With 9.1.5 on the horizon and then 9.2, I think we are all aware Shadowlands is most of the way through it’s development cycle.
Work has almost certainly already turned towards 10.0 and in advance of 10.0 being announced and the inevitable beta (which should be underway this time next year), I thought I’d put together a little wishlist of what I would like for Fire and Frost (I don’t play Arcane enough to have an opinion beyond I don’t really like it).
GENERAL
Keep Shifting Power in some form. The end of an expansion these days means giving up all the borrowed powers we had accumulated and Shadowlands is no different but some of what we had can be preserved. Of the four abilities, Shifting Power is by far the most fun and the one with the most potential. Sure it falls behind for some specs, but some tweaking could fix those issues.
Radiant Spark and Deathborne could be kept as well in some form, but I wouldn’t cry if they were removed, Radiant Spark would need some work to stop it munching Flurry for Frost. Mirrors of Torment is a horrible ability and I would prefer it to be tossed in the trash next to prismatic crystal. Such a clunky ability.
Please make Blizzard baseline. It’s a fun, iconic spell for Mages with some handy utility and limiting it to Frost only seems like a waste.
Remove Focus Magic. I get what you were trying to do, but it’s a dead talent. Nobody picks it. Please remove and create one that stands a chance.
Make the fade from invisiblity instant for fire and frost with a split second of immunity to ensure it goes off properly. The five second fade time is rife with bugs and often doesn’t complete.
FROST
Fold the Icy Propulsion conduit into Icy Veins baseline. If I was being honest I’d also say you should fold thermal void into Icy Veins baseline, as that creates an interesting cooldown dynamic wherein you try and keep Icy Veins going as long as possible.
Make Freezing Rain baseline for Frost or at least the part about blizzard being instant cast in Frost Orb. It would smooth out our aoe considerably.
Make Splitting Ice baseline. Please just do it, this talent is taken 100% of the time anyway. If you want to design Frost as a cleave spec, then this should be a foundational ability.
Remove Lonely Winter as a talent and implement a Hunter like system where it becomes a buff. If we have a pet out, we don’t have lonely winter but gain access to freeze. If we don’t have a pet out, we get the Lonely Winter buff.
FIRE
Make Flame On baseline. Similar to splitting ice above, this talent is so critical that it destroys choice, there is no other option on the tier. Flame on enormously smooths out Fire’s rotation and has done for years. Just make it baseline as we have been asking for for years now and be done with it.
Redesign Phoenix Flames or make ignite spread passively again. It still mystifies me how this went through. During Shadowlands beta you started off by making fire blast spread our ignites, a spell with a relatively short cooldown of 10 seconds (because everyone takes Flame On remember) and then you swithced it to Phoenix’s Flames, a spell with a 25 second recharge. The result is everyone only uses PF for Combustion or if they about to cap on recharges. The design has failed. Reduce PF recharge to 10 seconds to match fire blast but lower the damage proportionally or restore passive cleave and repurpose PF.
Have Combustion refill our charges of Phoenix Flames and Fire Blast. A quality of life request, but nothing is clunkier for the otherwise smooth fire than having to let perfectly good heating up procs go to waste because you need to preserve your charges for a smooth combustion. Just have combustion fill us right back up again so we can execute a good Combustion and not have to be annoyed at wasting procs in the lead up.
Lower the casting time of Flamestrike and merge flame patch in. A talent that is required to make a spell function properly should not be a talent at all and Flamestrike’s casting time is incredibly clunky.
That’s my wishlist for Mages QoL changes. I know a lot of them are making certain talents baseline, but one of the problems Mages face are that our talents are so static and they are static because certain choices aren’t choices at all, we have to take them. Make what should be baseline a core part of the class and then be creative in creating replacements. We’ve enough legendary abilities and conduits lying around to come up with some creative new talents.
