Arcane Mage Review of Spellslinger Hero Talents - Death by 1000 Splinters, Yet Passive?
28.03.2024 - 04:21
/ wowhead.com
Mid-March, Blizzard revealed 12 new Hero Talent Trees in a sneak peek at the new system coming with the The War Within expansion.
Our Arcane Mage guide writer, Porom, offers an early review of the Spellslinger Mage Hero Talents that carves out a clear identity for Arcane but struggles to provide more active gameplay interactions.
Hero Talents are an extension of the Talent system designed to explore class fantasy with a third talent tree, separate from your class and specialization. Blizzard has revealed an early preview of Hero Talents coming in the next expansion, The War Within.
The War Within Hero Talents Overview
Our Guide Writers have provided initial first impressions on the Hero Talent Trees revealed so far. Check out all of our released Hero Talent reviews in our new Editorial Section.
Wowhead Editorials
Spellslinger Arcane Mage Review
Note: The icons for each talent are placeholders.
Developer's Note: Spellslinger Splinters are themed and tuned based on your active Specialization. Arcane's Splinters are named Arcane Splinters and deal moderate Arcane school damage. Frost's Splinters are named Frost Splinters and deal light Frost school damage. Those specifics have been omitted from this mockup for the sake of tooltip readability, as both specs' Splinters serve the same purpose.
First Impressions
The Spellslinger tree is going to be available to Arcane and Frost Mages in The War Within. The focus of the tree is shared between specs, generating Splinters of raw magic from some of our primary procs and abilities. For Arcane, this will revolve around spending Nether Precision, which is primarily only done in single target, to generate Splinters dealing damage and applying a stacking damage over time effect. As we put more points into the tree some of our cooldowns will be enhanced to generate a bunch of Splinters all at once as well as causing their damage to deal AoE and buff some of our abilities, trigger Splinters from Arcane Orb, and eventually trigger our capstone, Splinterstorm which consumes the damage over time effects of active splinters for damage and giving us a Clearcasting proc.
All of this sounds at-face pretty cool, it just does not seem very impactful; firstly, it is just not really a theme I would have chosen given that Mage archetypes in Warcraft that utilize Arcane and Frost schools exist in more established ways that would fit the «hero» theme much better, like the Lich (Kel Thuzad), or Kirin Tor Archmage (Jaina/Antonidas). Second, and most importantly, most of this toolkit will likely have low to no impact on how Arcane functions as a spec, the tuning would have to be very high for this to change any gameplay as what we already do maximizes the usage of Nether Precision