My review of the current talents below. For background, top raider/WF keys playing for just over 17 years, just under 1000 days played as mage. My review is on the talents alone and not how the nodes are connected or nodes ranks. Imo the best nodes structure is similar to shaman with massive amounts of interconnectivity, however that begs the question, why have prerequisite nodes at all?
Post structured from PvE perspective as Commentary per spec, New Spells suggestions and Talent review with comments. Any talent without a comment I consider ok. My point of view on talents is that I would like to have 3 distinct specs and each spec having at last 2 viable builds, with enough talents left open to match variety of content, without compromising the integrity of said specs’ nature and builds.
FIRE
Overall
Fire feels like its shoehorned into practically the same build as the past few years, Combustion-centric damage with little outside of it. With Ignite functionality nerfed since BFA, the answer is an unsatisfactory Flamestrike spam. Would rather see Living bomb made relevant and Meteor/Flamestrike turned into meaningful short and medium-strength cooldowns.
New spells:
Ignite - make it passively spreading. No matter which ability you link it with, it always feels underwhelming.
Molten Skin (Legion Fire artifact) - Blazing Barrier reduces all Physical damage you take by %.
Why? Instead of just an absorb and spamming it on CD, you can use Blazing Barrier at the right time to significantly mitigate an incoming Physical hit, similar to Mage armor but for Physical.
Cauterizing Blink (Legion Fire artifact) - Activating Blink heals you for % of your maximum health over 6 sec.
Why? Instead of using Blink/Shimmer as mobility, you can use it as recovery. Can be buffed to very high % heal, but remove the distance travelled as tradeoff.
Cinderstorm (old talent) - Throws a spread of 6 cinders that travel in an arc, each dealing Fire damage to enemies it hits. Damage increased by % if the target is affected by your Ignite.
Why? Can be made a capstone talent, different shape than an arc. Maybe make it spread a living bomb on each enemy hit, etc? A lot more interactive than existing Fire AOE playstyles.
Talents:
Fire Blast - currently it takes nearly 6 talent points to get to the current Fire Blast version. Make it all into 1.
Flamestrike - spamming Flamestrike is a horrible feeling, would rather see it changed to a bigger 15/30/45s CD and a meaningful spell.
Hot Streak - should be baked into the spec.
Improved Flamestrike - baked into Flamestrike as a bigger CD.
Fireball - passive crit stacking baked in, redesign this to also give haste per stack (Azerite trait).
Fire Blast rank 2 - bake in.
Conflagration - delete.
Flame On - feels mandatory.
Improved Blazing Barrier - move to a PvP talent and make it 5000% and not dispellable.
Phoenix Flames - should be much higher in the tree, perhaps instead of Flamestrike.
Flame patch - delete or as a significant upgrade on the CD based Flamestrike.
Phoenix Flames rank 2 - bake in.
Alex Fury / From the Ashes - remove From the Ashes.
Combust Duration / Tempered Flames - make mastery convertion % based not stat based. Tempered flames is interesting, but seems to be promoting a degenerate Pyroblast spam rotation.
Blaster Master - BFA s4 was probably one of the most fun Fire mages playstyles. Having blaster master is great, but the other components of what made BFA s4 fun are missing.
Molten Skyfall/Icendiary Eruptions - remove molten skyfall. It feels like the right side of the tree is trying to make both Flamestrike and Living bomb work, given how horrible Flamestrike playstyle is, would rather see full Living bomb focus which is a lot more exciting as a spell.
Living bomb - needs meaningful dmg
Phoenix Reborn - subject to tuning of Phoenix Flames damage, can be a full reset of a Phoenix Flames instead of 10 sec, if Phoenix Flames is worth casting dmg-wise.
Tinder - remove.
Wildfire - Ignite bonus dmg subject to tuning. Bonus crit can be changed to fully passive X% for the party, increasing raid appeal.
Master of Flame - Ignite should be spreading automatically. This can turned into another smaller 15/30/45s cd or longer for faster and higher ignite dmg (e.g. you burst with combust on aoe, then at the last tick Master of flame puts all of the nearby Ignite into 1 target to burn down faster.
Controlled Destruction - ok, but just feels like passive boring damage.
Pyromaniac - remove, this talent was never made to feel good and does not fit the Hot Streak gameplay.
Pyroclasm - remove or buff to capstone status to Legion bracers level.
Fevered Incantation - passive dmg, remove or not nobody will notice.
Sun king’s blessing - remove.
Kindling / Fiery Rush - split and make into 2 capstones, maybe Kindling on a different row.
Fire Frenzy - remove or add haste scaling.
FROST
Overall: needing multiple talents to rebuild a spell doesnt feel great. Frost tree feels like its trying too hard to include every frost spells - i would rather have a few main builds (ST slick ice, cleave Blizzard/Freezing wings/Thermal void, Glacial spike) than have Comet storm/ray of frost and other nonsense, and not know what to do with them.
New spells:
Icy Hand (Legion Frost artifact) - Increases the maximum charges of Fingers of Frost by X.
Why? Frost can end up with an overabundance of FOF/BF procs. Make Icy Hand can remove the cap on FOF/BF which you can hold, but keep the buff duration the same.
Black Ice (Legion Frost artifact) - Ebonchill has a chance to empower Icicles, increasing damage done by %.
Why? Can be linked to Ebonbolt empowering Icicles for X amount of time, during which Glacial Spike will hit much harder.
Frost Bomb (old talent) - Places a Frost Bomb on the target. After 4 sec, the bomb explodes, dealing 1 Frost damage to the primary target, and 1 Frost damage to all other targets within 10 yds…
Why? Can be redesigned to increase damage based on how many FOF lances are dumped into it.
Talents:
Flurry - good redesign, but very long cd for a spell which was procing much more than once per 40s.
Shatter - bring back old regular shatter, remove it from class tree.
Brain freeze - remove and bake into flurry.
Winter’s chill - remove and bake into flurry.
Frostbite - remove, sure you get some more shatter dmg in dungeons, useless on bosses.
Arctic Piercing - works well if Icy Hand (above) is implemented.
Focused frost / improved blizzard - imp blizzard should be baked into Blizzard. focused frost an interesting idea, depending on tuning. maybe include Packed ice with it?
Perpetual Winter - feels like a mandatory talent due to how strong flurry is.
Wintertide - remove, bake into FOF minus the frostbolt dmg.
Snowstorm - actually interesting talent, Cone should be available in the 1st section of talents. Would prefer to see playstyle where the goal is to dump 1-2 big Cone of colds in each pack (so every 45-60 seconds).
Flash Freeze - subject to tuning and what can make Glacial Spike viable.
Frigid Shattering - move to pvp talents.
Glacial Assault - without the tier bonus, remove.
icy veins - needs more baked in.
Ice Nine - maybe icicles can be uncapped and then Glacial can use as many as you have to feel worth casting?
Comet storm - fun looking, but underperforming spell. subject to tuning, but also taken only if a sim says you should do it. does not fit Frost playstyles which are focused on lances/bf or glacial spike.
Icy propulsion - should be baked into IV and give CDR outside of having IV.
ray of frost - for how cool the spell is, i would love to see it either baseline or removed. there is really no middle ground as similar to comet storm, does not fit.
Fractured frost - would rather have this removed and more talents put in to support either glacial spike or thermal void builds.
Improved icy veins - remove.
Snap Freeze - useful for pvp, quick on demand burst, but essentially useless in pve.
Chain Reaction - remove or keep, nobody will notice.
Cold Front - remove.
Thermal Void - feels mandatory for all builds except Glacial spike, which is usually undertuned.
Glacial spike - really wish this became an actual alternative build to thermal void, subject to tuning.
ARCANE
Overall: I like that Arcane is being reinvented. I dont like that the reinvention stopped halfway and we end up with the same Shadowlands setup: Kyrian Arcane. With that, I would skip the Arcane tree as it is essentially just designed for Kyrian arcane. A few suggestions/ideas however:
- Shard of Woe used to be a very powerful trinket for arcane and it was all about huge ABs - i miss the times when Arcane Blast was hard hitting.
- Making Arcane about mana recovery and not mana spending feels like the right direction, but it doesnt feel right when it ends with Radiant spark.
- Mana Gems should be just perpatual upon crafting with CD matching Arcane surge. Make the gem restore meaningful mana (25-50%) and the spell power it provides be also meaningful.
- IMO, arcane in M+ should be dynamic - arcane barrage, arcane orb, arcane explosion and nether tempest focused, not arcane missiles and arcane blast.
- Arcane familiar as an idea is cool, having a little buddy shooting next to you, but should be worth the choice - what if the familiar actually replicated all your spells for example? or had his own combos?
- Greater invis should either belong only to arcane or be one of the 3 capstones in class trees along Cauterize and Ice block.
CLASS
Overall: feels like talents are all over the place - movement, dmg, utility, situational spells are spread all around. First, would love to see a spread of the nodes like Shaman tree (up to 9 per row). Then the paths down can be vertically split into arcane/fire/frost. The 3 sections can be further split into the respective defensive, utility, output categories. Capstone talents can be redesigned into Ice Block / Cauterize / Greater Invis (the 90%ish version) for example.
New spells:
Jouster (Legion Frost artifact) - When Ice Lance/Fire Blast/Arcane Missiles deals damage, you take % less damage for 6 sec.
Why? Instead of a bland -3/-6% magic reduction, incorporated with a spell, making the spell feel stronger when cast.
Time Anomaly (DF)
Change: Make it spawn an anomaly next to you which lasts 20-30 seconds and you can pick it up for the respective Icy Veins/Arcane Power/Combustion, putting the player in control of RNG.
Timweaver’s Needle (Torghast power) - Spells cast during Alter Time reduce your remaining cooldowns of all spells by 1 second.
Why? Instead of returning health/position, turns Alter Time from a purely defensive CD to an offensive CD.
Talents:
Cone of cold - feels out of place. if i am an arcane mage, id rather use slow, if im fire, i prefer to tank the hits, if im frost i have slows. rather just keep it in the frost toolkit. since snowstorm is a cool talent.
Shatter - remove.
Rigid Ice - remove, as nova doesnt work on bosses, breaks instantly in pve and pvp.
Winter’s Protection - remove.
Grounding surge - remove.
Slow - feels out of place and cant compete with Spellsteal.
Alter time - make it a choice node and offer Timeweaver’s Needle (above).
Reabsorption/Reduplication - redesign to heal every time u get hit when images are out for example, currently does not function in pve.
Cryo-Freeze - feels like it should be a pvp talent with faster healing.
Rune of Power / Incanters Flow - if it was up to me, remove both and redesign Mage dmg to be more consistent.
Tempest Barrier - remove.
Blast Wave / Mass Poly - blast wave can be moved with a meaningful redesign into Fire talents, Mass Poly moved to arcane as unique appeal.
Tomes - remove, passive stats arent interesting.
Improved Frost Nova - remove: only scenario where this talent is relevant is if you are kiting a mob/player but not killing them.
Arcane Warding - replace with Jouster (above) so its not just a checkbox.
Ice Nova - feels out of place, the idea someone will take Shatter, Ice Nova and Meteor for any spec feels awful and heavily prerequisite.
Accumulative Shielding - remove, shields are put up to mitigate dmg so they dont last, also boring passive.
Ice Floes / Shimmer - would rather see Ice floes replaced with Foresign from the Arcane tree, Shimmer is in an extremely costly hard to get to node.
Frigid Winds - remove, can be baked into certain Frost talents (not new one, baked in).
Flow of Time - remove and bring back Shimmer to 20s recharge.
Diverted Energy - remove, most of the time this is just overhealing.
Ice Ward / Ring of Frost - ice ward is fun gimmick talent for more Shatter dmg as Frost, but rather just see Frost nova have 2 ranks as base. Location of this choice node should be much higher.
Greater invis - remove and give to Arcane passively.
Dragons breath - remove and give to Fire passively.
Shifting Power - remove, this is a shadowlands spell.
Time anomaly - redesign as Time Anomaly above.
Meteor - move to Fire and make it a meaningful cd. Maybe when the meteor explodes, all targets get living bomb debuff. the patch on the ground can be tuned so it does significant amount of dmg on ST, but drops off in AOE.