A Compilation of Proposed Changes

[Deleted]

Fireball and pyroblast are in as much need to be updated as the arcane spells. If the 90 talents were removed I think it would be best if they were all AoE spells which work in different ways, because mage AoE at the moment is incredibly boring.

Wildfire Spark
1 minute cooldown
40 yard range
Instant Cast
Places a wildfire spark on the target enemy, causing fire to spread around them, dealing 10k damage every 3 seconds to all targets standing in the area. If the target moves location fire will spread at their new location as well. Debuff lasts 15 seconds and fire lasts 30 seconds.

Icy Storm
2 minute cooldown
Channelled
Summon a tornado of ice at your location, dealing 30k damage per second to all enemy targets touching the tornado. While you are channelling the tornado you are able to control it, allowing movement of the tornado. Lasts for 15 seconds.

Arcane Orbs
Passive
Whenever you deal damage with Arcane Blast, Fireball or Frostbolt you have a 10% chance to summon an arcane orb within 10 yards of yourself. Touching an arcane orb causes your damage to be increased by 5% for 20 seconds, stacking up to 20.

The numbers could be tweaked to make them more balanced but that is the general idea for them.

Shatter stacks above 50 can stun bosses.

As great as that might be, it would force Blizzard to design bosses with mages in mind or a group with one could easily pass certain bosses. Also, top 25 man guilds would probably class stack many mages to lock the boss out for 2 minutes.

[jtmzac]

I would start by questioning why....
... need to evolve.

The idea of "dps through control" simply shouldn't exist in pve because it just can't work. As much fun as your idea of being able to stun bosses is its just going to cause more problems than its worth.

Shatter and deep freeze should never have been made available for all specs. Arcane is based around mana management and thats what makes it interesting but I feel it needs to be even more reliant on it then it is now. The other specs need something similar to be built around.

Frost I would say is in the most need of being completely rebuilt. It just feels like it was made for pvp and blizz tacked on something to make it work in pve. My suggestion if you had to keep it based on control is change the various freezes to debuffs that let you use shatter while they are applied on the target rather than using procs.

I think all the specs should provide fairly similar single target dps and a secondary utility like fires good cleave. Maybe frost could be a spec where you have to move to do dps giving it an advantage in movement heavy fights. Arcane definitly needs some more time based ideas. Maybe ways to rip temporal holes and move around differently or manipulate buffs and debuffs on targets.

I really think the specs just need more complexity. It's too easy to be good at a spec now. Blizzard might argue that making it too hard would drive aways players but why can't the more complex side just be hidden? It works fine on a computer for example. You only use the advanced features if you know where to look and you have a reason to use them.

[Elegiac]

Seperately
It would be cool to shatter a boss. Like actually shatter it. You can even have the fancy freeze graphics on that shatter outwards making it look cool.
Say a stacking buff, that keeps stacking as long as you pump FBs into it. Then you have

Shatter
1.5 sec cast

Consumes all shatter stacks, dealing X (based off stack) damage to the target, stunning it for 0.5 seconds

Shatter stacks above 50 can stun bosses.

And there you have it.
Frost becomes the first spec in the game that can interrupt boss mechanics. It needs a high shatter stack, so you cant just spam interrupt (tunes to once or twice a bossfight), but at least it gives something 'special' to frost. (i dont know if welly is enough tbh. personally, i cant stand it. If i wanted perma-pets, i play my lock. my demolock is beast)

But then everyone out there would want a special cookie too and probably a pony on top as 'compensation'.

Mages need to evolve.

Hm, an interesting idea.

Winter's Chill: Allows you to generate the Winter's Chill debuff on targets, stacking up to 10. Lasts 15 sec.

- Your Frostbolt and instant cast Frostfire Bolt will generate a stack of Winter's Chill every time it deals damage.
- Your Ice Lance will deal double damage if at least 2 stacks are present, triple at 5, and quadruple above 7.
- Deep Freeze can be cast on any target susceptible to stuns with more than 5 stacks regardless if they are Frozen, but will consume all stacks. It can no longer benefit from Fingers of Frost.

Shatter
1.5 Cast

Consumes all stacks of Winter's Chill, dealing X Frost damage and stunning it for 0.3 sec for every stack.

--

A very roughly thought out idea, but following on from yours.

[Sw1tch]

Well they say they won't do big changes, but in this patch we are seeing completely new talents for some classes, so I won't have any of the excuses. These talents need to be either scrapped or changed. (L90)


Whatever happens, magi need their spec identity back. Fire needs a permanent and ingenious fix for its RNG issues that doesn't change the core dynamic, Arcane needs an overhaul because its style has always (for the most part) been hated among the community. Who enjoys just sitting there casting one spell with barely any graphic to it? Frost needs to go back to its frosty roots, I want to see Deep Freeze doing damage, winters chill, I LOVE the shatter ideas going on right now. Stack up to 10 and shatter crit for 1 mil? I'm in.

Although take out this:
Your Ice Lance will deal double damage if at least 2 stacks are present, triple at 5, and quadruple above 7.

Frost has and forever should be a no ramp up burst specialization. If something like that existed, frost would suck for fights like elegon and spiritbinder, where burst is very very good. But I absolutely adore the idea of an active Shatter spell. What a fantastic idea.

I just want to feel like a frost mage, and having a pet labeled "water elemental" doesn't make me feel frosty. We use the solid form of H20, not the liquid!

Side note and a bit random: Put Frost Bomb's cooldown up to 12-13 seconds and compensate the damage appropriately. Am I the only one that feels you are casting it way too much?

[Deleted]

Can be interesting but need a lot of work.
But you can't manage CC with something like this. They need to be instant/on-demand spell (for both PVE & PVP use).
The "Shatter" that you describe is just a Combustion like spell, stun + big damage.
This can be better as a resource because of target's switching. It's the actual problem with FB's debuff but it's is purpose : reducing instant burst.

[zomgDPS]

The "Shatter" that you describe is just a Combustion like spell, stun + big damage.

You're right in some way, they are similar. But my shatter has no cd. Plus, it can stun bosses.
True, it was a light hearted musing at best, mostly just to illustrate what i think mages are lacking in general right now, that being, something cool.

Something that makes people say, "ok good, we got a mage" like they used to.


Back in the day, you'd log on and you would see in /2 trade

"[2 Trade] LF3m RAMPS, need mage"

Now I'm not saying thats neccisarily a good thing, but basically it seems like mages (as well as other pures) are kind of just falling by the wayside now. There really isn't anything 'special' about them. They nuke? sure, so do booms, locks, eles etc etc. They got CC? So does everyone else. My booms can CC an entire bgs worth of pple if you need it. Maybe mobility? Nope. Burst? Nerfed. Control? Nerfed.

Then what is it? What makes mages 'special'?

I am jacks sense of identity crisis. <- most mages right now.

[Alexand3r]

I'm half-asleep so this might be a silly idea, but how about...

- Shatter is now Frost-only and has been redesigned.

Shatter: Your Deep Freeze applies the Shatter debuff, which causes your next Frostbolt to critically strike. In addition, its damage is increased by 20%. This effect has a 30 second cooldown and is also applied to targets that are immune to Deep Freeze.

P.S.

I like your ideas Didactic. The only thing I think is unnecessary is the reduction of Counterspell's cooldown, but overall, good ideas :P

You should use longwriter's talent grid tool. It's quite useful when people want to show their changes regarding the talent grid

[Deleted]

Yep, it's really true.
What define mage before ? What did we have now ?
One of the good point of Mop is Alter Time.
But I thinks we lost the burst feeling. What the difference between FB and IL? nothing, they do equivalent damage.
If we count spec and Talent, we have 9 game-play, 27 if we add Mage Bomb. How can we have a identity in this case.

[Deleted]

Shatter doesn't need to be changed whatsoever. Theres nothing wrong with it, so please stop suggesting changes before someone from Blizzard actually reads them. Its an iconic part of Frost, and Frost is 100% reliant on it for PvE Dps and PvP.

The only thing that maybe should be changed is its interaction with Arcane and Fire, Shatter with Frost is perfectly fine.

As for changes to the class, I really feel the Level 90 talents are pathetic, Ghostcrawler had this whole spiele about talents being fun choices not mandatory etc;

But Invocation is better for everything as Fire/Frost,
Rune is better for 99% of things as Arcane,
Incanter's Ward is only truly useful in PvP.

Then you look at Warlocks with Kil'jaedens Cunning, Elemental Shamans with Elemental Blast, Priests with Cascade/Divine Star/Halo

The only change I'd lobby for is the removal of our Level 90 Talents, Then tack on +20% to our armours (Until they can truly rebalance every spell to give the same effect) Then add talents with relatively low cd's that add something rotationally for the specs. What these could be I don't know, but this is something mages have lacked in my opinion for a long time, A short CD high DPCT spell that we weave in rotationally. Sort of like Frost Bomb I guess.

[Deleted]

Fireball and pyroblast are in as much need to be updated as the arcane spells. If the 90 talents were removed I think it would be best if they were all AoE spells which work in different ways, because mage AoE at the moment is incredibly boring.

Wildfire Spark
1 minute cooldown
40 yard range
Instant Cast
Places a wildfire spark on the target enemy, causing fire to spread around them, dealing 10k damage every 3 seconds to all targets standing in the area. If the target moves location fire will spread at their new location as well. Debuff lasts 15 seconds and fire lasts 30 seconds.

Icy Storm
2 minute cooldown
Channelled
Summon a tornado of ice at your location, dealing 30k damage per second to all enemy targets touching the tornado. While you are channelling the tornado you are able to control it, allowing movement of the tornado. Lasts for 15 seconds.

Arcane Orbs
Passive
Whenever you deal damage with Arcane Blast, Fireball or Frostbolt you have a 10% chance to summon an arcane orb within 10 yards of yourself. Touching an arcane orb causes your damage to be increased by 5% for 20 seconds, stacking up to 20.

The numbers could be tweaked to make them more balanced but that is the general idea for them.



As great as that might be, it would force Blizzard to design bosses with mages in mind or a group with one could easily pass certain bosses. Also, top 25 man guilds would probably class stack many mages to lock the boss out for 2 minutes.

This needs to get to Blizz Dev Team...

[Elegiac]

You're right in some way, they are similar. But my shatter has no cd. Plus, it can stun bosses.
True, it was a light hearted musing at best, mostly just to illustrate what i think mages are lacking in general right now, that being, something cool.

Something that makes people say, "ok good, we got a mage" like they used to.


Back in the day, you'd log on and you would see in /2 trade

"[2 Trade] LF3m RAMPS, need mage"

Now I'm not saying thats neccisarily a good thing, but basically it seems like mages (as well as other pures) are kind of just falling by the wayside now. There really isn't anything 'special' about them. They nuke? sure, so do booms, locks, eles etc etc. They got CC? So does everyone else. My booms can CC an entire bgs worth of pple if you need it. Maybe mobility? Nope. Burst? Nerfed. Control? Nerfed.

Then what is it? What makes mages 'special'?

I am jacks sense of identity crisis. <- most mages right now.

Probably the best answer to this without obvious favoritism is to give the pure classes a shared raid utility or buff that is exclusive to Mages, Hunters, Warlocks, and Rogues.

---------- Post added 2012-12-29 at 10:26 AM ----------

Shatter doesn't need to be changed whatsoever. Theres nothing wrong with it, so please stop suggesting changes before someone from Blizzard actually reads them. Its an iconic part of Frost, and Frost is 100% reliant on it for PvE Dps and PvP.

The only thing that maybe should be changed is its interaction with Arcane and Fire, Shatter with Frost is perfectly fine.

As for changes to the class, I really feel the Level 90 talents are pathetic, Ghostcrawler had this whole spiele about talents being fun choices not mandatory etc;

But Invocation is better for everything as Fire/Frost,
Rune is better for 99% of things as Arcane,
Incanter's Ward is only truly useful in PvP.

Then you look at Warlocks with Kil'jaedens Cunning, Elemental Shamans with Elemental Blast, Priests with Cascade/Divine Star/Halo

The only change I'd lobby for is the removal of our Level 90 Talents, Then tack on +20% to our armours (Until they can truly rebalance every spell to give the same effect) Then add talents with relatively low cd's that add something rotationally for the specs. What these could be I don't know, but this is something mages have lacked in my opinion for a long time, A short CD high DPCT spell that we weave in rotationally. Sort of like Frost Bomb I guess.

There is in fact a problem with Shatter currently, even for Frost; it's the only spec where damage output is contingent upon control. Many classes used to have some sort of "increased damage against stunned targets" mechanic available, but these have been curtailed as Blizzard apparently wants to seperate CC from Burst.

And the problem with that is, like Frost Bomb, people will complain about mage burst. Despite the fact that we are a class designed around being able to nuke stuff.

Using the Warlock Level 90 talents as an example of a good tier isn't exactly valid :P

[Deleted]

Probably the best answer to this without obvious favoritism is to give the pure classes a shared raid utility or buff that is exclusive to Mages, Hunters, Warlocks, and Rogues.

---------- Post added 2012-12-29 at 10:26 AM ----------



There is in fact a problem with Shatter currently, even for Frost; it's the only spec where damage output is contingent upon control. Many classes used to have some sort of "increased damage against stunned targets" mechanic available, but these have been curtailed as Blizzard apparently wants to seperate CC from Burst.

And the problem with that is, like Frost Bomb, people will complain about mage burst. Despite the fact that we are a class designed around being able to nuke stuff.

Using the Warlock Level 90 talents as an example of a good tier isn't exactly valid :P

For 90's talent of example, you can look at warrior's one. isn't there one like the old Deep Freeze ? very ironic.
For Shatter, they just show us that they can nerf a spell only against players. Maybe it was a new tech they just test it before 5.2. Wait and see.

A buff/utility exclusive. Actually, it's the case for hybrid with the spell haste buff. It takes month before they give it to hunter because they restrict it to hybrid to be sure there taken in raid. They forget that hybrid is good because they can switch between heal and DPS, depending on fight requirement.

In raid,
you want Hunter because they can have every single raid buff, with a lot of control, even off-tanking.
you want Warlock for healstone and to bring in people easily. And now, they also can off-tank if needed.
you want Rogue for, in fact I don't know because they aren't needed a lot, I think. Maybe, there's debuff, multiple CC, movement like game-play.
you want Mage for table with the so-much easy fest ctually, for portals for those who have lost there hearthstone, for ...

[Swizzle]

Hm, an interesting idea.

Winter's Chill: Allows you to generate the Winter's Chill debuff on targets, stacking up to 10. Lasts 15 sec.

- Your Frostbolt and instant cast Frostfire Bolt will generate a stack of Winter's Chill every time it deals damage.
- Your Ice Lance will deal double damage if at least 2 stacks are present, triple at 5, and quadruple above 7.
- Deep Freeze can be cast on any target susceptible to stuns with more than 5 stacks regardless if they are Frozen, but will consume all stacks. It can no longer benefit from Fingers of Frost.

Shatter
1.5 Cast

Consumes all stacks of Winter's Chill, dealing X Frost damage and stunning it for 0.3 sec for every stack.

--

A very roughly thought out idea, but following on from yours.

You single handedly killed Frost PvP with that change.

[Elegiac]

For 90's talent of example, you can look at warrior's one. isn't there one like the old Deep Freeze ? very ironic.
For Shatter, they just show us that they can nerf a spell only against players. Maybe it was a new tech they just test it before 5.2. Wait and see.

A buff/utility exclusive. Actually, it's the case for hybrid with the spell haste buff. It takes month before they give it to hunter because they restrict it to hybrid to be sure there taken in raid. They forget that hybrid is good because they can switch between heal and DPS, depending on fight requirement.

In raid,
you want Hunter because they can have every single raid buff, with a lot of control, even off-tanking.
you want Warlock for healstone and to bring in people easily. And now, they also can off-tank if needed.
you want Rogue for, in fact I don't know because they aren't needed a lot, I think. Maybe, there's debuff, multiple CC, movement like game-play.
you want Mage for table with the so-much easy fest ctually, for portals for those who have lost there hearthstone, for ...

Versus all the hybrid classes which bring vastly superior damage reduction and healing cooldowns. There is no comparison nor reason to bring pures beyond their dps.

[Soulstrike]

Fireball and pyroblast are in as much need to be updated as the arcane spells. If the 90 talents were removed I think it would be best if they were all AoE spells which work in different ways, because mage AoE at the moment is incredibly boring.

Wildfire Spark
1 minute cooldown
40 yard range
Instant Cast
Places a wildfire spark on the target enemy, causing fire to spread around them, dealing 10k damage every 3 seconds to all targets standing in the area. If the target moves location fire will spread at their new location as well. Debuff lasts 15 seconds and fire lasts 30 seconds.

Icy Storm
2 minute cooldown
Channelled
Summon a tornado of ice at your location, dealing 30k damage per second to all enemy targets touching the tornado. While you are channelling the tornado you are able to control it, allowing movement of the tornado. Lasts for 15 seconds.

Arcane Orbs
Passive
Whenever you deal damage with Arcane Blast, Fireball or Frostbolt you have a 10% chance to summon an arcane orb within 10 yards of yourself. Touching an arcane orb causes your damage to be increased by 5% for 20 seconds, stacking up to 20.

The numbers could be tweaked to make them more balanced but that is the general idea for them.



As great as that might be, it would force Blizzard to design bosses with mages in mind or a group with one could easily pass certain bosses. Also, top 25 man guilds would probably class stack many mages to lock the boss out for 2 minutes.

combustion was too strong and they made it capped to 3targets(now 4, its sad but its true)

mage aoe is fine as right now i dont see why we need to buff it even more. i know i know flame strike then spamming arcane explosion/blizzard sucks balls but its really strong.

then you have ice storm.....you just added new spells and got rid of blizzard,AE and flame strike. why??need reason

and finally arcane orb.... does that mean arcane mages needs to stand next to melee range of the boss just to get the buff from its effect??? sounds pretty bad tbh, hate standing in melee range (H rag and H alakir says hi)

im just saying this because mages dont need more spell cd usage just need to fix things up like lvl90 talents and shatter for pvp

[Deleted]

Holy crap, loads of changes. Will go through them one by one, voicing my opinion on each. Sorry if I'm overly harsh.

General
Mana-management related changes

Mana Gem removal; fine - only Arcane has a use for it and it's no longer like Cataclysm where it gives you a DPS boost. Having read some other posts in the thread you propose it's made Arcane-only (I think?), but will come back to it later if this is the case.

Nether Attunement; change isn't welcomed, if I'm honest. The baseline regen from it is fine where it is, and changing the calculations based on different stats would literally shoot Arcane through the roof. Potentially could be added to the game if they balanced it properly, but as this is unlikely to happen I would have to say no; I personally think it's fine as it is anyway.

Evocation change; Interesting idea but perhaps makes it a tad strong on the PvP side and takes away from the PvE side - would become near-useless in PvE situations other when it's absolutely necessary to be used as another small personal but also removing the mana regeneration from it is slightly odd, I think. I know you've changed Arcane Power below to make up for this; but the reality is that both Fire and Frost do have their uses of Evocation, both the healing and the mana-regen; so personally I don't think it should be changed.

- Shatter removed as a baseline ability.

I'm fine with this change so long as it remains in Frost Specialization (or some form of it - see below in Frost changes for my opinion on that). It's fun to abuse in PvE (and, to an extent as other specs in PvP) but it's mostly a Frost ability but it's also very important to Frost playstyle.

- Counterspell cooldown reduced to 15 seconds, down from 24. School lockout changed to 4 sec to bring it in line with melee interrupts.

Disagree with this due to the implications it would have in PvP - having a ranged interrupt on that short a CD with that long a lockout would make Mages far too strong.

- Arcane Brilliance increases spell haste by 5% rather than critical strike chance.

Same number of class/specs give each buff - no need to change.

AoE related changes.

Blizzard I disagree with; mainly used as AoE slow (Feng HC comes to mind if you don't have solid stuns) and having that as something to just cast-then-leave seems a bit too strong. Could maybe either reduce/remove slow (most likely reduce) and maybe keep damage at similar levels or lower them if you really wanted to implement this.

AE is fine; I dislike the positional requirement, but possibly reduce the damage as it currently does hit quite hard for a spammable AoE spell.

Flamestrike; will come back to this if you go into what Blast Wave is later. If you don't come back to what Blast Wave is, this needs more explanation.

- Ice Barrier is now a baseline ability, recieved at level 30.

Disagree, combination of having IB and Temporal Shield will be too strong in PvP, unless they are made to share a CD.

- Spellsteal's mana cost has been reverted to 3% of base mana, now has a 6 second cooldown, steals two spells rather than one, and now has a priority queue of active damage boosts > Heals over Time > passive stat buffs.

Change the % to ~10% and keep it so it only steals one spell, then this is OK. Spellsteal is effectively an offensive dispel and should be treated as such. Note that offensive dispels don't have CDs, either.

Arcane
- Arcane Blast and Arcane Missiles have been given new animations.

No real personal feeling about this; won't mind either way as animations aren't what make me play a specialization.

- Arcane Explosion will always generate an Arcane Charge if at least four targets are hit. In addition, its damage is increased by 30% per stack of Arcane Charge, up from 24%.

Agree with the 100% Charge if at least 4 targets struck, don't agree with damage increasing per stack. Doesn't scale at the moment and shouldn't scale - would make Arcane FAR too strong in AoE situations, especially if your targetable AE comes into effect.

- New Spell: Mana Tap. Taps into nearby ley energies, restoring 45,000 mana (at level 90). 2 min cooldown.

Following on from your Mana Gem removal this replaces it effectively. The two would have to be implemented in tandem, though. Agree with it though, it's fine.

- Ice Lance now becomes a new spell called Nether Bolt for Arcane mages. Nether Bolt is instant cast, deals 115% of the damage of a single wave of Arcane Missiles, and refreshes your stacks of Arcane Charge. Damage is increased by 24% per stack of Arcane Charge.

- Arcane Missiles altered. Your Arcane damage spells now have 40% chance to generate two stacks of Arcane Surge, stacking up to four times and which can be used for one of two spells: Arcane Missiles, or Nether Bolt. Arcane Missiles consumes two stacks of Arcane Surge, while Nether Bolt only consumes one.

Disagree with both as a pair of changes - would be a buff to Arcane in it's current form (which isn't needed) and would effectively stop people using Missiles and give Arcane too much mobility. The whole point of Arcane is that it's supposed to be bad on the move; changing that only buffs the spec which isn't necessary at all.

- Arcane Power has been changed. While the damage benefit and mana cost increase remain the same, at the end of its duration it will restore 15% of your mana immediately, and another 45% over 5 sec. This effect cannot be reset by Alter Time.

Proposed numbers make this far too strong; in fact any part of AP restoring Mana AFTER usage buffs Arcane insanely - makes the cooldown far too strong so unless you lengthen the CD to compensate for this it's far, far too dreamy to ever come to fruition. Even if you did lengthen the CD, this would require far too much balancing as it's just too strong in a base state.

Fire
- Combustion damage increased to 75% of Ignite.

Agreed that Combustion needs a buff; maybe not QUITE to 75% of Ignite, but balancing aside this is fine.

- Your Fireball spell now generates a proc of Molten Fury, stacking up to 5 times. Each stack reduces the cast time and mana cost of your Pyroblast spell by 20%, and increase its damage by 2%. Gaining Hot Streak will clear your stacks of Molten Fury.

Something for next expansion; Re-working a class/spec shouldn't be done mid-expansion, I'm sure this point has been raised already.

- Inferno Blast is now off the Global Cooldown, and will spread your Combustion, Pyroblast, and Ignite effects to all targets within 8 yards.

Plain and simply, no. Would make Fire AoE disgustingly overpowered and Inferno Blast doesn't really need changing.

Frost
- The Frostburn Mastery now increases the bonus damage provided by your Frostbolt spell. In addition, the Frostbolt debuff now applies its bonus damage to Frostfire Bolt.

Considering how little Frostbolt is used in PvP you effectively just killed Frost PvP, not nerfed it, killed it. Disagree.

- Casting Summon Water Elemental while an Elemental is already active will restore its health to full and clear all debuff and damage over time effects from it.

Interesting, would require further development but as the pet can be healed by casting Frostbolt on it already don't think it's 100% needed.

- Fingers of Frost and Brain Freeze now multiply the critical strike chance of Ice Lance and Frostfire Bolt by 2.5.

Guessing this is to counter your Shatter change. Disregard what I said earlier about Shatter being Frost-only then, and so long as both FoF and BF keep Mastery benefit (assuming Mastery unchang

- Your Water Elemental recieves a number of changes:
-snip-

I believe a form of Water Jet is in the works for 5.2; it's more similar to your Deluge idea though I believe. Prefer the base Water Jet that Blizzard are developing to both your ideas, but they aren't bad. Could use some work to make them better and more balanced.

- Freeze will only generate charges of Fingers of Frost when it successfully roots targets.

Being implemented in 5.2

- Your Water Elemental will now passively be healed for 5% of all Frost damage you deal, in addition to being healed using Frostbolt.

Hmm, would disagree on this. Other pet classes do not have this sort of thing without talents (as far as I'm aware, anyway), would be unfair and unbalanced to implement it for us. If other pet classes have this WITHOUT talents, ignore this.

- Using Ice Lance against a target affected by your Blizzard spell will now cause Ice Lance to also strike all targets within 8 yards of the primary target for 25% of the damage dealt.

Guessing this is based off your Blizzard change, but as I disagree with the Blizzard change I slightly disagree with this as well.

Talents

Level 15
-snip-

Presence of Mind buff is, excuse this for being harsh, stupid. Like, seriously...so stupid. Not needed at all and, if implemented, would be the most stupidly OP talent ever, especially considering it's in Tier 1.

The other two talent changes, while interesting, would be pointless as no one would take them over the new PoM; as new PoM is effectively both combined just with a few less perks.

In my personal opinion Tier 1 is fine as it is, PoM could use some SMALL tweaks to make it a tad more viable, but Ice Floes and Scorch are both fine as they are.

Level 30
-snip-

Blazing Speed change would be too strong in PvP situations considering how strong Frost already is at kiting.

While, again, your Refraction idea is a fresh take, as I disagree with Ice Barrier becoming baseline I disagree with the change.

Level 60
- Greater Invisibility now removes all damage over time effects when cast, up from two.

Too strong for PvP, especially considering 90% damage reduction.

Level 75
-snip-

Basically it looks like you want to nerf NT's single target damage and buff the other two?
Honestly, this is another tier of talents that is fine. Doesn't need changes/reworks.

[Sw1tch]

At the end of the day the proof is in the pudding. Go to the WoW talent calculator for mists and go to mages. The "spec" tab is a list of maybe 6 things for all 3 specs. Every other spec in the game requires you to scroll considerably, including rogues (but they have the second least). Interesting how the two classes with the current worst QoL are the same two with the least amount of spec differences....


Mages are by far the most homogeneous class (within the class, if that makes sense) in the game right now, and it's truly terrible.

[Elegiac]

At the end of the day the proof is in the pudding. Go to the WoW talent calculator for mists and go to mages. The "spec" tab is a list of maybe 6 things for all 3 specs. Every other spec in the game requires you to scroll considerably, including rogues (but they have the second least). Interesting how the two classes with the current worst QoL are the same two with the least amount of spec differences....

Mages are by far the most homogeneous class (within the class, if that makes sense) in the game right now, and it's truly terrible.

One could say warlocks were relatively similar. But, Blizzard managed to sufficiently diversify the class and deliniate the playstyle for all warlock specs. We can only hope that it will happen for mages (unlikely since again, none of the devs play a mage)

[Shangalar]

Just got two probably silly Fire ideas for Critical Mass:

Idea 1: Whenever you land two consecutive non-periodic spell hits, you gain the Critical Mass buff making your next Fireball have a 50% increased chance to critically hit.

I don't really think that my first idea would change anything. RNG would still be a factor, just a different type of rng. However...

Idea 2: Critical Mass - at max level increases your chance to critically hit with all spells by 40%, but you are no longer able to benefit in any way from other sources of Critical Strike Chance. Instead, 10% of the Critical Strike Rating from other sources is converted into Spell Power.

[Bullcephus]

Just got two probably silly Fire ideas for Critical Mass:

Idea 1: Whenever you land two consecutive non-periodic spell hits, you gain the Critical Mass buff making your next Fireball have a 50% increased chance to critically hit.

I don't really think that my first idea would change anything. RNG would still be a factor, just a different type of rng. However...

Idea 2: Critical Mass - at max level increases your chance to critically hit with all spells by 40%, but you are no longer able to benefit in any way from other sources of Critical Strike Chance. Instead, 10% of the Critical Strike Rating from other sources is converted into Spell Power.

Your first idea completely devalues crit rating and your second idea completely devalues mastery and haste.