It wasn’t a permanent elemental originally. I remember that it lasted only 45 seconds around Wrath of the Lich King era ?
Correct. The permanent water elemental was added in Cataclysm. TBC and Wrath it was a CD pet.
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Monks, and shamans have temporary pets, so why does only one specialization of mages need to have a permanent pet ?
Some people liked having it, I guess. As I said earlier in the thread I didn’t care for it and actually found it only there to give me Fingers of Frost on demand. I always go Lonely Winter on my Mage.
The thing is, it could kill stuff sometimes while questing so I didn’t have to think too much and only cast light spells to get through, it made the leveling experience more enjoyable, why would I want to cast four frost novas when my water elemental can take care of things while I just click ice lance a few times,
I don’t want my leveling experience to be too tedious.
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Awesome, thanks for that. I read up on most of the changes but I guess I missed this one in particular.
Now that I actually see the change, I have to agree with you that it’s a pretty silly one.
I see a few issues with this.
- They’re removing a part of the class fantasy that was there from the start (That you mentioned).
- The 2385328746398241 shades of blue Water Elemental Glyphs they made are now, essentially, useless. This seems to be a trend with their changes these days, and they’ve essentially left the Glyph system in the dust.
I’m torn. On one hand, it was useless. On the other hand, it definitely did add to class fantasy.
From what I read (And again, I could be wrong), they didn’t put anything in there to replace it as a choice node with Lonely Winter. Unless they chose “Coldest Snap” and placed it there (Since it doesn’t mention where that one went).
One can hope they decide to go back on it, but who knows.
Still, I’m one that always fights for the side of more options.
Less options makes the game less fun for everybody.
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This is my main concern with rolling the elemental into Icy Veins. Will all these glyphs be deleted along with the Warlock’s Observer? Or will they update the glyphs to now apply to Icy Veins?
Blizzard was doing so well this expansion with all these new character customizations… and then they do this. It’s just… a bizarre change for Mages and Warlocks.
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I’m actually gonna add this to the OP. I completely forgot that quoting the PTR notes was a possibility. Been a long time since I talked on these forums
I dont remember the last time I ever saw a frost mage use their water elemental.
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They don’t. It’s a terrible pet, super weak and shares a node with much stronger talent.
Making it a baseline permanent pet wouldn’t fix it. It’s still terrible and deals less damage than warlock Imp. Basically a cosmetic for RPers.
I haven’t done frost PvP in a while, but the 2nd freeze was amazing at one point. Not sure about these days.
It just irritates me when people make these threads and say things like “It’s iconic”. No, it wasn’t, and a lot of us still remember well the days when mages didn’t have any pet.
In fact, there were forum threads about why shaman could summon elementals, but fire/frost mages couldn’t…
People that think the way you do are such a cancer on RPG’s.
Please, go play math quiz games or some other spreadsheet bullcrap.
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Well I also remember a time before it was a permanent pet, and I remember hating when it became so. I never rolled a mage to play a pet class. So I was thrilled when lonely winter was introduced. Although I did always miss having the ele as a cooldown. It was very iconic for the fantasy given its place in WC3.
That said, while I am happy to see it as a cooldown again I do feel for the people who love it as a permanent pet. It’s been around for long enough now that it more than deserves to stay. My preference would be to still introduce it as a temporary summon with icy veins. But keep the earlier choice of the pet or lonely winter. People who choose the permanent pet, maybe icy veins empowers it or summons a second one.
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Weird. They don’t have to do this. I think the idea is reducing screen clutter though.
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They do. It’s vital for landing Glacial Spike and soloing/PvPing effectively. Also helps on Comet Storm burst if you don’t have Ice Nova up (which is also used to land Glacial Spikes).
It also helps on threat with Mirror Images/Ice Block, improving solo viability a little bit.
For everything other than M+ and raid parsing, it’s still amazing.
Finally, we already had this thread ongoing:
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It’s 2023. Mists of Pandaria came out in 2012 and was my first expansion. That’s over a ten year gap.
If you go back and say that you started in Vanilla, that’s 2004. Mists of Pandaria was 8 years later.
But the change was actually made (from what I understand) in Cataclysm. That expansion came out in 2010 - 6 years after Vanilla’s launch. The gap of time from Cataclysm to Dragonflight is 13 years.
Frost mages have had a permanent water elemental for a span of 13 years, whereas it was only temporary for 6 years. So how long does something have to be in play before I’m allowed to say that it is ‘iconic’ to the way a class is viewed? It’s been that way for as long as I’ve played and it’s been that way for double the time that it was not.
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Considering most builds take Lonely Winter (and have for years) the “removal” of the elemental will actually cause it to see more usage than live.
Honestly the biggest whiff I have with the frost changes (besides pushing Spike) is Coldest Snap making a defensive/utility cooldown into a throughput increase. It’s the same issue I have with Ele and the totem CD reset. I’d love to use it to reset Cap Totem or hell even Poison Cleansing, but it is a damage loss to do so over Liquid Magma.
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Could be partially that, in light of the warlock Observer changes. I’ll be glad if they make a shift back to pets being for pet classes.
I did in fact acknowledge this. And I would like to see mages get more justification to use their elemental. However…
Warlock have permanent pet same with hunters