Aethervision just isn't fun to play around

Classes Mage
1

Hi! Hoping to give my feedback here.

I don’t generally mind having to learn new rotations, or having my spec / class get a rework, I don’t believe I’m complaining about change just because it is a change from something I already am familiar with. But I really enjoyed playing with the 11.0.2 version of Arcane Mage. It felt powerful and rewarding for playing well, but also punishing for making mistakes and not thinking ahead (especially in m+). Double dipping on Nether Precision was part of that feeling of being rewarded for good play.

However, I understand why a class developer would want to get rid of the double dipping mechanic - it’s not particularly intuitive and you generally wouldn’t know about it without third party resources. But I don’t believe Aethervision is the answer we are looking for. The conditions to optimally cast Arcane Barrage feel incredibly clunky now and are unintuitive where a player who doesn’t interact with third party resources likely wouldn’t be able to ever know when to Barrage. The Mage discord has been passing around a WeakAura that says when to optimally Barrage, and even long-time Arcane players are confused about why you do or don’t Barrage in certain situations. Aethervision is just another buff that you have to use a WeakAura to track, didn’t solve the issues double dipping presented, and has taken away a lot of the enjoyment I had running dungeons as Arcane.

For instance, when reading Aethervision you’d think that you would want to Barrage right when you get it (and it would be similar to the old playstyle of Missiles → Blast → Blast → Barrage) but it’s actually best to cast Missiles again after you get Aethervision so you get a Nether Precision buff to increase your damage on your Barrage even more. This is just double dipping with more steps. But now you end up with 1 Nether Precision stack and if you’re out of Clearcasting procs… you just sit on one stack of Aethervision while casting Blast. Again, this is not intuitive or fun.

Also, wanted to throw in that I really don’t like the optimal talent setup anymore. High Voltage is a very fun talent, and we’ve had to move that talent point to pick up Aethervision. Spellslinger is an incredibly unfun hero talent tree due to the massive reliance on procs for doing your damage and requiring you to be in close range (nearly melee) for optimal dps so your Arcane Charges get refilled by your Arcane Orb procs before your GCD comes back up so you can Barrage again. It also is missing the satisfying Arcane Soul window that Sunfury has.

I get a lot of enjoyment out of playing optimally with the correct setup and it’s a shame SS has become the go-to hero talent tree. But I don’t even have the option to go back to the old Sunfury rotation.

I know you can’t just revert that changes that you’ve implemented, but please fix these issues so I can go back to enjoying my m+ push! I haven’t really wanted to do dungeons the last two days :frowning:

Thanks for reading!

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I disagree. Aethervision is one of the best talents they’ve ever released for Arcane. The only problem is that it currently overlaps with similar effects that come from the current tier 4 set bonus as well as Sunfury’s Glorious Incandescence and Arcane Soul hero talents. I also don’t see how using ABarr is clunky. It literally lights up when you get an effect that empowers it, prompting you to hit the key. It couldn’t be simpler and certainly doesn’t require a Weakaura. Micromanaging your rotation to that extend is overkill for virtually 99% of all content.

Though it’s not perfect I am 100% for them doubling down on this new idea of having ABarr refund the Arcane Charges it spends because it solves the longest running problem with the spec which has been the inability to integrate ABarr into the ST rotation due to the glacial pace AB generates charges.

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Maybe buff Arcane Barrage’s baseline damage, and remove it from Nether Precision. That’d feel more intuitive.

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The double dipping was just so much better. It’s really a shame that they incorporated it in a poor manner via Aethervision as it currently stands.

I hope they’ll iterate on this talent further and push it closer to what we used to have with the double dipping. Aethervision makes the rotation pretty convoluted when we used to have it good and simple.

Honestly, as it currently stands that’d probably be better. Move the entire damage from Nether Precision buffed Barrage to Aethervision but Splinter generation for Spellslinger would need to be looked at.

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This misunderstands the issue on two fronts. Firstly if you are waiting for Barrage to light up before you press it, you are too late. You need to press it immediately after the Arcane Blast that gives you the second Aethervision stack or you are dropping about a third of your procs. This isn’t a trivial minor percent optimization either, this is a significant source of damage.

The second thing is if you have Clearcasting, you need to hold your AV to combine it with Nether Precision. This is an incredibly frequent occurrence and clunks up the rotation a lot. Also non-trivial.

We already had the right amount of procs that make ABarr return 4 charges. Even if this talent was theoretically solving some issue in season 2, that hardly matters when we are playing the game right now.

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Yeah they butchered the rotation, especially sunfury it’s just clunky and nothing flows well. You’ve got 3 abilities refunding charges and 2 of them are basically rng so it’s just a disaster with bop And glorious incandescence. Like why doesn’t bop and glorious incandescence consume on barrage together now ? You didn’t have to think twice about glorious incandescence before now you have so many overlaps of aether vision, tier set and bop/ incandescence it’s so bad… along with trying to literally line up 3 NP stacks to get the maximum out of aethervision/ barrage damage

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I’m usually not, but I’m going to be a bit elitist here. It’s fine if you like to play by just hitting buttons because they “light up” and not doing something remotely close to the optimal rotation, but then your opinion on the optimal rotation I’m talking about isn’t valid. Because you’re not doing it and haven’t experienced it.

I was genuinely curious how you’re playing the class and saw you had logs hidden, which makes sense.

ABarr could already refund Arcane Charges through the tier set bonus or Burden of Power. ABarr has always been a significant portion of damage even in ST situations. If any of our spells needed any changing it would be Arcane Explosion imo.

But I guess you made my point. It’s not ideal to press ABarr when it lights up because you should cast Arcane Missiles to get another Nether Precision after you get 2 stacks of Aethervision. Players like you are being misled because this talent has made the rotation clunky, and it’s not any more intuitive or easy to understand than double dipping.

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It’s not only “fine” it’s what the vast majority of “non-elite” players do and why specs like Ret, which is the poster boy for that playstyle, have always been so popular with the masses.

I never gave my opinion on the optimal rotation. I just said that Aethervision, and more generally the mechanic of refunding charges on ABarr use, is an objectively good thing as it solves one of the longest standing problems with the spec. I further went on to say that while a good talent, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum and it currently clashes with too many other sources of the same effect. And yeah, optimal play is not necessary for virtually all but the most cutting edge content, so that’s also objectively true. Nothing I’ve said is inaccurate in any way.

Just because I choose not to do it and be sweaty or overcomplicate my life doesn’t mean I can’t if I need to. It’s just that I don’t feel the need to do it because I am at a stage in my life where I play games solely for the pleasure of it and not to be competitive in any way. But of course you wouldn’t know that about me because you don’t know me, so don’t be so quick to jump to conclusions.

I genuinely do not remember doing that (which probably means I did it so long ago I’ve since forgotten) but it certainly sounds like something I would do because I oppose any kind of involuntary data collection or harvesting by third parties as a matter of principle, regardless of how benign the use of the data might be. It’s an occupational hazard of my rl work as a lawyer. So yeah, it definitely makes sense but again not for the reasons you assumed. I see jumping to conclusions is something of a favorite pastime for you, lol.

I can see where you’re coming from but I still disagree. The talent in of itself does not make the rotation clunky. There is nothing clunky or unintuitive about a simple sequence like AM > ABx2 > ABarr. The problem, again, is that atm it clashes with too many similar effects, especially for Sunfury. So to recap, AV and what it tries to accomplish is a good thing and a sound move from a development standpoint but it doesn’t exist in a vacuum and the current rotation is indeed a mess (though not because of it) on top of being nerfed into the ground.

I expect said mess to be cleaned up at some point (hopefully soon) and in the meantime I plan to explore Spellslinger which I have been completely ignoring up to this point. What I am not going to do, however, is wring my hands over what was clearly a messy and rushed “balancing” patch plagued by a number of rash and, frankly, incompetent decisions.

Lastly, because you brought up “elitism” I feel compelled to point out that the reason so many of you guys are still up in arms over the whole double dipping fiasco is because from your perspectives it made all the sense in the world but for us “lesser” mortals it was just as clunky and unintuitive as you’re finding the current iteration. In other words the moral of this story is that it’s import to try and walk a mile in other people’s shoes so that you can better understand where they’re coming from.

P.S. The whole “elitist” discussion is incredibly ironic and amusing to me given my rl background where I guess I would be emblematic of that word given my circumstances and position in society but funnily enough it’s just the opposite for me in WoW. I guess that’s why I enjoy it so much and have for almost 20 years, we all like to pretend we are something different in the fantasy world, hence the escapism appeal. :joy:

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I am not misunderstanding anything. I am voluntarily choosing not to play optimally (1) because it’s unnecessary for the types of content I engage in and (2) because currently trying to do so is tantamount to torture, hence all of these threads popping up.

I completely agree and I said as much though apparently it wasn’t clear. So to reiterate once again, AV and what it tries to do is a good thing but when taken in the context of the way the spec currently plays, specifically Sunfury, the overall rotation becomes messy. It’s plain for everyone to see and I fully expect the devs to address it but we can be certain they’re not going to revert back to the double dipping so it may take longer to sort out. In the meantime, I suggest looking at Spellslinger, it’s what I intend to do anyway.

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I do agree with this, I find it to be a great add. I would recommend throwing barrage right away and not try to get the precision stack to go with it, because you are right that would create a terrible dead zone and misalignment with the next precision stack.

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I’m not going to reply to literally everything you posted, because most of it isn’t pertinent to the actual rotational feedback.

I’m just a bit confused that you admit you’re not doing the rotation, and you agree that the current iteration of the rotation is not as good as it could be. Also the issues AV brings applies to both of our hero talent trees. I’ve been playing Spellslinger in high keys and it’s just not as fun as it was a couple days ago. I’m trying to voice my concerns about the thing we agree on to the devs, but you come and try to argue it. I just really don’t see what your angle or motive is here. You just like that now there’s another proc that makes ABarr light up on your action bar?

My issue with AV is that in the context of how our class / spec plays it is bad. It’s not inherently or morally bad in isolation, obviously. But the addition of AV as it is currently, to how our spec plays currently, is really bad - worse than how it played before.

Last thing I’ll mention is you commented about how " you guys are still up in arms over the whole double dipping fiasco is because from your perspectives it made all the sense in the world". I think most players would agree (and I mentioned this in my original post!) that double dipping isn’t intuitive and it can restrict the design space for the devs. But if you didn’t utilize it you just lost out on some damage. If you didn’t know about it or didn’t care to utilize it you weren’t doing content that required that amount of damage anyways, so I’m not sure why it was such a major and urgent issue that the devs needed to rush out this new talent that completely changes the playstyle. Players like you still aren’t playing optimally and are missing out on the NP stack on their barrage because they’re not using AM before Abarr.

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You’re making it sound like I have some kind of hidden agenda, lol. I don’t, and for what it’s worth I think we agree on more than we disagree. I am not really sure how to explain it any better than I have already. I’ve done it twice, I guess I can go for thrice. :sweat_smile:

AV as a standalone talent is great. The idea of having ABarr refund its charges is great. Having that happen in a predictable fashion is great and AV accomplished that. I think we can all agree on these.

The problem is that there are currently too many effects that do the same thing and the fact that they very frequently overlap is problematic and has thrown a proverbial monkey wrench into the rotation. In this way it’s not unlike the proc munching that Frost has historically struggled with. Again, I believe we agree here too.

The one area of disagreement is on what to do about it.

I believe the right way to go about it is to double down on the general principle of AV and have highly visible procs that don’t require multiple WeakAuras to track properly and are based on intuitive mechanics. Something so fundamental to the base rotation should not require third party software and should be readily handled by the game’s native UI. Now, I understand that currently AV doesn’t accomplish that but it isn’t because AV is a bad talent that needs to be reverted, it’s because it clashes with all the half-measures that came before it, including the current 4 piece set bonus that was designed before AV was ever even envisioned. This has always been the biggest pain point with Arcane’s design. The devs just keep pilling on one thing after another in a haphazard fashion and without any consideration about counter synergy. That’s what’s happened here but we shouldn’t throw the AV baby out with the bathwater.

And then on the other hand you guys just want to go back to the double dipping, spell queueing extravaganza. But Blizzard aren’t willing to do that for reasons that have already been covered ad nauseam. So the best we can realistically hope for is that they smooth out the rotation (something that would happen naturally, at least to an extend, when the current tier set bonus goes away) and have AV fit better into it. In the meantime, if you don’t want to switch to SS just stay Sunfury and don’t take AV.

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11.02 sunfury arcane was such a joy to play so of course they butcher the entire spec by adding aethervision.

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Telling on yourself for not knowing how the spec fundamentally works is wild.

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Double dipping isn’t really something you even had to play around - it just made the rotation simpler by disincentivizing holding your Barrage proc for a new NP charge. With the double dip you just sent ABarr whenever it lit up and that was optimal.

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I like the idea of aether a lot

This isn’t a problem of idea, aethervision idea is awesome. This is an issue of tuning and implementation.

They should add some form of exclusion, so if you have nether precision it uses that first, after you used 2 stacks you get the buff, and your next ab utilizes aether, but not both aether and nether. This should bring back the cc 2 ab into barrage thing. While also still working in AOE, you use cc, get precision your next 2 barrages are nether precision empowered, the third one is aethervision.

Then buff to compensate for the fact that you can no longer use both buff into one barrage

This should solve the problem.

They might also wanna make a choice node with aether for something that favors sunfury a bit more since the mechanics are very similar, or just straight up buff sunfury, it has to cater around barrage though, or you’re just gonna keep spamming arcane blast. In fact the easier solution is probably just to buff sunfury to the point where it’s about as strong as slinger