Why is the Cone Of Cold gone from all Mage specs while melees keep spamming their snares and stuns on us? Feels really bad. Was it op? Give it back and increase its CD if its “op”… Do they even play the game?
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Frost has it
Arcane has “slow” spell. Don’t know what about fire in SL
We get frostbolt. Probably with some ridiculously long cast time. Perfect.
Friggin’ unpruning. If they’re gonna give us back stuff, it should be useful, not a load of niche crap. There are literally hundreds of old spells, passives, talents and even different version of abilities to pick from.
Instead of giving us Frostbolt baseline for Fire they need to look back to WoD. We had baseline Cone of Cold, the option to glyph Ignite for a 50% slow and the best ever version of Blast Wave as a talent (at the cost of Frost Nova).
And looking at Arcane, Frostbolt is literally only gonna be used when you’re interrupted, if you aren’t too busy running away or using Frost Nova or Fire Blast instead. It’s far too niche, since the rest of the time you’re always better off using Slow.
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Cone of Cold should be available to all specs, period. Together with Ice Lance these are 2 spells I need most as Arcane, because the spec has no AoE slows anymore (had artifact trait in Legion that improved Slow to work on groups, so ofc fun was removed) and no way to deal damage when moving that doesn’t cost charges. I could live without Frostbolt, since Slow snares better and when interrupted there is Fireball, but some tool to manage group of mobs is essential, so CoC should be always available and it makes no sense to instantly forget it because you changed talents. IL is more utility/quality of life - cheap instant that is not Arcane spell, tool to pull something when you don’t want to waste charges/cds, reflect removal, pest control, 1shotting everything when helping low lvl friends without Barrage cooldown, etc.
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To be fair barrage can slow 4 targets and you will have fire blast and arcane explosion for instant casts.
In case you forgot, Barrage only hits more than 1 target when you dump charges on it & are in combat with targets (not sure how to describe this - Barrage is kinda smart tracking spell, you cannot pull AoE with it even if you cast it on pack of rats in a barrel), so it’s not exactly AoE snare tool, and anyway 5s slow is not something you can maintain on 4 targets unless under Time Warp & hitting stuff with Explosion in meantime every 1s with perfect 0ms latency to generate 4 charges in 5 seconds & cast Barrage again. And if the targets are in Explosion range, you are already screwed if you wanted to kite them. Explosion has melee 10y radius and Fire Flast has sucky CD & loses out a lot of damage boosts because it is not Arcane spell.
Still not a real instant dmg spell that 1. does not cost charges 2. does not suck in damage department 3. does not mean that instead of getting owned right now you will be instead owned by attrition, because perhaps you are unaware that Barrage’s damage SUCKS. BIG TIME. Even with Resonance, unless you have Arcane Pressure trait(s) and the target is under 35% HP, in which case it is decent execute, but you have to shave upper 65% first, and charges don’t generate themselves. You try kiting several targets with Barrage, they will likely grind your HP down faster than you can damage them. Blame 80% damage crammed into Blast, and BFA design philosophy that put Barrage in “useless dump/rotation reset” category instead of “spender”.
tl;dr: Yeah Arcane really needs CoC & IL both.
Feels weird Cone Of Cold is gone from Fire spec. Used to kite mobs and opponents in PvP with it and it froze targets.
Should be baseline absolutely.
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You wanna kite packs bigger than 4 to ST attack them?.. Just wear some gear with haste on, explode and barrage and man up sunshine. You also have blink, altered time, supeenova or 2x frost nova. You know most specs dont have aoe slows…
As for your reasoning for ice lance. In raid you will have 3 charges of clearcasting to cast missles while moving, pinging off a missle can pull things and arcane is great in old content because you can have constant up time from barrage speed buff and fly through, you can also use nether tempest if you want an instant cast.
Stop moaning about dumb things.
It should be baseline, and if anything should be buffed. Mages are melee dinner in pvp as things stand. Can´t kite anyone.
Excuse me princess, I didn’t realize that you are a nitpicking Hazzikostas’ lawyer GF who needs every single thing pointed out, in bold italics, outlined, explained and defined in case of not knowing &%^@ about the matter we speak of. I thought the core of the matter is clear, but apparently it is not, so I will try to explain. Slowly this time, so those more intellectually challenged of us should be able to understand.
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I’m pointing out that currently as Arcane you CANNOT have decent ST damage AND AoE damage AND AoE snare of any sort. You can specifically go for TWO of these things in best case - AoE damage and AoE snare in Reverberate-Resonance spec. And the cost of it is that you ST damage goes down the toilet. And this AoE damage isn’t so great, you still get owned by ST specced DHs.
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There might be a situation in which you want to kite multiple enemies and Invisibility is not an option because cd, dots, or something else. And if you are not specifically geared for this, you are short on options, and all of them point at you being screwed. Currently pretty much everyone goes for Chrono Shift, as in, close to 100% 120 lvl builds because it is plainly better option than 1 more Frost Nova and nothing after.
FYI: Arcane does not have 2x Frost Nova. It is OPTIONAL TALENT that is EXCLUSIVE with Chrono Shift. You know, that 5s slow on target when you hit it with Barrage. So either 2 Frost Novas or the only AoE slowing option possible.
Same thing with Supernova - it is either that or Resonance (AoE damage option) and Supernova’s damage sucks.
Oh, and Nether Tempest is of this sort too, with Reverberate and Touch/Enlightened, pick one thing, get screwed in others. Cannot have both. Can only have one. ONE. 1. Two is right out. So is three. GET IT? -
Blink is on GCD and has cooldown. Shimmer is going to have even worse cooldown and 1 charge down from 2. And most things I’d like to get away from have multiple gap closers (DHs, warriors, monks, face-eating elites). Because mages tickled someone the wrong way. And when you use Blink, you do not deal any damage, because Arcane is all about direct damage turret casting. Nether Tempest sucks and if you think otherwise, try it out and prepare for massive disappointment.
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I mentioned Ice Lance in CoC topic specifically because it is another Frost school QoL spell. Quality of Life - making things easier but not really necessary, just utility for something. Not raid dps tool unless you are on totem removal duty in BG. Last time I remember seriously using Ice Lance in raid was on Blood Prince Council in Icecrown Citadel to keep the bombs from falling - that’s 3.3 raid for you, Wrath of the Lich King. And SOME damage done when moving is better than NO damage when moving, and we have already established that Fire Blast isn’t going to be enough because cd. Free reminder - Slipstream is OPTIONAL TOO and EXCLUSIVE with Shimmer, so you can either cast Missiles with sucky damage when moving or keep casting Blast while repositioning. Yeah yeah Arcane is great for old content because it breezes thru everything at 150% speed. But what if you want to do that AND kill everything without waiting 3s? Or to keep the charges up for that nice big target sitting a bit further? Or helping out a low level friend and you just want to kill 10 targets right now, one by one, 1 gcd per target? Like Warlocks do with their Corruption-Tab thing? Barrage has cooldown. AND it eats charges AKA your ST damage AKA your AoE damage AKA your AoE snare. Being only able to have one, but not others, when other people are not limited in such a way SUCKS.
I can understand that playing Fire got you used to having it easy. You do not have to look at anything, don’t have to think, don’t have to make hard decisions over choosing one thing to do moderately well and suck at all others - because as Fire can do anything very well. For now. Arcane was the unfavoured spec thru whole BFA, you didn’t play it, fine, just say you don’t know stuff about it. And now I’m seeing that a certain other spec shall know pain too. Why hello “sunshine”, how fares your Greater Pyroblast with 15s cd? Aw, does poor little baby hurt in the butt? Perhaps you should say your goodbye to Blazing Speed or whatever else you have in the way of utilities before it’s deemed too OP in pvp? Now, now, don’t cry, you still have Blink and Fire Blast! And you can still remove 1/3 of someone’s HP once per 15 seconds! Enjoy your spells while you have them, for they are so easily removed!
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Sorry girl but I came back like a week ago after quittin WoW when MoP started and the way Mages were played back in Cata was incredibly satisfying.
The current version of Mages is a joke. There is nothing surprising or interesting in them right now.
We are support turrets and sheepers and almost all melee run over us anyway they want.
It feels terrible.
The fact that you dont know how Ice Lance was used as Arcane and Fire tells me that you are just a raider that presses buttons and move away from danger when addon tells you to do so.
I have looked my current Mage specs and played them both on lower bracket in both PvE and PvP and we have lost like over 20 abilities compared to Cata and they were all usable.
The state of Mage gameplay right now feels so bad and 1 dimensional that if it feels like this at start of Shadowlands I just simply have to reroll.
You are clueless or you just dont have the knowledge how things were in the past. I dont mind if game moves forward but if the most important thing class design feels even slightly awkward it will be gamebreaker.
Abilities that seem to be returning for Mages in Shadowlands look extremely unimpressive so far. But since its Alpha things probably change like they used to change.
Im honestly telling if this is the way Mages will be played in Shadowlands we will be dead class.
It feels really really bad.
Excuse me… what? Fire being strong right now because a specific set of gear and essences gave us big damage does not mean it is an easy spec or one that got used to having it easy. The fotm rerollers who didn’t touch fire before Eternal Palace, sure. Those who’ve played the spec before that? From Trial of Valor to Battle of Dazar’alor, the spec wasn’t in that great of a place with the exception of some single encounters here and there and it wasn’t even comparable to frost in mythic+. Early into BfA, even the world content was problematic because you had no tools to kite and couldn’t nuke the mobs fast enough to take no damage. Pulling more than 1 mob without combustion was a deathwish.
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You weren’t pointing that out at all and thats because of azerite traits that will be gone in 9.0. DHs make most specs look bad but are also getting nerfed in 9.0.
So. Don’t pull big pulls, your an arcane mage not a tank! I was pointing out you had options for dealing with the problems.
Your mixing up problems now. If your talking about one on one pvp you have a spammable slow button. I agree melee have too many gap closers though, shimmer nerf will hurt that but one on one slow is better than cone of cold as it has no cd.
So it’s bad because you have 2 different movement options?
Arcane explosion. And if your one shotting mobs with ice lance you won’t need charges.
Missles. Start cast, change target, start cast etc
I did play it, I used it in dungeons and bgs a lot earlier in the expac, I tanked first boss of crucible with it, but did not play it as much as frost and fire because of its problems and because I find its raid rotation dull. My point is with all the problems the spec has why moan over cone of cold and ice lance? Moan about dead talents, moan about shimmer nerf, moan about 3min Arcane Power in 9.0.
I totally agree with this, I’m also looking at rerolling but every spec I like playing seemed to be getting nerfed for 9.0. Unpruning my butt.
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