Suggested Mage Changes - Please stop ignoring us

Brainard-area-52 · March 9, 2023, 9:38pm

TL;DR:

This thread is here to suggest changes to each respective spec tree. Click through the sections to learn more.

Hey everyone,

This thread is here to outline a couple of problems (and solutions) to the mage class tree and the 3 mage specs. I’ll have a brief summary below, followed by in-depth details and ideas. Here goes:

General Design Philosophy

Click here to see my General Design Philosophy for the Mage Class

Class vs. Spec Talent Tree:

In my opinion, the class tree should be focused on utility and defensives with minimal damage, while the spec tree should be reserved. The reason for this is simple: for DPS specs, introducing damage talents in a tree means they will always take priority. In the Mage Class tree for example, there are no builds that currently exclude Rune of Power/IF, Shifting Power and Temporal Warp/Time Anomaly (and Meteor, if it did more damage). This is because our role as DPS specs is to simply do damage. The same thing applies to the spec tree: utility and defensives will always be overlooked in favor of more damage, unless if the utility/defensive allows others to do more damage (i.e. Black Hole, new talent that I suggested in the Arcane Tree). Finally, the class tree should also have as little DPS talents as possible since it makes reworking individual specs more difficult. If a class tree had only defensives and utility, there would be little crossover between the spec tree being rework and the class tree. Putting everything together, this means:

Class tree: should have as little DPS talents as possible, instead focusing on utility and defensives
Spec tree: should have as little utility/defensives as possible (unless if that utility grants more damage to the player or the raid), instead focusing on damage, rotations and different builds for the given scenario (i.e. Raid vs. M+ vs. PvP)

Arcane:

During Shadowlands, Arcane had essentially 2 viable covenants: Kyrian Arcane (in Raid and M+) and Venthyr Arcane (only in single target, very few people played this). The two builds went as follows:

Kyrian: This build focused on delivering a small number of huge hits, culminating with an Arcane Barrage that everyone prayed would crit for a ton of damage. This damage was entirely front loaded into your Radiant Spark rotation, which you would perform in your Touch of the Magi window. I loved this build, but I (and many others) kept asking for a tier set that would somehow guarantee a crit for the Barrage (which you kind of added in S1 of DF). It was a functional and unique build, usable in all contents (fantastic funnel in M+).
Venthyr: This build focused on Siphon Storm → Touch of the Magi with 3 Clearcasting procs, where you would dump all of your Clearcasting Charges into this narrow ToTM window, with increased damage from Arcane Echo (reminiscent of Prophecy of Fear from WoD). This build, while fun, was basically only viable in single target. Some people actually made it in the top 20 logs for Skolex in patch 9.2 with this build, which proves it wasn’t entirely worthless, but it was severely limited by the lack of guaranteed Clearcasting charges outside of the Venthyr Covenant ability.
Current Meta Builds: the problem inherent to the complexity of Arcane’s current build is the fact that it is a mix and match of both builds, with a ton of ancillary buttons to empower both setups. Personally, I think these two builds should be separated so as to simplify the rotations for players while providing the same rush players previously desired. In my mind, Arcane Echo and all of the talents that make it do a lot of damage (i.e. Nether Tempest) should belong to the Venthyr Build, while Arcane Bombardment should belong to the Kyrian build.

Fire:

Fire mage has shifted a significant amount since BfA, where it was known as a huge cooldown class, to its current state as a nearly-always in Combustion sort of class, mainly thanks to Sun King’s Blessing and the cooldown reduction from Shifting Power and Kindling. Some people appreciate this build, some people would rather have the old two minute huge Combustion build and some would like a return of the 100% crit build from Season 4 of BfA or from Legion. I actually believe that all 3 crowds can be appeased with choice nodes that tweak Combustion in different directions. I also want to address the under-representation of some talents in places where they really shouldn’t be underrepresented (i.e. Flamestrike in AoE).

Sun King’s Blessing Build: No problems with this build, keep it in the game for sure. The only thing I would add is to remove the timers on some buffs like Sun King’s Blessing and Pyroclasm, since it makes Fire mage very difficult to play, especially for new players and less experienced players. It should be no surprise that Fire mage (like Arcane) is considered one of the hardest specs to play correctly in the game.
The 2-minute Giga-Combustion Build: Fire mages from BfA remember the rush of getting a huge Combustion right when all the adds spawned on the Hivemind boss fight, or on Psychus in the N’Zoth encounter. I can hardly remember a time when Fire felt as good as that. Let’s make it happen again (see Fire Mage Suggested Changes section below to see my suggestions).
The 100% Crit Build: This build almost makes Fire mage feel like a completely different spec, and it feels really good. I think we can use Combustion’s buff to our advantage here to create a talent that allows Fire mage to have that without being overpowered, simply by virtue of having to dump all of their secondary stats into crit to achieve that 100% crit chance (see Fire Mage Suggested Changes section below to see my suggestions). It should be expected that the damage with this build is less bursty, but more stronger than out-of-Combustion phases.

Frost:

coming soon

Specific Problems Class/Spec Trees

Below are some examples of problems that I (and other mages I’ve talked to) have with the Class, Arcane, Fire and Frost trees.

Class Tree Problems

Almost every mage I’ve talking to would rather have had Cold Snap and Cauterize over Shifting Power and Meteor as capstones. I even a video with timestamp where this is discussed on Max’s stream. In addition, there has been no communication as to why this near-universally requested change was not implemented.
Incanter’s Flow continues to be completely inferior to Rune of Power, and will never be picked as a result. Furthermore, a simple damage buff to Incanter’s Flow would be an improvement, but would still be incredibly underwhelming in terms of effect, since all it does is give you non-interactive damage buffs that oscillate in power, similar to the Shards of Domination mechanic from Patch 9.1 (which was not well received).
A lot of the class talents (i.e. Winter’s Protections, Rigid Ice, Improved Frost Nova) are near unusable due to weak effect and/or lack of talent points since a lot of these are 2-point talents.
Mass Polymorph is so unearthly niche it hardly sees any play whatsoever.

Arcane Tree Problems

Orb Barrage is completely (and will continue to be completely) dead
Arcane Harmony is as far away from Prodigious Savant, and Orb Barrage (even if it was viable) is as far away from Illuminated Thoughts and Concentration as possible.
Arcane has 6 utility nodes which are, with the exception of Slipstream to get to damage talents and Supernova in PvP only, never picked (talents: foresight, chrono-shift, supernova, improved prismatic barrier, mana adept and slipstream). I’ve seen Shadow Priest complain about have 4 in their tree.
Arcane has eight (8!) cooldowns to juggle (evocation w/ siphon storm, mana gem, rune of power, radiant spark, touch of the magi, temporal warp, shifting power and arcane surge)
Arcane has an 11 second setup just to do damage (6 second for evocation, 1.5 for rune, 1.5 for radiant spark and 2.5 for arcane surge)
Arcane has a DoT (Nether Tempest) that it has to use during TotM windows. This does not fit into the Radiant Spark rotation/playstyle of a few gigantic hits at all. Furthermore, it creates a large bloat of buttons to have to press in your rotation, making it more difficult to play.

Fire Tree Problems

Tempered Flames is severely undertuned; it is a literal DPS loss to pick up this talent.
Pyromaniac is way too RNG and completely messes with the flow of Fire’s rotation. I have a clip of Imfiredup discussing this with Max below.
Firefall’s intended purpose may be to have some Meteors fall down sometimes, but the way players use it is they try to time it with RoP + SKB or Combustion windows for huge damage + guaranteed crit.
Living Bomb very weak on low numbers of targets and extremely strong on masses of targets (i.e. Tree Boss in Algethar Academy)
Flame Strike is lower in the grave than even Survival Hunters (rest in piece)
Hyperthermia is a gigantic buff that ironically could make Flamestrike viable if it wasn’t so incredibly random. At the start of a huge AoE pull that could be the difference between 500k and 800k DPS, but it almost never happens that way because of RNG
Phoenix Reborn (and Phoenix flames in general) still feels like an awful button to press. I would give up all 3 Phoenix Flames charges for 1 extra charge of Fire Blast (gameplay wise, not talking about damage output here)

Frost Tree Problems

We still have to pick up Blizzard to get to talents like Cold Snap and Wintertide, even in situations where we would never cast a single Blizzard (i.e. Single target)
Glacial Spike is not only dead because of damage, it feels bad to play because you cannot press it without Flurry (since you want to guarantee a critical strike), meaning you cannot use a major button (Flurry) and instead have to keep it for every Glacial Spike. Besides the bad damage, that just feels bad to play because you end up having to spam Frostbolts just to get Brain Freeze and Flurry procs
Flash Freeze and Cold Front talents are never picked, and Cold Front especially is incredibly underpowered in all scenarios
Splitting Ice, which grants Frost its 2-target cleave and is core to Frost Mage’s niche and identity in raid fights, is over in Narnia on the right side. I would put this talent front and center.
Same as above with Hailstones since this talent is so powerful that it completely changes Frost’s secondary stat prio
Thermal void still does not interact with Glacial Spike

Mage Class Tree Changes

Click here to see Suggested changes for the Mage Class Tree

Current vs Suggested General Mage Tree Comparison: https://imgur.com/gallery/A1zGztX
Pastebin link to tree: https://pastebin.com/JJR1qZqj
Above talent tree was made with TobiasM95’s WoW-Talent-Tree-Manager (the same one featured on Max’s stream). You can find it here: https://github.com/TobiasM95/WoW-Talent-Tree-Manager

Mirror Images

Can now be reactivated to dismiss the Mirror Images (to prevent them from butt-pulling patrolling mobs in M+)

Rigid Ice

Removed from the game.
Replaced with Chrono-Shift (see Arcane Mage section)

Improved Frost Nova

Now baseline; please don’t nerf frost nova by 2 seconds just to create this incredibly bad talent.
Replaced with Improved Prismatic Barrier (see Arcane Mage section)

Shifting Power

Removed; added to the Fire Mage tree as a choice node with Living Bomb (see Fire Mage section).
Replaced with Cold Snap (see Frost Mage section)

Meteor

Removed; added to the Fire Mage tree in Cauterize’s position.
Replaced with Cauterize talent (see Fire Mage section)

Winter’s Protection

Current: The cooldown of Ice Block is reduced by 20/40 seconds (2-point talent)
Suggested change: During Ice Block, you retain the ability to cast spells but cannot move (1 point talent)

Tempest Barrier

Current: Gain a shield that absorbs 3%/6% of your maximum health for 15 seconds after your Blink (2-point talent)
Suggested change: Gain a shield that absorbs 5% of your maximum health for 15 seconds after your Blink (1-point talent)

Incantation of Swiftness

Current: Greater Invisibility increases your movement speed by 16%/32%. Invisibility increases your movement speed by 40%/80%. (2-point talent)
Suggested change: Greater Invisibility increases your movement speed by 32%. Invisibility increases your movement speed by 80%. Also increases your movement speed by 5% at all times (1-point talent)

Arcane Warding

Current: Reduces magic damage taken by 2%/4%. (2-point talent)
Suggested change: Reduces magic damage taken by 3%. (1-point talent)

Mass Polymorph

Current: Transforms all enemies within 10 yards into 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. 10 target cap 1 minute cooldown
Suggested Change: Transforms all enemies within 10 yards into 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. Works on all types of enemies. While Polymorphed, every enemies gains 1 stack of Remote Sheep Detonator every 3 seconds, max 10 stacks. When Mass Polymorph ends or is broken by damage, the stacks detonate, dealing (10% Spell Power) Arcane Damage per stack to the target and all enemies within 10 yards. 3 minute cooldown

Incanter’s Flow

Current: Increases damage by 4% to 20%, cycling every 10 seconds
Suggested change: Grants you the following effect based on your specialization:
1. Arcane: Increases your maximum number of Arcane Charges by 1 and increases the damage of Arcane Blast, Arcane Missiles and Arcane Barrage by 15%
2. Fire: Increases your maximum Fire Blast charges by 1 and reduces the cooldown of Fire Blast by 1 second
3. Frost: Generates Brain Freeze every 15 seconds and increases Ice Lance damage by 25% and Icicle damage by 10%

Quick-Witted

Current: Successfully interrupting an enemy with Counterspell reduces its cooldown by 4 seconds
Suggested change: Successfully interrupting an enemy with Counterspell generates 1 Clearcasting stack / 1 Fire Blast charge / 1 Fingers of Frost stack

Developer’s note: one of the fundamental mistakes made with the class tree was trying to put DPS power into it, since it will universally result in a situation of one talent set is permanently picked for all content ever (i.e. Rune of Power, Temporal Warp and Shifting Power). In addition, there are a number of dead talents like Rigid Ice and Improved Frost Nova which serve almost no purpose save to fill an otherwise empty spot, as well as “half dead” talents like Winter’s Protection, Tempest Barrier, Incantation of Swiftness and Arcane Warding where even though there are many situations where they are useful, the two-point requirement of them makes them prohibitive to pick up more than one of these 4 (and their effects, besides the 4% damage reduction are generally boring/underwhelming in my opinion). Below I discussed my reasoning for certain talents in detail:
- Mass Polymorph: I could be wrong, but I currently see no advantage to this spell over the regular Polymorph in PvE. I guess it may have some niche uses in PvP (?), but the 1 minute cooldown is prohibitive at best for a talent point. The other huge problem with this spell is that it requires the mage to be in melee, which can be true of Arcane but less often for Fire or Frost mage. Also it doesn’t work on Dragons or Elementals (which is almost every non-boss/cc-able mob in Dragonflight). I wanted to fix this by giving a damage component to this spell to allow it to act like a damage source worth pressing so long as the targets remained CC’d for at least 30 seconds. This is based on the Torghast Anima Power called Remote Sheep Detonator, which I personally liked even if there were better powers. Hopefully something like this gives this spell new life. https://www.wowhead.com/spell=330674/remote-sheep-detonator
- Incanter’s Flow: This talent has been living in the shadow of Rune of Power since I started playing in BfA. I’ve heard everything from buffing it to nerfing/removing RoP, to changing its effect. I would recommend changing its effect, but not to some other static buff, instead changing it to something that changes your rotation in some way (like the way I designed it above). Simply put: increasing damage by just making numbers bigger is boring; increasing damage by changing the rotation in some way is a mark of good design and I think this new version of Incanter’s Flow could provide that. Shoutout to Imfiredup for the idea on increasing Arcane Charges, here’s the video w/ timestamp (he says it ~30 seconds into the timestamp): https://youtu.be/1YeT2f4FQwk?t=6938
- Quick-Witted: This is based on the “Punishment” talent of the new Paladin cast tree, which casts Crusader Strike (generating Holy Power and doing damage) whenever you successfully interrupt. Fantastic idea; people need more incentives to press their kick button (as any M+ pug group experience would tell you).
- Shifting Power, Meteor, Cold Snap and Cauterize: This has been talked about before. My gut tells me that Blizzard hasn’t done this because they are worried that Mages might be unkillable if they pick up both Cauterize and Cold Snap. However, this is unlikely to be the case and here’s why: in order to pick up both Cauterize and Cold Snap (if they were swapped for Meteor and Shifting Power respectively), you would lose out on either Temporal Warp or Time Anomaly, losing some ~5-7% DPS based on sims. I know of very few DPS that would ever opt to lose out on DPS, and if they do choose both Cold Snap and Cauterize, I think the trade off of doing significantly less damage is worth it. For PvP: you could simply have Cauterize go on cooldown if you press Cold Snap, or vice-versa (if you proc Cauterize, Cold Snap goes on cooldown). At present, this situation is miserable where every spec permanently going for Shifting Power for all content, and nerfing that spell would simply result in all specs switching over to Meteor. In addition, Fire Mages are currently in the same boat as the old Moonkin tree where they lose significant damage talents as a result of picking Cauterize, which feels turbo bad (Moonkins had the same problem with Solar Beam). Putting Cauterize in the Class tree prevents this kind of issue as well. This idea was previously discussed in the video below by Max, Imfiredup, Preheat, Norrinir and Sergrand (this idea is said at 8:00):

Arcane Talent Changes

Click here to see Suggested changes for the Arcane Mage Spec Tree

Current vs Suggested Arcane Tree Comparison: https://imgur.com/gallery/ZyHOaXi
Pastebin link to tree: https://pastebin.com/TvGVxFV2
Above talent tree was made with TobiasM95’s WoW-Talent-Tree-Manager (the same one featured on Max’s stream). You can find it here: https://github.com/TobiasM95/WoW-Talent-Tree-Manager

Arcane Barrage-Oriented Talent Changes

Mana Adept:

Current: Grants 2% maximum mana per Arcane Charge consumed by Arcane Barrage

Suggested Change: Grants 2% maximum mana per Arcane Charge consumed by Arcane Barrage and deals 25% additional damage.

Resonance:

Current: Arcane Barrage deals 15% increased damage per target it hits. (Max +75%)

Suggested Change: Arcane Barrage deals 10% increased damage per target it hits, excluding primary target (Max +40%). For every Arcane charge, Arcane Barrage hits 1 additional target for 40% damage, up to maximum of 5 targets (does not cleave to 6 targets with 5 Arcane Charges from Incanter’s Flow)

This nerf is to compensate for Mana Adept change (+75% bonus damage on 5 targets with Mana Adept (same as current with Resonance alone)

Arcing Cleave

Removed; effect added to Resonance

Masterful Magic

New Talent: Arcane Barrage has a 10% chance per target hit to generate 2 Arcane Charges (similar to Artifice of the Archmage Conduit from Shadowlands).

Placed where Foresight is in Patch 10.1.0 Arcane tree

Arcane Harmony

Current: Each time Arcane Missiles hits an enemy, the damage of your next Arcane Barrage is increased by 5%, stacking up to 20 times (100% damage bonus total)

Suggested change: Each time Arcane Missiles hits an enemy, the damage of your next Arcane Barrage is increased by 6.25%, stacking up to 16 times (100% damage bonus total) Switched positions with Orb Barrage.

Prodigous Savant

Current: Arcane Charges further increase Mastery effectiveness of Arcane Blast by 20/40% and Arcane Barrage by 20/40% 2 point talent

Suggested change: Arcane Charges further increase Mastery effectiveness of Arcane Blast by 13/27/40% and Arcane Barrage by 26/54/80%. 3 point talent.

Arcane Missiles-Oriented Talent Changes

Unstable Missiles

New Talent: Every Arcane Missile has a 10% chance to ripple on impact, dealing (8.25% Spell Power) to the target and all enemies within 8 yards. Deals reduced damage after 8 targets (same damage as Arcane Echo).

Placed where Improved Prismatic Barrier is in Patch 10.1.0 Arcane tree

Orb Barrage (renamed to Missile Barrage):

Current: Consuming Clearcast stack reduces the cooldown of Arcane Orb by 2 seconds. Casting Arcane missiles grants 1 stack of Orb Barrage (Clearcast Arcane Missiles grants 2). Once you reach 15 stacks, you shoot out an Arcane Orb in front of you.

Suggested Change (complete rework): Clearcast Arcane missiles now fires 1/2 additional missiles. Each Clearcast spent during Touch of the Magi increases its duration by 0.5/1 seconds. Switched positions with Arcane Harmony, now a 2-point node

Kyrian Build-Oriented Talent Changes

Rule of Threes:

Current: When you gain your 3rd Arcane Charge, your next Arcane Blast or Arcane Missiles has its mana cast reduced by 100%

Suggested change: Every 3rd spell you cast is guaranteed to be a critical strike, but you can no longer crit outside of this repeating 3-spell combo.

Upon selecting this talent, critical strike damage is reduced by 25% (175% instead of 200%). Your critical strike rating will now increase critical damage instead of critical strike chance (i.e. 25% crit = critical damage does 200% like normal).

For Arcane Missiles, every 3rd missile benefits from this guaranteed crit effect, not the whole Arcane Missiles cast

Arcane Echo / Arcane Bombardment

Combined into a choice node

Venthyr Build-Oriented Talent Changes

Nether Tempest:

Current: Deals (19.62% of Spell power) Arcane damage over 12 sec to the target and nearby enemies within 10 yards. Limit 1 target. Deals reduced damage to secondary targets. Damage increased by 60% per Arcane Charge.

Suggested Change: Deals (19.62% of Spell power) Arcane damage over 12 sec to the target and nearby enemies within 10 yards. Limit 1 target. Deals reduced damage to secondary targets. Damage increased by 60% per Arcane Charge. This spell is automatically applied to your target when you use Touch of the Magi.

Arcane Echo / Arcane Bombardment

Combined into a choice node

Harmonic Echo:

Now a choice node with Focusing Spark

Focusing Spark:

New Talent: Radiant Spark’s Vulnerability debuff decreased from 10% damage to 1% damage per stack, but this can now stack infinitely (i.e. Clearcast Arcane Missiles gives 8 stacks (with current tree), 10 stacks with new Orb Barrage replacement). Debuff lasts 10 seconds and is not further increased by new stacks. Choice node with Harmonic Echo

Arcane Orb-Oriented Talent Changes

Foresight:

Current: Standing in place for 10 seconds grants you 4 seconds of casting while moving

Suggested Change: Casting Arcane Orb now grants you 4 Arcane Charges on cast.

Moved to Arcing Cleave’s position in 10.1.0 Arcane tree

Arcane Explosion-Oriented Talent Changes

Reverberate

Current: If Arcane Explosion hits at least 3 targets, it has a 50% chance to generate an extra Arcane Charge.

Suggested change: If Arcane Explosion hits at least 3 targets, it has a 100% chance to generate an extra Arcane Charge.

Arcane Surge-Oriented Talent Changes

Arcane Power

Now a choice node with Arcane Ignition

Arcane Ignition

New Talent: Store 15% of all damage dealt during Arcane Surge (including mini-Arcane Surges granted from Time Anomaly). Your next Arcane Surge within 2 minutes will release all of the stored damage on your targets, split evenly.

This stored damage resets upon starting a raid boss encounter, and cannot exceed 20 times the max-mana Arcane Surge damage (i.e. no massive damage stored from low-level mobs, then porting to bosses to one-shot them Rextroy-style)

Unique Utility Talents

Black Hole:

New Talent: Deals (60% Spell Power) to target and (30% Spell Power) Arcane damage to all enemies within 8 yards of target and pulls them towards the targets (like a ranged Gorefiend’s Grasp). 120 second cooldown

Positioned where Chrono-Shift is in Patch 10.1.0 Arcane tree

Quality of Life Talent Changes

Conjure Mana Gem

No longer a conjured item that need to be summoned with 3 charges; now simply a cooldown-based spell

Radiant Spark

Current: Conjure a radiant spark that causes (91.2% of Spell power) Arcane damage instantly, and an additional (49.5% of Spell power) damage over 10 sec. The target takes 10% increased damage from your direct damage spells, stacking each time they are struck. This effect ends after 4 spells. 30 second cooldown

Suggested Change: Conjure a radiant spark that causes (91.2% of Spell power) Arcane damage instantly, and an additional (49.5% of Spell power) damage over 10 sec. The target takes 10% increased damage from your direct damage spells, stacking each time they are struck. This effect ends after 4 spells. This also applies Touch of the Magi on your target. Replaces Touch of the Magi. 45 second cooldown.

Talent Swap with the Class Tree

Chrono-Shift

Current: Arcane Barrage slows enemies by 50% and increases your movement speed by 50% for 5 seconds

Suggested change: Moved to class tree, switched to Rigid Ice’s position Arcane Barrage / Hot-Streak Pyroblast / Ice Lance on Frozen targets increases your movement speed by 50% (reduced to 25% in PvP)

Improved Prismatic Barrier

Current: Prismatic Barrier further reduces magical damage taken by an additional 5% and duration of harmful magic effects by 10%

Suggested change: Moved to class tree, switched to Improved Frost Nova’s position Prismatic / Blazing / Ice Barrier reduces magical damage taken by an additional 5% and duration of harmful magic effects by 10%

Talent Position Changes

Changed the positions of Amplification, Nether Precision, Evocation, Siphon Storm, Conjure Mana Gem and Cascading Power to make the capstone nodes more accessible and the tree more condensed and cooler-looking (in my opinion)

Developer’s note: there’s a few talents for Arcane that are permanently never picked. Some are not picked because they compete with other damage talents while themselves not doing any damage whatsoever (i.e. Mana Adept, Foresight, Improved Prismatic Barrier, Chrono-Shift and arguably Supernova, which does negligible damage). Other never-picked talents are never selected for different reason, which are expanded upon below:
- Mana Adept, Resonance and Arcing Cleave: Mana Adept, in its current version, will never see play, simply because you can circumvent picking this talent by having good mana management and it competes with actual damage improvement talent. I provided an example of something Blizzard could add to make this talent more viable. In order to compensate for the gained damage, I nerfed Resonance. Lastly, because of the nerf to Resonance where it no longer applies damage to the primary target (meaning it is useless in Single target), I put Arcing Cleave’s effect into Resonance. I think a lot of Arcane Mages would feel good about that change, since picking Arcing Cleave just to allow Arcane Barrage to cleave feels really, really bad.
- Foresight: This talent suffers from the same problems as Mana Adept (above), but with movement, and arguably a worse version of Ice Floes since you have to be stationary for 10 seconds. I struggled for a while with trying to find a suitable alternative for this talent, and I think I like this one a lot. It now guarantees that Arcane Orb always grants you 4 Arcane Charges. Obviously, this is stronger in single target, but in M+ it still has utility on bosses and mini-bosses.
- Nether Tempest: This simply aims to put Nether Tempest on your target when you apply Touch of the Magi, which were are currently already doing. This aims to reduce the number of buttons we have to press to make the class easier, without taking away the option of being able to use Nether Tempest outside of that.
- Rule of Threes: Same as with Mana Adept; albeit worse since not spending mana reduces your chances of proc Clearcasting to 0%, so this talent can actually be a DPS loss. I ran with a theme of 3s here and at the same time solving the issue of wanting the big Arcane Barrage on the 4th stack of Radiant Spark to crit. This will now be a counting game where the player will have to time their rotation so that the 2nd and 5th spell in the Radiant Spark rotation are the ones that crit. Note that for Arcane Missiles, it would only allow every 3rd missile to crit, not the whole volley.
- Supernova and Black Hole: In my Design Philosophy discussion, I mentioned that we should minimize utility/defensives. So why did I add another utility spell (Black Hole)? While this talent does compete for DPS talents, you are sacrificing your own damage for the benefit of the entire group/raid by clumping up mobs nice and tight. In a way, you are losing damage for yourself but increasing everyone else’s, much like Twins of the Sun Priestess talent for Priests (which incentivizes PI’ing someone else so that you both get PI, but at the cost of a talent point). I think a utility spell like that could actually see use in M+ and Raid. Supernova has uses in PvP as an interrupt, so the original version should be kept in.
- Masterful Magic and Unstable Missiles: I put these in here is to replace Chrono-Shift and Improved Prismatic Barrier respectively; these could honestly be anything so long as it can actually compete with other talents. For Masterful Magic: I remember liking the Artifice of the Archmage conduit from Shadowlands, even though it wasn’t very strong. You would get 2 Arcane Charges from using Barrage, then would have to use Arcane Explosion (cooldown of Arcane Barrage is 2 GCDs so you have to cast something even if you’re at 4 Arcane Charges), then you could Barrage again. With Reverberate, this could allow you to Barrage more frequently, which smoothens the AOE rotation. For Unstable Missiles, I’m suggesting a weaker version of Arcane Echo that is always active since that has use in both AoE and single target for the Arcane Missiles build.
- Reverberate: This talent was intended as the AoE option, but has been completely replaced by Nether Tempest due to its interaction with Arcane Echo. The thing is: this talent is actually a game changer in terms of rotation altering since it allows you to use 2 Arcane Explosions and then Barrage rather than 4 Arcane Explosions. Buffing it to guarantee that proc chance would make this talent not only viable but interesting to play with for the Kyrian build once done with your Radiant Spark rotation.
- Prodigious Savant: I loved this talent, but it makes no sense to me that the scaling should be the same for both Arcane Blast and Arcane Barrage since Arcane Barrage has half the normal mastery scaling as Arcane Blast (for some strange reason?). I simply doubled the Mastery benefit of Prodigious Savant for Arcane Barrage and made it cost 1 extra point to compensate.
- Orb Barrage and Arcane Harmony: Couple of things here: first of all it makes no sense that Orb Barrage (the talent that relies on Clearcasting procs) is as far away from Illuminated Thoughts, Concentration and Cascading Power as possible, and Arcane Harmony, which improves Arcane Barrage damage, is as far from Prodigious Savant as possible. These talents need to be swapped; their locations make no sense. Secondly, Orb Barrage is a very poorly designed talent that deals low damage in single target (since Arcane Orb does less damage than a single Arcane Blast) and low damage on AoE since you would have to spam Arcane Missiles in AoE just to proc it. It makes no sense. I reworked it to give more Arcane Missiles (similar to Amplification) during Clearcasting because that would do more single target damage and more AoE via the Arcane Echoes talent, while also incentivizing the use of Clearcasting over Arcane Blast in Touch of the Magi to extend it’s duration as a way to change the rotation during your damage windows. Currently, that talent is and will remain dead for the rest of the expansion due to its poor location and effect.
- Radiant Spark: one of the biggest complaints currently coming from Arcane mages is the number of cooldown buttons that we have for our setup. To address this, I made Touch of the Magi and Radiant Spark into the same button, where applying one places the other. In a way, this is also a nerf to the rotation since you cannot pre-plan place your Radiant Spark and apply Touch of the Magi right at the end, but this goes back the the Shadowlands rotation with Kyrian Arcane, which I really liked (damage was low, but fun). With the addition of Focused Spark, this also allows Radiant Spark to be used with the Arcane Missiles Venthyr-like build from Shadowlands. Lastly, Radiant Sparks’ cooldown would be increased to 45 seconds to match Touch of the Magi.
- Harmonic Echo and Focused Spark: In an Arcane Missiles-focused build, there is no incentive to pick up Radiant Spark since a single Arcane Missiles will consume all 4 stacks of the buff. Instead, I added this talent to make it viable to pick up with Arcane Missiles. Tune as appropriate.
- Conjure Mana Gem: This change is just meant to remove the whole “having to re-conjure the gem”, which I think is a redundant mechanic for this spell since it’s basically a cooldown-based spell that can give you Clearcasting procs (basically a QoL change). No change in effect otherwise.
- Arcane Power and Arcane Ignition: This talent addition isn’t necessary by any means, it just aims to give players a choice since in all scenarios people will pick Arcane Power to buff their main cooldown. This aims to give players choice by turning Arcane Surge into a nuke that only gives a minor damage buff, thus front-loading the damage. Also has a cool interaction with Time Anomaly, which isn’t picked currently (sadly).
- Arcane Bombardment and Arcane Echo: One of the reasons for Arcane’s improved performance is due Arcane Echo, which could now be combined with the Radiant Spark build to provide a devastating burst of damage. However, I think this talent is the reason for why Nether Tempest has made a comeback (which I any many others hate pressing) since it double dips for procs and does not align in feeling with the Radiant Spark build seen in Shadowlands. Rather than force Arcane players to all play the same build that has both Arcane Echo and Arcane Bombardment, I would rather let the Arcane Missiles build have Arcane Echo, and the Radiant Spark build have the Arcane Bombardment. Arcane players who hate Radiant Spark will be able to play the Arcane Missiles build and enjoy their “Prophecy of Fear”-type build of Arcane Echo while the Radiant Spark enjoyers can enjoy big crits and execute damage.
- Chrono-Shift: This talent actually feels fantastic to run with, but sadly sees 0% play for the same reasons as previously discussed: it competes with damage talents. Rather than reworking this and losing this amazing effect forever, I would rather move this to the Class tree and share this amazing effect with Fire and Frost mages. Nerfed by 50% for PvP.
- Improved Prismatic Barrier: Same as above, but with defensives. I think we could reasonably put that in the Class tree and replace it with a damage talent that would actually see play. In my case, I picked the Unstable Missiles talent described above).

Fire Talent Changes

Click here to see Suggested changes for the Fire Mage Spec Tree

Current vs Suggested Fire Tree Comparison: https://imgur.com/gallery/JqSpZUL
Pastebin link to tree: https://pastebin.com/zRxK2mFR
Above talent tree was made with TobiasM95’s WoW-Talent-Tree-Manager (the same one featured on Max’s stream). You can find it here: https://github.com/TobiasM95/WoW-Talent-Tree-Manager

Core Fire Mage Mechanical Talent Changes

Critical Mass

Current: Your spells have a 7% / 15% increased chance to crit. You gain 5% / 10% more crit stat from all sources. 2 point talent

Suggested Change: Your spells have a 15% increased chance to crit. You gain 10% more crit stat from all sources. 1 point talent, moved to Firestarters’ location in 10.1’s Fire tree

Flame On

Moved to Phoenix Flames’ location in 10.1’s Fire tree

Firestarter

Moved to Critical Mass’ location in 10.1’s Fire tree

Fireball-Oriented Talent Changes

Loaded Flame

New Talent: After 8 seconds of not casting Fireball, your next Fireball is instant cast. Placed in Pyrotechnics’ location in 10.1’s Fire tree

Pyrotechnics

Current:Each time your Fireball fails to critically strike a target, it gains a stacking 10% increased critical strike chance. Effect ends when Fireball critically strikes.

Suggested Change: Each time your Fireball fails to critically strike a target, it gains a stacking 10% increased critical strike chance. Effect ends when Fireball critically strikes. Fireball critical strikes deal 25% more damage.

Flame Accelerant

Current: If you have not cast Fireball for 8 seconds, your next Fireball will deal 70%/70% increased damage with a 20%/40% reduced cast time.

Suggested Change: If you have not cast Fireball for 8 seconds, your next Fireball will deal 60%/120% increased damage and has a 50%/100% increased chance to critically strike.

Conflagration

Current: Fireball applies Conflagration to the target, dealing an additional (6.6% of Spell power) Fire damage over 8 sec. Enemies affected by either Conflagration or Ignite have a 10% chance to flare up and deal (6.75% of Spell power) Fire damage to nearby enemies.

Suggested Change: After not casting Fireball for 8 seconds, your next Fireball cast will explode on impact, dealing 25% of its damage dealt to all enemies within 8 yards of your target.

Scorch-Oriented Talent Changes

Blazing Execution

New Talent: Scorch critical strikes reduce the cooldown of Fire Blast by 2 seconds. Placed below Improved Scorch in 10.1’s Fire tree

Improved Scorch

Current: Casting Scorch on targets below 30% health increase the target’s damage taken from you by 2%/4% for 12 sec, stacking up to 3 times. Additionally, Scorch critical strikes increase your movement speed by 30% for 3 sec. 2 point talent

Suggested Change: Casting Scorch on targets below 30% health increase the target’s damage taken from you by 3% for 12 sec, stacking up to 3 times. Additionally, Scorch critical strikes increase your movement speed by 30% for 3 sec. 1 point talent

Phoenix Flames-Oriented Talent Changes

From the Ashes

Current: Increases Mastery by 2% for each charge of Phoenix Flames off-cooldown and your direct-damage critical strikes reduce its cooldown by 1 sec.

Suggested change: Increases Mastery by 3%. Your direct-damage critical strikes reduce Phoenix Flames’ cooldown by 1 sec. Your Phoenix Flames can now be cast outside of GCDs.

Alexstraza’s Fury

Current: Phoenix Flames and Dragon’s Breath always critically strikes and Dragon’s Breath deals 50% increased critical strike damage and contributes to Hot Streak.

Suggested change: Phoenix Flames and Dragon’s Breath always critically strikes and Dragon’s Breath deals 50% increased critical strike damage and contributes to Hot Streak. Your Phoenix Flames can now be cast outside of GCDs.

Phoenix Reborn

Current: Targets afflicted by your Ignite have a chance to erupt in flames, taking (12.5% Spell power) Fire damage and reducing the cooldown of Phoenix Flames by 10 seconds

Suggested change: Casting Phoenix Flames reduces the cooldown of Fire Blast by 5 seconds. Casting Fire Blast reduces the cooldown of Phoenix Flames by 5 seconds.

Pyroblast-Oriented Talent Changes

Tempered Flame

Current: Pyroblast has a 30% reduced cast time and a 10% increased critical strike chance. Combustion duration reduced by 50%

Suggested Change: Pyroblast has a 30% reduced cast time and a 10% increased critical strike chance. ~~Combustion duration reduced by 50%~~

Flamestrike-Oriented Talent Changes

Flamestrike

Moved to Improved Flamestrike’s location in 10.1’s Fire tree

Improved Flamestrike

Removed, effect added to Flame Patch Talent

Flame Patch

Current: Flamestrike leaves behind a patch of flames that burns enemies within it for [8 * (5.076% of Spell power)] Fire damage over 8 sec

Suggested Change: Flamestrike leaves behind a patch of flames that burns enemies within it for [8 * (5.076% of Spell power)] Fire damage over 8 sec. Flamestrike’s cast time is reduced by 1.0 sec and its radius is increased by 15%.

Pyromaniac

Current: Casting Pyroblast or Flamestrike while Hot Streak is active has an 8% chance to instantly reactivate Hot Streak

Suggested change: Every 5th Flamestrike cast (Hot Streak or hard-cast) will cause your next Flamestrike to be instant cast and deal double damage.

Hot Streak-Oriented Talent Changes

Pyroclasm

Current: Consuming Hot Streak has a 15% chance to make your next non-instant cast Pyroblast cast within 15 seconds deal 230% additional damage. Max 2 stacks.

Suggested change: Consuming Hot Streak has a 15% chance to make your next non-instant cast Pyroblast or Flamestrike ~~cast within 15 seconds~~ deal 230% additional damage. Max 2 stacks.

Firefall

Current: Damaging an enemy with 30 Fireballs or Pyroblasts causes your next Fireball to call down a meteor on your target. Hitting an enemy player counts as double.

Suggested change: After consuming 8 Hot Streaks, your next non-instant cast Pyroblast or Flamestrike will call down a Meteor on your current target.

Sun King’s Blessing

Current: After consuming 8 Hot Streaks, your next non-instant Pyroblast or Flamestrike cast within 15 seconds grants you Combustion for 6 seconds

Suggested change: After consuming 8 Hot Streaks, your next non-instant Pyroblast or Flamestrike ~~cast within 15 seconds~~ grants you Combustion for 6 seconds

Living Bomb

Current: The target becomes a Living Bomb, taking (30% of Spell power) Fire damage over 4 sec, and then exploding to deal an additional (17.5% of Spell power) Fire damage to the target and reduced damage to all other enemies within 10 yards. Other enemies hit by this explosion also become a Living Bomb, but this effect cannot spread further.

Suggested Change: Consuming Hot Streak (Flamestrike or Pyroblast) puts a living bomb on your target, dealing (50% Spell Power) Fire damage over 10 seconds. After being hit by 3 Hot Streak-consuming spells (either Flamestrike’s AoE or Pyroblast), the target explodes, dealing (100% Spell Power) Fire damage to it and all enemies within 10 yards. 30 seconds cooldown. Passive talent, applies to target when consuming Hot Streak

Hyperthermia

Current: When Hot Streak activates, you have a low chance to cause all Pyroblasts and Flamestrikes to have no cast time and be guaranteed critical strikes for 5 seconds.

Suggested change: Every 40 seconds, your next Hot Streak will activate Hyperthermia, which causes all Pyroblasts and Flamestrikes to have no cast time and be guaranteed critical strikes for 5 seconds. If this procs during your Combustion, your Combustion will be extended by the duration of Hyperthermia (5 seconds).

Brand New Spec Defining Capstones

Fury of the Fire God

New Talent: Deals (150% Spell Power) Fire Damage to your target and all enemies within 8 yards, and activate Combustion for 10 seconds (increased by Improved Combustion). During this Combustion, your Ignite damage is increased by 100% and spreads to all nearby enemies with in 8 yards passively. Replaces Combustion. 3 minute cooldown (decreased by Kindling). This talent does not interact with Legend of the Eternal Flame. Choice node with Sun King’s Blessing

Endless Blaze

New Talent: Flamestrike will now contribute to Hot Streak if at least 1 target hit was crit. Flamestrike deals 20% less damage, flame patch damage unchanged. Choice node with Hyperthermia

Legend of the Eternal Flame

New Talent: Combustion is now permanently active, but only grants you 30% additional Critical Strike chance. If Wildfire talent is selected, it’s critical strike chance increase becomes permanent for you and your 4 party members. Replaces Combustion, choice node with Fiery Rush

“Freeing up the Tree” Talent Changes

Firemind

Current: Consuming Hot Streak grants you 1%/2% increased Intellect for 12 sec. This effect stacks up to 3 times. 2 point talent

Suggested Change: Consuming Hot Streak grants you 1% increased Intellect for 12 sec. This effect stacks up to 3 times. 1 point talent

Feel the Burn

Current: Fire Blast increases your Mastery by 2%/4% for 5 sec. This effect stacks up to 3 times. 2 point talent

Suggested Change: Fire Blast increases your Mastery by 3% for 5 sec. This effect stacks up to 3 times. 1 point talent

Talent Swap with the Class Tree

Meteor

Added from Class tree to the current position of Cauterize

Shifting Power

Added from the Class tree as a choice node with Living Bomb

Cauterize

Removed from the Spec tree, added to the Class tree in the place of Meteor

Developer’s note: Similar to Arcane, Fire has some talents that see exactly 0 play, mainly for tuning reasons (i.e. Flamestrike build in AoE). While you could simply fix Flamestrike with tuning, a lot of the talents in the Fire tree are poorly designed and not fun to play with, even if they were tuned to do good damage (i.e. Living Bomb, Pyromaniac, Cauterize). Below is a detailed description of talent changes for talents that see no play, as well as talent tuning that makes it harder for new players to pick up Fire:
- Core Fire Mage Mechanical Changes: The addition of the new talent trees resulted in certain core talents being made into talent points that, if omitted from a spec, could make the spec borderline non-functional. Fire has 2 examples of this: Flame On (which grants 2 Fire Blast charges and reduces Fire Blast cooldown) and Critical Mass (which increases critical strike chance significantly). Without these talents, Fire is near unplayable, both in and out of Combustion. In order to address, I positioned Flame On early and in the middle of the early spec tree, and made Critical mass a 1-talent point node that is easily accessible for all builds. This resulted in moving Firestarter to the next tier of talents.
- Fireball-Oriented Talent Changes: Flame Accelerant is a controversial that has potential, in my opinion. At this time however, it is a strange talent that has almost no value after the 1st talent point since the 2nd does not further increase Fireball damage. Going with a theme of not casting Fireball for 8 seconds (i.e. during Combustion), I decided to create several talents oriented around saving up for a big Fireball the could be cast during Combustion (8 seconds into it) and outside of it, i.e. during the execution phase when you replace Fireball with Scorch. Loaded Flame is a new talent that allows Fireball to become an instant cast if not cast within the past 8 seconds. Pyrotechnics increases now also increases the critical damage of Fireball in addition to eventually guaranteeing a crit with Fireball. Lastly, Conflagration is an extremely weak talent, even back in BfA, which is entirely passive, boring and uninteractive. So I thought: Why not use it to give Fireball some cleave? With this change, it would allow this mega-Fireball thrown every 8 seconds to cleave 25% of its damage to all nearby targets, giving Fireball value in AoE.
- Scorch-Oriented Talent Changes: Several Fire mages on the Mage discord have been complaining about Fire’s lack of Execute, which seemed to be stronger in the days of BfA, and I agree with them. In fairness to Blizzard, they tried to improve Fire’s execute with the addition of Improved Scorch, but this talent is almost never selected because there are a number of absolutely manditory core talents that compete with it. This, unfortunately, has led to Improved Scorch not seeing much play. In an effort to reinforce that and bring back Fire’s execute, I made several changes to those manditory talents (see “Freeing Up the Tree” Talent Changes below), as well as made Improved Scorch a 1-point talent at the cost of 25% of it’s effect. I also added a new talent, Blazing Execution, which will significantly improve Fire’s throughput in the execute phase by helping with Fire Blast cooldown resetting. Also it makes the talent tree look mirrored with the right side instead of having a big gap between Improved Scorch and Call of the Sun King, which is always nice.
- Phoenix Flames-Oriented Talent Changes: Phoenix Flames remains a controversial spell to cast. It has a travel time, is not guaranteed to crit (outside of with Alexstraza’s Fury) and is on the GCD. All of these make it an unfun button to press, even if the 10.1 tier set is hard at work trying to make use press it more. In an effort to fix some of these issues, I made From the Ashes and Alexstraza’s Fury both change Phoenix Flames to no longer be on the GCD. I also removed the “Off-cooldown” Mastery gain of From the Ashes (which disincentivized using Phoenix Flames altogether for that reason). Lastly, I changed Phoenix Reborn to make Phoenix Flames essentially give you 1 Fire Blast charge when used, which should significantly increase its use during Combustion.
- Pyroblast-Oriented Talent Changes: Tempered Flames, while a cool idea at its roots, should not come with a 50% Combustion duration drop. This actually makes the talent a DPS loss to pick up in almost all settings. I simply removed the Combustion duration decrease. The opportunity cost of not having 2 more seconds and more mastery from crit rating during Combustion is enough of a trade off for this talent.
- Flamestrike-Oriented Talent Changes: Flamestrike is sadly seeing almost no play at the moment. Now, one could reasonably argue that it simply requires a numerical buff, which certainly could make it more useable, but I think there are other problems with this spell, mainly in the way of you having to spend 4 points just to get your full Flamestrike (Flamestrike + Improved Flamestrike + Flame Patch + Incendiary Eruptions). Note that those 4 points would be traded from talents like Flame On, Critical Mass, Feel the Burn or Firemind, which is an acceptable loss. In an effort to reduce this, I removed Improved Flamestrike and tied its effect to Flame Patch. I also buffed Pyromaniac to give benefits to casting Flamestrike (both in and out of Combustion). Lastly, I added a brand new capstone that allows Flamestrike to generate Hot Streak procs (see Brand New Spec-Defining Capstones section below).
- Hot Streak-Oriented Talent Changes: A lot of the complaints I hear for new Fire mages is that the spec is very difficult due to having to juggle a bunch of different buffs within a narrow time span. I agree that the number of buffs have gotten excessive, but I actually think the real problem is the timer on these buffs. Losing a Pyroclasm or Sun King’s Blessing proc feels awful and your DPS meters most certainly feel it too. As such, I removed the timers on these buffs to make it easier to juggle these buffs. I also made Firefall, a talent that also sees no play, now interact with this 8 Hot Streak in a row mechanic that Sun King’s Blessing has. This is because even when I tried the talent, I would always try to line it up with Combustions so as to guarantee a crit with Rune of Power on the Meteor for massive damage. This change simply bakes this mechanic into the talent. If the damage ends up becoming excessive, you can always dial back the Meteor’s damage by whatever percent is appropriate. Lastly, I made Hyperthermia more predictable, since this extremely strong buff (especially with Flamestrike) is far too random, and procing at the wrong can feel extremely frustrating (i.e. at the end of a large AoE pull rather than right at the start).
- Brand New Spec-Defining Capstones: Many of my friends and fellow mages have suggested several things for Fire Mages. First of all: there are a lot of Fire Mages that would like an option for the old BfA version of Fire Mage, with a super-Combustion every 2 minutes where you completely smash the meters, especially in AoE. This is the purpose of the “Fury of the Fire God” talent. It has both upfront damage and significantly increased Ignite damage that spreads to all targets in the vicinity, something reminiscent of BfA Fire Mage, with a 3 minute cooldown (reduced to ~ 2 minutes with Kindling). Secondly, I mentioned in the Flamestrike section a talent that would allow Flamestrike to contribute to Hot Streak, allowing players to throw down a lot more Flamestrikes (albeit with less damage per Flamestrike, but unchanged Flame Patch damage). This is essentially what Endless Blaze does. Lastly, I remember in Season 4 of BfA, you could actually get enough critical strike chance to permanently emulate being in Combustion for Fire Mages, which completely changes the playstyle. I would like to see that come back. My attempt at bringing it back is with the “Legend of the Endless Flame” talent, which grants you a permanent, albeit weakened Combustion that forces you to heavily invest into crit to reach 100% crit from normal Combustion. With your base crit chance, Critical Mass, Wildfire and Tome of Rhonin talents, this net you a total of 60% critical strike chance, meaning you still need 40% critical strike chance (about 6750 Critical strike rating with the Critical Mass crit rating increase buff) to reach 100%. Because of talents like Improved Combustion, this would make 75% of that turn into Mastery, so although your haste, versatility and base mastery would likely be low from putting so many points into crit, your Mastery would be somewhat secure with this talent. Also, this would provide a neat permanent party buff of 2% crit to all members of your party with the Wildfire talent.
- “Freeing Up the Tree” Talent Changes: As I mentioned above in my “Core Fire Mage Mechanical Changes” section, there are a lot of 2-point talents that net so much damage that you cannot deviate from them. I chose to seperate Firemind and Feel the Burn from Flame On and Critical Mass because while the spec would be non-functional without Flame On and Critical Mass, it could still function with Firemind and Feel the Burn. You would just do a lot less damage, which many find unacceptable. As such, I decided to make both of these talents 1 point each, as well as nerfing them slightly to compensate. Hopefully this allows Fire Mages to have more freedom and diversity of choice in their spec tree.
- Talent Swap with the Class Tree: This is just documenting some of the talents that got moved from the class to the spec tree.

Frost Talent Changes

Click here to see Suggested changes for the Frost Mage Spec Tree

Current vs Suggested Frost Tree Comparison: https://imgur.com/gallery/mqD6ao4
Pastebin link to tree: https://pastebin.com/dhXx9rRp
Above talent tree was made with TobiasM95’s WoW-Talent-Tree-Manager (the same one featured on Max’s stream). You can find it here: https://github.com/TobiasM95/WoW-Talent-Tree-Manager

Blizzard

Removed from spec tree; now a baseline ability. Replaced with Splitting Ice

Splitting Ice

Moved to the position of Blizzard on 10.0.5 version

Cold Snap

Moved to the Class Tree at the position of Shifting power in 10.0.5. Replaced with Frozen Bigeminy (new talent)

Frozen Bigeminy

New Talent: If there are no secondary targets to which your Splitting Ice talent can cleave to, your cleaved spell instead hits your primary target for 25% of intended damage (i.e. 80% damage normally cleaved for Ice Lance/Icicle/Glacial Spike/Ebonbolt → 20% damage hits primary target again). Positioned where Cold Snap is on 10.0.5 version

Hailstones

Moved to the position of where Ray of Frost is on 10.0.5 version

Ray of Frost

Moved to the position of where Splitting Ice is on 10.0.5 version

Current: Channels a beam for 5 secs, dealing (168% Spell Power) Frost damage every 1 second and slowing movement by 60%. Each time Ray of Frost deals damage, its damage and snare is increased by 10%. Generates 2 Fingers of Frost charges over its duration. 1.25 minute cooldown.
- Total Ray of Frost Damage: 1008% Spell power over 5 seconds, 201.6% Spell Power DPS
Suggested change: Channels a beam for ~~5 secs~~ 10 secs, dealing (~~168%~~100% Spell Power) Frost damage every 1 second and slowing movement by 60%. Each time Ray of Frost deals damage, its damage ~~and snare~~ is increased by 10%. Generates 4 Fingers of Frost charges over its duration. During Ray of Frost, you are able to cast Finger of Frost-Ice Lances without interrupting the channel. ~~1.25 minute~~1 minute cooldown
- Total Ray of Frost Damage: 1550% Spell power over 10 seconds, 155% Spell Power DPS

Glacial Spike

Current: Conjures a massive spike of ice and merges your current Icicles with it, impaling your target and dealing (393% Spell Power) Frost damage plus all of the damage stored in your Icicles and freezes your target in place for 4 seconds. Requires 5 Icicles to cast. Passive: Ice Lance no longer launches Icicles.
Suggested change: Conjures a massive spike of ice and merges your current Icicles with it, impaling your target and dealing (393% Spell Power) Frost damage plus all of the damage stored in your Icicles and freezes your target in place for 4 seconds. This spell always deals damage and behaves as though your target is frozen. Requires 5 Icicles to cast. Passive: Ice Lance no longer launches Icicles. Moved to the position of where Hailstones is on 10.0.5

Frozen Reserve

New Talent: Increase the maximum number of Icicles that can be stored (and spent on Glacial Spike) from 5 to 10. Positioned where Glacial Spike is on 10.0.5 version

Subzero

Current: Your Frost spells deal 10%/20% more damage to targets that are rooted and frozen (2-point talent)
Suggested change: Your Frost spells have a 10% increased chance to crit on targets that are Frozen (1-point talent)

Glacial Assault

Current: Flurry has a 15%/30% chance each hit to call down an Icy comet, crashing into your target and nearby enemies for (21% Spell Power) Frost damage. (2-point talent)
Suggested change: Blizzard is now a passive effect, causing ice shards to pelt the area dealing (5% Spell Power) in an 8-yard radius around you, slowing nearby targets by 20% and applying Ice Caller at 100% of normal effect (if talented). You can activate this ability to deal (150% Spell Power) to all targets within 8 yards of you and freeze them in place for 4 seconds. 1 minute cooldown. This makes Blizzard passive and no longer castable (1-point talent)

Fractured Frost

Current: Your Frostbolt has 25%/50% chance to hit up to 2 additional targets.
Suggested change: Your Frostbolt has 50%/100% chance to hit up to 4 additional targets.

Cold Front

Current: Casting 30 Frostbolts or Flurries calls down a Frozen Orb towards your target. Hitting an enemy player counts as double.
Suggested change: Fractured Frost now applies to Ice Lance, Icicles and Glacial Spike at 50% effectiveness.

Thermal Void

Current: Icy Veins’ duration increased by 10 seconds. Your Ice Lances against frozen targets extend your Icy Veins by an additional 1 second.
Suggested change: Icy Veins’ duration increased by 10 seconds. Your Ice Lances against frozen targets extend your Icy Veins by an additional 1 second. Your Glacial Spike casts increase the duration of Icy Veins by 3 seconds (4.5 seconds if Frozen Reserve is talented)

Developer’s note: Much like Fire, Frost has an entire side of it’s tree that never picked (Fire never picks the right side with the Flamestrike talents, Frost never picks the left bottom side with the Cold Front/Fractured Frost/Glacial Assault talents). In addition, Frost’s known niche talents (Splitting Ice aka 2 target cleave) is so far to the right side of the tree when it is in fact their specialty, which makes little sense to me. Below is a detailed list of changes that could make these talents more interesting:
- Blizzard and Splitting Ice: Blizzard (the spell) is in an absolutely awful spot at the moment. Players are forced to pick it not only to access Cold Snap but also to access talents like Wintertide. I was debating putting it elsewhere in the tree, but I think its better to make it a baseline ability so that there is more room for cool new talents. The reason for why I chose to put Splitting Ice in the same position as Blizzard is because the core niche of Frost mages is two-target cleave. It is absurd to me that the talent that allows them to cleave is over in the middle of nowhere on the right side of the tree and not right in the middle where it belongs.
- Cold Snap: Discussed previously, I think this should replace Shifting Power
- Frozen Bigeminy: One of the problems with making Splitting Ice a talent that one has to pick by putting it in the early middle is that Splitting Ice has little use in single target. As such, I added this talent to give Splitting Ice more value in single-target scenarios and make that talent viable in all settings.
- Hailstones and Ray of Frost: Hailstones is an extremely powerful talent that completely changes Frost’s stat prioritization, but like Splitting Ice is in the middle of nowhere on the right. The purpose of this change is make this talent more accessible by allowing players to pick it up right after picking up Icy Veins (by moving it to Ray of Frost’s position. Ray of Frost would then be moved to Splitting Ice’s location on the 10.0.5 tree. This talent has some tuning issues and feels kind of bad to play with. I actually believe this spell should be in the Arcane tree (as an Arcane laser or something), but that’s my take. I added some changes to it that might address some of its problems (see below)
- Ray of Frost: This spell is in a tough spot because it both doesn’t do a lot of damage and even if it did a lot of damage, it wouldn’t be fun to play in PvE. Rather than just buffing its damage (since you using it just means you AFK for 5 seconds), I thought about giving it an interaction with Fingers of Frost, where you would be able to continue casting FoF Ice Lances during the channel, while at the same time generating FoF charges from the channel itself. Making it’s cooldown 1 minute was also intentional: using Frozen Orb and the Freezing Winds talent, you would generate more FoF charges that you could dump during the laser’s channel. The rotation would thus be: Frozen Orb → Ray of Frost → Ice Lance dump (generated from both, which have the same cooldown)
- Glacial Spike and Frozen Reserve: Two big changes here, and why: the first is the “Glacial Spike always deals damage as though Shatter was applied”. The reason for this change is that spam-casting Frostbolt sucks and makes for terrible Frost gameplay. However, the Glacial Spike build currently requires you to do that in order to reset Flurry procs, which you cannot spend outside of Glacial Spike (which is probably why this spell is so behind the Ice Lance build since you are effectively unable to use Flurry outside of Glacial Spike in most cases). This change would allow the Glacial Spike build to use Flurry without fear of having to spam Frostbolt for a Brain Freeze stack, which makes for a more diverse and less restricted spell use pool, and a substantial buff to this build without actually buffing Glacial Spike’s damage (since we currently already use it with Flurry and thus already Shatter it everytime). The second change pertains to Frozen Reserve and builds on the first change: by allowing you to cast Flurry (and 2 Ice Lances), you now have a large pool of Icicles to fling. By allowing you to increase the number of Icicles stored (and fired by Glacial Spike) to 10, you given Frost players more wiggle room (and fatter crits) to use Flurry in between Glacial Spikes
- Subzero: This talent is seen in ~5% of M+ builds (according to Subcreation) and mainly in PvP. The fact that you can’t freeze a lot of enemies (and every single boss) makes this a sort of niche talent that I would like to broaden up.
- Glacial Assault: This talent is also never picked for any content at the moment. Rather than try to breathe life into it by buffing the numbers, I would simply rework it into a new talent. I’m using this opportunity to fix one of Frost mage’s biggest problem in M+: the tank moving mobs out of Blizzard. You can now simply become the Blizzard, follow your idiot tank around as he dances around like a monkey and never lose uptime again. I also wanted to give this spell an active so that you didn’t just lose a button to press (Blizzard). I think this talent fits perfectly on this side of the tree since the changes I suggest below it to Fractured Frost and Cold Front incentivize casting single target spells in AoE, and this talent would free up time to cast said spells.
- Fractured Frost and Cold Front: These talents are completely dead at the moment. The intent is clearly to provide some source of AoE damage / Cleave while casting single target spells (i.e. Frostbolt and Flurry), but the effects are not anywhere near the potency needed to make up for what is required in AoE. To address this , I made Frostbolt cleave to 4 extra targets (minor change in overall damage) and Cold Front now makes this cleave apply to Ice Lance, Icicles and Glacial Spike at reduced effectiveness (massive AoE damage buff). I see this as vastly more interesting, powerful and influential (i.e. Glacial Spike now only doing so much damage, but also rooting targets) than just 1 Frozen Orb every 30 Frostbolts and Flurries (which I cannot begin to describe how boring that feels, much like Firefall in the Fire mage tree, which is also a dead talent at the moment).
- Thermal Void: This change is meant to give some synergy with the Glacial Spike build and Thermal Void’s interaction with Icy Veins, as was pointed out in the Mage forums.

Sarm-malganis · March 9, 2023, 9:48pm

Maybe I’m missing something but I feel a bit confused. You acknowledge that it was a mistake to cram DPS talents into the general class tree because some will always get used, but you only suggest to remove the weaker ones? Aren’t RoP and Temporal Warp by far the worst offenders here? I saw you suggested buffing IF but what if you don’t want to spec into Temporal Warp or Time Anomaly?

Nelanna-area-52 · March 9, 2023, 9:50pm

TLDR: I dont know how much I care about redesigning every single talent, but man it would be nice even to just have some singular blue post that maybe someone has even glanced at mage since early beta.

Over 100 reply post in the 10.0.7 post, numerous posts all in the mage forum, and still just pure silence from blizz. We are already the lowest represented spec in PVE if you look at heroic + mythic. If the class just stays in its same state for the rest of the xpac the class population is going to dwindle to nothing

Edit: Our issues are known and fairly well documented all over this forum. I just want some acknowledgement that blizzard cares about this class

Quillari-stormrage · March 9, 2023, 10:09pm

RoP just needs to be removed. I’d rather them take it out and give a flat buff across the board than keep it as is. Making you stay in one spot for a 40% damage buff is just bad.

Brainard-area-52 · March 9, 2023, 10:13pm

Not some.
ALL with ALWAYS get used, because DPS is about min-maxing at all times, and if you are doing less damage than another DPS then you will be benched, plain and simple. This will never change and is true for all DPS specs. People who think utility will ever trump DPS didn’t pay attention to S3 of Shadowlands when Survival Hunter, who has only 1 defensive and no utility outside of Tranq shot, was the 2nd most used DPS in M+ (after Destro lock, who was ahead because they did more DPS)

If the class tree allowed it, mages would also have picked up meteor in addition to shifting power and temporal warp.
Shifting Power + Temporal Warp just happens to be doing more DPS than Meteor + any other combination. This doesn’t change the fact that it is inexcusable that we now have so many cooldowns in the general mage tree that Arcane now has 8 total damage cooldowns (evocation w/ siphon storm, rune of power, radiant spark, touch of the magi, temporal warp, shifting power and arcane surge). In addition, the entire mage community on beta forums asked for Cold snap and cauterize instead of more cooldowns in the general mage tree. See max’s video link in my OP for more quotes of this.

I’m happy to see RoP and Temporal Anomaly removed as well, but the community is more divided on those two, so I instead sugested IF buffs. But make no mistake (and see mage forum right now if you want to see more of this): many, many mages despise RoP and want to see it removed because it keeps getting them killed since they have to stand within 8 yards of it.

As for temporal warp or time anomaly, the former is basically a 4-5 minute cooldown (depending on Shifting Power usage reducing Time Warp), so while it is an extra cooldown, it doesn’t actually come up that often. Plus you can get omega haste with it so it actually feels pretty good. Time Anomaly is a passive that I actually really like but doesn’t actually impact my rotation too much (as any of the 3 specs, maybe fire being the most impacted with random combustions).

If these talents were front and center and not capstones, we wouldn’t have to drive straight down to get these like we currently do for every spec. As it stands, because we need to min-max DPS, Shifting Power and TW will remain BiS. Nerfing either will simply mean some other combo will be BiS for that whole tier. This isn’t a number’s issue, this is a design issue with a class tree, which I believe should have much more (if not all) of the utility of a given class and almost no damage so you can actually choose your talents.

There’s one, didn’t even need to go to the mage forums.
Like I said, RoP is very controversial among mages nowadays

Sarm-malganis · March 9, 2023, 10:16pm

Alright, my bad. I think I’m just exceptionally salty over the class lately and vented it on you inappropriately. Sorry.

Temporal Warp is a particularly new gripe of mine ever since I tried it out because my internet’s not the best and my game client goes down the toilet with that much haste, and it makes the game feel awful to play. I hate having that much haste, and would relish a viable alternative to not having to take it. And TA’s randomness bugs me in its own way so I found myself sorely disliking both.

Two. I’ve hated the spell conceptually since its creation, but I also dislike what feels like extreme cooldown stacking and it’s as if I’m being pushed out of the class I’ve mained since I started this game in TBC. But as of right now, the only spec I’m told is workable without it is frost, using a specific build that wants to go for 100% Icy Veins uptime and like I said above, too-fast spellcasting screws with my client and I often end up trying to play “in the future” from the slightest latency hiccups.

And also I’m being told that apparently RoP’s so powerful for the other specs that you can keep it off of your bars and it still outperforms IF due to the autodropped rune alone? And because of the nature of cooldown stacking, of course you’re going to want to double up on Time Warp inside of it, etc… It’s depressing.

Brainard-area-52 · March 9, 2023, 10:18pm

Same ngl lmao

Lygmagosa-area-52 · March 9, 2023, 10:23pm

Justice for mage!

Quillari-stormrage · March 9, 2023, 10:46pm

One thing you haven’t mentioned that I think should be looked at is how mana works with arcane surge and the dependency on evocation. Evocation has such a long channel time, and the mana regen is required to make it through your surge. I’d like to see the mana regen from arcane surge increased. If you could cut out RoP and Evo from your rotation that would cut out over 6 sec of your burn setup. I also would say Siphon Storm would need to be re-worked. I hate having to stop dps to channel for mana and Mana Gem is also clunky because of it’s charge system.

Freemounntt-sulfuras · March 9, 2023, 10:48pm

stay mad mages
that’s what you get for being OP every tier

Electrocok-area-52 · March 9, 2023, 10:50pm

wait what are you even saying? why would you talent into weaker talents lol

Justinbeebr-sulfuras · March 9, 2023, 10:51pm

RoP should just go back to the WoD days when it gave less damage but mana regen

Sarm-malganis · March 9, 2023, 10:57pm

I misread the intent of Brainard’s post. What I was getting at was to remove every DPS talent, because I saw only removing Meteor and Shifting Power as not actually solving the problem at all.

Quillari-stormrage · March 9, 2023, 10:58pm

That would be good for sure. It would take a flat buff on all specs to make up for it. It would make more sense with where it’s at it the tree too. 40% is just too much for how restricting it is and the mana regen would be nice for Arcane for sure.

I’ve just given up on this mage for now. Which sucks because Arcane has so much potential to be fun. Just wish they would do something to address the issues all specs have.

Mystgun-goldrinn · March 10, 2023, 12:38am

No one likes Rune of Power.

I want Deep Freeze (with huge damage in PvE) back for frost, as well as baseline Fireball (with the 8s DoT), Frostfire Bolt (1st version), Arcane Blast (1st version) and Scorch again. This is huge for PvP.

Spellsteal shouldn’t empty my mana when it’s almost always a glorified dispel, nor should arcane explosion cost 10% of my mana in frost.

I don’t bother min-maxing anymore, like my fellow posters above, I just focus on playing with a flow that I enjoy.

Mathamazhen-wyrmrest-accord · March 10, 2023, 1:35am

Fantastic write up. I don’t know if every change is perfect or ideal, but is shows how much of the talent trees we have are absolutely worthless. At the very least, SP and Meteor have to go, and a lot of the Fire talents on the right of the tree, and Frost talents in general need some serious work. Not even mentioning all of the utility nodes trapped on the Arcane tree. An additional bit I feel the need to mention is something has to be done about some of the Frost % multipliers and tuning. We’re getting dangerously close to NOIL territory again.

Brainard-area-52 · March 10, 2023, 2:22am

Completely agree, Meteor and Shifting Power have no business in the class tree

Ravenborn-azralon · March 10, 2023, 2:37am

I think [Temporal Warp] is ok in the class tree. Either that or remove it entirely, including from spec trees because we all know the class is gonna be balanced around having double lust. The problem really is that, as long as it’s an “option”, it’s gonna be mandatory because let’s face it, hardly anything would top it.

Brainard-area-52 · March 10, 2023, 4:04am

Yeah I didn’t touch temporal warp (or remove RoP) because these are controversial at this time.

Nelanna-area-52 · March 10, 2023, 4:25am

We got the 10.0.7 post to over 100 posts, how high do we get this one