Class Wishlists for Midnight
Death Knight Wishlist
Hunter Wishlist
Monk Wishlist
For a brief breakdown of the changes coming to each specialization in Midnight, check out our Midnight Class Survival Guide.
Midnight Class Survival Guide
Mage Wishlists for Midnight
Our Mage Writers, Porom (Arcane), Preheat (Fire), and Dorovon (Frost), discuss the most significant issues plaguing their specs as well as the must-have changes they'd like to see prior to Midnight's launch in just a few short months.
Arcane Mage Midnight Wishlist
Top 5 Midnight Wishlist
Wishlist
1.
Arcane Pulse Reworked or Removed
2.
Better Integration of Orb/Explosion with Hero Talents
3.
More Interesting Class/Spec Talents and Choices
4.
Hero-Spec Talent/Spell Balance
5.
Make Apex Talents More Exciting
Arcane Pulse
Arcane Pulse is frustratingly slow and takes Arcane back to a gameplay loop that no one really wants to return to. The sad thing is that the animation is great and meanwhile Arcane Blast still suffers from a nearly invisible animation that has been bugged for-basically-ever. Pulse also spits on a bulk of feedback given during The War Within that Arcane Explosion was left behind by hero talents, this is still the case, meanwhile Pulse is added and day 1 gets every single hero tie-in that was requested for Explosion. This is compounded by the biggest Explosion suggestion being to make it targettable from range; Pulse takes all 3 of these points of feedback and bastardizes them into a spell that I will actively be trying to avoid having to play in Midnight. I am hoping that Pulse can be a sacrifice for Blast to get a new animation and Explosion can be tied-in sufficiently with hero talents (Orb as well could use some love here).
Class and Spec Talent Trees are Atrocious
The class and spec talent trees are absolutely unacceptably bad for Arcane Mages. The class tree options are weird at best and useless to bad to take in most cases at worst. Talents like Improved Remove Curse are more than likely going to be either picked in one situation or never picked, and in the unfortunate case where someone accidentally takes this it is going to actively make them worse at decursing than normal. A number of talents are built around improving Mirror Image or generating images (this even extends to hero talents), which as of Midnight alpha launching no longer does anything worth investing into. I could even ignore the amount of 1% or 2% for whatever stat, mana reduction, or other minor throughput nodes they've added this expansion if the remaining choices actually had any substance to them. The spec tree is almost worse off as you are literally spending points on useless nodes regardless of what build you make, this is true primarily in single target, but is also very often the case in AOE as well. This is markedly worse than when talents originally shipped in the first version of Dragonflight alpha or any version since.
Hero-Spec Talent Anti-Synergy and Tuning
With how limited the talent trees are for choice, there are 2 primary choices that ultimately dictate every other choice you make in your talent trees. Do you want to play for Orb or for Missiles? Currently, due to tuning, Missiles is the correct choice in all cases, regardless of any synergies that exist between other spells or hero talents. This is in part due to Arcane Missiles being tuned high at the moment, but, importantly, this is also due to the fact that Arcane Orb has no tie-ins beyond Splintering Orbs and Orb Mastery. While Orb Mastery allows you to consume Clearcasting with Orb, it does not enable Orb to stack Arcane Salvo which is an important driver for Orb Barrage (worst change ever) and a large reason why Missile builds are just flatly ahead at the moment in all cases. Simply put, Arcane has a ton of talents in every tree that either lack coherency in design, excitement, or any forethought into usefulness, it's clear they had a vision of Orb vs Missiles, but it also has clearly failed on execution of that vision so far.
Arcane Mage Guide
Fire Mage Midnight Wishlist
The response to the initial release of Midnight Fire Mage was met with a strong reaction from the community. Changes to talents and the overall design of Fire Mage were great but the gameplay was lacking. Many players felt that the Midnight streamlining of specs had hit Fire too hard. Fire was already a lean spec to begin with so there wasn't much to cut. After some small tweaks, I'm happy to report that Fire is in a much better place now. That being said, there is always room for improvement.
Top 5 Midnight Wishlist
Wishlist
1.
Bug Fixes and Cooldown Manager Tweaks
2.
Standardized Travel Time
3.
More Capstone Competition
4.
Another Active Ability
5.
Proper Resource Beyond Mana
Bug Fixes and Cooldown Manager Tweaks
The removal of most combat addons in Midnight will have a huge effect on how most players receive and interpret information. The Cooldown Manager is meant to fill this void, but the current implementation is a bit lacking. Buffs like Heat Shimmer should absolutely be trackable. Speaking of buffs, Fired Up is currently bugged and not overlapping. The first stack determines the duration of the buff and all stacks are lost once it expires. To play optimally, we will likely cancelaura it leading into Combustion to increase uptime. This absolutely needs fixing.
Standardized Travel Time
Fire Mage gameplay, especially in Combustion, is very fast paced and reactive. Distance to your target means increases the travel time of your spells and sometimes leading to waiting for a Hot Streak. This is one of the reasons why you sometimes find yourself accidently hardcasting. The easy solution is to just fight closer and stay moving during Combustion, but it doesn't always work. If you have ever played played Fire Mage during a boss with a large model (Dimensius for example), you know exactly what I'm talking about. Lowering the maximum travel time for Fire Spells would go a long way to fix this issue.
Dreaming Big
Fire Mages had most of their wishes come true in Midnight. Pyroblast hits hard, Combustion is no longer tied to constant uptime, the big burst is back. Scorch has returned and Combustion gameplay is solid. Gameplay outside of Combustion is feeling a lot less Fireball-centric but could still something more. It's a longshot, but having a proper resource to spend or another ability to use specifically outside of Combustion could help keep things interesting. A resource that you build during Combustion could be used to fuel a new ability, or it could just be a returning favorite like old Living Bomb or the Darckli's Dragonfire Diadem effect on Dragon's Breath.
Fire Mage Guide
Frost Mage Midnight Wishlist
Top 5 Midnight Wishlist
Wishlist
1.
Add an Option to Hide the Icicles Visual
2.
Casting Ray of Frost While Moving
3.
Stronger Ice Lance Incentives
4.
Weaker Frostbolt Incentives
5.
Making Flurry More Interesting
Ray of Frost as a Primary Cooldown
Overall, I like having Ray of Frost as the new primary cooldown for Frost Mage, but it leaves the specialization uniquely vulnerable to interrupts and forced movement. This conflicts with the stated design goal of making Frost an approachable specialization. Not even counting the lost damage, losing so many stacks of Freezing just feels awful. This will cause a lot of players to simply stand in mechanics and take a lot of damage or die just because they really don't want to cancel it, which is just going to be frustrating for everyone. Allowing it to be cast while moving, bringing back Ice Floes for Frost Mages, or doing something to lessen the punishment if it gets canceled would be greatly appreciated.
Ice Lance is Weak
For the new Frost Mage, Ice Lance exists as one of the few spells that consume Freezing stacks. This is the primary incentive to cast it, but right now for Frostfire, you can ignore it because it and Shatter deal low enough damage that just wasting most of your Freezing stacks is an acceptable rotational decision. Some new incentive needs to be added to Frostfire here even if it's just a buff to Ice Lance and Shatter damage, since being able to ignore the new core mechanic of the specialization is silly. Building on that, part of the problem is that Frostbolt/Frostfire Bolt still tend to drive too much on their own. They do things that Ice Lance doesn't like generating Brain Freeze and Frostfire Empowerment. While having a filler spell that feels strong can be a good thing, feeling incentive to keep pressing it over spender spells like Ice Lance is a problem. This is especially clear in AoE situations where Frostfire Empowerment and Glacial Assault apply Freezing stacks to multiple targets at once, which can then be consumed by Comet Storm removing the need to cast Ice Lance.
Flurry
Prior to the Midnight rework, Flurry was always a spell that drove the iconic Shatter combos in Frost's rotation. Now after the rework, it largely just feels like a better version of Frostbolt that you can cast sometimes. It would be nice to see changes to the spell that add more interaction with the spells you cast around it to make it distinct from Frostbolt and to keep that feeling of doing combos with it. I also want to mention that Brain Freeze empowering Flurry is not necessary. Because Flurry is already a cooldown, the cooldown reset alone is enough to make Brain Freeze work as an impactful proc. Providing extra damage and now also having the new Thermal Void interaction work only with Brain Freeze just makes the natural casts feel bad. Lastly, it's worth pointing out that while normally the ideal time to use a charged cooldown involves some extra decision making due to their flexibility, this is not the case the Flurry. Because a Brain Freeze proc provides a full charge, there is incentive to cast Flurry immediately when it's available to try to minimize cooldown waste. If there were some windows where you could sit on a Flurry charge with no penalty, the rotation would feel more engaging.
Frost Mage Guide
