First off, the new mage tier set is a good step to resolving the issues that the community has brought up. The 4 set is fantastic for frost mage giving us amazing up time on Frozen Orb. While making 2 set evocation channel 50% faster is a nice quality of life boost, but is the minimum effort solution to the feedback the community gave.
Now on to the bad. Why did we need to sacrifice dps increases for QoL? 2 set now no longer gives the extra 20% from the extra stacks? The extra duration on Icy Veins got reduced by 10s? Why? Sure have a 60% damage buff you can get in 4 seconds a little much but now our 2 set gives us no dps increase at all except for 2 gcds ONLY if the fight lasts longer than 2 minutes, which most don’t.
Speaking of two gcd’s let’s talk about fire mage. The only meaningful bonus they get is a 5 second reduction on fireblast? In a minute long fight, that amounts to two extra casts. Why not buff living flame to make it actually useable, having living bomb explode halfway through its duration, buff flamestrike damage by 50% and make it an instant cast when you consume hotstreak.
These changes are a step in the right direction for Mage DPS, but it feels like the desire to make an interesting tier set just… isn’t there.