A question to the masters of the arcane. Why does Arcane have the blandest spell effects of the three schools. How come you guys don’t have a jaw dropping spell animation like the archon disintegrate spell?
https://youtu.be/OBM__Gm8CLM?t=7
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Or arcane blade, i can summin blades and just impale my enemies when i got all charges up, look cooler than that arcane barage piece of crap
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REAL mages like Jaina study magic from the masters of old. That’s how they learn to cast spells with amazing visual effects like Jaina’s Arcane Broadside.
PLAYER mages like us study magic by reading “Arcane for Dummies”. Unfortunately, the spells contained inside were meant for idiots and only contain the blandest of the bland effects.
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Good question. Arcane Missiles looks pretty good to me, but Arcane Blast has almost no animation. Arcane Barrage and Arcane Explosion are fine, but they aren’t impressive.
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I would not mind seeing some new animations or even skills for this spec. Say what you will about Diablo 3, but the spells for the wizard, especially for the arcane skills, are visually impressive.
Arcane deserves a giant laser beam.
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I think Blizzard developers do not like arcane and would rather forget the spec exists. Consider the following:
- Frequency of graphics updates:
- Arcane didn’t receive updates to its core spell effects until the BFA pre-patch. Prior to that Arcane Missiles and Arcane Explosion had not received a graphics update since WoW’s launch nearly 14 years earlier.
- Until the BFA pre-patch, Arcane Blast had not received a graphics update since the launch of TBC 11 years earlier.
- Arcane Barrage received one graphics update. I forget when it occurred, but I think it was before the BFA pre-patch.
- Evocation is the only spell that had multiple updates. Over WoW’s course it received 2 or 3 graphics updates.
- In contrast, over the course of WoW’s history, virtually all core fire and frost spells received regular updates. Fireball, Pyroblast, Frostbolt and Blizzard each received something like 3 different updates. Flamestrike received one update.
- Years ago, when just about every other class was getting major updates, the only change mages got was “Evocation has a new unique icon”.
- It’s pretty clear much more attention has been paid to fire and frost. Arcane is really just an afterthought spec. Based on how frequently arcane gets a graphics update, I would expect the next one in maybe 11 years.
- In Shadowlands, all the developer attention for mages appears to be going to fire and frost specs. Arcane is getting virtually nothing except a major nerf to arcane power (double the cooldown). It’s obvious they just do not care for the spec.
- In BFA, Arcane is a garbage spec in PVE useless for dungeons and raiding. It can’t do adequate AOE and single-target damage with the same gear and cleave is virtually non-existent. Shadowlands is doing nothing to address these shortcomings.
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I can’t help but agree. I like the idea behind arcane, but it seems like a half baked idea. You have to enter melee to AOE properly but the spec does not support this by giving you adequate defenses. It is supposed to be the best at single target, but fire has it beat soundly. You need to stand still to cast, but the game wants you to be as mobile as possible. As you’ve mentioned it can’t cleave very well.
When I think of an arcane mage I imagine someone who has mastered the energy of magic itself. You don’t see that in WoW. This spec should have all kinds of tricks that make it stand out, and it should have the visuals to match.
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Still think they need to re-emphasize arcane spec as more a of a timemage/chronomancer aspects than just blue-ish sparkles. Alter time becoming baseline is nice change…though all 3 specs get it.
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That would be cool. The Elisande fight definitely had aspects of this.
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There is so much detail that could be added to amp up arcanes visuals, much of which failed in translation from its older counterparts.
My top criticism would be that in the casting of all mage spells particularly arcane, there are no runes around the hands. In pretty much all of their media showing mage spell casting from cinematics, to concept art, to the movie all have mages using runes and there even is a flash of the runes on older spells when used and still visible when using some like blink. I think it would add heaps of flavour to the spells over just some purple sparkles.
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arcane blast - the spell release effect when it finishes casting only displays an effect on one hand which is fine for casters who use only one but for those whose animations include two handed casting really irks me. Also, with high haste often the spell effects of the building energy or rune explosion on the target do not show at all.
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rune of power - it used to have an aura indicating its range which at some point disappeared.
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arcane explosion - used to have an impact effect when it hit enemies, it would be good to have it back again, even subtle to know its doing something.
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arcane barrage - wish it had a bigger impact visual, quite underwhelming considering it is essentially the end of our rotation and release of all the power from the arcane charges, like when you had the legion trait that exploded when you hit three targets.
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arcane power- this really needs some more glow or 3D effects of lightning coming off of your model as the effect is too subtle for what it is trying to convey both lore wise and visual language for the player.
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They could easily just give us the focusing iris active and satisfy all the mages wanting a laser for arcane. I personally feel that arcane blast should have increasing visual effects as we build charges. There could even be glyphs to change the impact visual to swords or w/e that others have suggested. Some really easy and minor things to please a lot of people but they just dont do it. 
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Yeah I will always support any idea of giving that spec a proper laser beam! Arcane blast should look and feel impactful as well. Here’s hoping they get inspired to improve the spec and the visuals.
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I really want a “chargin mah lazor” effect. Maybe spending mana banks energy to cause it to do more dmg. I really wish our spells had more interactions other than AB and AE to build charges and ABa to spend them. And thats not really even an interaction.
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I’m leveling my mage now, and I really like the idea behind the talent Time Anomaly. I don’t know how good it is at max level, but thematically it fits. It just feels likes this spec should be slippery to pin down and de-buff, and have a whole bag of tricks to deploy. The talent slipstream, for example, should work on more abilities too.
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I agree. I like the idea of being super elusive. Time Anomaly is fun but is overshadowed by the other two talents unfortunately. I enjoy being able to have as many blinks as melee have gap closers. I love instant invis but hate that its tied to our defensive. I’d rather be able to pop in and out of invis more frequently and have our damage reduction separate.
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Over and over again these points are brought up in feedback and yet nothing is changed. And they are listening to feedback; fire got some updates along with a blue post.
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Weren’t they also supposed to do something about the number of GCD’s arcane has to burn through before they can start to DPS?
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Well that is a major concern for arcane players, however instead of shortening the amount of ramp up time and GCDs needed Blizzard decided to give us even more.
I heard you wanted some GCDs with your GCDs. It is like spitting in the wind if you play an unfavored spec.
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yes, they haven’t even made a blue post addressing these very issues. it’s very concerning because i’m a hardcore arcane fan, been playing it since burning crusade.
It would be nice if Arcane Blast’s animation was an Arcane explosion on impact, big explosion. Arcane missles are fine, however, the colors could be more interesting. As if each missile was slightly a different color. More prismatic. Would also be cool, if Arcane explosion faded out as it got bigger and also were different prismatic colors every cast.
1 Like