Leydrinker: Granting Leydrinker with Touch of the Magi is a great addition to make the effect more consistent when it matters. However, there are issues with how Leydrinker interacts with Touch of the Magi which will hinder the viability of the talent unless it is fixed.
The Leydrinker effect does not contribute towards the accumulated damage of Touch of the Magi. This bug makes the change to guarantee Leydrinker during Touch of the Magi pretty lackluster. Since Arcane deals most of its damage during Touch of the Magi windows, Leydrinker will be significantly disadvantaged compared to other talents that do not have this issue.
It is not just Leydrinker that has this issue. It appears that any effect that causes spells to “echo” its damage does not contribute towards Touch of the Magi, such as Magi’s Spark. Furthermore, since both Leydrinker and Magi’s Spark “echo” the damage of Arcane Blast, these effects do not benefit each other. Leydrinker is severely hindered by all these missing interactions with other effects.
In my opinion, Leydrinker should be changed such that it simply increases the damage of the next Arcane Blast by 60%, and then cleaves onto four nearby enemies for around ~40% damage (roughly equivalent to current values).
Magi’s Spark: Only the first tick of Arcane Missiles into Magi’s Spark benefits from Magi’s Spark. A change was announced during beta that made it such that when the target was first hit by a tick of Arcane Missiles, a 2-second window would occur where all ticks of Arcane Missiles would benefit from Magi’s Spark. However, this change never made it into the live game.
That said, I am not a fan of this implementation. For Touch of the Magi windows not paired with Arcane Surge, you often do the following sequence (depending on buff state, timing, etc):
- Arcane Missiles → Arcane Barrage → Touch of the Magi → Arcane Blast
The issue here is that Touch of the Magi is applied to the target while there are still Arcane Missiles in the air toward the target. This is not an issue on the live game, because only a tick benefits from Magi’s Spark anyway. However, with the 2-second window implementation, you would waste several ticks of Arcane Missiles that could have benefited from Magi’s Spark.
Arcane Echo: During the beta, Arcane Echo was changed such that the effect had a small cooldown on it happening. This would been a prudent change in Dragonflight when Arcane Echo was procing constantly due to spells such as Nether Tempest, among other things. However, Nether Tempest does not exist anymore, which leaves Arcane Echo with an underwhelming and underutilized effect.
In my opinion, the greatest casualties of the Arcane Echo change are Arcane Missiles and Arcane Familiar with Energized Familiar.
Because of the cooldown on Arcane Echo, only some ticks of Arcane Missiles procs Arcane Echo, instead of every tick like it was in Dragonflight. Right now, even with effects such as Arcane Debilitation and Arcane Harmony, it is not worth it to fully channel Arcane Missiles. It does not make sense that Arcane Missiles is this weak even with this many effects that benefit each tick of Arcane Missiles.
On another note, channeling spells such as Arcane Missiles or Mind Flay is not satisfying. It is awkward and overly punishing to try and time the end of a channel with your next spell, trying not to lose a channel tick but also avoiding gaps in casting spells.
Lastly, Energized Familiar. This effect is extremely underwhelming in no small part due to the inability to proc Arcane Echo on each hit from the Arcane Familiar.
Arcane Debilitation/Prodigious Savant: My feedback to these talents will always be that it feels awful to have these 2-pointer nodes preventing us from accessing the fun and interesting effects. They do not need to have the value of the full two points baked into a single point. Just make them 1-pointer nodes, but keep it at, respectively, 0.5% and 20% for Arcane Debilitation and Prodigious Savant. Just let us access the other effects more freely.