DF Mage Class Tree thoughts

Classes Mage
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Hey, first time poster - needed a place to put this to link to it, random vent about the Alpha Mage Class tree. Feel free to add thoughts, I probably won’t monitor this too much.

Thoughts on specific nodes/rows
Barrier - Should be baseline , feels like they didn’t know what starting point the specs should get so they made it easy for themselves, thought the same would happen with the Warlock trees when they didn’t have a free point, but they seem to have learned that lesson?

Row 1 - Fine, probably needs a fire starting point when barrier gets made baseline - why are both Invis and Greater Invis on the tree? If it’s going to be 1 for defensive and 1 for invis they can’t share a cd. Don’t know if thats a bug or not

Rigid Ice - Nova breaks in much less than a global, 80% is worthless

Winter’s Protection - Boring, fine?

Remove Curse - Should be skippable

GS / IoS - Feels fine

Mirror Image - Fine, except pathing makes the whole left side pretty much dead

Slow / Spellsteal - Fine but should be skippable via pathing (Slow feels like it should be Arcanes thing)

Alter Time - Fine

Redup/Reabs - Horrible, similar feel to warlock/hunter/shaman defensive choice nodes - just much worse. Neither point does anything in most scenarios

Cryo-Freeze / Tempest Barrier - Horrible, 3pointers you can’t take because of pathing - you would rather take MI choice node that does nothing just to get down to the crit node

RoP / IF - So boring, must take, warps pathing - need to take Remove Curse and Slow / Spellsteal to get when all 3 of those points should be taken on a case by case basis

Blast Wave / Mass Poly - Fine, Mass Poly feels like an early idea waiting to be removed because it adds nothing to the class

Tomes - Fine, stat nodes being 2 of the more fun talents puts this whole tree into perspective

Imp. Frost Nova - Horrible, nerfed Nova to add this horrible point you need to take to get to the left capstone

Arcane Warding - Fine, see Tomes

Ice Nova - Basically the only way for fire and arcane to really get benefit of shatter, would possibly be fun if it was possible to take, left side is dead

Accumulative Shielding - Horrible. If you don’t take damage for 20 seconds after shielding, you gained 5 seconds off the cd. This means the shield must be absorbed in those 5 seconds to gain any benefit from this point

Shimmer / Ice Floes - Fine choice, but horrible placement - warps everything due to pathing

Temporal Velocity - Ayy, something interesting and fun

Master of Time - Ayy, something interesting and fun (Feels like Arcanes thing though)

Row 7 - 3 pointers that do pretty much nothing, if these were 1 pointers anywhere else in the tree the only one that I’d even think about taking is Frigid Winds (Which feels like a Frost thing)

RoF / Ice ward - Fine, feels like it should be higher in the tree, might feel better if the gatekeepers are removed/fixed

Greater Invis - Fine, but where are Cold Snap / Cauterize? Arcane gains nothing from this but loses a defensive

Dragon’s Breath - 150% increased cooldown is kind of much, no? (Feels very Fire, Arcane and Frost have other things that could be added… Imp.CS / DF, enough has probably been said about this)

Shifting Power - Boring, no conduit, no legendary, just going to feel bad

Time Anomaly - I’ve always liked this personally, different opinions are widely available - I will say that the “spec proc” proc is way worse than the other 2 options in probably every scenario?

Meteor - Feels similar to Ice Nova, possibly fun for Arcane / Frost - probably not capstone worthy

Pathing thoughts
Pathing in the tree feels horrible, you start off having to take RoP at which point the best ways to the capstones are taking either (Imp. Nova + Acc. Shielding, which does nothing) to get to the left side or (Arcane Warding + Temporal Velocity) to get to the right

If you would wan’t to take RoP, 2 Tomes and 2 cap stones (which is pretty much all the throughput) you can’t possibly get Shimmer, which after 6 years feels like a baseline ability

Random notes
Honestly the tree just needs to be scrapped, there are in total 7 interesting non-ability nodes, counting 2 Tomes and Arcane Warding. The others being TA, MoT, TV and Shatter
I feel like more could be done to make the class like a class and not 3 specs, things like bringing Meteor and Ice Nova into the class tree
Am I the only one that felt like the 3 baseline abilites introduced in Shadowlands (Frostbolt, Fire Blast and AE) should’ve been (CoC, AM and Fire Blast). CoC now in coming to the class tree I feel like AM could be there aswell, since it has situational uses for all specs

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Dragonflight Mage design is beyond bad. First time Im skipping expansion and will play Wrath Mage instead.

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This should have its theme changed to be a frost ability. I’m so pissed, that it’s a lazy copy paste from systemlands :face_vomiting::face_vomiting::face_vomiting:
Also, not all mages wanna be nightfae in dragonflight, if they decide to spit on us by giving us covenant themed things

It’s also ironically the ability, that destroys the mage spec balance, and makes fire too broken

This whole tree has 0 effort Lore-Wise, and it has 0 effort gameplay wise. It also doesn’t even seem fun for leveling. I wonder, what they’ve done good about this tree, bc I have trouble finding it. Also: no communication at all whatsoever outside from datamined hints :face_exhaling:

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No response is a response. And a strong one at that.

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Shifting Power should be Evocation. So you pick Evocation and improve it with healing or Shifting Power effect. For example. Then it makes sense.

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Shifting power should be a thematically cool frost mage spell, that applies winter’s chill. That would also make choosing shatter way more meaningful.

The arcane node shouldn’t be time anomaly. It should just be cooldown reduction, and thematically a “time skip” with a clock above your head

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One which we don’t know what they’re saying. At this point it’s pretty worrying.

So we either have:

  • They’re completley re-designing the trees and seem to be too scared to tell us what’s going on.
  • Whoever designed these trees are 100% happy with them and honestly don’t care what we think. Despite all the glaring issues.

Maybe we should ask the Hunters very nicely if we can borrow their guy for a little bit. Or at least get their guy to prod our guy to make sure they’re still even alive.

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They are not scared or done with them.

I start a riot during beta if this farce makes it there.

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I look at the Mage talent tree and all I see is a load of garbage blocking the way to talents I actually want.

Every talent should be desirable, it should be a hard choice between which routes you take.

The ones that I take most issue with are : -

  • Diverted Energy - Seriously, 3 points to heal 6% of your max hp over the course of your barrier being depleted, it has zero effect if it doesn’t get consumed or it gets dispelled.

  • Temporal Velocity - That speed boost needs to be 25/35% per point if it’s only gonna last 2 seconds. The boost to Alter Time also seems odd, as you don’t actually have to take Alter Time to get this talent.

  • Accumulative Shielding - effectively reduces your barrier cooldown by 1.2 seconds for every second that it stays active, has a maximum reduction of 4.2 seconds if your barrier stay active for 20.8 seconds. In most cases your barrier won’t be staying up for that long and if it does, it effectively nullifies the talent (why refresh your barrier if it hasn’t broken?).

  • Rigid Ice - 180% of nothing is still nothing.

  • Flow of Time - 3 points to decrease the cooldown of our only baseline movement ability by 10%, I’m not saying it should be more, but it defintely shouldn’t take 3 points.

  • Shifting Power - Even now it’s only really good for Fire and that’s with Unity and conduits, even then it’s not used for the damage it does (which is pathetic), only the cooldown reduction.

  • Mass Polymorph - just what we needed, a third incapacitate effect, an AoE version of simoultaneously one of the best (no CD CC) and worst (clears debuffs, fully heals the target and breaks on damage) CCs in the game.

  • Remove Curse - It’s nice to have but not a necessity, however, by locking Spellsteal and RoP/IF behind it with no other branches to reach them, it is effectively mandatory. So much for player choice.

We should be looking at talents and picking the route that we think will best suit us for a given situation, instead we have to pick the least worst.

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I thought to write some observations about the mage tree . It has way too many problems to easily structure the post, so I decided to classify the talents regardless their spot right now. The organising principles are: do I want them (pve)? do I need them (pve)?, pathing, cost

  1. Talents I want: Ice barrier - starting point, you need and want it
    Ice Block - easily accessible
    Invisibility - easily accessible
    Mirror Image - bad pathing
    Alter Time - pathing problems, not so glaring as Mirror Image
    Blast Wave - knockback is very welcome, other choice…
    Shimmer - terrible pathing
    Greater Invisibility - placement is odd, it should be an upgrade of Invisibility on a side branch
    Dragon’s Breath - would love to have it as frost, as we really needed an aoe cast stopper, although mostly useful in pvp and m+, only situational for raiding
    Time Anomaly - as frost it could be fun, for the other two, well… too random for the specs that neeed forplanning to do good damage, but for the sustain frost its just an extra rng hepler
  2. What I need? Shatter - why it is on the class tree???
    Rune of Power/Incanter’s Flow - still boring or unwieldy but still necessery - terrible pathing
    Arcane Warding, Tomes - most useful nodes… the stat sticks… yeah…
  3. Situationally useful: Cone of Cold - if melee range instant slow is needed and for Snowstorm talent
    Winter’s Protection - if IB is needed a ‘bit’ more frequently,
    Remove Curse
    Spellsteal - must have for m+, barely used in raiding, but useful if needed
    Grounding Surge - for more frequent interrupt
    Master of Time - interesting concept could be fun, but very situational
    Ice Nova - for some content
    Frigid Winds - when enemies can be slowed, BUT NOT FOR 3 POINTS
    Tempest Barrier, Diverted Energy - small defensive, BUT NOT FOR 3 POINTS
    Flow of Time - very small blink cd reduction if little more mobility is needed, BUT NOT FOR 3 POINTS
  4. Do not want it: Rigid Ice - useless
    Incantation of Swiftness - can barely think of any usefull application in pve, fine for pvp i guess
    Slow - i have built in slow as frost, fine situational for the other two specs
    Reduplication/Reabsorbtion - never occurs in pve
    Cryo-Freeze - it wasn’t used in Shadowlands, won’t be in DF either - and NOT FOR 3 POINTS
    Improved Frost Nova - just no
    Accumulative Shielding, as previous posters pointed out, useless, and useless for 2 points
    Temporal Velocity - negligable movement speed for 2 POINTS
    Ring of Frost/Ice Ward - fine for pvp i gues, would never take it for pve ( i know it has some m+ usability, but still)
    Shifting Power - it was ever useful for Fire, and without the conduits and legendary it is questionable for that as well
    Meteor - I’m not sure why i would want it unless the math tells me so
    In total: 11 talents you don’t want, 11 situational 4 of those are offensively expensive and most gatekeep the 5 needed (3 stat stick) and 10 good talents. Several of the don’t want talents are way too expensive as well, but as they would be bad for 1 points as well it doesn’t really matter.
    In an actual build right now you can take all the wanted, 4 of the needed points but are forced to take 6 of the situational talents without any choice - and several of the way too expensive ones at that (13 points total), and at best you are forced to use 2 points on useless things, with 1 point left to use - probably meteor if the math works that way)
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I know that’s unrelated, but I actually used to spec into ring of frost purely to put it around mobs before I combust when I did not have mirror images available. When playing with pug tanks, I did not trust them to hold threat so I preferred to ring in case something does try running towards me. Stoppeed doing this after I began playing with better tanks, though.

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