Putting aside all the difficulty of implementing this, i’d love to see a mage healing spec.
I enjoy playing as a mage DPS and honestly, I likely wouldn’t play anything else if it did have heals as I enjoy that too.
Just to be clear though, i’m not talking about changing any existing spec just adding a 4th.
Currently maining an Ele/Resto Shammy as it’s in my opinion the next closest option but it just doesn’t quite do it for me. I guess I like the mage fantasy? I don’t know.
On a personal note, the reason I thought of this is due to having limited playing time these days and i’d really love to just focus on one char instead of many piecemeal fashion. (Just because i like one thing about one class/spec but hate another etc).
Anyway, wasn’t meant as a rant, just thought it’d be really cool.
While I’m not necessarily advocating a healing spec a little versatility for the Mage would be nice.
Currently we have three ranged DPS specs which can be nice from a Mythic raiders point of view (at least one spec performs okay).
For all other situations the class fantasy and the gameplay of the WoW Mage feels very narrowed down to a elementalist-style. Damage spells are either frost, fire, or (raw) arcane which feels a bit uninspired. Ability likes Blink, Mirror Images, or Alter Time seem like outliers or remnants from another time.
I also like the Battlemage spec, but I don’t know if the game needs another tank spec. It’s interesting how tanky you can get just by picking up 15% leech from the Cobalt Assembly buffs.
I find myself using my defensive/self-healing gear a lot and it’s pretty good fun to play in. It has 8% leech, Breezy Companion trinket (30k/30s heal/shield), Seal of Filial Duty (fire shield) and Onyx Amulet with Desirous+Flame-Licked+Prophetic. It’s mostly for “out in the world” solo play, but I will switch to this gear on the rare occasion when I’m in a group and don’t feel safe about the healing I get.
The game could use more healers though - especially Solo Shuffle, but I think a healing spec would feel “too different” from the mage core whereas the leap from Frost Mage to Battlemage is a much shorter one (some taunts and defensives and a bit of self-healing and you’re a tank). The solution to the SS healer shortage could be a “mech suit” that converts any DPS spec into a healer and you would then throw one of these on each side.
The faint mage healing spec hopes died with prevoker. If mage did ever heal it would have to have been be through alter time and cauterize mechanics (disc already had shields) and prevokers took all that… and they copied our bloodlust. Not a fan of being a skinny dragon or I might play it.
Battle mages with warglaives and plate armor, blinking around and arcane exploding, chucking meteors and using temporal shields. Thats the warden class right there, not a spec. Combustion as a tank defensive that heals you and does dmg to anyone near you, teleport above mobs and crash down on them. A frozen orb that forms around you and gives you FoF to do special melee attacks. Sounds like a banger.
No thanks. I rather have 3 dps specs to choose from than them turning one of the specs to healing which in turn would most likely make whole class yet another hybrid class that revolves around healing with all the other specs being completely forgotten.
You could put Arcane as one spec (as it is now), Fire/Frost in the same spec (elemental mage), basically combine the 1233 of the frost with some pyroblast and thermo-frost mechanics that buff/nerf each other, making freeze take +10/15/20/25 fire dmg but -5/10/15/20% frost dmg and viceversa, something in that line.
And then you can add a third, new spec. Problem is, healing is weird for a wacraft mage. Healing magic is diferent, uses light, or nature. And water/wind is monk/shaman stuff, not related to the same kind of magic. Not that I don’t want to, I’ve been healer when I’m not DPS, but lorewise doesn’t make sense.
The third spec should be something like either a mele/close range battlemage (since we can use swords, it actually makes sense) or something void related, like some sort of corrupted new kind of magic mixed with the void. Something that buffs you so you can throw a brutal numbers of DPS but at the cost of your own hp (the classic high risk-high reward kind of DPS).
Dude there is already classes with 4 specs out there, you don’t have to castrate Frost and Fire with some “off the top of my head” ideas on how to cram them into one tree. Just add a new one.
Not saying I necessarily need a heal spec on my mage, just that your approach on how to add a new spec seems totally pointless.
I think it’s hard or impossible to remove or even meaningfully change specs. Just look at the uproar when the hunter survival spec turned to a (full) melee spec. People will get (rightly?) emotional if you remove or fundamentally alter their favorite spec. So I think that ship hast most likely sailed for the mage class.
Although, I totally agree, that the spec themes lack a bit of meat and feel “stretched too thin”. There is only so much you can come up with pure fire/frost/arcane damage spells. For example, a chrono-based spell DoT like “rapid atrocity” would be unthinkable for the WoW mage.
