Dragonflight Talents for Mages

[mrgreenthump]

From raiders PoV:

The general tree looks pretty bad. Am not even sure I want Meteor or Shifting Power as Frost. Fire might want Shifting(but it's very weak), because 4% crit isn't that special and Radiant Spark + Meteor might do something for Arcane. But as Frost you probably only want Time Anomaly and then just pick up passives from the tree. Shimmer not leading to anywhere in the middle feels really weird, would be great if it lead to Flow of Time. Not to mention to take Shifting Power you are going to have to spend 4 points on really weak talents, which could be used on stronger ones. Time Anomaly being under Greater Invisibility also makes it a really strong defensive option compared to the other 2 especially for Frost which will need the extra defensive. Also RoP/IF being at the middle with nothing special leading to them is a bit weird as well, you will just always have Remove Curse and Spellsteal, might as well be base line the way they sit at in the tree and CoC/Shatter for Fire and Arcane is a bit weird.

Fire talents look ok. Mid part is a bit rough with routing(probs wont take PF at all), but the bottom has a lot of power baked into it. So if they balance it right. Fire will have a lot of possible variation. Only real gripe is that Blaster Master is back with it being 3 stacks and 3 seconds and not 2 stacks and 5 seconds like Infernal Cascade is.

Frost is weird. You either go pure ST with the current spec pretty much and gain nothing new, actually loose something even. For AoE you are giving a lot, maybe there is a middle ground that am not seeing atm. For M+ the AoE build will probs be just fine. And has the same problem as the general tree with having to pick Blizzard and Cold Snap to go through the middle that has by far the most power for ST builds. And you need to use 4 talents to make Flurry even work. I think the flow would improve here if they added routing from Brain Freeze to the left side choose talent in the middle and from Arctic Piercing to the right side choose talent. And Acrtic Piercing has a really short duration. Upping that to 10 seconds would be really nice.

Arcane though. Oh my. You basically have to choose between loosing out on either Arcane Harmony, Radiant Spark or Arcane Orb. Doesn't really feel good. And you kinda have to loose out on damage for you to pick Forsight, which frankly is probably an autopick for raiding. And still no Displacement and we need to sacrifice the defensive upside of Alter Time to do the same with clunkier mechanics.

Overall seems like the Fire tree is much more rounded than any of the other trees. Feels like they totally missed the mark with them focusing on each spec picking more of other spec utility and damage spells. There pretty much is only Meteor for damage and heavily nerfed Dragon's Breath and Greater Invis for utility.

[klaps_05]

After 17 years of mage i can finally see how it looks like to put together some of the worst talents, rank 1 conduits or legendaries for mage, in the form of a talent tree.

Class tree:
Absolutely all over the place. Meteor? Greater invis? Shifting Power with Ring of Frost prerequisite? Multiple slow/nova talents which are essentially useless. Shadowlands conduits added on nearly their lowest levels, making them useless. Feels like the Class tree was made for PvP only and then they let the janitor do the capstone talents.

Fire:
1 min bust offered, except nowhere as fun as BFA s4, so it hits like a noodle. SKB/Pyroclasm/Pyromaniac/Firestorm - absolute horrible procs/playstyles. Fire was always about pumping instants and pyros, not casting Pyroblasts.
Conflagration is still a talent even though it remains unpicked and with 0% impact since it was created.
One upside - potential permanent Combust uptime with Rogues in the group.
Phoenix Ashes, Improved Blazing Barrier, Tinder, Pyromaniac, Firestorm, Molten Skyfall, Flame patch should be straight up removed and replaced.
Ignite still manually spreading...
Have to spend multiple nodes to rebuild how spells work..
Fire mage in BFA was essentially the best and smoothest Fire mage has ever played, not sure whats so difficult in allowing ppl to play that. Tree shouldve been you go either Living bomb build or ST build.

Frost:
Complete lack of identity. ST talents all over the place, M+ shoehorned into TV/Freezing Winds, Glacial Spike is only competitive on ST but usually completely undertuned.

Arcane:
Literally just Shadowlands arcane which is pretty garbage. Horrible nodes placement with arcane orb for some reason nearly unreachable to make sense. Arcane both ST and AOE still essentially shoehorned into Touch of the Magi.
Imagine putting the Foreskin legiondary in a talent tree, yikers whoever decided that.

It feels like they didnt want to create any clear builds, but instead just jam stuff in the tree, APL will turn into some awkward to play style eventually to be modified in 11.0. Heavily disappointed with this 1st version of the tree as there are hella more fun spells and playstyle available than just a repeat of Shadowlands.

[bloodwulf]

It really drives the point home, when you compare the mage class tree to that of the shaman. The shaman tree has many viable builds and tons of points you WANT to take. The mage tree has basically no coherent build, and tons of points that you take because you HAVE to. For the classes sake, i really hope Blizzard is watching the feedback.

[mrgreenthump]

For the classes sake, i really hope Blizzard is watching the feedback.

Let's hope so. But reading the feedback thread isn't really giving me a lot of confidence.

[bloodwulf]

Let's hope so. But reading the feedback thread isn't really giving me a lot of confidence.

Luckily, looking at the the changes to Hunter\DK\Shaman so far, it seems they are not reliant on the feedback threads solely. A lot of feedback seems to be taken from experienced class players feedback on twitter and youtube.

[kiramon]

After 17 years of mage i can finally see how it looks like to put together some of the worst talents, rank 1 conduits or legendaries for mage, in the form of a talent tree.

Class tree:
Absolutely all over the place. Meteor? Greater invis? Shifting Power with Ring of Frost prerequisite? Multiple slow/nova talents which are essentially useless. Shadowlands conduits added on nearly their lowest levels, making them useless. Feels like the Class tree was made for PvP only and then they let the janitor do the capstone talents.

Fire:
1 min bust offered, except nowhere as fun as BFA s4, so it hits like a noodle. SKB/Pyroclasm/Pyromaniac/Firestorm - absolute horrible procs/playstyles. Fire was always about pumping instants and pyros, not casting Pyroblasts.
Conflagration is still a talent even though it remains unpicked and with 0% impact since it was created.
One upside - potential permanent Combust uptime with Rogues in the group.
Phoenix Ashes, Improved Blazing Barrier, Tinder, Pyromaniac, Firestorm, Molten Skyfall, Flame patch should be straight up removed and replaced.
Ignite still manually spreading...
Have to spend multiple nodes to rebuild how spells work..
Fire mage in BFA was essentially the best and smoothest Fire mage has ever played, not sure whats so difficult in allowing ppl to play that. Tree shouldve been you go either Living bomb build or ST build.

Frost:
Complete lack of identity. ST talents all over the place, M+ shoehorned into TV/Freezing Winds, Glacial Spike is only competitive on ST but usually completely undertuned.

Arcane:
Literally just Shadowlands arcane which is pretty garbage. Horrible nodes placement with arcane orb for some reason nearly unreachable to make sense. Arcane both ST and AOE still essentially shoehorned into Touch of the Magi.
Imagine putting the Foreskin legiondary in a talent tree, yikers whoever decided that.

It feels like they didnt want to create any clear builds, but instead just jam stuff in the tree, APL will turn into some awkward to play style eventually to be modified in 11.0. Heavily disappointed with this 1st version of the tree as there are hella more fun spells and playstyle available than just a repeat of Shadowlands.

This will be an odd expac for talents. It is all literally just rebuilding what you already have, sometimes even more limited. It's very hard to get past, since youre basically going to be spending points to become what you already were, with a few new things here and there and losing some others. Hell, healers having to talent for Cleanses? Lol
After this expac they might become more interesting, but for now youre basically a gutted version of your former self. Sucks, but it's true for most classes.

[Miyagie]

Frost mage looks very good, we keep all the good talents, we can keep up Ice Veins all the time from the start with bad stats/gear and we get 4 more CCs.
Better def cds and the Ice Nine talent looks broken since we can now spec into Glacial Spike.
Our Frostbolt and Flurry can proc 30 Iceicle with a 15% chance so we get alot heavy hitting cleave dmg.
Looks to good for me, i bet frost get nerfed into the ground.
Here is my first try with the frost spec:
https://www.wowhead.com/beta/talent-...VVFUDEGGECgUBF

[mrgreenthump]

Better def cds and the Ice Nine talent looks broken since we can now spec into Glacial Spike.

Either a tooltip error or implemented poorly, but it definately only gives one Icicle when it procs currently on Alpha.

[Auxis]

I'm intrigued by Fire Frenzy (capstone talent for Fire, bottom-right node).
Unless there is a CD on how many times it can proc, it might be fun to run. Guaranteed instant cast Pyro's, 2 Pyro's proc a Hot Streak. that Hot Streak has a chance to proc Fire Frenzy, rinse and repeat. Plus Molten Skyfall to drop free Meteors.

Also, I hope Arcane Surge looks/performs well. It's effectively a BLM's Flare from FFXIV with some bonuses tacked on.

[Hctaz]

Indeed, these are somewhat more interesting and better than the TBC/LK trees - by a long shot.

But they follow the same concept, just done better via some years of experience.

I disagree. I think the Classic trees are better designed comparing the current state of the two. The old trees were boring and didn't allow you the option to customize your build further than what Blizzard deemed acceptable, but the current trees are a mess in many aspects.

Frost DK for example has one side that starts off being based around Obliterate, single target, and Crits while the other side is based around Frost damage and AoE. Cool and great.

Then you get halfway down the left side and you can randomly choose Might of the Frozen Wastes which is the ability that lets you play as Two handed Frost? Why? Then there's Glacial Advance down there as well? On the same side of the tree where using Frost Strike (both spells use Runic Power) increases your Strength and whose Crits can give you Killing Machine? Why is that on the same side?

I know this is a forum post dedicated to mage trees, so I can list some examples from there specifically- although I'm not a mage player so I might miss the mark here.

Arcane: AoE and Single target seems to be split up dramatically. I can't honestly tell you what each side or section of the tree is trying to do. Both sides of the tree have things that deal with the other side of the tree. It's a horrible spaghetti mess of incoherence with no clear direction to go in other than just simming things. One row has 4 different AoE abilities split across every side of the tree.
Arcane Barrage deals more damage per target hit on one side and on the other side you have Arcane Barrage dealing damage to more than one target per charge consumed.
Evocation is on the bottom left side of the tree, but there's a talent on the right side that allows you to cast it while moving.

Fire:

Starts off better than Arcane by far, but still has some of the same issues. Right side is apparent from the start that there will be some AoE and the left side looks like more single target. Great.
But then you end up with the right side randomly having Pyroclasm? And consecutive critical strikes increase your critical strike damage? The bottom bits of both left and right side end up being all about Hot Streak which seems kinda weird. It just seems really hard to follow along with what is happening. I can start off making a strong single target or AoE build and then it devolves into a simulation fest at the end of the tree where there's just things that happen and you kinda just want them all but you can't.

There's multiple talents in every tree that you have to just take in order to retain the functionality of the current stuff which ends up locking you into certain paths. I don't know when you'd venture to the far left or right of some of the trees or where you'd want to take one over the other. Seems like a mess.

- - - Updated - - -

It really drives the point home, when you compare the mage class tree to that of the shaman. The shaman tree has many viable builds and tons of points you WANT to take. The mage tree has basically no coherent build, and tons of points that you take because you HAVE to. For the classes sake, i really hope Blizzard is watching the feedback.

Same with Frost DK and the mages.

I can come up with a few coherent builds with DK (there are some oddities here and there) but the mage tree has sections I'm left staring at knowing I'll need to sim it. The ends of some of the trees just have a bunch of things that don't have any correlation to the side of the tree they came from other than being in the same talent tree. Like the fire tree devolves into a bunch of things that want you to land a bunch of crits. Great, but that's fire in general so...
At least the earlier parts of the tree have some clear focus on single target versus AoE damage.

[mrgreenthump]

I'm intrigued by Fire Frenzy (capstone talent for Fire, bottom-right node).
Unless there is a CD on how many times it can proc, it might be fun to run. Guaranteed instant cast Pyro's, 2 Pyro's proc a Hot Streak. that Hot Streak has a chance to proc Fire Frenzy, rinse and repeat.

It's a copy of a current legendary power called Firestorm. You can test it on live if you want. Think it has a 1.66 RPPM though, so it can't chain proc.

[Miyagie]

Either a tooltip error or implemented poorly, but it definately only gives one Icicle when it procs currently on Alpha.

Still good since you get now more Flurry procs just lets hope Glacial Spike wont hit like a wet noodel.

[Chromeshellking]

I looked at the talent/class tree for arcane and im just...Am I crazy? is it really as bad as I think it is?

[Razorice]

Played around with Frost Talent tree a bit and uhhh... it seems to me Blizzard will have to re-arrange the Frost tree a bit, it's a ll over the place. To reach same levels of fluidity of current Frost you have to spend more than 30 points.

[Stickiler]

This will be an odd expac for talents. It is all literally just rebuilding what you already have, sometimes even more limited. It's very hard to get past, since youre basically going to be spending points to become what you already were, with a few new things here and there and losing some others. Hell, healers having to talent for Cleanses? Lol
After this expac they might become more interesting, but for now youre basically a gutted version of your former self. Sucks, but it's true for most classes.

I think what a lot of people are missing is that one of the goals of the talent tree is to avoid spellbook bloat, while not filling the tree with garbage +1$ blah talents. So the idea is that for a fresh character, as you level you're getting points, and as you put those points in you gain new spells from the talent tree and it works same as it does now.

Same thing with people at max level, the goal is to be the exact same as you currently are, with the important legendary items turned in to talents and a couple of new things. It's not supposed to be like the artifact weapon, SL talents or azerite armor, where it's stacking on top of your existing spells to give you something new.

[Jaggler]

I disagree. I think the Classic trees are better designed comparing the current state of the two. The old trees were boring and didn't allow you the option to customize your build further than what Blizzard deemed acceptable, but the current trees are a mess in many aspects.

I agree that some trees are still kinda confusing, but it's also the first iteration of them. As we saw with hunter, they are willing to drastically change them. I just wouldn't compare trees that have been developed over 3 expansions to the first alpha pass of the new ones.

[Chromell]

congrats dear mages, Mass Poly + Alexa Fury + shitload of self healing in base tree, i bet fire mage gonna end up as 2nd fotm spec/class after Evoker in DF.

Shitload of healing? The nerf to iceblock heal was massive compared to the conduit (and that's considering the whole 10 seconds). And even though barrier's reabsorbing damage has been buffed it's still lackluster.

On a more personal note, I really dislike the fact that single target builds are heavily centered into hardcasting Pyroblast. My main wish is for Fire Frenzy (Firestorm) to be viable as that's the most fun talent in the tree by far.

[Caprias]

I think what a lot of people are missing is that one of the goals of the talent tree is to avoid spellbook bloat, while not filling the tree with garbage +1$ blah talents. So the idea is that for a fresh character, as you level you're getting points, and as you put those points in you gain new spells from the talent tree and it works same as it does now.

Same thing with people at max level, the goal is to be the exact same as you currently are, with the important legendary items turned in to talents and a couple of new things. It's not supposed to be like the artifact weapon, SL talents or azerite armor, where it's stacking on top of your existing spells to give you something new.

Mage is not a class that suffers from having too many buttons though, also compared to other talent trees there are neither interesting choices nor that much new stuff.

[mrgreenthump]

I think what a lot of people are missing is that one of the goals of the talent tree is to avoid spellbook bloat, while not filling the tree with garbage +1$ blah talents. So the idea is that for a fresh character, as you level you're getting points, and as you put those points in you gain new spells from the talent tree and it works same as it does now.

Same thing with people at max level, the goal is to be the exact same as you currently are, with the important legendary items turned in to talents and a couple of new things. It's not supposed to be like the artifact weapon, SL talents or azerite armor, where it's stacking on top of your existing spells to give you something new.

The problem is that Mage talents are full of such talents and there's nothing new or old brought back.

[dileria]

Interrupting as a caster means interrupting your own cast first >.>. Maybe this can be a choice node for counterspell. Either give it -5sec Cooldown, or it is castable during other casts. this would be so much qol <3. (imagine interrupting a clearcast arcane missile for a crucial interrupt... that is painful)

Frost:

Blizzard needs to have 2 charges / a charge system. This would make so much sense with the current Frost spec. Instant synergy with Shifting power, Freezing Rain, Snowstorm - and it smooths out the AOE Rotation by sooooo much.
Is there any synergy between Frost Mastery (icicle damage?/icicle generation) and Blizzard? None that im aware of. Mastery being a useless stat in aoe, makes me sad and it feels unrewarding. ("Dealing Damage with Blizzard has a *%Mastery* Chance to create an Icicle"... or the simple Frozen Orb treatment "Increases the Damage by Frozen Orb and Blizzard by X%" - Solved)
The Ice Lance / Blizzard Synergy - Legendary (Glacial Fragments) should come back in some form as a talent or sth.
I think the single target / cleave rotation is smooth and makes sense... but the aoe rotation feels weird sometimes.

Fire:
Hardcasting Flamestrike back to back, with the occasional instant Flamestrike by using two flameblasts... is boring and clunky >.>.
Flamestrike needs to generate Heating Up Procs, or maybe succesful casts reduce the cooldown of flameblast... anything to make it more smooth / synergetic.