The Water Elemental has lost a lot of interaction after the removal of Water Jet long ago. It currently feels like a turret that sits idle and fires waterbolts during most* raid encounters. I know a lot of people do not like relying on pets, especially in cutting edge PvE content, so I’d suggest giving the WE more of a purpose outside of such activities.
My suggestion is to give the WE a defensive cooldown move that causes it to dash towards your target where it then turns it into a larger and bulkier Water Elemental (it could use a model similar to the Glacial Tidestorm or Duke Hydraxis). While transformed it would enter melee range and act more like a warlock voidwalker or shaman earth elemental and temporarily gather aggro for the mage. This allows it to be used during solo PvE content (like difficult quests or when a mage wishes to solo the upcoming Torghast: Tower of the Damned) without affecting raids or PvP, meaning people can happily take Lonely Winter and be unaffected by the loss of the Water Elemental when it comes to DPS.
The goal is to give the water elemental a purpose other than “do I sim better with or without Lonely Winter?” Frost Mage is definitely the least developed pet class and unlike hunters and warlocks there is zero interaction between the pet and it’s master. No health funnel, or master’s call, or anything that brings the pet together with the mage. It doesn’t even appear on the character select screen like warlock demons or hunter pets. I feel like a lot of players are super resistant to adding any of that too, so feel the best course of action is to give the pet some more utility that has zero affect on raids and arenas, but helps if you wish to do some solo content or need another defensive cooldown.
I’ve thought about other ideas like making it more like the Heroes of the Storm Water Elemental, which has a talent that allows it to temporarily copy her spellcasts, allowing for her to double cast Blizzard, Ice Lance, and etc. However, I feel like that sort of direction, where you give the WE a DPS cooldown steps on the toes of people who just don’t want to deal with the pet. So I fell back on the solo content defensive CD idea.
TL;DR:
The Problem: Water Elemental lacks purpose compared to other pet classes. Without Water Jet, it’s just a “does this sim higher/lower?” talent choice.
The Fix: Give it a defensive cooldown that only affects solo content and doesn’t affect DPS.
Why does that fix the problem?: Now choosing Lonely Winter is a choice of “do I wan’t more survivability while doing solo content like Torghast?”
I’ve long thought Water Elemental should transform into a more powerful version of itself upon using Icy Veins to make our big CD more meaningful. I like the idea of it copying the mages spells for that duration and then going back to normal when the buff ends.
I don’t get the push for Lonely Winter to always be super viable, Water Elemental has been a part of frost mages kit since Warcraft 3, the spec shouldn’t be built around catering to those who don’t enjoy the class fantasy as a whole. Its been much better at high ilvl for a long time and its unfun to always get rid of my pet the end of the expansion for the large dps increase.
Having Water Elemental help tanking would be somewhat flavorful as Frost is about survivability, but also seems perhaps a bit excessive considering all the other defensive options we have and that the spec is centered around freezing/kiting.
Instead, I think it’d be more interesting to make Water Elemental more akin to Warlock’s Inferno or Shaman’s Fire Elemental - a big DPS cooldown. One of the main weaknesses of Frost is the lack of burst. Maybe Blizzard wants to keep it that way as it is part of our identity, but almost all other DPS specs have some big DPS CD (often multiple) whereas our only default one is one of the weakest in the game.
Idk, just a thought. Would suck to lose the consistent access to Freeze, but worth it if we were able to deal, say, 50% more damage when Water Elemental was up.
I’d like Water Elemental to mimic the mage’s spells when Icy Veins is used, essentially something close to double damage (like what Arcane Power does). This’d give it some more “umph” but wouldn’t cause a button bloat & would help bump up a rather weak DPS cooldown.
I’m also actually all for Water Ele to turn into something like Arcane Familiar and just be a tiny orb that floats around you as well.
My issue with that is that people will still crunch the numbers and pick LW solely based on DPS, which is why I proposed that LW is the “more DPS” talent while keeping the WE allows for solo utility.
Agreed. Make the elemental something want to summon rather than something I have to summon. My shaman thinks “Sweet! Elemental time!” every few minutes while my mage often forgets the pet even exists.
I agree. I get that Lonely Winter is a dps increase so I took the talent, but I actually miss my water elemental tbh. Since frost mages need a buff anyway, maybe Lonely Winter could be changed so that instead of eliminating our watery friend altogether, it just makes it so that the elemental runs into melee instead of hanging out by our side. Also since mastery is such a bad stat for us, mastery could be adjusted to buff the water elemental’s melee (hypothetically) damage.
I get that people say “but then mages would be a pet class, go play warlock”…look. The Water Elemental is a key element of the frost mage class fantasy and it’s been with us for a very long time. I’m not asking for it to be a tank, I’m just asking for it to be useful.
That’s what it was like in the past, but I always preferred the permanent option when they finally added a glyph that allowed it to always be by your side. I’d be devastated to see it return to a limited cooldown as that idea is already taken by other classes. You want to make sure the WE feels unique instead of a lazy reskinned Earth elemental. That’s a sign of good design.
That’s why I proposed a limited “upgraded form”. It’d be unique to WEs and would avoid making it a thoughtless rip-off of the Shaman elementals. Think Metamorphosis for WEs, but solo-content-oriented. Doing Torghast? Bring the WE and have it transform to tank bosses, or keep it in its ranged form when you have the CDs available for kiting. Doing a raid? Lonely Winter. Ignore the hassle of a pet so you can focus on raid mechanics.
Yes. I feel that way too. WEs and Mages go hand in hand for me. Jaina always had one waltzing around her in Warcraft 3 and taking it away just doesn’t sit well with me. I know it’d be the path of least resistance but I’d like it to have a defined purpose. A reason you’d want to take it over LW.
I feel like they need to get away from talents that are simply a row of “crunch the numbers” and focus on making talents that are “Cleave VS AoE VS Single Target VS Solo Content VS etc”. Figure out which of those purposes the Water Elemental can fulfil and carve out a niche for it. The poor creature used to have synergy with your spec (Freeze used to grant FoF, it used to have Water Jet, which made it so FB procced FoF 100% of the time) but it’s slowly been morphing into a glorified DOT.
I personally am okay with not having a pet, but I agree that it’s part of the spec fantasy so if they made it viable again I would take it. I really liked my unbound elemental glyph.
The water elemental is and always has been garbage.
It serves no real purpose now. Even before said purpose was limited. That aside, I looked for the inspiration as to why it was a frost mage thing. The most I could gather was vague, “Jaina summoned them once” was the reason.
Just… let it pass. The water elemental is worse than a hunter pet that will mistakenly pull mobs, and in general not provide much use.
in WC3 water elemental was disposable and beefy and used to absorb hits so your other permanent units wouldnt take damage.
Id rather see it as a short term cooldown that functions similarly to Earth Ele for shamans. Powerful ranged attacks, big hp pool but relatively slow movespeed to balance it.
As it is now, water ele is so pathetically weak it ends up dying from cleaved damage pretty quickly.