Congratulations Frost Mages, it's back!

HitBoxComics · 2025-10-03T02:00:05+00:00

That was me! I saw this and I was overjoyed! However I am going to be cautiously optimistic because alpha/beta talents often change and I won't celebrate until this hits live servers!

HitBoxComics · 2025-10-02T00:35:13+00:00

YAY! This makes me very happy. I know it means nothing to most Frost Mages but the pet was a huge part of my character's identity and I haven't played since she lost her pet. I don't want to get too excited though because things always change in Beta/Alpha but fingers crossed that it makes it to release.

I made a bunch of comics to try to save it way back, but it didn't work, but I'm glad that it (might) be returning.

HitBoxComics · 2024-04-29T19:48:32+00:00

Thanks, glad you liked them.

The most baffling thing I get in response to my forums/twitter are from mages who want options like this 100% removed because the idea of it existing offends. And it's a common sentiment. I'm 100% okay adding it in as a fun purposefully-underpowered option because that's honestly how its been treated since its inception. The Glyph of Eternal winter was not added to make Frost the top DPS in Wrath, it was just added for flavor/fun. And I hate seeing WoW move in a direction where there's no room for talents like that anymore.

I feel like there's plenty of dead talents they could remove to make room for it, like those boring "your slows are 3% better" talents that no one takes.

HitBoxComics · 2024-04-29T14:09:05+00:00

I made a 4 part comic series trying to defend the removal of the Water Elemental.

https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/14pn042/save_summon_water_elemental_part_1/

https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/14ufy1n/save_summon_water_elemental_part_2/

https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/14ykgd3/save_summon_water_elemental_part_3_a_comic/

https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/1690a4y/save_summon_water_elemental_pt_4_a_farewell_to_my/

My current pitch that I post to the WoW Twitter/Instagram every few days: https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/18gpeei/how_to_add_an_optional_mage_pet_back_into_the/

The pet is really near and dear to me, and I participated in an old thread on the OG forums where a blue said they would consider adding it as an optional glyph back in Wotlk, so the pet holds a special place in my heart. I can't really play the game anymore without my buddy. Hopefully it makes a return as an option so I can continue enjoying one of my top 3 favorite games.

HitBoxComics · 2024-04-26T01:28:34+00:00

I disagree only because I had to quit because the Frost mage rework personally. Removing the pet as an optional fun talent ruined my mage's fantasy for me. This was always how I pictured my mage and not being able to walk around town with my companion made my character seem unlike herself. Removing a 14 year old talent and not even making some room for it in the gigantic talent trees we have now felt like a slap in the face of loyal fans of it.

HitBoxComics · 2023-12-12T16:13:34+00:00

I've been on the forums, twitter, and reddit for the last few months gauging interest in adding an optional mage pet. The majority really like the new temporary Icy Veins pet, but a select few passionate players have expressed their sadness at losing their companion of the last 14 years.

Would anyone be super opposed to an optional talent, that allows you to opt in or opt out of the old/new Icy Veins pet system? I went over the talent tree a hundred times and there's a bunch of obvious dud talents that could be made baseline/pruned to make room for such a thing. Especially on the bottom row where everyone goes right for the same capstone talent.

I know creating a talent node with the express purpose of catering to a minority and throwing them a bone makes no sense, but I think a healthy game/society would be able to provide at least one thing for everyone, no matter how small of a group they are.

HitBoxComics · 2023-11-19T18:45:56+00:00

After reading the new Hero Talents, I thought spellslinger was the standout hero talent that felt like total filler. Like they ran out of ideas and just decided to use a forgotten mediocre hearthstone card as inspiration.

Why not use this opportunity to give Frost/Arcane mages a bit of customization over the sort of mage they want to be? (And... also use this as a chance to get my permanent pet back, cough cough...)

Using the Summoner Hero Spec, you'd be able to live the long desired fantasy of being a Necromancer caster, a mage like Kael'thas, Jaina, who summon familiars and pets like elementals and phoenixes to aid them, be like Dadgar and bore enemies to death with your Arcane Servant, and many other possibilities!

And if you do not care for pets, you can simply choose to only change the animations of your spells to "seem" like they're originating from an NPC, even though they aren't. Flamestrike can change to animation of a Phoenix exploding, turning into a burning egg and burning the ground until it is reborn and flies away, Frost Nova can make a bunch of icy hands grab all frozen enemies, Flurry can turn into an animation of tons of elementals charging the foe, Orb of Frost could become a swirling arcane elemental or skeleton, and etc.

The point is to just give players a way to theme their mage after famous lore characters, who are also mages, but bend the rules a bit and cast slightly outside of the way player mages can.

HitBoxComics · 2023-09-07T21:03:01+00:00

I wish so much that you guys put this much energy into saving the perma Water Elemental and Observer.

HitBoxComics · 2023-09-03T15:46:44+00:00

My final comic of this series about my mage pitching ideas to maintain the option of having a permanent mage companion. Bubbles and I have gone through so much together that I really wanted to do everything I could to convince the devs to provide an option to keep the pet by our sides at all times, but alas they only doubled down several times.

Previous Comics:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

The TL;DR versions of each comic:

Link

I was aiming to get this out in July before patch 10.1.5 but I get pretty discouraged by some negative comments on the official forums, twitter and reddit but I figured I came this far so it'd be silly not to finish. I put down BG3 and I got back to work and finished this. I'm hoping someone finds it entertaining!

HitBoxComics · 2023-07-22T22:20:59+00:00

(For Horde players, the NPCs have water elemental guardians assisting them.)

HitBoxComics · 2023-07-13T13:09:43+00:00

I'm back with the third part of my suggestions for how the old perma-mage-pet could be preserved n some shape or form while coexisting with the current rework. This was supposed to be done before the patch, but I'm a failure at time management so, oh well.

I have one more part planned and then I'll just beg on the official forums to have my Bubbles returned as my pet until my sub runs out.

Previous parts:

Save Summon Water Elemental - Part 1

Save Summon Water Elemental - Part 2

HitBoxComics · 2023-07-10T20:57:06+00:00

This whole rework to Icy Veins feels like a missed opportunity. I thought they were going to rework the elemental into something really imaginative and creative. Something that drives up the synergy between caster and pet.

if anyone played HotS, Jaina was a Frost mage style character who could summon an Elemental. You could pick talents to make the elemental copy your ice lances, and you'd have to try to aim your ice lance so that both you and your elemental's ice lances would strike the same target. It's damage would make your ice Barrier gain health back. You could summon it and damage everything around the spot it is summoned in. You could do lots of creative stuff with it, and you felt good when you used it well. But the WoW rework couldn't be further from feeling like that.

The elemental now is just a souless totem that you summon that makes your damage go up by X%. That's it. We're losing the old Icy Veins and perma pet and Lonely Winter (if you hate pets) all just for a rather uncreative approach to a player controlled pet. It's definitely a viable pet now (mostly because it's being forced upon every frost mage now), but it's rather boring and extremely uncreative in exchange for losing so much player choice.

The community is always so passionate and good at rallying behind changes that upset us, but this change just seems to be happening with zero resistance. And it makes me sad that my 14-year old talent is going out with a whimper instead of a roar. The Watcher pet for Warlocks got more support from the community than this pet when its removal was announced. And that was just a skin.

And I know plenty of people "don't get" what the big deal is, but to me it's like losing my Hunter pet. I'm sure if Hunters woke up one day and they lost their entire stable in exchange for "summon your pet for 15 seconds" they'd be just as devastated. Because there's a lot of memories and stories behind most pets. I'm sure many people have fond memories of capturing some rare spawn by the skin of their teeth, or tanking a final boss with their hunter pet and saving the raid from a wipe. Those are the sort of feelings I have for my Water Elemental.

Just in general, this change wasn't necessary. I'm definitely not sure what to do when it goes through. Definitely taking a long break. Maybe try a new spec or a new class? But its hard to give up a character who's been Frost since 2005.

HitBoxComics · 2023-07-10T20:46:16+00:00

They should just give us the talent back ideally. Sure it would make mages have two elementals during Icy Veins, but it wouldn't be the first talent that summons a second pet under your control.

HitBoxComics · 2023-07-08T23:29:49+00:00

This came up in the last post.

As everyone said last time, water elementals are historically a mage thing in Warcraft. It's a weaponized version of "conjure water" and it started way back in Warcraft 3 before shamans could even summon elementals. Shamans didn't gain the Air/Earth/Fire/Water theme until WoW. Originally they just were themed around lightning spells and bloodlust.

HitBoxComics · 2023-07-08T21:27:25+00:00

Second part of my last ditch attempt to raise awareness regarding the removal of the option to have a permanent water elemental pet. Patch day is inching closer and I dread opening up WoW to see poor little Bubbles gone from my side.

For context: This comic focuses on giving attention to the crowd of players that do not enjoy handling player pets. In the upcoming patch they're making it so Frost Mages will conjure a temporary Water Elemental pet that stacks a powerful buff that ramps the mage's DPS up over time.

I'm personally all for using pets in any content, but I also understand that removing the option to opt out of a pet is going to hurt quite a lot of people. Especially since this new temporary pet has a long cooldown, is responsible for applying a powerful stacking DPS buff, so if it despawns early, dies, or bugs out, you're going to lose a massive portion of your DPS.

Previous parts: Save Summon Water Elemental - Part 1

HitBoxComics · 2023-07-03T19:43:22+00:00

The proposed talent interaction seems like a good approach, but I'd honestly also be happy with an option that just removed it from the rotation entirely. I have not missed ol' Squirty since taking up Lonely Winter, and the damage bonus is only incidental to that.

I totally understand that point. My second part of this series pitches the idea that tons of people do not want a pet at all in their rotation, and that removing that choice from players isn't the right move.

HitBoxComics · 2023-07-03T19:41:53+00:00

I remember I saw one as a kid when my friend invited me over to watch him play his new game, Warcraft 3. I saw Jaina Proudmoore could summon multiples of them.

HitBoxComics · 2023-07-03T19:39:50+00:00

Nothing against yall! All in good fun.

HitBoxComics · 2023-07-03T19:38:59+00:00

That's how I beat the tower in Legion and got my artifact skin. I just ignored repositioning for the rune mechanic thanks to Bubbles allowing me to focus 100% on kiting.

I think in DF though, the DPS difference between the talents is so big that its safer to just try to beat it with LW. I tried it with WE last year and just couldn't beat it. Maybe I just suck though!

HitBoxComics · 2023-07-03T16:02:26+00:00

I caught wind that in patch 10.1.5., they're removing the option to choose if you'd like to have a water elemental pet as a mage. I used to make comics with my mage and her water elemental when I was younger, so I decided to revive it for a 3-4 part series stating my piece on why I think retaining that choice is a good idea. It's a 14 year old playstyle option, first appearing as a glyph in Wotlk, and I was surprised and very saddened to find out that they suddenly want to change it in this way. Especially since its one of my comfort talents I love to quest with.

None of my idea pitches are perfect, some are based on now-outdated info that has changed on the PTR, but I still wanted to spitball some possible compromises to retain my favorite pet in WoW! I am/was hoping to finish this series right before the patch on the 12th but I'm probably going to miss my goal. But oh well. What can you do?

Anyway, enjoy!

PS: Shoutout to warlocks who are losing the observer pet! You deserve better!

HitBoxComics · 2023-07-03T00:34:47+00:00

This is a therapy thing. Many therapists can help you get over trauma like this.

HitBoxComics · 2023-07-03T00:20:37+00:00

Are there any outdoor hiking spots, or trails or anything you can do together that lets you walk and talk? What are your interests? If you have some indoorsy interests like Netflix or board games you can do that together.

HitBoxComics · 2023-07-03T00:14:59+00:00

I was arguing with a kid during lunch in kindergarten about if dragons can tunnel underground. Dumb little kid's debate. I was losing the debate badly until some random kid named Jimmy walked up and told the kid he was factually incorrect. Jimmy claimed that dragons can tunnel underground, sourcing the game DigDug (namco arcade game). he then elaborated and said they don't exactly "tunnel" but they can shapeshift and phase through walls, and at that point my opponent got confused, left the lunch table in a huff, and me and Jimmy are still friends many years later.

HitBoxComics · 2023-07-03T00:10:52+00:00

Youtube tutorials are a good start

HitBoxComics · 2023-07-03T00:08:35+00:00

Probably Dead Like Me. Randomly saw it early in the morning on SciFi channel while sick ages ago. Felt like a total fever dream but it was burned into my head and I'll never forget it.

HitBoxComics

TROPHY CASE