[Discussion] Mage class - What would we like to see happen to the class in Shadowland

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Conduits and Legendaries only affect core abilities, so as long as GS is a talent, it's not getting any love.

Which ties back into change Icicles to a spec passive at 40% SP, bring Frostburn back since we can utilize it via Winter's Chill. That fixes GS having no conduit/legendary side because Icicles are now base, and Frostburn through WC means we can grant Mastery scaling to Ice Nova, GS, Ebonbolt, and Ray of Frost.

Grisly Icicle also becomes valuable in M+ due to granting Blizzard/Orb partial Mastery.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Conduits and Legendaries only affect core abilities, so as long as GS is a talent, it's not getting any love.

Haven't there been instances in the past where they just affected the icile damage as the underlying mechanic, therefore affecting skills like GS as well? I mean essentially that is what mastery does for us. I could have sworn there was a mechanic in legion that worked like that. I'm sure there is ways to fix it (as indicated above by Kuni Zyrekai), it certainly would be a crying shame to neuter the last talent tier again. They could also simply define the base damage of GS as a multiple of icelance damage (+ the damage of icicles), therefore granting partial auto-scaling instead of just being a multiple of spellpower as it is currently iirc.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Haven't there been instances in the past where they just affected the icile damage as the underlying mechanic, therefore affecting skills like GS as well? I mean essentially that is what mastery does for us. I could have sworn there was a mechanic in legion that worked like that. I'm sure there is ways to fix it (as indicated above by Kuni Zyrekai), it certainly would be a crying shame to neuter the last talent tier again.

In Legion Black Ice and Ice Nine were both on Icicles. Ice Nine just gave you 2 Icicles randomly, much like Lucid minor, but Black Ice had the chance to proc a double size Icicle. This was rolled for when calculating GS damage, so yeah, it did impact it. It also didn't salvage GS. BfA also now allowed for Icicles to crit, so this is functionally baked in at a higher rate.

In BfA we got Flash Freeze, which had some wonky-ass math when specced into GS, and basically broke the spec. Now, we were running GS regardless, but that's because Ice Lance lost everything else the Legion artifact brought to the table.

They are diametrically opposed. Ice Lance is a payoff spell. The key to generating Ice Lance is casting Frostbolt/Frozen Orb as much as possible. Glacial Spike is a payoff spell that rewards everything that generates Icicles; Frostbolt and Flurry. Casting either of the payoff spells intrinsically does nothing for the other one, and in fact hinders it by losing a GCD/a 3 second cast to not generating more of the resource for it. This is a horrible tension within the spec, and it breaks even further when you look at other active talents. None of them interact with Fingers of Frost or Icicles, thus they all fall by the wayside.

There is a solution, we handed it to Blizz on a silver platter, and it was ignored. Be it through lack of desire to change or disagreement over the fact the spec is broken, I cannot say. It is mildly complex, but that's because it completely addresses a number of very complex spec issues.

They could also simply define the base damage of GS as a multiple of icelance damage (+ the damage of icicles), therefore granting partial auto-scaling instead of just being a multiple of spellpower as it is currently iirc.

That's not how this works, simply because Icicles as a Mastery means you have a consistently floating point to hit in terms of your Ice Lance:GS goal. It doesn't matter if you pin GS to IL or not, you will either eventually hit a gear point where noIL returns, or you never use GS.

[Swizzle]

-snip-

What if they just redesigned the GS talent to have it replace Ice Lance on the bar and gain benefit from the Ice Lance modifiers?

[Kuni Zyrekai]

What if they just redesigned the GS talent to have it replace Ice Lance on the bar and gain benefit from the Ice Lance modifiers?

Codify noIL? Interesting thought. What does FoF bring to the table for it?

I don't really like the idea because it'll almost always be strictly better just because it scales with all stats where IL doesn't. IL might be the play early expansion but late game it'll get outscaled to the point of it being BfA all over again.

- - - Updated - - -

Probably necrolord for an actually useful ability, since it seems to be the only globally useful ability, other than Kyrian on single target.

A modification here: RoP change made Night Fae interesting. Which is good for me, cause I was going NF for aesthetic.

[blankfaced]

The issue with the old combustion is that it ties AoE and ST damage into the same cooldown, and you end up in a situation where either the ST is neutered because the AoE was balanced, or ST is balanced and AoE is ridiculously strong. It happened all through Cata, and was why they changed it.



FM also gives you 1% Int, stacking 8 times. It's not on the tooltip, but was added a patch or two back. It brings it up a lot in terms of strength, for fights where your partner can keep it stacked for you with crits.



I'm expecting RoP to get nerfed from it's current state, cos atm it's too far above.

Pretty certain their reasoning behind changing combustion was that they didn't want a core part of a class to be taken care of by an addon. Potency of the ability swung wildly between people who used the addon and those who didn't.

OT: I don't care for Ignite spread being tied to an ability with a travel time like PF has. It feels like it's the slowest moving missile we have. Fire needs it's aoe performance back to where it was. Flame orb, blast wave, living bomb, ignite spread, flamestrike ground dot, should all be baseline. Replace all those talents with fun things. Like Flamestrike knocks targets in the air, flame orb seeks out targets, living bomb can lay dormant until targets are around them, blast wave could trade it's daze for a further knockback. FIRE IS BORING!

Also, I wouldn't mind seeing old combustion return. Call it kill it with fire and make it a 45s cd that causes your current ignite damage over 3 or 4s.

[Swizzle]

Codify noIL? Interesting thought. What does FoF bring to the table for it?

I don't really like the idea because it'll almost always be strictly better just because it scales with all stats where IL doesn't. IL might be the play early expansion but late game it'll get outscaled to the point of it being BfA all over again.

Wouldn't it be competing with the value added by TV or RoF for its place and not Ice Lance? I think the Mage talent trees overall require minor reworks as the game has evolved. The simplest change to Frost would be to bring back the old Mastery of increased damage to Frozen targets while also keeping Icicles as a lower percentage of Frostbolt damage. Or something along those lines, I don't know anymore, Blizzard's class design is starting to wane for me.

[dileria]

Suggestion:
Ice Lance against Frozen targets also generates one Icicle. (affected by Fingers of Frost and Winter's Chill)

OR

only Finger of Frost - Ice Lances do generate one Icicle.

noIL Playstyle is gone. Win (at least for me)
Scaling Issues improved. Win (!)


Oh also Comet Storm:
Calls down a series of 7 icy comets over 2 seconds on and around the target, that deals up to [7 * (40% of Spell power)] Frost damage to all enemies (Target Cap at 5?) within 6 yds of its impacts. During the Comet Storm all targets are affected by Winter's Chill.

or/and

Ice Nova:
Causes a whirl of icy wind around the enemy, dealing [(45% of Spell power) * 400 / 100] Frost damage to the target and (45% of Spell power) Frost damage to all other enemies within 8 yards, freezing them in place and applying Winter's Chill for 2 sec.

The Comet Storm and the Ice Nova Change would improve their viability in (pve-) group content. Additionally it can be used as a Glacial Spike Shatter substitute.
Damage can be nerfed accordingly.


Last but not least
Blizzard needs to be "cooler" - frost spec get it ?...sorry
Mastery: Icicles: "Increases the damage of Frozen Orb and Blizzard by 15%."
or
Make Blizzard (-Casts) have the same proc effects as Frostbolt -> FoF and Brain Freeze chance on the initial cast.
Or
The initial Blizzard Cast creates one Icicle.

I think that change would improve the flow of frost, because casting Blizzard feels like a punishment in a mastery heavy build.
It doesn't scale well with mastery AND it delays the next Glacial Spike

- - - Updated - - -

Covenant Improvements:

Radiant Spark:
Instead of debuffing the Target the Radiant sparks lights up a spark inside the mage. /Roleplay off
-> just make it a self buff. "Your next 4 damaging spellls deal increasing damage" - nonpurgeable pls for pvp reasons
-> no coding issues at all, no further restrictions needed anymore.

Mirrors of Torment:
Casting 3 Abilities at the target also shatters one Mirror. (only damaging spells - dont abuse counterspell for damage !)
-> if the boss does nothing the mage can self proc all 3 mirrors after 9 casts
-> to evade all further complaints about "i cant fit it into my ring of piece duration", make it snapshot all modifiers at the Mirros of Torment Castpoint

Deathborne:
Casting Damaging spells during the duration, also
refunds 1% mana
refunds 2-3 (?) sec cooldown off fire blast
generate one icicle
-> arcane effect needs to be the weakest additional effect to offset having the strongest main effect of cleaving arcane blast. For Fire and Frost its gonna be a pseudo lucid dreams effect.
ALSO the latest Rune of Power change made something completely new possible. Merging Cooldowns together... wow.
Casting Combust/Icyveins/Arcane Power activates Deathborne by default for the full duration.
-> Decreases GCD bloat, smoother gameplay. also cool.


Shifting Power:
Has 2 Stacks, and a higher cooldown, does no damage, and has a stronger cooldown reduction.
-> evocation-type spell, can be used during downtime, and between pulls in m+. cool

Summary:
Radiant Spark syngergize with frequent small burst windows
Mirrors will improve constant dmg
Deathborne will improve the main cooldown dmg
Shifting power enable one or two additional uses of the main cooldown.

[Cosmic Janitor]

That's not how this works, simply because Icicles as a Mastery means you have a consistently floating point to hit in terms of your Ice Lance:GS goal. It doesn't matter if you pin GS to IL or not, you will either eventually hit a gear point where noIL returns, or you never use GS.

I mean you could base IL also on icicle damage as well, this works even from an RP PoV, becaue IL is just another popsicle-type spell. My main goal was to fix IL-only buffs to talents that share the same design space, coupling them and giving both of them their own uses/niches also seems sensible. After all Split Ice also affects both effects, so it seems reasonable. Once they are both fully coupled their scaling would also work similar and the use would depend on other factors (ideally high vs low movement).

Btw, since I haven't done the math, how does the secondary stat soft & hard cap affect the chances of noIL builds? It should push their viability a bit back and I just hope we won't see something as awful as corruptions again.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Wouldn't it be competing with the value added by TV or RoF for its place and not Ice Lance? I think the Mage talent trees overall require minor reworks as the game has evolved. The simplest change to Frost would be to bring back the old Mastery of increased damage to Frozen targets while also keeping Icicles as a lower percentage of Frostbolt damage. Or something along those lines, I don't know anymore, Blizzard's class design is starting to wane for me.

Well firstly GS grants Mastery an increased value by virtue of it force critting most of them, and Mastery is a changing value. Secondly you can't really give it the same bonuses you give Lance, since that'll involve buffing GS by some level of 90% between talents and conduits, and I'm not even including how you could work Chain Reaction into it. You also lose at least partial value of anything that increases FoF proc generation, such as Frozen Touch, and the new FoF while Orb is active legendary.

But yeah Frostburn's return with Icicles at a static SP%, which gives us another spell they can tune via legendaries/conduits/whatever other borrowed power.

I mean you could base IL also on icicle damage as well, this works even from an RP PoV, becaue IL is just another popsicle-type spell. My main goal was to fix IL-only buffs to talents that share the same design space, coupling them and giving both of them their own uses/niches also seems sensible. After all Split Ice also affects both effects, so it seems reasonable. Once they are both fully coupled their scaling would also work similar and the use would depend on other factors (ideally high vs low movement).

Btw, since I haven't done the math, how does the secondary stat soft & hard cap affect the chances of noIL builds? It should push their viability a bit back and I just hope we won't see something as awful as corruptions again.

You could. I don't think that's a viable option for Blizz to implement, but you could. I still think the ideas put forth over the past few years have a better chance/are easy to tune.

Soft and hard caps?

[Cosmic Janitor]

You could. I don't think that's a viable option for Blizz to implement, but you could. I still think the ideas put forth over the past few years have a better chance/are easy to tune.

Soft and hard caps?

Fair enough. I was just throwing up ideas to fix this quickly without changing any of the other/introducing new gameplay mechanics.

Soft and hard caps as in diminishing returns and the cut off point for percentage gains respectively. ->Wowhead
It should at least push the break point for noIL back a bit.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Soft and hard caps as in diminishing returns and the cut off point for percentage gains respectively. ->Wowhead
It should at least push the break point for noIL back a bit.

Oh somehow that slipped my radar. Interesting.

Regardless, we'll likely start seeing noIL crop back up around the 40-50 point area. Rough guess, since it's hard to say what a couple of the soulbind/conduits do to the point it starts to tip over. That's an extremely high gear point, so it's possible the 50% IL conduit has saved IL.

Honestly I feel GS is just a dead talent this expansion due to the big three conduits and the legendaries. I don't think there's any potential wiggle room there. We're very much looking at yet another LW/SI/TV run. Likely RoP/CR, Night Fae, Orb grants FoF every 2.5s, Icy Propulsion/Lance damage/Orb damage.

[dileria]

If i am understanding you correctly you are currently discussing, wether noIL will be a thing again.
Currently it isn't, since Ice Lance is buffed by various effects, therefore glacial spike is devalued.

Isn't that kind of ... wrong? Why should ice lance be bad for a glacial spike build in the first place.
Maybe instead of discussing wether/when noIL is a thing, we should discuss how to change Ice Lance so it has a rotational purpose in a glacial spike build.
The Topic is called "what would we like to see happen to the class in Shadowland" :P

As i wrote before... my suggestion is for finger of frost ice lances to generate icicles, therefore bulding up to the next glacial spike.

Another suggestion, this time regadring FoF Munching
Finger of Frost
Fingers of Frost causes your next Ice Lance to deal damage as if the target were frozen.
Maximum 2 Charges
One Charge is refunded if the target is affected by Winter's Chill.

Easy change ^^'

[Kuni Zyrekai]

If i am understanding you correctly you are currently discussing, wether noIL will be a thing again.
Currently it isn't, since Ice Lance is buffed by various effects, therefore glacial spike is devalued.

Isn't that kind of ... wrong? Why should ice lance be bad for a glacial spike build in the first place.
Maybe instead of discussing wether/when noIL is a thing, we should discuss how to change Ice Lance so it has a rotational purpose in a glacial spike build.
The Topic is called "what would we like to see happen to the class in Shadowland" :P

As i wrote before... my suggestion is for finger of frost ice lances to generate icicles, therefore bulding up to the next glacial spike.

Another suggestion, this time regadring FoF Munching
Finger of Frost
Fingers of Frost causes your next Ice Lance to deal damage as if the target were frozen.
Maximum 2 Charges
One Charge is refunded if the target is affected by Winter's Chill.

Easy change ^^'

Currently it isn't. That doesn't mean it doesn't have the capacity within the expansion to not. All it requires is enough Mastery to tilt DPCT of Frostbolt north of Ice Lance's. There have been many potential solutions given over the years and none implemented. But yes, Lance generating Icicles and Flurry launching them makes a lot more sense, especially for non-GS variants, as it at least somewhat equalizes the value of Mastery by making most Shatter regardless.

There are many "easy" changes. That doesn't mean they get implemented or even paid attention to. If they did, this spec wouldn't be in the shape it has been since WoD.

Norrinir threw up a demo of changes we've brainstormed over the years and proposed multiple times. https://vituscze.github.io/frostmage/ The ? button top right explains the vast majority. This was done to address scaling issues, proc munching, unused active talent options being non-competitive, and the entire "don't GS until BF proc" feeling awful. There's even some experimental spells that could replace the holes in the talent tree, such as where Splitting Ice is.

tl;dr: Frostburn, LW gets the GoSac treatment, Icicles are Frostbolt only, Flurry becomes charge based, BF restores half a charge, SI baseline and activates for 15s after a Blizzard, IV baseline 30s and increases Flurry recharge rate, Flurry launches Icicles when non-GS, Frostbolt gains bonus damage when Shattered which encourages doing the mini-combo properly, and as you stated refund/ignore FoF when throwing it into WC.

These would enforce the mini-combo, fixes scaling issues entirely, makes IV's strength worth being a 3m CD, fixes dead DPS talents (fuck you GI), proc munching, and the absolute ridiculous famine feeling when waiting for BF to proc for GS.

[Rothex]

Norrinir threw up a demo of changes we've brainstormed over the years and proposed multiple times. https://vituscze.github.io/frostmage/ The ? button top right explains the vast majority. This was done to address scaling issues, proc munching, unused active talent options being non-competitive, and the entire "don't GS until BF proc" feeling awful. There's even some experimental spells that could replace the holes in the talent tree, such as where Splitting Ice is.

tl;dr: Frostburn, LW gets the GoSac treatment, Icicles are Frostbolt only, Flurry becomes charge based, BF restores half a charge, SI baseline and activates for 15s after a Blizzard, IV baseline 30s and increases Flurry recharge rate, Flurry launches Icicles when non-GS, Frostbolt gains bonus damage when Shattered which encourages doing the mini-combo properly, and as you stated refund/ignore FoF when throwing it into WC.

These would enforce the mini-combo, fixes scaling issues entirely, makes IV's strength worth being a 3m CD, fixes dead DPS talents (fuck you GI), proc munching, and the absolute ridiculous famine feeling when waiting for BF to proc for GS.

This looks great tbh and solves a lot of the current issues. But, questions:

1) What's the intended cap on FoF charges that can be held in this? I may have seen the demo show 3 charges at some point.
2) Depending on #1, how is FoF munching solved in this? My assumption is that it isn't?
3) What talents would you be looking at removing or changing? Obviously looking at Glacial Insulation here, maybe Ice Nova and Ray of Frost from a raid perspective, but also eyeing the 2nd and 3rd talent rows. If SI is baseline, what could replace that?

[Kuni Zyrekai]

This looks great tbh and solves a lot of the current issues. But, questions:

1) What's the intended cap on FoF charges that can be held in this? I may have seen the demo show 3 charges at some point.
2) Depending on #1, how is FoF munching solved in this? My assumption is that it isn't?
3) What talents would you be looking at removing or changing? Obviously looking at Glacial Insulation here, maybe Ice Nova and Ray of Frost from a raid perspective, but also eyeing the 2nd and 3rd talent rows. If SI is baseline, what could replace that?

1) 3 was a trial, since we've had 3 at various points in history. 2 still works, but that was set to 3. 3 also feels a bit better re: FoF ignoring WC, as in point 2.

2) Functionally all of it. I think optimal play drops to about 1% FoF wastage, and 2% of the time Flurry is capped. There's an option that defaults to on, that ignores FoF procs while Winter's Chill is on the target. Enabling the Detailed Stats checkbox will show proc wastage. Artificial Intelligence will play automatically if you wish to see how an optimized player would look, although I would recommend turning game speed up to speed the play up.

3) GI can't really be a DPS ability, so it's irrelevant. Lonely Winter we decided should just be a spec passive, allowing your choice of "no pet, random proc damage roughly equal to pet" or having the pet. There's no way around what it is right now, especially going back into a Legion-esque style of excessive Ice Lance damage making a 25% to Ice Lance mandatory beyond anything else.

The removed talents would be Lonely Winter and Splitting Ice, and you can enable experimental spells in the options menu on the top left. They should have tooltips when placed on the bar, but they're Supercool, Flash Freeze, Frost Bomb, and Ice Shard. Some are likely a bit complex for their relative positions, and are open to be replaced with whatever. It's just a set of suggestions, mostly trying to play around Frost's fantasy.

[klaps_05]

Frost in m+ right now feels a bit underwhelming on AOE as both necrolord and kyrian. Orb and Blizzard are very weak, so essentially 80% of the dmg comes from spamming ice lances from potent orbs, which is limited to 2 targets. TV-IL in dungeons feels like its just missing something to do actual AE dmg.

[Doffen]

Arcane just got hit by the nerfbat on the beta. Nothing spectacular, but noticed Overpowered got nerfed to 50% and enlightenment moved to the level 100 row(as in last row?)

My bad, its the talent Overpowered that got nerfed. Effectively nerfing Arcane Power though. Damage and mana nerfed to 50% down from 60. I guess they want competition on the last row.

[Cosmic Janitor]

All of the changes around 10% should mostly be to account for the change of the spec aura buff that was previously at -9% and is now at 0%. At least if I'm reading wowhead right.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

All of the changes around 10% should mostly be to account for the change of the spec aura buff that was previously at -9% and is now at 0%. At least if I'm reading wowhead right.

AM and AB got a further nerf above and beyond the baking in.