Why is our best AoE option tied behind RNG? (Orb Barrage)
Other classes can do consistent AoE damage EVERY mob pull in mythic+. I’m pretty sure most class AoE rotation isn’t tied to RNG. Hell even our 4pc is tied behind RNG. It feels so wrong. Don’t get me wrong those orb barrage procs are nice when they do proc but the consistency sucks.
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Was just thinking this. At max, 40% chance to shoot a unbuffed arcane orb. So sad
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Partly because the original orb barrage was pretty garbage, partly because people begged for Mantle of the First Kirin Tor to come back, partly because the design team has no idea what to do with arcane and hasn’t for some time, partly because RNG is the exact opposite of our ST rotation and makes at least AoE a bit less mechanical, partly because slot machine rotation go brrrr.
I don’t think Blizzard likes making Arcane Explosion powerful. It’s a simple spell and if it was too strong in AoE, AoE would be pretty uninteresting to play. Spamming 1 button is boring, even if it’s winning.
Arcane Barrage has a bit of an identity crisis - it’s both our Single Target and Aoe spender. The more powerful they make it for AoE, the more powerful it gets for Single Target. The more powerful it gets for single target, the more likely we are to be a generic builder-spender rotation that just generates and spends charges (which arcane isn’t really, at least on paper). And, theoretically, the more likely we are to be able to do way too much damage in too short a window.
Making either of those 2 spells too strong individually would likely make for some degenerate gameplay. So what we’re left with is Arcane Orb for AoE (since they refuse to make Supernova a real spell and Nether Tempest can only exist on one target and has no abilities that really interact with it). Arcane Orb is a great way to build arcane charges. Building and spending charges more frequently but only in AoE situations gets that balance between not making a spell too strong, but allowing us to cast it more to get more effectiveness out of it.
But if Orb Barrage was a 100% chance, there’d be no randomness in our AoE rotation at all. We wouldn’t use Clearcasting procs. We wouldn’t cast Arcane Explosion. We wouldn’t even need to cast orb. Once you hit 4 stacks of arcane charge - that’s it as long as you have 4 targets. It’d be Arcane Barrage on repeat. Which brings us back to the “one button rotations are bad”) problem.
I think Blizzard is moving in the right direction with Orb Barrage, but I don’t think we’re there yet. In ST we have a script that we follow. But in AoE it feels like an actual rotation that can change from fight to fight based on RNG. Right now we’re just too reliant on RNG to be able to do what most other classes seem to be able to do every pull. If our averages were a bit higher, I could understand it. But when I have a perfect AoE pull where everyting procs, I used my cooldowns effectively, and we had an optimal number of mobs but I’m STILL third on damage, it doesn’t feel good.
I could easily be doing something wrong, but why play the slot machine for a chance at something that you could by for less than the cost of a spin?
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Truer words have not been spoken on the WOW forums.
They don’t but it still has to do more than it does now.
Mmm not sure I’m with you 100% on this. What it needs is to hit more targets which doesn’t really affect ST. Now sure if they make it hit the primary target harder, but this isn’t what needs fixing.
#backtoWODsupernova
Should not exist if it’s sole purpose is to buff arcane echo. Talents buff spells/skills, not the other way 'round.
Which is why it needs a 10% or perhaps 20% buff to it’s proc chance, but not make it 100%. Sure those planetary alignment pulls where you pop off 9 in a row are fun, but then you get the pulls where it doesn’t proc at all. Karmic justice? Yes. Fun? No.
I misspoke above. Truer words than this have never been spoken on the WOW forums.
Every mage dev should read this ^. Except there are no mage devs so DOH! 
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It’s cold in here.
I’d like to see nether tempest “infect” all mobs hit by it so it becomes a nice DoT drain that persists for the whole mob pull. Since it’s such low dmg, this would at least give it a useful life and a steady AOE drain. They could even lower the duration quite a bit.
Totally agree on SuperNova!!! Make it a beast! A nice interior with big dmg and Maybe even leave a burn behind like meteor used to (I miss having access to that spell even if it sucked). Could be a fantastic AOE option, but it’s right now left in obscurity.
I’ve come to think there is a mage Dev, but they just have a really specific idea about how arcane is “supposed” to play, and that vision isn’t shared by any of us playing it, so they double down on things that we don’t like. But they’ve had some wins in design. Orb barrage in my opinion is a big win. The new 4-piece effect if they kept as a talent capstone would be awesome. I like mass barrier, as it highlights to everyone in the group “I’m here to help!” But with a handful of wins, they really do have some glaring issues they just won’t admit. We’ve called em out lots of places, but they don’t have an ear for it.
As many of you know I share your concerns with Arcane’s rotation and build variety, particularly on ST. However, I don’t think our AoE shares a lot of the issues that we have on ST and minor cleave. There’s some build variety there and I’ve had very effective DPS (usually first, sometimes second if there’s a DH or BM or I played poorly) in the 20-24 key range.
Arcane Surge, Touch with Missiles dumping, the tier set (Arcane Battery), and orb barrage rotations generally do a good job of covering my DPS. I do exceptional (talking 1.2M-ish DPS) if I get a really good chain of orb barrage procs but otherwise I do competitive DPS if I’m unlucky in the worst case scenario. It mostly boils down to good cooldown management for packs, which is something Arcane has had to deal with since time immemorial.
I do run Harmony so I get extra crunchy missiles, especially in execute phases and especiallly after a Battery proc. I also just pump CC missiles into touches (without the weaving) for particularly large pulls so I get juiced up barrages in between orb weaving.
That being said, I do think we could use some fixes for AOE.
I Just avoid RS and Evocation like the plague. I don’t want to rely on the tank for SS uptime and I don’t want to deal with Radiant Spark on AOE (it’s annoying as hell).
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Nether Tempest feels terrible to use. Just make it autoapply during touch casts and have it extend when you use missiles if they want to keep it.
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Remove the knockup on Supernova and just make it a tactical nuke.
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Buff Surge substantially. It’s pathetic on its own.
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I’d love NT if it could be placed on multiple mobs. I think it was this way in MoP?
Maybe tie NT to auto apply on clearcasting procs - either Missiles or Explosion. That’d be neat looking.
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I may give it another shot, I do miss the big hits it gives. I’m ready to be hurt again.
Just treat it passively! Only track it for purposes of not overstacking it, like making sure you don’t waste stacks from the 4pc (which take it to 20 instantly).
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An AoE spender with a shortish cooldown and 100% chance to proc the orb would be cool. Keep the 40% to Barrage if there’s a guaranteed proc on an ability with ~10s cooldown.
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Did a test run, very different than what my tempo has been for a long time. Not stacking evocation is a weird feeling. On the upside, you never really run low on mana because you barrage so much you just get it back. Also AOE with Harmony is like melting butter, every battery turns into a barrage+battery+barrage with big numbers, it’s pretty fun, but on Single Target, man I can’t get that to work with Harmony very well. But might be because of time anomaly…maybe I won’t take that.
I run anomaly too and it works great.
On ST bosses you just need to make sure you still follow a standard-like rotation. Spend some CC before bursting and bank a few so you battery in burst. Barrage when you touch like normal. The main difference is that you also end your touch with a barrage cause it chunks, esp in execute.
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So I get the frustration, I really do, because having to rely on RNG generally sucks. However, I don’t think this applies to Orb Barrage because what would be the alternative? If Orb Barrage was “consistent” aka 100% then AE would have no place in the rotation at all. Furthermore, the real problem is not with Arcane’s AoE (aside from maybe a slight numbers tuning) but more to do with the nature of M+ which will always favor classes and specs that have strong burst AoE on short cooldowns (DHs I am looking at you). They will always dominate trash AoE and a spec like Arcane just can’t compete with that. But more importantly, at the end of the day all that insane trash AoE is just number patting and it doesn’t really matter who gets to delete a pack as long as they die quickly. Frankly, if damage meters did not exist no one would even know or care about this.
For my part the only reason I was forcefully asking for that is because I am a pragmatist and I knew that realistically the devs would choose the most low effort solution to fix the truly terrible original version of that talent and replacing it with MotFKT fit that to a tee. Was it a perfect solution? Not really, but we can’t really let perfect be the enemy of good, especially when we’re dealing with developers who have clearly demonstrated that they have no idea how to make the spec work and very little desire to figure it out.
That’s generous. It’s got a full blown split personality disorder! And again, just like the Orb Barrage to MotFKT it could be fixed just as easily (if equally imperfectly) with the addition of a single talent that makes ABarr hit for significantly more damage per Arcane Charge if it only hits one target. Then suddenly all the confusion and unintuitive nature of Arcane’s ST disappears and the new default becomes AB to four charges into ABarr. This will also have the added bonus of entirely eliminating the mana management aspect of Arcane, which let’s face it just doesn’t work anymore and has gone from being a core mechanic of the spec to a mere nuisance, and also making Haste a great stat for Arcane instead of something we have to actively try to keep low which is ridiculous and not something any other spec has to deal with. There are always going to be stats that are better and stats that are worse but no other spec has to deal with a stat that will actively tank your DPS if you have too much of it.
Exactly.
I’m glad it works for you. I’ve tried a couple more runs and it has such potential, I just can’t make it line up for me. My biggest hangup is tracking harmony ticks and arcane charges…nothing feels worse than throwing barrage at 20 stacks and zero charges into a single target flop! On the other end is when it comes together and you BAM max stacked harmony with full charges, it throws an orb and you hit battery into another full harmony/charge and it’s fantastic. From the runs I’ve done, the fantastic doesn’t line up for me. But I see the potential man, if you’ve made it work my hat is off to you! (and by now the triggers are probably second nature to you) I can’t get there, so I’ll shrink back to my hole.
Yeah it’s really not for everyone. I played with Harmony throughout the entire first season of SL and the frustration from that experience was probably a big factor contributing to me quitting that entire expansion.
Could Orb barrage would work at 60%?
Also they should make Nether Tempest a permanent (DoT). That would free up a global. It should have a chance to spread to other enemies, max 3 cap. IMO
Or they could make the spell increase in speed during the duration? idk
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Maybe they could just make Radiant Spark and Nether Tempest (buffed if such change to be made as it would “receive a CD”) into optionally picked passive effects attached to Touch of the Magi, since they are often used together anyway. That would reduce both number of CD stacking and Arcane’s ramp-up time significally and might make its flow smoother.
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Yes.
No.
Speed isn’t the issue, damage is. NT serves no other function than to buff arcane echo which is bad design.
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Nether Tempest (and Arcane Echo by extension) would be better off being removed from the kit altogether. I recognize that Arcane Echo can still synergize with dumping a bunch of clearcast missiles into a touch, but it fights with Nether Precision (which I still think is an overall win in our talents). I’d rather see them lean into NP more OR provide talent options that can accommodate both styles.
Tempest just isn’t interesting. It’s a dot in a non-dot class. If it’s strong, it becomes a maintenance debuff. If it’s weak, it exists only to trigger Arcane Echo. Neither case is very compelling. They either need to add more interactions with our other abilities or drop it.
Radiant Spark would also be better off not in our kit. Personally, I kind of like the idea behind it, but we already have so many other buffs and debuffs to keep track of. Of the bunch it feels the least impactful. Harmonic Echo still feels like a giant band-aid to our “trouble with cleave” problem that would be better off being fixed in a more interesting and useful way.
Re: buffing orb barrage to 60%, I think I’d like to see it at 12.5% per charge with an additional 10% while Touch is out and an additional 20% during Surge. That’d make it
- 0% at no charges
- 50% at 4 charges
- 60% at full charges during touch
- 80% at full charges during touch AND surge
No no no Arcane Echo is one of the best mechanics we’ve had in a long time. I don’t think prioritizing NP over it is a good approach at all.
I’d argue that the spec would be healthier if two things were done
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Echo had an automatic proc at set intervals to mimic the effect of NT (with NT removed or the interaction changed) OR have Touch auto apply NT on the cast.
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NP is made to be stackable so that you aren’t necessarily forced to weave when you have no reason to.