Feedback: Mage Updates
In this thread, we’ll be testing and talking about Mages in The War Within. Look here for posts from the development team as adjustments and bugfixes are made throughout the testing period.
Please note that off-topic or inappropriate posts will be strictly removed.
Thank You
Before we continue testing The War Within, we’d like to take a moment to thank everyone who read and responded to the Hero Talent previews we posted over the last few months.
Looking to the Alpha
In this first Alpha build, every single class has at least one new Hero Talent tree available for testing, with the rest coming in the following weeks. We’re asking testers to initially keep several things in mind:
- There are UI elements on the talent panel that are placeholder, including things like talent icons, text, or final UI art.
- Some talents may not be functioning yet, or may be marked as not yet implemented (NYI)
- New spell visuals and audio for several new Hero Talent trees are still a work in progress. Many trees are using placeholder assets for now that will be updated over the course of Alpha.
- There are some talents that are not fully tuned yet. This is expected, and we will implement tuning adjustments throughout testing.
The combat design team has two big areas of focus right now that we are prioritizing over other concerns such as tuning or generic class updates/maintenance:
- Finish building the remainder of the Hero Talent trees that are not yet available.
- Fix bugs that are blocking testing of new talents.
With the Alpha build being playable and all of the discussion that will occur around the flood of data, we wanted to reiterate that the responses to our blog previews were highly valuable. The feedback we received allowed us to make some early improvements or revisions while we didn’t yet have a public test environment. It allowed us to take some big early swings on certain trees, and then react to early feedback quickly.
Going forward, we aren’t planning to publish any additional Hero Talent previews in blog form, since we’ll add the remaining classes to the Alpha as soon as they reach their ready-to-test state.
Working from Feedback
Several Hero Talent trees have received changes after reading feedback to the blog posts. Some of these were tuning changes to ensure that the Hero Talent tree felt competitive, while others were significant design changes. The feedback thus far has been of great benefit to us.
Going into Alpha, we feel good about the shape of the Hero Talent tree designs. Keeping a consistent number of utility and defensives nodes across all trees, having parity between number of choice nodes, and the overall structure of the trees are things we’re confident in.
We’re also working on tweaking some core class designs as well. In some cases, it was necessary to make adjustments to the class or specialization talent trees before significant work was done on a Hero Talent tree. In other cases, we did work seeking to improve base class talent tree designs.
Alpha Feedback
Now that we’re in Alpha, we’re looking for feedback on how it feels to playtest these trees. We’re specifically curious about:
- Hero Talents that you feel are “required” for your spec in a type of content, such as raiding or Mythic+, or that push you towards picking a specific tree.
- Hero Talents that create frustrating or unsatisfying gameplay or rotations for your spec.
- Hero Talents whose functionality is confusing, unclear, or difficult to track during gameplay.
Throughput comparisons of Hero Talent trees are helpful, but we’re more interested in gameplay, feel, and choice feedback at this stage. Also, when possible, we appreciate it when you focus posts or articles on a single spec and Hero Talent tree, rather than combining feedback about multiple issues.
Again, Thank You
We greatly appreciate all your feedback on Hero Talent trees and are very excited for you to see everything else we’re working on. Thank you!
– The World of Warcraft Combat Design Team
Hello mages!
We have another round of Arcane Mage changes hitting the Alpha today, and we want to do a check-in on the state of Arcane Mage and how it relates to our stated goals.
As mentioned in our initial post, our goals for our Alpha Mage changes were:
- Allow you to acquire each specialization’s core gameplay with less talent point investment.
- Simplify rotational complexity.
- Provide new nodes that can help you adapt your damage profile to better match a given encounter’s demands.
- Provide competitive choice nodes that let you opt-out of complex gameplay.
We feel that as of right now, we’re approaching these goals with Arcane, but there have been a few outliers that we’d like to address.
Clearcasting
In this alpha build, we are officially untying Clearcasting’s proc chance from mana spent. While this did add interesting texture to the landscape of Arcane’s rotation, it created some discrepancies we weren’t comfortable with-- namely how challenging generating Clearcasting could be in AOE versus single target where mana spent varies drastically.
After this change, initial tests show proc rates marginally decreased in single target but increased in multi target-- which will assuredly have some knock-on effects across Arcane’s kit. We’ll be monitoring discussion and making adjustments as necessary to Clearcasting’s proc rate and its associated talents.
Clearcasting Out of Combat
In the latest build, we’ve removed Arcane’s ability to generate Clearcasting out of combat with spells like Arcane Explosion. We do not feel that spamming Arcane Explosion outside of combat to build Clearcasting pre-pull or in-between packs in M+ was an interesting or compelling part of Arcane’s gameplay, but it felt necessary to smoothly begin damage.
To remedy the loss of this functionality, we made Evocation grant Clearcasting, so that those of you who use it can still reliably acquire Clearcasting on pull or going into your burns. In AOE scenarios, the aforementioned changes to Clearcasting should mean you are more consistently gaining Clearcasting in AOE, so the need to build Clearcasting in-between packs should be lessened.
We will be closely monitoring feedback with regards to this change, so please share your thoughts!
Arcane Battery
Both Arcane and Fire are seeing some Dragonflight tier bonuses baked into their talent tree in the War Within Alpha. While there was initial excitement around the return of the 4-set effects, we’ve seen a lot of discussion around the gameplay and tracking inherent to the 2-set effects Arcane Battery and Charring Embers.
After some consideration, we’ve decided to remove the 2-set effects to help reach our stated goals of reducing rotational complexity and to mitigate buff tracking. Arcane will see Arcane Battery removed in today’s Alpha build, with Charring Ember’s removal coming in a future update.
Wizened Wit
As with many of our active-to-passive talent choice nodes, our goal is to make sure that the more complex option is usually the strongest, but we are making a concerted effort to ensure that the distance between the two talents is not very large. With regards to Wizened Wit, our initial tuning made it substantially better than Presence of Mind-- its more complex counterpart.
This has sparked some interesting discussion, with some parties happy to lose Presence of Mind, while others are sad to see it not be optimal anymore. We’ll be continuing to monitor the discussion, and in the meantime, we are going to be adjusting Wizened Wit to close the gap on the choice node.
Buff Tracking
Talents like Arcane Battery, Aether Attunement, and Leydrinker incentivized a lot of buff tracking, something that Arcane Mage didn’t have a lot of before. While we are comfortable moving Arcane’s complexity into the more traditional buff-tracking-space, it is very clear that we overshot the mark, and we’ve taken steps to rein in amount of effects that need to be tracked.
We really appreciate all the feedback we’ve been receiving with regards to the Mage changes, and we hope you keep it coming!
FuenteHello mages!
We have another round of changes to all three specs showing up in the build today, and wanted to provide some more context for you.
Time Anomaly
In general, we’re happy with the gameplay around Time Anomaly. We feel the randomness it provides can create some fun (and frustrating) moments across pulls that helps to add texture to the Mage experience. An outlier here is for Frost Mage, which across all three specs has the weakest bonuses by a decent margin. We’ve changed Time Anomaly to now grant Brain Freeze instead of Fingers of Frost for Frost Mages to help increase the impact that this talent creates for that spec specifically.
For Mages who want to opt-out of the randomness of Time Anomaly, we are adding a new talent: Inspired Intellect, which will provide a flat increase to your Intellect. We’d like Inspired Intellect’s tuning to hit the expected value of Time Anomaly across a reasonable amount of pulls, and we will make adjustments to get there if necessary. People who enjoy the randomness Time Anomaly provides can expect a higher output compared to Inspired Intellect when things line up just right, but we don’t want that gap to be very large.
Spellslinger
We appreciate the feedback everyone has been providing towards the Mage Hero Talents. We’ve heard the complaints that Spellslinger feels a touch too passive, so we’re redesigning Spellfrost Teachings to better synergize with the “orb” aspect of the Spellslinger fantasy and add some more active gameplay. When Spellslingers get lucky, you’ll be able to see a slew of Orbs firing off, and they’ll hit much harder in those windows.
You’ll also notice substantial adjustments to Arcane’s Splinter damage in this set of changes. A bug was fixed that was preventing Spellslinger Splinters from appropriately triggering procs and benefitting from spell damage bonuses like Arcane Surge and Icy Veins. These changes paired with Arcane’s somewhat recent change to now fire two Arcane Splinters when consuming Nether Precision meant that Arcane’s output was substantially higher than what we consider in-bounds for Hero Talents at this stage. We’re still monitoring Frost’s Splinters, and more changes could be on the horizon as we continue to gather data.
Charring Embers
As mentioned in last week’s update alongside Arcane Battery’s removal for Arcane, we are removing Charring Embers from Fire’s spec tree. We appreciate all the feedback we’ve gotten regarding this talent, and we agree with the community that the removal of this talent helps to better align Fire Mage with our stated goals for these tree updates.With the removal of Charring Embers, Fire is seeing a few replacement talents added and a few talents returning to ensure there is enough choice in Gate 2 specifically.
That’s all for this week! Thank you for your continued feedback.
Fuente