7.0 New Spell Suggestions

[Imnick]

Guess I'll sort of crosspost from MMO Champion, anyone got any fun ideas for new spells or effect we could have? I thought of a couple for each spec.

For Fire I ideally just want to see the spec redesigned entirely, but if that's not happening then my ideal spell would essentially just be giving us Kael's phoenix ult from Heroes of the Storm.
https://youtu.be/qyoSLycPAPY?t=2m18s" target="_blank
Casting Flamestrike over and over for AOE isn't that fun and I would like a spell that is Fire-and-Forget. I know people don't like spells mobs can just walk out of, but it's a skill component and the area wouldn't have to be particularly small.

For Arcane the answer was easy: I don't really want or need any new spells, I would just like to see Arcane Barrage more.
Give me a proc that lets me cast the occasional free ABarr without resetting stacks and I will be very happy. Ideally should be tuned such that we'd want to use it in conserve phases, but not during the burn, that could get awkward.
We'd get a little more cleave damage out of it too.

For Frost it was a bit tricker.
My main problems with Frost are with the Water Elemental being a little boring (Water Jet was a great move and to be honest we now already do as much with pets as Warlocks do, but I think they could still do a little more) and Ice Lance not getting anything out of your Mastery. Icicles look really cool and make the spec feel nicer even if they are essentially just an autoattack, but more could probably be done with them.

However, my idea didn't solve any of those problems, instead I just wanted to patch a quality of life issue.
You know how the best feeling in the world is getting a group of 10 mobs, throwing Frozen Orb at them, and spamming procs into a Frost Bomb? The only thing that mars it, is that when you use Blizzard to reduce the Orb's cooldown to go again and get Ice Lance procs, you have to cancel Blizzard to cast them and set off Frost Bomb.
I want to be able to cast Ice Lance while channeling Blizzard (like Monks) in order to make Blizzard immediately drop an additional shower of ice (or rather, just deal a big tick of damage within its area). Then I wouldn't have to keep re-channeling, and it could even set off Frost Bomb!

Anyone got any other ideas for things you definitely won't see in the next expansion because Blizzard are charlatans who don't appreciate my genius, but would enjoy?

[Chev]

I have split this into it's own topic as it could be a bit of fun (like the Glyph suggestions was for 6.0) and it stops it from getting jumbled with the other speculation thread topics.

[Imnick]

That's probably a good idea and I should have just done that myself, thanks for splitting it into its own topic.

[Searix]

I like your ideas.

Maybe for arcane some sort of Wrought Chaos/Gaze of Sethe mechanic that hits mobs in a line

[Komma]

Mods will be keeping a close eye on this thread. For suggestions, focus on the justification - WHY we need such a spell, WHAT it is good for, and HOW it would be improve things. Mindless, low-effort "omg this would look cool" posts are not encouraged.

"If a dev reads this, he will think this is a cool idea that would make Mages better". Post with that as your goal.

[yungg]

I think it'd be nice to have Blizzard have a perk to be a cast and forget spell, sort of like Rain of Fire.

My problem with the Improved Blizzard perk is that it's often pretty unclear when you want to channel Blizzard. For example, on fights with waves of short-lived adds, (imagine darmac, or maybe Xhul'horac), you'd want to Frozen Orb on the first wave of adds. However, then you have the choice of using Blizzard to reset the cd on your Frozen Orb for the next wave, or to dump your Ice Lances into your Frost Bombed target to do max aoe damage.

Now, this isn't really a choice, channeling Blizzard on those targets would basically mean that you wouldn't contribute to damage on those targets, and it'd basically be a waste of your Frozen Orb, since you'd end up capping out on FoF charges, and such.

This usually means that by the second add wave, Frozen Orb won't be up, and you're inclined to channel Blizzard to get Frozen Orb back up. However, I think it's usually pretty murky as to whether or not Blizzard is even worth channeling, depending on number of targets, and the time in between each wave of adds. If the second wave of adds is short lived, you might get your Frozen Orb back up, just in time for the wave to be dead or near dead, and then you'd be inclined to hold Orb for the third wave. Then, in the case that the waves come in thirty second intervals (or longer), that cooldown-reduction on the Orb may as well have been meaningless, considering that the second Orb would have been up for the third wave regardless.

I think a non-channeled Blizzard would make the decision simpler, when an add wave comes, you drop frozen orb, place your blizzard so that you get frozen orb up sooner.

As for potential problems with this idea, I think we could potentially run into the Rain of Fire issue, where RoF was worth casting on single target at the beginning of WoD, when it was originally meant to be an AOE spell. Also, it'd mean that Frost starts to edge into Fire's niche (burst/sustained aoe).

[nickseng]

I'm thinking of an Aura toggle for fire, so that it has the option for both Single Target and AOE.

Aura of the Phoenix: Casting Inferno Blast on a target with ignite causes an explosion dealing the total ignite damage in a 10 yard radius. Inferno Blast Cooldown is 6 seconds. Flamestrike is instant cast and has no CD.

This is the AOE aura. There's not really a big change since Fire AOE does work pretty well. Added the explosion so that it mimics the Living Bomb talent without actually having to take Living Bomb (Talent variety). I thought about adding in double IB charges, but that has proven to actually increase single target damage, and that's not what this Aura is about. Besides, with the focus on AOE, you'd probably use IB exclusively for AOE.

Aura of the Pyromancer: IB no longer spreads dots. Direct Damage spell on targets with ignite will combust the target, dealing the total ignite damage instantly. This extra damage will not add to ignite.

Dot spreading is disabled in the Aura so that you can't abuse it in AOE. The idea is keeping in form with Fire, in that you will need to build up your damage. At the beginning, when your ignites are small, the extra damage won't be noticable, but when you manage to get a couple of crits in, the extra damage should really be noticable.
I was worried that it could get out of hand, but then, ignites don't tend to stay high very long. The last part is just so we don't get a rolling ignite-kinda thing going on, and having the ignite grow sky high

[DocileCraig]

I feel like removing Incanter's Flow, and Rune of power would be a nice change. I don't feel that any talent should be a direct damage boost and I feel like there are more creative things that could take their places. I don't mind having mirror images as a talent after being away from it for a year. However rune of power is worse than it was in MoP with the lack of a healing option, and IF feels like an easy way to stop people from talking about it (the most vocal from what I've seen never even main mage).

As for a spell I'd like to see. I want Incanter's Ward back, with some changes.

First of all the passive effect should be removed.
Second of all instead of a damage boost/mana return, it should apply a healing effect. for instance

Incanter's Ward
35 second cooldown
Places a magical ward on you, absorbing 70% of all damage taken for 8 sec. Upon removal Incanter's Ward heals 25% of the damage absorbed over 5 seconds

Edit: My justification for this spell would be that we still have far more viable frost defencive spells that end up being used as fire, and arcane. I would like to see something like this replace Ice Barrier for the arcane tree as it could fit the fantasy laid out for arcane with time manipulation magic, and would add more spec identity overall to the class.

[Zelendria]

Rather than new spells more a modification of current ones to see them used more often. We have a large array of AOE spells that are either rubbish or not viable when you should be stood at range.

Arcane Explosion

A delayed bomb charged by other spells. DoT on target that is then charged by AB, AM and then explodes at the end of the timer. Similar in principal to the one in D3, but cast from range

Blizzard

Take away the channel and creates a debuff zone of cold air that subsequent Frost spells can split on. Similar to IL glyph, but done across all Frost spells.

Comet Storm

Shortest storm in history I think... Make this an actual storm on a similar damage level to the other tier options, but over a larger period of time meaning you need to think about its use. Say 15s use/90s CD

Meteor

This spells looks far too good to be the forgotten spell in the final tier. It should become part of Fire's core spells.

[Liandry]

I'm curious to know if people would be adverse to changing spells around/adding them d3 style. I feel there's a lot of untapped potential in diablo's spells that we could incorporate into wow. For example:

Frozen Orb - Could replace Blizzard as the main aoe. Way less damage, way shorter cd, a good way to generate finger procs that would allow them to get rid of water jet and make channeling blizzard actually worth it.

Meteor - Long cd, but does 3 or 4 times as much as a high-crit pyro. I agree with Zel that Meteor should be a core spell, and having it be any less than a giant nuke just feels like it would be undeserving of the name.

Arcane Torrent - A ranged alternative to arcane explosion that would shift the danger of being in melee to not being able to move while channeling it. Would work exactly like d3.

Slow Time - A raidwide cd that definitely fits with the arcane theme (I've yet to figure out frost/fire alternatives), it might not be very useful with d3's projectile slowing, so maybe an increase to the attack speed reduction which would work like an extra tank cd by slowing down the damage intake and be immensely more useful than amplify magic. 3-4 min cd, maybe 10s duration?

Hydra - I definitely would not be opposed to having this as a talent choice, or perhaps even a glyph to mirror images (assuming they buff it to be useful again). They could probably just create a "summons" tier, with hydra/MI and maybe something temporal hero style (It's gunna be a shame to leave behind this tier bonus). Maybe make it so MI is the go-to ST summon, Hydra is the cleave, and the temporal heroes could be AoE.

Then something I had posted a little while back on the blizzard forums about "designing my own talent tree" :

Black Hole (Arcane) / Tempest Flare (Fire) / Chilling Clutch (Frost) - Pulls enemies x yds around your target to the target and deals y damage instantly. If no target is selected, pulls enemies to the caster.
(Arcane) Increases the damage all enemies affected take by 10% for 5s.
(Fire) Leaves a dot, dealing x damage per second on all affected enemies.
(Frost) Chills all affected enemies, slowing their movement speed by 70%, and attack speed by 20%

Stasis - Freeze your target in a time-space continuum, stunning them for 6 seconds. (Halved in pvp, doesn't break on damage like Deep Freeze)

Temporal Jump (Passive) - Blink now stuns all enemies for 1.5s 8 yards around where the caster ends up. (15s internal cd, to prevent use with double blink glyph)

[Sneww]

After the removal of our raid utility almost completely, i feel like something should be done to address this. Granted amp magic wasn't all that great anyways. I like the idea of a "time" related CD, however if they were to give us something like this, it should be very situational. I would like it to be something like a targeted ground ability to be used when the raid is stacked up. Something like a smoke bomb.

The second talent row needs some work imo.

Anything like an incanter's ward would have to take the place of a talent IMO. With all the talk of wanting the different specs to feel diffferent, how about replacing ice barrier with a spec specific version of it.

Frost: it can stay as is, maybe have it trigger a slow around you when broken.

Fire: make it a shield that absorbs x% of imcoming dmg then releases stored dmg back at the attacker as a dot. (think priest reflective shield glyph) would fit with the theme of attacking a shield made of fire. Tuned to the point that it wouldn't be worth the GCD to use offensively for dmg in pve.

Arcane: Something like Incanter's ward mentioned above.

Make Flameglow an activated ability that could be taken situationally over Alter time. Alter should be for big burst incoming dmg, where flameglow should be a reduction in dmg taken over 10s on an equal cd.


I would love a glyph to make Arcane explosion explode from your target instead of yourself. make it exclusive with the range increase glyph if you must.

[Causese]

Imagine Water Jet proccs FoF every x seconds while channeling so you can cast it on high HP mob and switch to priority target.

Thoughts?

some OMGLOL that would be so cool spells:

(passive)
while arcane orb is flying, activating the spell again should release an arcane explosion at the location.
no idea how to justify it though.

alternative: an arcane explosion is released from the impact point (targets) of arcane barrage

(talent) / (T19)
Arcane missiles have a 50% chance to not be consumed.
building up arcane charges #feelsbadman

but then again... #iHateRNG

(passive)
Arcane spikes (icicles equivalent?)

Spoiler:

No idea what the spell should be doing.

[Komma]

Imagine Water Jet proccs FoF every x seconds while channeling so you can cast it on high HP mob and switch to priority target.

How is that different from what we have now? We already do that. Target weaving between shatterlances is a normal thing on fights such as Archimonde.

no idea how to justify it though.

More thinking about why an idea would be good, less coming up with random changes!

[Deuterio]

Hey there, here is what I feel would help:

1. Frost
Sudden Frost - 60 sec. CD
Casting Frostbolt deals 125% more damage and triggers all Icicles, but your movement speed is decreased by 100%. Successfully casting a spell reduces the effect by 20%.

Justification: Imagine some burst is needed (frequent add spawns), but Water Jet and/or Frozen Orb are on CD and you are unlucky with RNG proccs. This ability will help out, while not being just another boring way to generate FoF charges.
Aditionally, it adds another aspect to do optimal DPS.
On the other hand, it's not a no-brainer: when concidering to use it you have to be aware of the movement requirements of the fight within the next seconds.
Ultimately, the movement penalty you get fits nicely into the Frost theme, adding an ironic note.


2. Arcane
Nether Fissure - 4s channeled, castable while moving, no Mana cost
Opens up a dimensional fissure to collect 1 Nether Dust instantly and one more per second of channeling.
Reaching 10 Nether Dust, it condenses to a Mana gem.

Mana Gem - max. 3, no CD
Consuming the gem instantly grants you 15% mana.

Justification: Good old mana gem. Conjuring it pre-fight wasn't much fun. But generating it with Nether fissures gives you some compensation in movement-heavy encounters. You may use it to prolong burn phase or add some burst to conservation phase if needed.


What do you think?

[Kadde]

2. Arcane
Nether Fissure - 4s channeled, castable while moving, no Mana cost
Opens up a dimensional fissure to collect 1 Nether Dust instantly and one more per second of channeling.
Reaching 10 Nether Dust, it condenses to a Mana gem.

Mana Gem - max. 3, no CD
Consuming the gem instantly grants you 15% mana.

Justification: Good old mana gem. Conjuring it pre-fight wasn't much fun. But generating it with Nether fissures gives you some compensation in movement-heavy encounters. You may use it to prolong burn phase or add some burst to conservation phase if needed.


What do you think?

No offense but this would just have been an effective way to make me reroll.
Whats the logic behind 10-12s of channeling a spell to get a managem midfight.
Not even if the spell did some damage would it be fun since the dmg would have to be so low.
15% also seems very low considering a AB4 costs somthing like 11%.
Sounds like you would lose alot of dmg doing this - obviously the numbers can be changed but it just doesnt seem fun at all.
Force warlocks to summon healthstones and summonstone midfight with the same logic.

[Deuterio]

It was not intended to be used instead of any damaging spell. If there is something you can cast, go for it.
As stated, I thought of a spell castable while moving, to compensate for not being able to maintain dps at that time. With heavy movement going on, you might end up having used up all stacks of Ice Floes. Currently, what do you do in a situation like that?

[Wilderness]

Hey there, here is what I feel would help:

1. Frost
Sudden Frost - 60 sec. CD
Casting Frostbolt deals 125% more damage and triggers all Icicles, but your movement speed is decreased by 100%. Successfully casting a spell reduces the effect by 20%.

Justification: Imagine some burst is needed (frequent add spawns), but Water Jet and/or Frozen Orb are on CD and you are unlucky with RNG proccs. This ability will help out, while not being just another boring way to generate FoF charges.
Aditionally, it adds another aspect to do optimal DPS.
On the other hand, it's not a no-brainer: when concidering to use it you have to be aware of the movement requirements of the fight within the next seconds.
Ultimately, the movement penalty you get fits nicely into the Frost theme, adding an ironic note.

The idea of a dps benefit being gained by sacrificing movement is kind of interesting, although given the general mage communities opinions of RoP I don't know that it would be well received. I'm not sure that Frost needs something in case WJ/FO are on CD, since their short CDs (and being able to reduce FO with Blizzard) mean you should always have burst options for frequent add spawns. I think you'd have to have a bigger benefit to it to sacrifice your movement for 5 seconds, and I wouldn't want to have to do that every minute.

It was not intended to be used instead of any damaging spell. If there is something you can cast, go for it.
As stated, I thought of a spell castable while moving, to compensate for not being able to maintain dps at that time. With heavy movement going on, you might end up having used up all stacks of Ice Floes. Currently, what do you do in a situation like that?

I really dislike the mana gem return as well. Its unnecessarily complicated and just sounds horribly tedious. Between double blink and 3 charges of Ice Floes, mages are one of the most prepared casters for regular movement. And you can always take AO/NT for additional instants or use Frost/Fire. If you find yourself regularly moving with Ice Floes and blink all on CD then something has gone wrong in the fight or you screwed up. A fight with that much movement would not be doable for most other ranged or healers.

[nathyiel]

For me 7.0 should be the occasion to change some of the things, cheking what for and what isn't. And more important: enhancing spec identity.
Arcane: it's tide to raw magic but powerful. They can bend reality to create or to do damage. I think they should focus on spell that do damage with effect or such. I'm not fan of the way they link mana and damage. It could have been more interesting to switch arcane to a ressource more like in D3 (free/regen spell - mana hungry spell). But Arcane should be able to create things like Mirror Image but not only. Why not arcane construct/golem? Maybe not to the point of being a pet class but more like an additionnal ressource supply. A "living" battery that only the mage can interract with and why fusing with it for reallising its ultimate power (D3 Archon say hello).

Fire: they burn and explode thing. The whole ignite things is good but should be taken a step further : you want to ignite thing Like fof arcane, I think of 2aspect for fire mage : living fire and big fire ball. Living fire means it like to spread to other thing or to take form (hydra, phenix, etc) . By big fire ball, I think of spell that show off : pillar of flame, meteor, explosion, etc.


Frost : if arcane like efficiency et fire give the show, frost keep it cool. Welly is so much iconic, it might be hard to not think of him. I really like the idea around frozen things can shatter: damage on frozen target take more damage, even if they can't really be freeze (boss). This is what make the spec original. So I'm not sure if the spec really need that much change.

Edit on frsot: Frost has a good gameplay and identity already: Fast paced with interactivity with the pet. I'm not fan of waterjet but the idea is here.

[Imnick]

I've always wanted a spell that just conjures a big, slow moving, rolling ball of fire which leaves a path of flames behind it.
I don't think there's actually design space in the game for this though, people would hate the travel time and hate the fact that mobs might just walk out of it.

[nathyiel]

I've always wanted a spell that just conjures a big, slow moving, rolling ball of fire which leaves a path of flames behind it.
I don't think there's actually design space in the game for this though, people would hate the travel time and hate the fact that mobs might just walk out of it.

Could work if it have good acceleration, target locking and explosion on impact/end of duration. Or if it's purpose is the fire wall behind it. Not the ball.

I have see the snowball (rolling ball) concept in action in Skyforge. Such concept can work if it have a correct speed or a specific purpose.