And this is from me!
Arcane Rework
The rework has some positive things and there are some negative things. With that said, Arcane on Alpha is incomplete but still has some fun things going on and I hope that my feedback below won’t be perceived as me being dissatisfied with the attention, I just believe there are some large issues with the rework so far that I do not believe support the stated goals. All of my feedback below assumes a few things, first and foremost, that the rework is not complete, Cackling Energy, Improved Arcane Missiles, and Prodigious Savant will be 1-point talent nodes, and there is still time to make changes to really support the intention behind this design.
Per the post from Kaivax above: Allow you to acquire each specialization's core gameplay with less talent point investment.
Arcane’s tree feels desperate for additional talent points. Not only does the trees structure reduce the ability for Arcane players to take any utility points besides the small sacrifice in damage to choose Slipstream over Mana Adept, but the core gameplay of having Arcane Barrage cleave is dangerously difficult to access with its point being much more competitive than in the current tree. But perhaps most importantly to this point, Wizened Wit completely replaces Presence of Mind in any situation due to being a solid throughput increase while Presence of Mind gives utility primarily, and that is if you even have the point for it, since now it is no longer a gate to the extremely strong Siphon Storm ability. A lot of the problems here are simply caused by pitting utility nodes against throughput nodes, Arcane is currently the only Mage tree that has this issue and it feels awful, Slipstream, Chrono Shift, Presence of Mind, and Supernova all need to just be baked into the spec or other talent nodes so that they are staples in the Arcane toolkit, the same is true for Arcane Barrage cleave.
Simplifying rotational complexity
, and Opt-In Complexity
, I love Magi’s Spark. It preserves the legacy of Radiant Spark and of Arcane being a skill expressive specialization. However, Nether Munitions has some gross implications, most chiefly, this currently does not trigger if you fail, this should really auto-trigger as failing Magi’s Spark already comes at a cost of not benefitting from it’s damage increase. Nether Munitions is compounding that punishment which failure can just be a result of not getting a Clearcasting proc for a period of time and completely out of the players hands as it is a completely random proc still. Furthermore, Nether Munitions has heavy incentives on proccing Magi’s Brand as soon as possible to stack the damage modifier this could make opting out of Magi’s Brand and into Improved Touch of the Magi a much harder alternative to consider. A final note here as well, Magi’s Brand is unbearable to play in AOE, casting an Arcane Blast is just an awful feeling spell when there are multiple targets in play and Leydrinker does nothing to resolve that.
Aether Attunement, Arcane Battery, Time Loop, and Leydrinker, all do indeed provide avenues for adapting damage profiles, however they add a ton to track and pay attention to for optimal practice. This is added to what is already a difficult spec for people to play and I think this is going to be a recipe for people continuing to believe Arcane is an unapproachably difficult spec to play. Leydrinker has no real purpose for existing, we have a spell that consumes Nether Precision and is very satisfying to hit and should be our goto for cleave; embracing Arcane Barrage is a ton of fun and I think Arcane players in general would prefer we went more in the direction of Arcane Soul from Sunfury rather than Equipoise from BFA. Additionally, Arcane Blast has no animation and isn’t a super enjoyable button to hit even when it does notable damage. Lastly on the subject of these stacking buff talents. People voted for the season 3 set bonus because we enjoyed cleaving Arcane Missiles, no one likes Arcane Battery, having to spam Arcane Explosion constantly in dungeons and prepull environments is awful and this is a major quality of life issue for the spec currently. I can’t scream this enough: NO ONE LIKES ARCANE BATTERY.
Arcane Missiles and Clearcasting
Arcane Missiles is best as a proc only spell and I applaud this change back to the Legion variant of only casting it with a Clearcasting proc. However, this also opens up some problems with the spec as it currently exists. Clearcasting and Arcane Missiles have a ton of bugs, some I have reported on Alpha, some have been reported in the SimC github. These need fixes immediately as the fact that Arcane Missiles worked without a proc was the only reason they were tolerable at times. Please have someone fix this bug, it has been a sore point for players since Arcane Explosion was added to benefit from Clearcasting: https://github.com/SimCMinMax/WoW-BugTracker/issues/1078
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Removing the talent Reverberation has had the intended impact of raising Clearcasting procs in AOE, the same is true for Spellslinger’s Splinterstorm and Sunfury’s Arcane Soul. I am still unsure as to whether it is enough. Losing reverberation is also not without a cost, the AOE rotation, specifically for Spellslinger, is much slower paced without Orb Barrage procs and it doesn’t really feel good. This does not hold for Sunfury as Glorious Incandescence effect helps tremendously with the pacing of our AOE rotation, it would be nice if Spellslinger had something similar in place to help with Orb Barrage/Clearcasting dry spells.
Other Noteworthy Issues
With the removal of Radiant Spark and Nether Tempest, there arises a new issue. Arcane Echo is fairly dependent on these abilities to generate frequent procs during Touch of the Magi windows and while Arcane Phoenix generates some additional Echo procs via Meteor and Arcane Surge, it is not in the same ballpark as in Dragonflight. Given the amount of Arcane Splinters you generate as Spellslinger, it seems like adding echo to this would be a lot of fun, but perhaps too much as well.
Orb Barrage is currently nearly as random as you can get with a proc chance. Some form of bad luck protection would be a huge quality of life increase for when this spell has bad luck streaks. Currently this has some rather major implications for Arcane’s viability in the high end key scene in that Arcane can’t really promise to be consistent damage on planned routes.
Talent nodes that are ineffective like Rule of Threes and Concentration are still left to linger likely continuing to have near-zero pick rates due to their negative interaction with Clearcasting. Mana spend reducers are not beneficial for Arcane like they were when Clearcasting proc’d from any source of damage instead of from mana spent - this change also contributes to us spamming Arcane Explosion out of combat.
To echo my frosty friend’s feedback above, removing Temporal Warp was a great move, Time anomaly should definitely go with it. If it’s to stay with us in the future, it would be extremely nice to have a way to anticipate procs, getting Arcane Surge or Time Warp procs when you just cast Arcane Barrage and are casting a 0-charge Arcane Blast is a terrible feeling. It essentially feels like you are missing a talent when the procs are not able to be leveraged properly.
Finally on this list, Arcane Explosion needs an avenue to be used at range. Some fights and encounters simply do not allow range dps to be close to melee, this is easily one of the most requested things in the Altered Time discord for Arcane. While it is interesting to have ranged specs that play differently in AOE, I think the community finds this to be a turn off for the specialization.
Suggestions
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Remove Rule of Threes and Concentration so people aren’t accidentally selecting talents that are pretty unlikely to provide much, if any, throughput.
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Swap Chrono Shift and Mana Adept, we should be able to need to pick a utility to get to Touch of the Magi. Chrono Shift is part of Arcane’s identity and should not be so difficult to obtain. This would also give a balanced alternative to Slipstream.
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Rethink Arcane Battery, Time Loop, and Leydrinker, these are just simply not going to be fun. People don’t want to spam Arcane Explosion out of combat and we don’t care about Arcane Blast cleaving, we just wanted cleaving missiles.
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Munitions should auto-proc even if you fail Magi’s Spark. Then again, replacing Munitions with a talent that auto applies Nether Tempest when you use Touch of the Magi would also be nice in my opinion.
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Orb Barrage should auto-proc if there have been 12 charges expended without a proc.
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Remove Time Anomaly and replace with choice node between Cauterize, Prismatic Barrier, and Cold Snap. Having a lack of defensive parity between mage specs sucks for balance and representation and more often than not this is the cited reason for why people prefer Fire in high end content.
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Consider changing Clearcasting to proc off of damage done from our spells or on casts instead of from Mana spent.
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Create a Havoc-like spell for Arcane Explosion that duplicates the area of effect on a targeted ally, but not the damage of the spell so you’re not incentivized to stack them.
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This has no real gameplay implications but I would also like to formally request that you change the Splinter animations for Spellslinger to be more distinguished in how they travel and look, currently they just blend into Icicles/Arcane Missiles.
I understand that this is a lot of change that I am suggesting, obviously I don’t expect all, or any really, to happen. However I hope that the intention behind these changes that I would make are able to be expressed. Arcane players want access to our identity spells: Presence of Mind, Chrono Shift and Slipstream, rapid-firing Arcane Missiles, hard hitting Arcane Barrages, huge burst of damage that pull threat off seasoned tanks, and our shades of blue, pink, and purple in every animation. These are the things that make Arcane what it is for me and are what I would like to see available to us before we get into the middle of our spec tree.
To end this on a sweeter note, I would like to just garble out all the things I LOVE: Arcane Familiar’s new model, the Energized Familiar talent, removing Nether Tempest and Radiant Spark was good but I hope that you do something with Nether Tempest still, Sunfury is super cool but I also hope for purple Spellfire Spheres but also they are still super cool, Burden of Power and Glorious Incandescence are super fun to use, never having to worry about overcapping haste because of Temporal Warp, never having to worry about using my Time Warp at the wrong time because of Temporal Warp, never having to begrudgingly not use Time Warp because of my group’s strategy (because of Temporal Warp), and Magi’s Spark’s animation is also terrific. I’ll stop here because this could go on for a bit. Thank you for reading my feedback!