Looking at Shadowlands alpha talent calculator

Classes Mage
1

Then looking at BfA live talent calculator

They are the same picture.

2

Probably still haven’t been touched minus focus magic. And that is good news so I don’t ever have to use it. It doesn’t make sense being on the same row as rop and IF. Hopefully, removal is in order.

3

It either needs to be removed or added as a baseline for all specs.

4

They did say there weren’t going to be sweeping changes this time around. Kinda hoped they’d do more but then again this is literally the first day of closed alpha.

They’ve made some progress by replacing a couple of talents and buffing others but there’s a good few talents that literally never see use or have such niche uses that they may as well not exist: -

  • Arcane Familiar - doesn’t compete and the ‘pet’ is more trouble than it’s worth
  • Mana Shield - even at 35% in SL it’s still gonna be worthless
  • Supernova - on a damage row, yet hits the same as an Arcane Explosion with a 25 second CD
  • Reverberate - doesn’t compete, has no versatility since it’s entirely focused on 3-5 target AoE.
  • Arcane Orb - doesn’t compete, only used in Timewalking/back in Legion in combination with legendary shoulders.
  • Blast Wave - Never gonna compete with Shimmer, even with a longer slow and higher damage.
  • Alexstrazsa’s Fury - doesn’t compete with Flame On, hasn’t been used since Legion with Darkcli’s Diadem, if you didn’t have a better legendary.
  • Phoenix Flames - doesn’t compete with Flame On in any situation
  • Glacial Insulation - Never heard on anyone using this until someone said it helped on Rexxar a couple days ago, that’s how niche it is.
  • Chain Reaction - crappy version of Legion’s legendary bracers that falls off way too often because of proc droughts.
  • Comet Storm - doesn’t compete, the other two options scale with all stats whilst it only benefits from int, crit and vers.
  • Ray of Frost - doesn’t compete, even with the IL spec, its damage is too low and it’s cooldown is too high. 200k channeled damage on an 80 second CD against a spec defining ability (GS) or double+ your Icy Veins duration (IL).

A lot of these need tuning or outright replacing, we haven’t used some of them since they were added, the rest are too niche or just don’t scale like their competition.

1 Like
5

So in otherwords out of touch class design continues until last WoW expansion. They are so confused and clueless about everything.

Arcane is getting damage buff and they have spammable slow with 1% mana cost. Fire got Frostbolt but it has 2 sec cast time. Every damn Mage spec needs Cone Of Cold and Deep Freeze as baseline.

Melee is all over the place in PvE and PvP. This is just horrible. Go back to revisit Wrath-Cata and MoP designs. This is extremely disappointing.

Toning movement across the all Classes has to happen or Mage will be dead class during Shadowlands. And no Im not going to base my Mage viablity around possible Covenant movement and dps boosts. I want solid core design that is good. Its been bad after MoP.

4 Likes
6

shimmer has been changed to 1 charge, wtf kinda change is that?!?!

Also focused magic has been added, which is just giving you and another player 5% crit chance, but it is in a row, where it’s likely only gonna be used with frost.

7

Most likely a display bug. Shimmer is already the only PvE talent that acts as a trade-off, something that is generally restricted to PvP talents, they won’t nerf it further.

I’ll be honest, I can’t see any spec take it, it doesn’t even remotely compete.

5% crit that only works in group content VS a fluctuating 4-20% damage buff or a 40% damage buff with 25% uptime (and a second charge), it just doesn’t work.

8

Just bring back Mageward from Cata and let Classic keep Frost and Firewards… I knew Blizzard devs would disappoint again I just freaking new it.

If they honestly keep melee uptime untouched there is zero reason to roll Mage for PvP. Even Ret has more mobility and all Fire will get is a Blastwave as “kiting” tool and its a Talent… Bring Cone of Cold back to Fire. You are a joke Holinka.

9

It’s not a display bug, mages on alpha only have 1 charge of shimmer

What do you mean trade-off? shimmer in of itself is not a trade-off talent, cause there is no negative part. Do you mean trade-off cause blast wave deals damage?

Honestly same, but what i mean is i could only ever see it get played.

We can do some quick math tho to see if it might be viable.

Incanter’s flow for the most part is not worth playing around, since you won’t hold glacial for 8 sec just to get it on a 5 stack, so generally IF is on average a 12% damage increase.

For focused magic we can evaluate an expected damage increase rather simply as 20.05+10.95=1.05 (which is very dumbed down, you can write a total expected increase dependant on crit level, but it reduces to 5% increase anyways).
So a 5% increased crit is an expected 5% dps gain.
Now give that to yourself and a player that does more damage than you and you have a more than 10% raw dps increase.

So the unknowns here are how well you and the receiver syngergises with crit, since there’s more to it than just spells deal double damage, and also you can game incanter’s flow to optimize it, but i think this gives a rough idea that it could be viable if you have a somewhat flat damage pattern (like frost, on a makro level), and it all depends on tuning.

10

Well, you sacrifice the ability to blink out of stuns.

1 Like
11

Of course it’s a trade-off, it’s blatantly obvious to anyone who reads Blink vs Shimmer tooltip.

You gain: -

  • A second charge
  • The ability to Blink whilst casting.

At the cost of: -

  • A 5 second increase to the cooldown
  • The ability to break stuns and roots.

That is the literal definition of a trade-off. Shimmer is the only non-PvP talent that does this.

3 Likes
12

There is no more second charge

13

Just hope they get rid of Rune of Power. Such an unfun talent-ability.

6 Likes
14

That’s on top of my wish list. And it would solve so many problem we have today. Just mage basic and strong fluid core spec and then grow your power with gear and trinkets, other covenant abilites, what ever you want. Just don’t multiply it with rune and create mess we have today (azhara, badge, wrist, root).

1 Like
15

Will actually compete with Shimmer now. Shimmer is still going to be great but it will have a single charge in Shadowlands which does lower its usefulness a lot. Especially in M+ I think Blast Wave will become the go to talent.

16

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