness of Barrage is going to create some wildly unhealthy balance issues that will just result in those spells having their damage reduced - making them feel weaker if you don’t have mastery

Additionally, removing our reliance on Arcane Charges to deal our most effective damage goes counter to how our kit is (or at least was) designed. It’s supposed to be a tradeoff where more charges = more damage but more charges = more mana consumption. Reducing the need for charges opens the door for rotations that ignore them altogether, thus defeating the purpose of them existing.

If mastery is our best stat, this will be absurdly powerful - to the point where it will be required. If mastery turns out to be our worst stat (it usually isn’t, but you never know), this will make taking whatever talent is below it feel bad.

I’m all for it, it’s better than what’s there now, but I fear it could be too strong in the grand scheme of things and could, once again, cause other spells to be balanced so that they feel bad when you don’t have this talent.

4

I did, it’s in the video right at the top.
All of my suggested, with math, are up there.

Same with this one: it’s because we currently have only 11% physical reduction as opposed to boomkins or warriors who have ~30-40%.
The magic damage reduction talent is stronger because that type of damage reduction is not gear based like physical damage is for armor (outside of vers usage)

I explained my reasoning for this (and all the other changes) in the video, It’s a ST talent. that allows you to do Barrage → Orb → Barrage → Orb → Continue rotation w/o DPS loss (and mana gain if mana adept is talented), which also allows you to have some good mobility since all of these are instant cast spells.

Yeah that was actually the goal with this talent. It’s meant to remove the Arcane Missiles clipping thing that we currently have, which a lot of people (including myself) hate. You physically cannot clip a spell if it has the same channel as the GCD (without manually interrupting it i.e. by pressing escape).

5

I am too lazy to watch the video. I’ll take your word for it.

I think you’re missing a bit of the point I’m trying to make.

If the fact that we wear cloth is a detriment to our class that needs rectifying, the way Armor works should be changed. Either the difference between cloth and plate should be reduced or removed (which isn’t a very “in flavor” change") OR, I’d propose that armor provides an additional magic damage reduction, scaling opposite the way plate and cloth do for physical damage.

That way most casters can excel at mitigating the type of damage they do, and then we don’t feel the need to spend a talent point to be on par with everyone else.

Arcane is not a builder / spender in ST situations? The goal is not to build up charges and spend them immediately. You say it’s a ST talent, but I see more uses for this in AoE than I do in ST.
And if your suggestions are to make arcane a builder spender in ST, I’ll hard pass.

It’s definitely a good thing to want to fix, but I’m not sure this is the way to do it. The real solution is to make Clearcast missiles worth channeling for the full duration. I’d say “have it do something when the channel is complete” but I feel it’s probably best to just make it a higher DPS output than even a Nether Precision buffed Arcane Blast (which is why we clip them in the first place).

The order of Damage used to be (at some point):
CC Missiles > AB (4 charges)
BfA accidentally made it:
AB (4 charges) > CC Missiles
Shadowlands is currently:
NP AB (4 charges) > CC Missiles > AB (4 charges)

I think the better solution is to make CC missiles do more damage overall (which I believe some of your other talents might already do) so that it becomes a bigger output than Nether Precision.

Also, having a channeled spell that finishes before the GCD feels like it defeats the purpose of being channeled a bit.

6

Yeah right now use floes for raying and shifting, couldn’t with change, not a fan… sucks for PvP…