Water Elemental Alternatives [Frost]

[Speaknoevil]

If you're like me you both love and hate your water elemental, it's abilities are great but it's uglier than teenage George Clooney. I'd like to suggest, and get feedback on some possible existing skins that could have identical abilities to our water elemental, while being less painful on the eyes.

Water Elementals:
1) Frost Specter, we've seen them for years, one minor glyph addition and this could be our pet.


2) Neptulon-esque Elemental


3) Revenants


4) Deep-sea Water Elemental

__________


Thoughts, feedback, and alternatives are welcome.

EDIT: other user's suggestions

the pandaren water elemental


a floating blue ball frost spirit thing, incidentally I am all for this idea

[Deleted]

Oh, the previous one is already this far behind ?

You forgot the Panda Style ^o^

[Malfecto]

I vote a little tiny ball of water, about the size of a critter, hanging over my shoulder. I'm tired of toting around a huge lug.

[Benchwarmers898]

I vote a little tiny ball of water, about the size of a critter, hanging over my shoulder. I'm tired of toting around a huge lug.

I am for this!
Size isn't everything!

[Speaknoevil]

Edited in your suggestions, thanks for the feedback.
__

A reskin of the current elemental to reflect the other liquid graphical updates would be nice too.

[Deleted]

I vote a little tiny ball of water, about the size of a critter, hanging over my shoulder. I'm tired of toting around a huge lug.

I'm an huge fan of the pandaren spirit but this blue ball is really cool.
Where did you found it ?

[Deleted]

I would like to have no pet by default, be able to summon 2 big water elementals in Jaina-style as guardians to fight for some time and be able to use targeted frost nova without pet.

[Speaknoevil]

I'm an huge fan of the pandaren spirit but this blue ball is really cool.
Where did you found it ?

It's the wisp model from Blackfathom Deeps.

I would like to have no pet by default, be able to summon 2 big water elementals in Jaina-style as guardians to fight for some time and be able to use targeted frost nova without pet.

Water Elemental used to be a cooldown, I don't see them giving us Freeze off the GCD or even as a self cast.

[Sforza]

Just NO.
A lot of players like myself completely despise the idea of having pets. I want a "grimoire of sacrifice-like" glyph to turn off that stupidity of a pet and give its abilities to me, plus a minor damage increase. Plain and simple.

[Polarthief]

I'd be happy with any of the bottom 4.

I'm not a fan of 1 or 2.

[klaps_05]

i like the revenants as they have armor/shield/etc and look better imo, maybe some better graphics will make them even better

[Polarthief]

Just NO.
A lot of players like myself completely despise the idea of having pets. I want a "grimoire of sacrifice-like" glyph to turn off that stupidity of a pet and give its abilities to me, plus a minor damage increase. Plain and simple.

I think everyone would.

Granted, there would be a few problems with this. Some fights, your WE gives you a much larger DPS gain because there are freezable targets. How would the GoSac be balanced? If it's not with these adds being frozen in mind, then we have a problem. In addition, how would you get a DPS boost? Would it be via Frostbolt? Ice Lance? FFB? Mage Bombs? A flat increase to everything?

[jtmzac]

When using the glyph to remove the elemental just buff frostbolt to compensate for the loss of waterbolt and give the mage a version of freeze that can be used while casting other spells and is not on the gcd. Problem solved and a lot of us would be much happier.

I suppose it would make the elemental rather redundant in pve but you would still want it in pvp.

[Imnick]

I prefer the generic Water Elemental model to any later kind of water or ice elemental they added, I'd go for a floating water ball though.
Perhaps just giving him some armour like the caster Voidwalkers would work too?

I wouldn't use Glyph of Elemental Sacrifice.

[Larwood]

Spectre*

Anyway, I would settle for simply a glyph to make the damn thing smaller.

[Elegiac]

The generic model is fine, it just needs an HD version.

[Polarthief]

When using the glyph to remove the elemental just buff frostbolt to compensate for the loss of waterbolt and give the mage a version of freeze that can be used while casting other spells and is not on the gcd. Problem solved and a lot of us would be much happier.

I suppose it would make the elemental rather redundant in pve but you would still want it in pvp.

Problem not solved. Frostbolt being buffed any further would make the whine-Os cry about it in PvP, much like they did last PTR when it was being buffed 52% w/o debuff.

Also, how much would you buff FB by? Water Elemental goes up by 15% after the FB debuff x3, AND WE is buffed based on your Mastery. This would be way too hard to balance in its current state especially on a Mastery-heavy Frost Mage. Frostbolt CAN'T go up any higher because it already GREATLY surpasses Fireball, at a quicker cast, and a snare, AND a debuff that buffs your other spells.

[jtmzac]

I had figured that moving the water elemental damage into frostbolt wouldn't be that big of an issue since in pvp your elemental is going to be casting waterbolt on the target anyway.

I really don't think anyone would use the glyph in pvp because if you get silenced currently your elemental can still cast and use freeze. If you were using the glyph you would lose this ability.

As for the mastery scaling that's tougher to solve. I can't see any way to fix that without significant spec changes or a new mastery. I would take the small nerf to use the glyph in pve assuming you just lost the elemental mastery when using the glyph and it would be another reason to not use the glyph in pvp.

[nickseng]

Note that moving WE damage to your Frostbolt has a huge disadvantage in PVP; i.e. your on-demand Freeze that does work in PVP is gone. Not sure that any increase in FrB damage would be worth losing that.

[Obelisk Kai]

I think everyone would.

Granted, there would be a few problems with this. Some fights, your WE gives you a much larger DPS gain because there are freezable targets. How would the GoSac be balanced? If it's not with these adds being frozen in mind, then we have a problem. In addition, how would you get a DPS boost? Would it be via Frostbolt? Ice Lance? FFB? Mage Bombs? A flat increase to everything?

I strongly disagree. We have enough issues with Fire and Frost playing similarly to each other, and removing Frost's signature characteristic of being a pet spec is the wrong way to go. In fact I'd argue Frost has to go the other way, MORE synergy with the pet (hopefully one day via water bolt) and it being clearly marked out as our Pet Spec.

As for Water Elemental Alternatives, yeah the model is now pretty old and I wouldn't mind it being replaced with a brand new model or (more likely) minor glyphs offered so we can change the appearence ourselves. The Pandaren water spirit or the revenant would be nice.