wow Mage Changes and Explanations in War Within Alpha: May 21st

[Staff 1,488]

Mages got plenty of attention once again this week, with Arcane being in the spotlight, but Fire also receiving significant adjustments. Clearcasting received the most changes, as its proc is no longer mana cost-dependent, it can't e gained outside of combat anymore, and it is gained when casting Evocation. There's plenty more to see so let's get into it. 

Mage (Source)

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!

And here are the actual changes themselves, from the development notes:

Mage (Source)

• Arcane
  • Energized Familiar now fires 4 bolts during Arcane Surge (was Time Warp or other similar effects).
  • Wizened Wit decreases Arcane Blast cast time by 5% (was 10%).
  • Mana Adept and Slipstream have swapped places.
  • Clearcasting’s chance to trigger is no longer tied to mana spent, and now has a 10% chance of triggering when casting any damaging spell.
  • You can no longer trigger Clearcasting by casting damaging spells while out of combat.
  • Evocation now grants one stack of Clearcasting.
  • Siphon Storm duration has been reduced to 20 seconds (was 30 seconds).
  • Arcane Battery removed.
    • Developers’ notes: We appreciate everyone’s feedback on the frustration centered around Arcane Battery, and have opted to replace it with Arcane Debilitation. Arcane Debilitation is meant to meaningfully integrate with existing Arcane Missiles effects across the tree in an exciting way with minimal headspace requirements. We will be sensitive to any degenerate optimizations that need to be done to maximize this talent’s effectiveness.
  • New Talent: Arcane Debilitation – Damaging a target with Arcane Missiles applies Arcane Debilitation, increasing their damage taken from your Arcane Missiles, Arcane Barrage, and Arcane Blast by 0.5%/1% for 6 seconds. New stacks do not refresh duration.
  • Time Loop has been redesigned – When you apply a stack of Arcane Debilitation, you have a 10% chance to apply another stack of Arcane Debilitation. This effect can trigger off of itself.
  • Aether Attunement has been redesigned – Consuming Clearcasting has a 15% chance to grant you Aether Attunement, causing your next Arcane Missiles to deal 150% increased damage to your primary target and fires at up to 4 nearby enemies dealing 100% increased damage.
  • Aether Attunement is now tracked on the personal resource display.
  • Arcane Debilitation is now tracked on enemy nameplates.
  • Leydrinker has been redesigned – Consuming Nether Precision has a 15% chance to make your next Arcane Blast or Arcane Barrage echo, repeating its damage at 25% effectiveness to the primary target and up to four nearby enemies.
  • Leydrinker visuals have been updated.
  • New Talent: Surging Urge – Arcane Surge damage increased by 5% per Arcane Charge.
  • Nether Munitions damage amplification reduced to 6% (was 8%).
• Fire
  • Alexstrasza’s Fury is no longer a choice node with From the Ashes
  • Quickflame’s Flamestrike damage bonus reduced to 20% (was 25%).
  • Charring Embers moved to Gate 2.
  • Charring Embers now increases the damage you deal to affected targets by 4% (was 6%).
  • From the Ashes has been redesigned – Your direct damage spells to targets affected by Charring Embers reduce the cooldown of Phoenix Flames by 1 second.
  • Deep Impact has been redesigned – Meteor now turns one target hit into a Living Bomb. Additionally, its cooldown is reduced by 15 seconds.
  • Phoenix Reborn no longer requires enemies to be under the effects of Charring Embers.
  • Inflame has returned and is now in Gate 3.
  • Focused Fury has been removed.
    • Developers’ notes: Convection and Focused Fury were intended to be flex talents to help you get a bit more single target damage while in an AOE build. However, the combination of these two talents were making Living Bomb so powerful in single target that it was overshadowing spells like Pyroblast. We don’t have a problem with Living Bomb being present in single target builds, but it shouldn’t be one of your highest damage contributors. Given the design of Focused Fury, it stands very opposed to this principle, and thus we opted to remove it.
  • Convection is now located where Focused Fury was.
  • Wildfire has been removed.