Hi, so i have been playing WoW on and off since 2004, now as someone who enjoys arcane as a spec, the spec feels like wasted potential or very limited in the theme it explores, the only real interesting abilities they have to cast is arcane missiles and orb, everything else is just on target explosions, when in reality arcane could easily be so much more innovative…Summon portal? now it can be used in combat, and when done so will randomly open a portal to either the firelands, the void, the twisting nether, etc. and barrage them with magic energies, or even just opens a portal to some randomly place and barrage’s them with whatever can be found, arcane missles? can now be upgraded to apply various magical effects (can apply ignite, or create a frozen/arcane orb), arcane blast? well now it can be upgraded to launch of a swarm of arcane missiles based on how many charges you have, touch of the magi? can flare up and do random magical damage…and so on, its a spec with massive untapped potential
TL;DR: for the spec that’s designed around unpredictable arcane magic, it really doesn’t feel like I’m using unpredictable arcane magic
Something worth pointing out: Arcane magic in wow lore isn’t unpredictable. In fact, it’s the opposite. It’s the magic of Order and control. Fel is the school of magic that embodies chaos (hence Chaos Bolt). Personally I wouldn’t enjoy playing an arcane mage (in this universe) that was based around things happening randomly.
The lore behind arcane magic is that it is, in most cases, the foundation of the universe and is largely what allows it to exist. It is the magic of both Space and Time, so its theoretical uses are limitless. It is, however, volatile and it requires extreme skill and concentration to wield it properly.
That “skill and concentration” is why arcane mages are so mana-hungry. It takes a bit more effort to manifest the spells. That’s why the ebb and flow of “mana as a resource” made so much sense for so long. The spells arcane mages cast require a bit more finesse to wield correctly.
But in terms of the actual spells we use, yeah, it’s pretty boring. Most of our spells / talents are “Arcane (ouch)”. Not really a lot of flavor in that. Theoretically, an arcane mage should be able to manifest arcane magic as just about anything - yet our spells tend to boil down to “Purple and / or Blue Splash”. An interesting twist would be to allow Arcane Mages the ability to copy spells from other classes or enemies, but that’d probably be some combination of complicated, unintuitive, or too simple (if Blizzard tries to dumb it down).
You would have me fooled on the stability of arcane magic, it seems whenever a villain uses it, they die by their own magic rather then natural causes, while it is magic of order i believe it’s based on potential rather then control, it’s why arcane magic is blue, it’s essentially raw mana, which is exactly why it tends to be unstable (on top of it supposedly just straight up being blood of the titan) but over the years WoW has existed there has been great uses of it on various bosses/npc’s, so idk why blizzard chooses to be lazy with the spec
Think of arcane magic like radiation. It is very powerful but only if you can keep it under control. If controlled, you can power entire cities for hundreds of years. If you don’t keep it under control and let it melt down, it can and will kill you indiscriminately.
Most of the “I used too much arcane magic and it killed me” is a hubris thing. It’s an “I thought I could control it but I couldn’t” problem. Not so much a “huh… I expected something else…” problem.
Good thing they gutted the part with mana that actually made the resource interesting and a compelling part of the spec.
Yeah, I’m still a bit salty about that. The “mana as a resource” concept is what drew me to arcane.
But I’ll be honest I’d be okay if they removed the concept altogether - I’m getting tired of the “Mana matters, but not really” style that we’ve had for the last 3 or 4 expansions. Either it matters or it doesn’t. Please pick one.
It would be nice for them to explore more variety in terms of arcane, all the mage specs feel too samey, its really a matter of what flavour of magic would you rather throw, fire, ice or arcane themed magic, would be nice if there was some sort of variety in how they worked aside from different proc styles…they did it with warlocks, they can do it with mages too
Yeah, I always wish they leaned into manipulation-of-space as a theme (especially since Evokers got time magic). Give me black holes, gravity waves, telekinesis, quantum-tunneling type magic…enough with the purple “Arcane [Shape/Thing]”, I want to port around the map and screw with the fabric of reality lol.
Yeah, the spec just feels really underwhelming, esp since many others definitely have been improved over the years
if you search arcane on the wiki, it being ‘volatile’ is one of the first things mentioned. it is unpredictable and unstable by nature.
Volatile doesn’t mean unpredictable, it means “not-stable”. A volatile reaction can be uncontrollable, but that doesn’t mean it produces random results, just that the reaction is uncontrolled.
volatile does mean unpredictable. it also means difficult or impossible to control. why is this a point of contention
Volatile can mean unpredictable. There are several different definitions of the word, “unpredictable” being one of them. Merriam-Webster says:
characterized by or subject to rapid or unexpected change (emphasis on the ors in the sentence)
which means it could be “unexpected change” but it could also be “rapid change.”
Definitions and word-choice aside, in lore it’s the magic of the titans, and what they used to order the cosmos. It’s opposite is Fel magic, which we also define as disorder magic, which we usually just refer to as “chaos” magic. Chaos is much more aligned with the concept of unpredictability.
Now, I’m not saying that wow lore has ever been consistent in any way shape or form in the way it handles magic and schools of magic, but for the most part, arcane in wow is more of an “I tried to cast an explosion and accidentally leveled a town” than an “I tried to cast fireball and accidentally turned my friend into cheesesteak” in terms of predictability. Yes, there is absolutely still a ton they could do differently, but I would want to steer it clear of becoming a Dungeons and Dragons Wild Mage.
I’ve been arc since the early days, i dont remember was it 2006 i started I think?
I miss the ‘flavor’ arcane had back then. In those days, it was sorta similar to magic the gathering. Spells has their original creation and there didn’t exist as many talents to increase dmg or spell effects outright like we have now. But arcane was sort of like “blue magic” from mtg, where it altered the rules. So in a way, it wasn’t damage… it was instead stuff like extra protection, resistance and just unique changes to spells, unique to arcane only.
It was more lore-depth. A mage who spent x years of their live, practicing the nuances and specialty of arcane to modify how things worked, to do things that were utterly unique to fire and frost, where one was just “pure dmg” and one was “pure control”. Slow was hardly used. At the time, i was told by almost everyone “you’re the only person i’ve ever seen run arcane”. It was the same on priest too, where only a tiiiny few people ever ran discipline.
If you were to immerse yourself in the LORE of the game and imagine what arcane would be, it would be way more magical… dipping toes into forbidden magics such as time specifically, or rewinding time or better shields and core abilities enhanced by a mage who was more fluent with those magics.
They changed arcane at some point, redefining it as “pure dmg”. In ways, this was a positively received change… who would scoff at damage? No one, thats who. But we lost the flavor and uniqueness of arcane. Its not so much a talented mage who learned the “secrets of the arts” but instead we just became another kind of fire. Where one is “rahhh derp DAMAGE herp derp” to “raahh derp arcane DAMAGE herp derp” and I never felt like it was as immersive. Instead, it became complicated, convoluted, weird. They gave time magic to the dragons, and over time all the unique things we had, such as better shields (prismatic barrier and mana barrier, remember those?) to frost and fire. Now they have multi-barrier. Our Slow, which was by far the most UNIQUE and magical ability, is overrun by frost’s consistent snaring, and even fire has snaring with blast wave. Warlocks exhaustion is 10xs better. And we used to have cast speed slow included, which was given to locks as well. The unique mobility was put into the general mage tree, so its no longer unique to arc - fire and frost can get lower blink cds and displace too. And even time anomaly, or greater invis, which USED to be unique to arcane, is now basic-mage-tree. They just took all the uniqueness out, gave it to all mages across the board, and the few spells we have left that are unique, are kinda outclassed.
Arcane orb is rather outclassed by frosts orb, it snares, generates resources AND lasts a long time. Ice wall is amazing. Ring of fire is amazing. We get arcanosphere… no resource generation, and it can miss.
TLDR: arcane is just weird. One silence and you’re totally locked out. The high damage you get when the stars align is praised, but in truth its not amazing, not really. Just cause you can sometimes do amazing isn’t justification towards consistency. Its the same as the lottery, “yea grandad blew 40k of his retirement playing the pick 6 everyday… but if you win the lotto just once boy is that cool! I guess gambling can be worth it in the end.”
yeah, none of this information is new. i simply think you’re overemphasizing the notion that arcane magic is really ‘ordered,’ when beyond seeing the titans act like neurotic landlords, nothing has really come of that theme. arcane magic and fel magic were at one time the same thing in the lore, and the only reason they were differentiated was due to quantity. but also, even warlocks are not wild magic sorcerers from dnd, blizz just doesn’t have the brainjuice to think of it
Arcanes hero talents are a bit bog, It would be cool if we got more telekinesis powers, picking things up and throwing them, warping enemy spells and reflecting them, ripping weapons out of enemies hands. Maybe being able to just fly around using arcane powers idk
You do know that mage and its specs don’t really define arcane magic very well right? Mages aren’t limited to spells that the player can cast. Mages in wow lore can do WAY more then we are allowed. Not just fire and frost, but water (the Kirin tor during the third war preferred frost and water spells) and lighting (Medivh conjured lighting many times in lore). Conjuration, protection spells (Antonidas was a prodigy with protection magic), telekinesis, animation of objects etc.
WE are just limited for gameplay purposes, that it.
And while arcane magic is the magic of order its is also addictive and hard to control.
Blizzard making Arcane be the magic of order was always confusing since everything prior to that, and a lot of things after that, present arcane as volatile, chaotic, and unpredictable in its natural state. Just look at Netherstorm. Or even more recently the “Wild magic” in Dragonflight. Even the Spellslinger hero talent explicitly state it’s inherently unstable.
It was never the magic of order until Blizzard made that stupid cosmic chart, and even afterwards Blizzard doesn’t present it as such. Even moving most of the Titan based Order nonsense to Light magic.