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

[tikcol]

Overall:

- I'd like to see the combination of Evocation and Mana Shield be brought back as baseline spells. So no more Prismatic Barrier or Blazing Barrier, and now Fire and Frost's mana means something again.

- Shatter passive baseline. Critical strikes on frozen targets were Mage bread and butter for over a decade. It's time for all specs to enjoy it once again.

- This 8-10 target cap on our spells needs to be bumped up to 15 or 20. Killing or crowd-controlling huge amounts of mobs has always been where Mage excelled, so I think that theme should be reinforced with increased limits.




Fire: Fireball and Pyroblast need to hit/crit for way more. Nothing feels special during bursts anymore other than a Pyroclasm casted inside Combustion window because of how lukewarm Fireball and Pyroblast hit for.

- Phoenix Flames brought back on par with Flame On dps-wise. Cycling Fire Blasts is not fun to me because of how uneventful it is. Whereas weaving Phoenix Flames into the rotation back in Legion felt fantastic and looked great visually. Give me the option to single target dps with Phoenix Flames like what was once possible.

- Blazing Soul talent removed for Cauterizing Blink. Since it's a mitigation option, this switch makes sense, gives the people what they want, and bolsters Fire survivability at the cost of Shimmer.

- Living Bomb baseline for Fire. Instead a third passive will be added to tier 90, something like splash damage/burning trails for Pyroblast or an Immolation Aura effect.

- With Mirror Image going baseline, I think Arcane Power would be cool to see here in Tier 45. The middle choice between Incanter's Flow and Rune of Power.

- I'd like to see Molten Fury come back in the form of a Talent. It was an execute passive that had 2 ranks, to increase damage by Fire spells by 6% when targets were below 35% hp. It could replace Alexstrasza's Fury since that's a bad talent and fits with the passive option there.





Frost: Frost Mastery reverted back to Cataclysm's version which was dealing more damage to frozen enemies.

- Ice Nova talent removed for Deep Freeze talent. Without Mage having Improved Counterspell anymore, this fits thematically, has perfect synergy with the Mastery/playstyle, and shouldn't be too powerful.

- Icicles Mastery is now a Talent and thematically replaces Lonely Winter. Since the Frost Mage no longer has a Water Ele, he/she stores Ice floating above them now.

- Ice Bomb talent replaces Comet Storm. I'm talking like Sapphiron's Ice Bomb from Naxx. Thematically Comet Storm is made redundant by Blizzard, so I think this would be cooler.




Arcane:

- Arcane Familiar, Supernova, and Arcane Orb talents removed for something else. These have got to be the most boring, uninspired abilities in Arcane's toolkit. How about a Mass Teleport or a Brilliance Aura? Maybe a Stasis Field? A Miniature Black Hole! A 360 degree pulsing AoE because the Arcane Mage is supersaturated with energy. Any of these would be huge upgrades the way I see it.

- Since I'm proposing for Mana Shield to come back, the tier 30 Talent would be replaced by Cauterizing Blink, thus giving the people what they want.

Shatter was never baseline

[Swizzle]

Shatter was never baseline

Wasn't it made a passive trait for all Mages in MoP?

[mrgreenthump]

Overall it feels like Mages are getting pruned, not unpruned. Mirror Image getting added base line is nice. But the removal of a shimmer stack and Displacement being completely removed is leaving us somewhat lacking in many aspects. Add to that a covenant ability just feel like an improved blink, it leaves me wondering what even makes Mages special anymore.

What I'd change:

Arcane needs a lot of work still. Whoever thought moving AP to a 3 min CD is nuts, because the 1.5 min cd is what made Arcane special. And ffs give us Displacement back. There is no universe where the utility version Alter Time will replace what we loose with Displacement being gone. Other than that they need to boost the damage of Arcane Orb and our other cleave components. Feels really bad when you just cant cleave without feeling like your ST damage is going down the drain, while other specs and classes do the same ST damage and cleave as standard.

Talents:
15: Arcane familiar is what it is, I don't like it, will never use it. So might as well remove it. Amplification can be made a choice with the change to AM on Alpha, but it's really hard to ignore Rule of Threes as long as we are focusing on AB as our main damage source.
25: Shimmer divided to 2, remove gcd and castable while casting as a talent, give us 2 charges baseline. Mana shield being at 35% now might see some play again, but it's still a non-talent if you care about your damage. Slipstream is somewhat useful in the next expansion as AM is once again castable at will.
30: RoP has to go, we will never have a choice in this tier if we have RoP to choose from. If they keep the current line up though Focus Magic has to be stronger than IF, due to it not working at all in solo situations
35: Charged up to baseline, it's just not a choiice atm.
40: Chrono Shift is the only choice once again in most situations, so baseline it goes.
45: Somehow Enlightened ended up in a row that it's against lackluster talents. I don't know what they are thinking with this one as it's an auto pick up in every situation. Maybe reverberate beats it in mass AoE, but even then I'd most likely take Enlightened for M+ over reverb.
50: Arcane Orb is the odd one out here. Taking it makes our cleave not suck, but it nerfs our ST quite a lot comparing to the other 2. It would be nice to have it baseline as well as it's impact on ST isn't big at all and it would give us much needed burst cleave. Time Anomaly is somewhat usable now with the god awful decision to make AP 3 min CD, but I still don't like the interaction with RoP, but if said RoP would be gone this talent might be quite enjoyable and give us some much needed variation in gameplay.

Fire feels like it always needs some sort of expansion mechanic to feel good. Sad part is that more often than not that moves us away from crit building to something else, because we tend to get so heavily balanced on us doing damage during our CD's and nothing when we don't have them. Crit focused Fire feels much better than what we currently have to deal with.

Simple logic to fix this would suggest putting more damage to Pyroblast so we want more of them.

Talents:
15: searing touch baseline, give us something impactful, but not autopick like searing touch
25: same as Arcane with shimmer
30: Same as Arcane
35: Flame on baseline or removed, it's an autopick always. Phoenix Flames baseline. Don't know what they could offer us in return, but they could redesign this whole row seeing as Alex fury could have a place in the 45 row instead of Conflag
40: Fine as is, although as a raider Frenetic Speed is still an autopick. So maybe baseline again and replace with other utility.
45: Fine as is, except remove Conflag with Alex fury(Legion helmet version)
50: I do like this row tbh, just number crunching so each have their own place.

Frost feels like it was decent in BFA, although I'd do some rebalancing with moving more damage back to Frostbolt. It just has no impact at all atm when you cast Frostbolt and you do all your damage with procs or building a big GS.

Talents: Overall I'm actually rather fine with Frost talents going to BFA. Ice Nova still feels like it doesn't exist, but other than that what I said with Arcane still applies on the 25 and 30 rows.

[Swizzle]

After watching a lot of Alpha spec review videos, everyone says that, "not everything should be baseline" as a solution to spec problems. I don't agree with this. We're on the 9th expansion and yet specs feel more hollow now than in Cata or MoP.

Personally, RoP needs to be baseline for all Mages and made to function more like Ley Lines in FFXIV than what we currently have (or at least brought back to MoP functionality). RoF baseline for all Mage also, give us back the expansion abilities we had before god damn it!

Arcane: Amplification, Chrono Shift, Reverberate, Arcane Orb baseline. Charged up functionality baked into AP if they want to increase it's CD that much.
Fire: Kindling, Flame Patch, PF, and Blast Wave baseline.
Frost: Bone Chilling, Frozen Touch, Freezing Rain, Thermal Void, Ebonbolt baseline.

[spaace]

If Fireblast had the 50% refresh a charge, it would fix a few fire issues.

Bliz just painted us for years as this amazing aoe class.. and every other expansion, they keep nerfing the amount we're able to aoe... I miss mop living bomb.

[TheWorkingTitle]

Shatter was never baseline

Of course it was. From Classic to MoP.

[tikcol]

Of course it was. From Classic to MoP.

I don't know about MoP but in classic it was a talent you had to put 5 points into and there is one classic pvp specs that doesn't use it. In fact no pve spec even puts points into it because it's useless.

[TheWorkingTitle]

I don't know about MoP but in classic it was a talent you had to put 5 points into and there are plenty of classic pvp specs that don't use it. In fact no pve spec even puts points into it because it's useless.

Nah, what you're thinking of is the Talent to increase it. By Shadow of Necropolis it was made baseline for all three specs.

It was this way in MoP as well, and it was the absolute fulcrum in the pyro chains with Alter Time, Frostjaw, Deep Freeze, for Fire pvp. Here's a video for reference - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83kowG0XpjI

[tikcol]

Nah, what you're thinking of is the Talent to increase it. By Shadow of Necropolis it was made baseline for all three specs.

It was this way in MoP as well, and it was the absolute fulcrum in the pyro chains with Alter Time, Frostjaw, Deep Freeze, for Fire pvp. Here's a video for reference - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83kowG0XpjI

Bro, in classic and tbc atleast I guarantee you that the chance to crit against frozen targets is the same as your regular spell crit. You put 5 points into it each worth 10% crit.

Shatter wasn't baseline whatsoever.

[Swizzle]

Bro, in classic and tbc atleast I guarantee you that the chance to crit against frozen targets is the same as your regular spell crit. You put 5 points into it each worth 10% crit.

Shatter wasn't baseline whatsoever.

Classic talents. Shatter requires 15 points in Frost. Shatter didn't become baseline for all Mages till MoP, then got shifted to only Frost Mages in WoD.

[tikcol]

Classic talents. Shatter requires 15 points in Frost. Shatter didn't become baseline for all Mages till MoP, then got shifted to only Frost Mages in WoD.

That's what I was saying..

You had to put points into it and there are specs without it, especially pve specs that never use it for obvious reasons.

[blankfaced]

I'd like to see ignite do it's damage over a shorter duration. I liked fire because it was sort of a dot spec but it was quick and potent. The spec just doesn't feel destructive anymore. Then again i don't play all the way through an expansion, so maybe it's different then? Frost and Arcane feel like they've evolved and come more into their own and fire was left on the sidelines because it was "fine."

Another thought, they could make Ignite just a static passive again and make our mastery increase our critical damage. Didn't fire have the highest crit damage possible at one point? And we had better range than other spell casters. It'd be nice to see that return.

[Gediablo]

My biggest wish for Shadowland arcane mage are the following:

- Less focus on perfectly aligning CDs. Everything currently feels like you have to stack so many CDs around the AP window. I find it un-fun, especially with the GCDs being more prevalent in the game today. I fear with TotM, Mirror Images, and Anima powers the list of things to do around AP is just increasing. I assume the 3 min CD on AP was meant as a way to counteract this - don't really like that fix nor do I think it will work.

- AoE should still be centered around Arcane Explosion, but with more interactions. I personally liked the chance of Arcane Orb when using ABar from the Legion legendary shoulders, but something else could work. Arcane Orb is mainly disregarded due to the other options being superior when it matters - not because it is unfun or a bad idea.

- Stutter movement. M+, Raiding, PvP in modern WoW all have constant stutter movement. Corrupted gear just added extra stutter movement on top of this. Shimmer was the only tool to deal with stutter movement. I'm fine nerfing Shimmer, and I'm fine with stutter movement being how Blizzard decided to make content harder - but then every spec needs to be able to do something that isn't completely gimping them during the stutter movement. Scorch castable while moving is a good example of how to solve this. Making Slipstream baseline could be a way to do something similar for Arcane.

- Getting rid of Rune of Power I would be all for - I do not enjoy the way it feels to play with it. It has never been a fun skill for me - just being the best talent in the RoW by a significant margin is no reason to keep it. RoP adds to the issues I have with both stacking CDs and stutter movement. The main problem with RoP is that it makes the mage either be too OP in a burst window, or too weak overall when normalizing boss damage across all classes. By the last part I mean: You can't balance all dps-specs in M+ or raid if some classes have easy to pull off consistent damage while moving, while others require stationary dps perfectly aligned with CD, random procs, and encounter mechanics. Looking at warcraftlogs if this should be fairly balanced specs with potential highest burst should practically always top the logs of the top parses, but the spread of those specs should also be very big compared to the more stable dps specs. Looking at the data I do not come to that conclusion. To me the solution is to make the dps-specs across all classes at around the same difficulty to pull off in a standard encounter. To simplify my point: Make BM hunters more like Arcane mages - make Arcane mages more like BM hunters.

[Obelisk Kai]

A tiny bit of progress!

We want to make Ignite spread something the player has agency over, and first experimented with the past system of making Fire Blast spread it. However, because of the importance of using Fire Blast for Hot Streak very frequently, we’ve seen feedback that this creates a lot of tension and still makes it difficult to control when you and don’t want Ignite to spread.

In the next alpha build, we’re going to try letting Phoenix Flames fill this role, as a baseline spell for Fire Mages. This gives Phoenix Flames a unique function and identity as a core spell, as well as allowing for more choice over when to spread Ignite. If we continue with the change, we’ll look into a new talent to replace Phoenix Flames in upcoming builds.

Let's just hope the new fire mage talent isn't complete garbage as Focus Magic is threatening to be. (Who am I kidding, of course it will be garbage. Nothing compares to Flame On)

And that Phoenix Flame's gives us back our cool orb visual.

[mrgreenthump]

A tiny bit of progress!

Just sad it's an expansion too late.

[Obelisk Kai]

Just sad it's an expansion too late.

And that they still haven't committed to making Flame On baseline. The one change we keep saying must happen and they keep trying to avoid it.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Well tbh, I'm quite excited for this change, I mean they actually listend to player feedback and on top of that went with the sensible choice instead of something convoluted. I'll gladly take that!

[Obelisk Kai]

Well tbh, I'm quite excited for this change, I mean they actually listend to player feedback and on top of that went with the sensible choice instead of something convoluted. I'll gladly take that!

Indeed, but it still leaves Flame On which is the OTHER major issue fire has. And remember, this change merely fixes a problem they created by changing the nature of ignite from auto spread to requiring a spell to trigger the spread.

[mrgreenthump]

Well tbh, I'm quite excited for this change, I mean they actually listend to player feedback and on top of that went with the sensible choice instead of something convoluted. I'll gladly take that!

Did they listen to feedback though. This all was due to the push for Ignite to be AoE capped. Doing the spread with Fire Blast clearly broke the spec and Phoenix Flames was the obvious choice to begin with.

Not saying it's good that they changed, but anyone with a brain would've said it shouldn't have been like it in the first place. So it's as if they pushed an obvious wrong choice to get us all focused on one thing and then reap the rewards of us thanking them for not ruining a spec? I know this is quite a tinfoil hat logic, but I wouldn't put it past em seeing how they are treating the playerbase with the expansion systems(rng over months just to add catch up when it doesn't matter anymore).

[Cosmic Janitor]

Did they listen to feedback though. This all was due to the push for Ignite to be AoE capped. Doing the spread with Fire Blast clearly broke the spec and Phoenix Flames was the obvious choice to begin with.

Not saying it's good that they changed, but anyone with a brain would've said it shouldn't have been like it in the first place. So it's as if they pushed an obvious wrong choice to get us all focused on one thing and then reap the rewards of us thanking them for not ruining a spec? I know this is quite a tinfoil hat logic, but I wouldn't put it past em seeing how they are treating the playerbase with the expansion systems(rng over months just to add catch up when it doesn't matter anymore).

I'm among the first to say Blizzard's bullshit has method, but in this case I think they really thought their hare-brained idea with ignite spreading via fireblast was a good thing. I mean if you have no clue it might actually seem that way because "after all you use it anyway, so barely anything changes for you". That's obviously not true in practice.