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Arcane Mage: First Impression of the New Mage Talent Trees in Dragonflight
Dragonflight
Опубликовано
04.08.2022 в 10:00
Porom
With the reveal of the Dragonflight Mage talent trees, our Arcane Mage writer Porom provides initial reactions and thoughts on this revamped system. We break down the Arcane Mage talent trees, discussing the new talents and providing some sample builds. Join us as we predict how this class could play in Dragonflight!
To learn about the best PvE talent builds in Dragonflight for this class, and export these builds into the game, please check out our Arcane, Fire, and Frost Mage class guides:
Arcane Mage Talent BuildsFire Mage Talent BuildsFrost Mage Talent Builds
Mage Dragonflight Class Tree
Class Dragonflight Talents - What’s New?
Dragonflight is bringing a new take on talents, instead of 7 rows of 3 options to choose from we will have trees that include many Arcane Mage spells and abilities as well as previous borrowed powers. The goal of these is to enable competing playstyles while providing a foundation for abandoning the heavy borrowed power model for class development. We will receive two talent trees, a class tree which is shared between all Mage specs, and an Arcane specific tree.
The Mage class tree enables some interesting utility pickups we previously did not have access to. The most notable entries are
Плавучая льдина
,
Кольцо обледенения
,
Конус холода
,
Обледенение
,
Взрывная волна
, and
Дыхание дракона
. There are a lot of returning conduit powers from Shadowlands as well as some new talents which are definitely welcome, most notably
Кумулятивные щиты
.
While throughput options are all very familiar, there is yet another rework on
Аномалия времени
providing a
Ясность мысли
proc now instead of 4
Чародейский заряд
s and giving the new
Чародейский выброс
buff in place of the old
Мощь тайной магии
buff (more on that in the spec tree discussion).
Переходящая сила
makes a return from Shadowlands and
Метеор
has migrated its way from the Fire talent tree into being a capstone talent.
Everything else will be immediately recognizable as basic Mage utility or some minor defensive conduits from Shadowlands.
Mage Dragonflight Talent Tree - First Impressions
My first impression of things was rightfully pessimistic, the class tree has some serious issues for Arcane Mages. To focus first on the positive points here:
Взрывная волна
and
Дыхание дракона
are of particular noteworthiness for both mythic+ and PvP. I don't know if these options will enable Arcane to become more relevant in PvP, but it is definitely a welcome start. Being able to pair
Плавучая льдина
with
Величие разума
can enable some builds to perform their burst while being fully mobile. There are some interesting uses for
Метеор
, even though it is really off-theme for Arcane. These are the kind of tools that have been seriously lacking for Arcane over recent expansions.
Now for the negative points. The biggest issue in my mind is the heavy expenditure of talents at the bottom of the tree; because of this positioning and cost of talents, you can get 2 capstones and both stat boost talents (
Книга Антонидаса
and
Книга Ронина
) by sacrificing our strongest mobility talent node (
Мерцание
/
Плавучая льдина
). On top of creating issues like this, where a build is almost certainly going to be the best simply by having more throughput talents, the bottom talent branches having both a strong utility spell and strong capstone spell locked behind 3-point nodes reduces the freedom players have to choose utility options overall.
It is also strange that Arcane has had it's spec-unique defensive,
Великая невидимость
made available via the talent tree to Frost and Fire, however
Холодная хватка
and
Прижигание
are locked in their respective spec talent trees. There is a real likelihood that Arcane plays a build next expansion that does not offer it it's iconic defensive ability and this would also leave Arcane lacking heavily on defensive power. Additionally, there are a number of talents in the tree that are focused on defensive power but require 2-3 points and compete with a utility spell in some way or another and as a result you end up avoiding a lot of them. Compounded together, these issues leave me wondering if Arcane will end up being the weakest Mage spec defensively.
Overall, I think this tree was decently thought out for PvP but not as well for PvE, there are a lot of utility and defensive nodes that have some thoughtful choice making; however, the throughput options enforce extremely restrictive builds with how the tree is structured, particularly due to the 3-point node placements; I would love it if many of the 2 and 3-point talents were changed to 1 and 2-point talents and had more options spread out in a way that encouraged a bit more diversification. It is clear though that Arcane has gained quite a lot of utility and mobility options but perhaps lost out when it comes to defensives compared to Frost and Fire.
Below is a Class talent tree I put together for a build which is intended to be paired with the current Shadowlands meta of
Сияющая искра
/
Чародейская гармония
. Note that
Метеор
is used as one of the later spells in your
Сияющая искра
rotation.
Кольцо обледенения
is primarily taken as a means to proc shatter outside of cooldowns, this would not work on bosses though; you would likely take
Кумулятивные щиты
for raiding or
Взрывная волна
over
Плавучая льдина
for Mythic + perhaps.
View on Dragonflight Talent Tree
Arcane Mage Dragonflight Spec Tree
Arcane Dragonflight Talents - What’s New?
The largest item in this category, and the one I am most excited for, is the rework of our primary cooldown spell,
Мощь тайной магии
into a giant nuke that then buffs us with increased damage and mana regen. Along with these changes the spell has been rebranded to
Чародейский выброс
, from the small amount of alpha time I have spent using this it is extremely fun to use and actually feels like a cooldown that fits Arcane's theme much better. Another new addition is the choice talent underneath
Чародейский шар
, which contains the option of either
Заряженная сфера
or
Обстрел сферами
.
Making a return from Shadowlands are
Сияющая искра
,
Энергия бури
,
Чародейская гармония
,
Чародейская бомбардировка
,
Меткость Пустоты
, and
Сосредоточенность
. From other expansions prior to that,
Чародейский темп
is returning based on our Antorus set bonus,
Предвидение
from the Legion legendary. Lastly, there are the semi-new
Каскад энергии
and
Улучшенный чародейский снаряд
which have appeared in many iterations of the game at this point.
Tuning will determine all things, but as it stands now it seems unlikely that many builds will be able to pass up the center part of the tree which contains our major cooldowns,
Чародейский выброс
and
Касание мага
, and the covenant ability which added some much needed spice in Shadowlands, I am of course talking about
Сияющая искра
. Outside of this column in the talent tree there are a few notable powers that are strong but were inaccessible in previous iterations of talents or borrowed powers, this includes
Просвещение
,
Волшебный фамилиар
, and being able to have both
Чародейский отголосок
and
Резонанс
.
There are also, however, some extremely weak talents, some of which are impossible to avoid. The biggest standout in this category is
Правило троек
which is actually a dps loss in many situations due to it preventing
Ясность мысли
from proccing. Preferably this would just get removed entirely as it no longer fits Arcane's kit unless we are just meant to have a /cancelaura macro in half our keybinds. The new
Умудренный мастер
talent is unclear on how effective it will be at-a-glance, however some quick napkin math shows that it will likely be incredibly weak for a tier 3 talent that blocks one of our most satisfying spells to cast,
Чародейский шар
. Likewise,
Буря Пустоты
continues to appear in our talent tree despite it never being tuned or reworked to be a useful part of our toolkit, even if it somehow manages to be picked up and used, it is very disheartening to see it here, unchanged, again.
Choice Nodes
Currently we can choose either
Энергия бури
, which adds a large int buff for fully channeling
Прилив сил
, or
Улучшенный прилив сил
, which reduces
Прилив сил
's cooldown by half. Our second choice is
Заряженная сфера
, which gives
Чародейский шар
an additional charge, or
Обстрел сферами
, which causes you to fire off an
Чародейский шар
after casting
Чародейские стрелы
15 times. I would like to contextualize these effects a bit here, but first I want to draw attention to the fact that this is it, 2 choice nodes for Arcane Mages, for comparison: Frost has 4, Fire 5. We get 2, and they're hardly meaningful choices.
Улучшенный прилив сил
is, in my opinion, probably dead on arrival with the rest of Arcane's toolkit giving more than enough mana - it is my expectation that we will have
Прилив сил
-less builds and that seems to be intentional based on the spell
Прилив сил
being so low in the talent tree. I cannot think of a current situation where you would require this much mana, even in an infinite burn build that seeks to minimize any casting of
Чародейский обстрел
, you will still have a full mana bar for 12 seconds every 90 seconds from
Чародейский выброс
and a mana refill from
Прилив сил
for 6 seconds every 120 seconds; combine this with the Class talent tree capstones and running out of mana is no easy feat.
Энергия бури
is probably the clear winner here and that is despite the fact that it is a 2-minute cooldown and our other cooldowns are 45-seconds and 1:30 respectively. Overall this choice is likely only going to be taken as a talent if nothing else is available after your build is complete and the sims favor it over other options. In a general sense,
Прилив сил
at a baseline level should be a 1:30 cooldown, there's little reason to desync this by 30s when the end result is it being a 3-minute cooldown to match with every other
Чародейский выброс
.
Neither
Заряженная сфера
or
Обстрел сферами
seem like particularly strong effects in PvE, however in PvP I believe
Заряженная сфера
will be a welcome addition.
Обстрел сферами
seems like a half-baked attempt to give Arcane some ranged AoE tool but the issue is that 15
Чародейские стрелы
will take an incredible long time to bear fruit, even more so if you're not just spamming
Чародейские стрелы
over and over.
Обстрел сферами
has an additional concern in that the player has to keep an eye on the stack count for it as launching an
Чародейский шар
unexpectedly can reduce the value from
Чародейский заряд
generation The other issue with this choice is that it is incredible deep in the tree for what it is and I do not think we will see this talent choice get much play in PvE at all.
View on Dragonflight Talent Tree
Arcane Mage Dragonflight Talent Tree - First Impressions
Overall, I am not happy with some things in the spec tree for Arcane. There are several over-arching issues with the tree's structure; there is an inherent lack of decision making, specifically with regards to utility, in how you construct builds due to how spread out the talent points are that are related to one another. There are several capstone and required talents that pose problems for the spec when it comes to function as well as fun. But it isn't all doom and gloom, there are some redeemable qualities, the playstyles people have enjoyed over the years seem to have some representation here, the
Чародейский выброс
rework is amazing and solves many issues that the old
Мощь тайной магии
/
Перегрузка
combo had, and many of the individual talent nodes are desirable in some build or another.
Contradiction Talents and Utility
To elaborate further on the problem of how talents are situated in the tree; many of the defining utility and damage talents directly require you to go through another talent which emphasizes a completely different area of gameplay to get them.
Предвидение
, a mobility tool that is designed around single target, requires that you go through
Отскакивающие молнии
, an AoE talent, to get it.
Отзвук
, an okay AoE talent, is locked behind a talent that makes
Ясность мысли
stack, when using
Чародейский взрыв
itself prevents that from ever happening and as well as
Чародейский темп
, a potent AoE talent, is locked behind multiple single target talents.
Some other utility spells end up competing with throughput options, this creates a special problem for PvE content where throughput is almost always selected at a higher priority than utility.
Темпоральное смещение
, a mobility tool primarily used in AoE, is situated to compete with throughput options and thus never get picked up despite this being a core talent through most of the last 6 years. This is also true for
Сверхновая
, which hasn't seen real gameplay since Warlords of Draenor.
Compounding the issue of utility spells being unavailable through intuitive talent selection, there is the issue that many of our throughput options are spread through the tree in such a way that taking them all leaves us with few points leftover to grab those wanted utility points. These conflicts all together lead to us ending up with significantly less utility that feels like something interacting with our spec toolkit and while we have gained
Плавучая льдина
in the class tree for mobility, we have lost several Arcane-specific tools that have not been compensated for in the class tree. To expand on this, currently on live servers we have
Величие разума
baseline,
Темпоральное смещение
on a talent row that competes with nothing useful, and we get a choice of
Мерцание
or
Воздушный поток
; with these new talents, we would get a choice from our class tree of
Мерцание
or
Плавучая льдина
and a choice from a spec tree between
Воздушный поток
,
Величие разума
,
Темпоральное смещение
, or
Предвидение
. Getting more requires a loss in throughput in some form or another.
Bad Talents
Правило троек
is unavoidable as a talent in our first tier, but it is a damage loss in most situations.
How this talent made it in here I am not sure, it has negative synergy for us as mana is plentiful with how
Чародейский выброс
works now and removing the mana cost makes it impossible to proc
Ясность мысли
. This effect really needs to be replaced with something new, entirely.
Самоцвет маны
and
Каскад энергии
are incredibly uninspired talents and the functionality issues that have plagued
Сотворение самоцвета маны
have not been resolved in 2 years. We have to use an add-on and a macro in order to delete our
Самоцвет маны
and conjure a new one; the item does not refresh with new charges like
Камень здоровья
s do. This has been annoying to deal with at best for all of Shadowlands and the only saving grace for this talent is that it is in a position in the tree where we can completely ignore it's existence. Adding a buff to it with
Каскад энергии
only means that we will have to macro it to
Чародейский выброс
, which also nullifies its incredible lackluster utility. I am not really sure how
Самоцвет маны
made it's way into being a talent much less not just being pruned entirely - this spell is not fun and you could make
Каскад энергии
give it 30% power and people will use it and it will
still not be fun
. Either change this to be something interesting or just get rid of it.
Меткость Пустоты
needs to buff
Чародейский взрыв
as well to be an effective talent, in it's current place in the tree you have to take it as a purely single target talent that blocks access to one of our most powerful utility spells in any content,
Воздушный поток
. This would also be a welcome quality of life change, as accidentally consuming a
Ясность мысли
with
Чародейский взрыв
is painful and very easy to do.
Меткость Пустоты
also has a significant bug that has prevented anyone from wanting to use it for as a Shadowlands conduit for the past 2 years; when you queue a
Ясность мысли
buffed
Чародейские стрелы
immediately after
Чародейская вспышка
, it will munch one charge of
Меткость Пустоты
and not buff the
Чародейская вспышка
.
The Worst of It
Lastly, I want to talk about fun and how important
Чародейский шар
is to Arcane Mages. While
Касание мага
is the spell that made Arcane a relevant powerhouse at times in Shadowlands (most notably in Sanctum of Domination and in Mists of Tirna Scythe/Spires of Ascension),
Чародейский шар
is what made the rotation overall enjoyable; there's more to do than just burst, the time in-between mattered. But more than just being relevant damage-wise, the time in-between felt good,
Чародейский шар
is possibly our most satisfying single cast spell and any Arcane Mage in the community would argue that this should be more-or-less a baseline ability. It being a capstone guarded by the lackluster, 2-point talent
Умудренный мастер
is awful; I would argue there is no reason to gate
Чародейский шар
that far down into the tree, it makes the spec less fun and it's bad enough we still do not have
Смещение
back.
Arcane Mage Dragonflight Talents for Raiding - How Strong is It?
If I had to build a raid spec now, I would likely go with the Shadowlands favorite of Spark-Harmony build:
View on Dragonflight Talent Tree
This build would play exactly like live but with a couple of twists, with
Метеор
available, we will opt to use that as our third
Сияющая искра
charge and use
Чародейский выброс
with
Чародейский обстрел
queued to double dip on the final stack, this means that instead of our opener using
Руна мощи
to stack
Чародейская гармония
, we'll instead stack
Чародейская гармония
unbuffed, then
Руна мощи
with
Сияющая искра
to stack with and
Касание мага
before our
Чародейский выброс
cast. A big reason why I believe this will be the way to go is that
Чародейский выброс
does not benefit from the
Руна мощи
it drops so this ensures that we not only get an absolute massive
Чародейский выброс
off but also our
Метеор
should land inside of
Касание мага
. With this much cleave and funnel stuffed into a single window, Arcane should find a niche in some raids with this build anytime adds are near a priority target.
Переходящая сила
provides some faster pacing for every minute and
Плавучая льдина
ensures that the most key spells in our burst window are covered for mobility.
Alternatively, you might swap
Чародейский отголосок
for
Энергия бури
if tuning favors it more, and you can also sacrifice
Чародейская бомбардировка
if there is no reasonable execute opportunity. For utility you just take what you can use for the encounter, the choices are all pretty direct, the only oddity is that you can trade
Взрывная волна
for
Кольцо обледенения
but you also trade crit for haste doing so.
The biggest difference here between this and live is, unfortunately, as we discussed before; this build leaves
Чародейский шар
out of range to be attainable. However it is worth noting that the faster cd recharge provided by
Переходящая сила
could be quite the buff in some Mythic + situations as
Переходящая сила
provides quite a decent dose of AoE damage when combined with
Метеор
. The utility trade off we're forced to make is also pretty unfavorable, we have had to forgo
Великая невидимость
,
Темпоральное смещение
, and
Величие разума
to get
Плавучая льдина
,
Взрывная волна
, and
Дыхание дракона
. This leaves us being a lot less defensive and mobile overall, but gives us a large boost in utility over the live game.
Conclusion
I think Arcane has a long way to go, but the base ideas are definitely there and can be molded into something terrific, the biggest points of weakness are how inflexible talents are after you've got your necessary throughput due to how the tree is structured,
Чародейский шар
being inaccessible to many builds, and a few talents that do not really belong in our toolkit. Hopefully as Blizzard iterates on Arcane Mage we get something a bit more forgiving on what you need versus what you want.
Interested in playing Mage now? Check our out live guide for Arcane Mage!
Arcane Mage Guide
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