I was considering suggestions to make Arcane Explosion relevant and make the Arcane AoE rotation generally make sense. However, simple changes cause too many design clashes. Therefore, suggestions would quickly become a fan fiction novel.
What if Nether Precision interacted with Arcane Explosion? (To allow for Arcane Explosion to generate Splinters)
Then Arcane Explosion generates and spends Nether Precision, resulting in massive munching of Clearcasting.
Okay, what if Arcane Explosion cannot spend Clearcasting?
Then Contrated Power no longer makes sense and, more importantly, Arcane would be forced to cast Arcane Missiles in AoE to generated Nether Precision. Since the cleave from Aether Attunement is not default, this would feel awful in AoE.
Removing interaction between Nether Precision and Arcane Barrage does not make sense with how Arcane is currently designed around generating and spending Nether Precision and necessitates even more changes.
It is true that even before this change, Arcane Missiles was already the spender of Clearcasting in all scenarios, even without an Aether Attunement proc, because Arcane Explosion does not interact with either hero specialization.
Fan Fiction:
- I would love if Arcane Missiles always cleaved, to two additional targets, and Aether Attunment procs would increase it to four additional targets and deal increased damage.
- I would love if spending Clearcasting with Arcane Explosion also generated Arcane Harmony and applied Arcane Debilitation.
- I would love if Arcane Debilitation and Prodigious Savant were 1-point nodes to allow for more interesting Gate 3 builds.
- I would love if I did not have to always spend 9 points in Gate 1.
- I would love if Arcane Explosion had the same rate of generating Clearcasting as Arcane Blast does.
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I’ve also tried brain storming ideas to make AE more viable, but I just don’t see a solution to it in its current iteration.
Arcane missiles will almost always be the CC spender of choice, since you can even get charges with it with high voltage, and Aether Attunement trucks in AOE. With both talented there is no reason to really ever use AE in any scenario
If you make it consume NP to generate splinters, it then has an awkward cadence of generating and consuming NP,
If you make explosion just generate Aethervision, talents like reverberate are dead since charge generation doesn’t matter since you refund charges from Aether Vision.
If you have explosion increment spell fire spheres it still may not be worth it to use in AOE with current tuning compared NP/AV generation from blast which is pathetic to say.
Arcane’s AOE with the current changes on PTR just needs an entire rework, because no aspect (barrage in AOE or Arcane Explosion) works for either hero talent.
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Speaking of high voltage, it’s one of the most fun talents they introduced with the TWW rework, which is very ironic because the introduction of Aethervision (specifically the refunding of charges) completely destroyed HV. At this point it has no reason to exist because, once again, AV has actively made the spec worse.
Re AE itself…idk, the only way I see it working out is maaaaaybe if it interacts with arcane charges again like in Legion (and therefore inherits a bunch of interactions from AB). But as you all are saying that is a massive rework, I doubt there’s time until .1 release to get that much work right.
Honestly, at a certain point it’s a matter of which situation is worse.
Right now the spec feels awful on ptr, i would rather have those issues than the one arcane has right now.
Munching a few procs of nether, but have explosion be functional in aoe sounds better to me than explosion being absolute garbage.
And if aethervision is here to stay they should make it interact with explosion, or they could also buff explosion so much that it beats out blast in aoe situations even if AV only works with it.
Personally, what i suggested was to make explosion cc directly grant 1 stack of aethervision, since i also pointed out the issue with it, since unlike blast, explosion can consume cc.
I think the current situation is infinitely worse
There is the unfortunate situation where high voltage loses significant value though.
Honestly, i like aethervision as a concept, but there are so many problems, it’s objectively badly implemented, and the changes they are doing are making things worse, not better.
My assumption is at this point that they will definitely do more changes for Arcane, there’s no way this garbage goes live.
I just hope they fix things with those changes, but my gut tells me they will only make things worse.
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Amplification and reverb being on a choice node also seems a kick in the teeth, explosion is already bad, you’re seriously gonna put it on a choice node with a strong st contender and with aoe interactions with attunement?
I wouldn’t like that as a choice node regardless though.
The kind of choice nodes i like are things that affect your rotation in different way but have similar function.
As an example, flowing spirits and wolf bones, that’s a good choice node.
Choice nodes that force you to go aoe or st instead are not what i like.
Hopefully the changes they do don’t screw the spec up even more, because so far it’s not looking good.
At this point, I’d rather them just undo the changes they did. I don’t really have much faith in them after the 11.0.5 changes, and these last few PTR changes have eroded it even further. Going back to 11.0.7 would at least make it only slightly negative
That, and maybe buffing sunfury would be I think at least a wash for me. With the nerfs Arcane has had, meteorites, spheres and mana cascade need buffs.
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Better than this for sure.
I don’t think that it is that hard to fix Arcane’s rotation, it is rather that developers are stubborn and cling to their vision / outdated concepts of Arcane too much.
Possible solution to current Arcane’s PVE issues:
- Restore Arcane Barrage consuming Nether Precision and just make stacked Aethervision affected Arcane Barrage not consume Nether Precision (meaning that stack of NP remains, not that it is consumed with no effect) → there will be no point to attempt to stack them and their stacking issue would be resolved
- Move Reverberate out of choice node and make it also cause Arcane Explosion to be castable at selected target from range dealing damage to target and other enemies in area → both Reverberate is more competitive and Arcane Explosion is finally usable as a ranged ability for a ranged class
- If needed make Arcane Explosion affected by Arcane Charges like Arcane Blast → if tuned properly would be competitive enough as a spammable AoE ability
- If needed buff value of Concentrated Power for Arcane Explosion’s echo to justify consuming CC with Arcane Explosion in AoE situations
- Make affected by Clearcasting Arcane Explosion generate X stacks of Arcane Debilitation on affected targets and make Arcane Debilitation also increase damage of Arcane Explosion
- Make Arcane Explosion contribute to generation of Spellfire Spheres for Arcane Sunfury
That is pretty much enough to both make Arcane Explosion relevant in AoE situations and resolve stacking of Aethervision and Nether Precision without ruining many AoE interactions caused by removal of Nether Precision from Arcane Barrage.
This probably sounds like a joke compared to more serious issues but:
I miss both Mass Slow and Chronoshift. These were both very fun overworld / solo talents to play with.
Arcane Intellect is mysteriously disappearing off of me whenever I buff someone I’m not grouped with. They don’t lose it when I rebuff myself, but I like passing out AI to casters I come across and this has become an irritation.
I’m sure it’s great in groups but I find Aether Attunement frustrating to try to take advantage of solo. The build-up effects are indefinite, but when the proc itself only lasts 30 seconds and can’t be taken advantage of without proccing Clearcasting, throwing in downtime and travel time into the mix has caused me to miss out on activating the buff more often than I’ve actually gotten to take advantage of it. I WANT to be able to enjoy how cool it looks to make Arcane Missiles cleave into multiple mobs, but oftentimes I don’t get to.
I know this is a Bad Player Opinion, but after 13 years, I still struggle with Alter Time. I’ve never been able to shake the fear and frustration of using it at a wrong time and potentially reverting myself into a worse spot, either positioning or HP-wise if I’m too late to use it and having to click it off to avoid that. And as a result, I’ve never liked using the ability. I didn’t have this problem with the old Temporal Shield spell because the only cost to misusing it was not benefiting. I feel embarrassed to ask this, but could there be some kind of “sucky player option” to take as an alternative? 
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I’ve asked that on another topic but does the fact that there is no official feedback post for this patch for all classes beside hunter and druid means they’re assuming the current changes are fine and don’t want to check with players how they feel about it ?
I really hope it isn’t the case
I wouldn’t think so, I think they’re aware as they made a pretty sweeping change.
It is bad that they haven’t responded to making a sweeping mechanic change across the spec, but the official feedback threads are for larger reworks (druid class tree and hunters across the board).
That being said, if they don’t make changes, again, Arcane’s AOE does not function. Arcane Explosion is worthless in AOE as it doesn’t interact with our hero talents, and we have no way to use NP (and thus generate splinters in AOE really for spellslinger). Sunfury is also about 10-20% behind after the nerfs it caught in 11.0.5.
We need changes, and hopefully they’ll just revert things or change things again, but not having a formal post doesn’t mean they’re not aware.
That being said, after the last changes I don’t know if I’m excited for whatever they have cooking, as this last change fundamentally broke Arcane.
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As it stands, there has been no response to our feedback, and so it seems like they don’t care.
We pay $200 a year for this experience. Name another company that could get away with that.
I just wanted to chime in and say I much preferred beta and 11.0 arcane. I don’t mind slinger 11.0.5.
I have been on the pbe and am not enjoying where arcane is going, I am usually pretty easy to please so anecdotally… the specs not please a player who is fairly easy to please. Don’t do it.
Please pay attention to aoe and m+ viability.
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EXTREMELY happy with the removal of Aethervision. I think I can speak for most Arcane mages in saying that we really appreciate you listening to our feedback and (eventually, but hey…) acting on it.
Intuition being its intended replacement is a bit odd given that it only procs ~2 times a minute. By comparison, Sunfury procs Burden of Power/GI ~3 times as often. That said, fewer free charges might bring HV back in play which is fun.
The arcane explosion buff is a bit misplaced. The fundamental problem of AE (that also leads to its tuning being borked) is that it doesn’t interact with either hero tree. Increasing its damage eventually might lead to it being casted, but as long as it’s so removed from the kit it will not be a button that feels good to press.
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Increasing the radius on Arcane Explosion to 15 yards or making it cast on target would be a requirement to get me to want to press that button ever again.
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Good changes so far
Messed around with Aoe and generally the bottom part of the tree on the PTR. This is mainly regarding spellslinger arcane aoe:
Arcane explosion:
- arcane explosion mechanically doesn’t fit into the gameplay. because of how the spec works we want to maximize arcane orbs and to do that we have to start barrage/orbing at a very specific range. now arcane explo is melee so the gameplay to use it would be running or blinking between literal melee range and orbing distance. please consider arcane explosion being usable from range. you could make it the same as Ele shamans Lightning Bolt/Chain lightning for arcane blast/arcane explo
- second issue is that arcane explosion helps more with pad than actual effective damage. Many of the packs and encounters are made so there are some very specific focus targets that we have to either kill or cleave-off from, and using arcane explosion severly reduces the priority target dealt to these.
- third issue is that if we move to melee, the random uncontrollable proc Arcane Orb gonna 3 times out of 5 ninjapull something extra because of the extra relative range gained from being closer to the pack
Tier3 tree / everything including and below Arcane Debil / Arcane Echo / Prodigious Savant
- there are not enough talent points to come up with something consistent. feels like we have to use every remaining points to get baseline passives such as Aether Attunement, Magi’s Spark(mainly because Shifting Shards/Signature Spell spellslinger node doesnt support normal ToTM) Arcane Bombardment. Because Arcane Debil and Prodigious Savant are double point nodes we miss out on 2 extra talent points that we could use to mechnically tweak the character
- Talent point powers improve eachother so doing a half-half tree where we do some ST while having aoe or doing AoE while still doing some prio damage feels bad because the damage profile of the spec is bursty. because we use compounding damage multipliers to deal damage in these small windows, missing out on half of them for specific scenarios feels like there is no moment of excitement or power
Would love to see improvements on Arcane Explosion. Right now it has to do at least ~5times its current damage for me personally to consider even moving to melee to cast it
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Very thankful for Arcane Rebound being added.
I would like to see it made more accessible in the tree though. Making it a choice node with Energy Reconstitution could potentially fit well.