Dragonflight Mage Tree Feedback

Classes Mage
1

A few things I wanted to give you feedback on after looking at and tinkering with the new Dragonflight Mage tree (I’ve been playing all 3 specs of mage for a long time).

Arcane

  • Problem

Arcane has been the most viable it has been in a long time in Shadowlands but there are problems with the spec that not only persists in the new tree but it even got worse.
I’m talking about the huge difference in Arcane Barrage and Arcane Surge crit, I’m a fan of RNG in MMORPG games but the difference in this case is very noticeable and it gives you a feeling of not having control over your performance, you get geared, you practice and theorycraft, but it all comes down to your Arcane Barrage (and now Arcane Surge) crtitting or not.

  • My solution to the problem

Give Arcane Barrage and Arcane Surge 100% crit chance and make it so the more critical chance you have, the more damage they do, and then tune their damage so it won’t be insanely overpowered. (similar to Chaos Bolt)

Frost

  • Problem

I look at the tree and I see A LOT of random procs on top of random procs, Frost Mage already has some random procs with Brainfreeze and Fingers of Frost, but the Dragonflight tree adds on top of them in a way that I think is a lot more problematic than it is already, let me explain.
Frost has been mostly about keeping your Icy Veins uptime as close to 100% as possible, in Shadowlands right now in a single target encounter, if you get unlucky you will lose a huge chunk of your uptime, and it all comes down to Brainfreeze procs, once again, I’m a fan of RNG, but the difference between having 100% uptime and losing your Icy Veins is huge both in terms of fun gameplay and of course your damage output, so having that in mind I’ll list the random procs that will have an effect on your Icy Veins uptime in the new Dragonflight Tree.

  1. Brainfreeze
  2. Fingers of Frost
  3. Glacial Assault (Flurry has a 15% chance of calling down an icy comet)
  4. Ice Nine (Frostbolt and Flurry have a 15% chance to generate 15/30 icicles)
  5. Time Anomaly

I don’t have access to the Alpha right now, so I can’t test to see how much luck you need to keep your Icy Veins at 100% uptime, but just by playing Frost Mage right now in season 3 of Shadowlands, I can make an educated guess that at the start of Dragonflight with losing a lot of your haste and crit chance, you will need to be pretty lucky to keep your Icy Veins at 100% uptime.

  • My solution to the problem

Either make 100% Icy Veins uptime requirements a lot more lenient so you won’t depend on this much luck to have fun and do reasonable damage when playing Frost Mage, or just remove some layers of RNG by making Brainfreeze and Ice Nine procs a guarantee after X number of Frostbolt/Flurry casts.

Fire (my main spec)

  • Problem

The problem I have with Fire Mage’s current gameplay which also exists in the new Dragonflight Fire Mage tree is Pyroclasm, most of my time playing Mage I’ve been playing as Fire, so I can tell you with 100% confidence that not getting a single Pyroclasm proc in your opener (first 25-30s of the encounter) not only massively ruins your damage output, but also completely negates the effect of having Pyroclasm at all, and once again the difference between being lucky and getting +5 procs on your opener and not getting any procs is MASSIVE both in terms of fun gameplay and damage output.
Dragonflight’s Mage Tree also adds to this issue by adding Time Anomaly to the equation, I have to admit this isn’t as big of an issue as Pyroclasm, but just randomly getting a proc out of nowhere which you cannot plan for (in my personal opinion) is not fun gameplay.

  • My solution to the problem

Remove the 15% chance of proccing Pyroclasm and change it to a guarantee, for example, you gain the effect of Pyroclasm after using X number of Pyroblasts.
This not only make it so you don’t have to be really lucky to have fun playing Fire Mage, but it also adds a new layer to the Fire Mage rotation that you can plan around and practice and improve on, which I believe is a lot more fun than just getting lucky.
About Time Anomaly, clearly you have designed this to be extremely random because you believe it’s fun to have a random effect apply to you out of nowhere, so here’s my feedback, as long as the RNG doesn’t have a massive difference in gameplay and damage output, it’s fine.

2

Would that not make the gameplay feel a bit too stationary when combined with Sun King’s Blessing which also procs after X used hot streaks?

3

consuming Hot Streak procs using Pyroblast is instant and you can do it while moving, what I meant by using X number of Pyroblasts, can be both hard casting a Pyroblast while standing still (which wouldn’t be an optimal way to play) or just consuming Hot Streak procs using Pyroblast, I wanted it to serve as an example of how you can change the random proc effect to a guarantee, you’re welcome to think of a better way for it.

4

That’s why i had the idea of adding flurry shatters to the mage tree. I wish all specs just went back to doing dmg and having synergy with crit and not so much stacking infinite damage multipliers.
https:/ /imgur.com/a/CEM1okg
That’s my personal take on what mage tree should look like, it’s far from perfect, but still way better than the current one.

5

Would you prune Dragon’s Breath, or would it be somewhere in the fire tree instead?

6

Most the stuff your moaning about is optional that’s the point of the talent tree. Also some people like the rng, less buttons to press. The game would be dull with no rng at all.

Who doesn’t get pyro procs in an opener with skb? Your combusting for half a minute.

O and the new build around Icy viens uptime is a lot more restrictive. It wont work on aoe, and ST you’ll do well to hit 50% without orb and comet storm procing it.

I like the follow up idea about shattering arcane attacks, give arcane the 2 stacks of flurry on a 45sec cd for shatter. That’d be great. O fire mage too for pyroclasm and meteor.

7

Just put it in the Fire tree at like 24sec cd or something.

8

Stick it where Phoenix Flames (just get rid of PF) is and then have that next choice talent down offer either Alexstrasza’s Fury (DB always crits and contributes to Hot Streak) or the effect of Darkcli’s Diadem (DB does 100% more damage and has a 40yd range).

9

Also why does mage general tree has so little choices?
Mage has total 37 talents.
Rogue has 45 talents.
Shaman has 49 talents.
Priest has 49 talents.
Warrior has 47 talents.
Evoker has 43 talents…
DK has 44 talents.
Druid has 46 talents.
Paladin has 41 talents.
Hunter has 36 talnets.

10

I would not compare our tree with the other class trees. In the forums you can see always post like this. “Shamans and warrior tree is perfect, why we don’t have this developer for the mage class” or “Rogues and warriors have to spend less points and we so much”.

In the US forum there is a good discussion at the moment started by Xaryu. Its based on their Youtube video together with Venruki, Raiko and Aeghis. The whole mage base tree seems to be more or less a tree for making the mage more tanky. Can be wrong but it seems really like this.

This may be not because the devs hate the mage class but it seems to be more a result of the melee changes for warriors, rogues and shaman.
With these changes its really hard for a caster to keep a melee on distance. So you have two choices. Rework all these trees or make the casters more tanky. And the mage tree looks like this. I hope I am wrong here but we will see it if the warlock tree will be released.

I really dont care if mage has 37 talents and other classes more. I am more worried that all the casters will be transformed into tanks in DF. I would like to see frostfire bolt in DF for my mage or other fun talents. But if a melee classes have now so many gap closers and interrupts a caster would never be able to cast these spells even they are fun. Maybe thats the reason why our tree looks like this.

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11

PvP is a mini game at most. We aren’t competing with melee gap closers in PvE. So, the entire tree shouldn’t be tank stuff that you have to dump a lot of points into.

12

It does seem odd.

Since we only dps, I’d expect other pure dps classes to have similar talent numbers (like the hunters do) but then the Rogues get an extra 8 choices over us.

1 Like
13

Waiting for this proc is like waiting for your GF’s mum to leave the house. But I don’t like this solution either (from pvp pov)
The thing with Pyroclasm is that it’s an insane 240% increase in Pyroblast. Once it procs it gives you the opportunity to almost one-shot a player. Maybe this is why they’ve made it such low proc.

We made a choice to pick this talent, knowing what is in store. It’s a risk, and we’re sacrifising the other 2 talents which are ok, but let’s be honest… they’re meh. Pyroclasm on the other hand it’s bloody fun!! Maybe because it’s so rewarding and satisfying when you pull it off and the reason it feels this way is because its rare.

However, in my experience the main frustration with this proc is the 15 timer. Also, if the timer runs out before you finish casting it’s just a normal Pyroblast, so in reallty you have a 12~ second window to start casting.

Maybe they should just increase the timer to 20secs. Any other change will eventually force them to squash the talent.

1 Like
14

They been dead silent about us. I think this is because they are sacrificing Mages for Evokers. Just like Warlocks were destroyed for DH’s. :face_vomiting:

Our gameplay has been complete dog after MoP. Atleast there is Wrath. Soon: :wink:

15

Nope, it was a PvE-only legendary in Legion and had the same proc chance back then.

16

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