While I think there are a few outliers, I believe that most of us agree, having a 1 button rotation sucks. That said, I think the current style of rotation for Arcane is here to stay. So how can we improve smashing 1 button repeatedly for the majority of the boss fight? How about having something better to look at? I propose a glyph (so it’s optional) that changes Arcane Blast animation into a beam (so there is no missile travel time). And this beam scales with the number of charges you have. At 0 charges its a tiny laser and at 4 charges it large and in intense. This is a win win for everybody. And it would create a much better feeling to the class.
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I found a YouTube vid showing arcane back in woltk and it was basically a 1 button rotation back then. As awful as that playstyle is Blizz seems very determined to stick with it for this spec.
In pvp, it’s actually useful having your attack being very difficult to see by enemies. 1v1 it doesn’t make a difference but when you’re in a crowd and your target is engaged with someone already, your enemy won’t know what’s hitting him.
I could see that glyph being fun to use with arcane missiles though. It’s also a channeled ability which lends itself to a laser beam better.
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The idea behind it is that against a boss, if feels like your just waving your hands and doing nothing. Visually the spec is very boring when it should be very flashy, it is raw arcane power after all. Using a glyph for it gives it a visual and hopefully one that feels dynamic and impactful. But being a glyph, it’s totally optional so it won’t affect the pvp scene at all. When they redid the animations a while back it made a huge difference to the feel of the game play, usually in a positive direction. Personally I still prefer the old Arcane Missiles animation but that’s not what this is about. Giving an OPTIONAL beam animation to Arcane Blast in the form of a glyph I believe will make the spec feel so much better to play.
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I would like the spell effects of arcane barrage and blast to be swapped. Barrage looks so nice but it doesn’t get used as much as I would like.
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X2. I was thinking about the same before I read your comment
Arcane’s rotation is simple, but it’s not quite as simple as just mashing one button.
Arcane Blast at 4-stacks costs a ludicrous amount of mana. Spamming it is unsustainable for even a minute. During Arcane Power we spam it, then during the rest of burn it’s spam, plus cast Arcane Missiles when it procs.
But then during the conserve phase … which is most of each boss fight … the goal is to stay above 70% mana. This typically means casting anywhere from 3-6 Arcane Blasts, while watching our mana, and then resetting with Arcane Barrage, while casting Arcane Missiles on proc.
To a non-mage like the original poster it looks like all we’re doing is spamming Arcane Blast, since if you look at a damage meter that’s where all the damage appears to be coming from. Those players don’t realize arcane mages are actually spending substantial attention managing mana… something no other dps class has to do.
Is the arcane rotation pretty simply? … yes. But it’s not quite as brainless as OP thinks.
It should also be noted that arcane’s simplicity comes at a price: According to warcraftlogs Arcane is the worst DPS spec in the game.
This is not surprising, since arcane is very limited on what it does well. It’s good at stationary single target, awful at AOE, and has basically no cleave at all and is worthless on any cleave fight.
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Arcane blast got so ridiculous right around when ICC came out! Good times
Best time for Arcane Blast was actually in Burning Crusade during Tier 5.
Initially, when AB was added to the game it was unremarkable. DPS was ok, but not fantastic.
… until we got to Tier 5 and got the 2T5 set bonus. At the time the set bonus was “Increases damage and mana cost of Arcane Blast by 20%”.
What made this bonus so good was the increase to DPS scaled with AB stacks, but the increase to mana cost did not. The extra 20% mana cost only affected the unstacked AB mana cost, and was the same for every cast regardless of how many stacks you actually had.
This meant that at 0 stacks, the set bonus caused AB to do 20% more damage and cost 20% more mana. But at 4 stacks AB did 20% more damage at only 1.3% increase to mana cost.
Also in BC, Arcane Barrage did not drop stacks. The only way to drop stacks was to not cast AB for 10 seconds. That pretty much never happened so virtually every AB cast you made during a boss fight was at the full 4 stacks.
The rotation consisted of spamming 4-stack AB, and then moderating your mana consumption by periodically inserting Frostbolts. The goal was to adjust your rotation on the fly to control your consumption of mana. There was no fixed rotation… you had to decide on the fly whether it was time to insert a frostbolt and how many. If you did it right, just as the fight ended you hit zero mana with all mana regenerating abilities on cooldown (potions, mana gems, evocation).
Since the mana increase from the 2T5 set bonus was negligible, you could pretty much think of that set bonus as “increases your DPS by 20%”. It was a ludicrously powerful set bonus… the strongest tier bonus mages ever received. And it made arcane mages the top DPS spec for pretty much all of Tier 5.
Unfortunately, by Tier 6 other classes and fire spec started to pull ahead. Arcane was also forced to continue wearing 2T5 for the rest of the expansion.
Note that the 2T5 set bonus was nerfed to 5% in the WOTLK pre-patch,.
Amazing, I can’t believe you remember all that! I mained a rogue in BC, but I could not tell you the first thing about our set bonuses without doing some digging.
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I play arcane when I play mage. I have every class at level 110 or higher. I am speaking of experience. I know the rotation is more nuanced than just 1 button. however that 1 button accounts for than 50% of the buttons we press for rotation though play. And it’s a button with next to no visuals. A beam would just make it feel so much better to press.
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Hey is arcane viable in mythic nya?
First few bosses yes.
But at least in my experience, it’s utter garbage for the rest of the raid.
The main problems are the following:
- AOE v. Single-target - Arcane must pick either decent AOE and abysmal single-target, or good single-target with bottom-of-the-barrel AOE. It can’t really AOE and single-target dps adequately with the same spec and gear. This renders it useless for any fight that requires both, which is pretty much any boss fight with adds.
- Cleave - Arcane’s cleave is the worst in the game. No matter how you gear and spec, arcane’s cleave is virtually non-existent. This renders the spec almost unusable on any cleave fight. On a one-target fight you might do good damage. On a two-target fight you do the same dps as you did on the one-target fight while everyone else’s damage jumps 50% from cleave.
- Movement - arcane does best on single-target when it can stand and spam, like Wrathion. It sucks even on single-target fights if high movement is required, like Dog.
This is why Arcane is a below average spec overall for Mythic progression (per Warcraftlogs statistics). It does well on fights like Wrathion, but on others like Vexiona and Hivemind it is at or near the bottom.
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I dont see how it can be considered a one button spec just because one of our abilities accounts for the majority of our damage. Frost mage basically operates in the same exact way… spam frostbolt, glacial spike at 5 icicles, flurry when you get a brain freeze proc right after spike.
Honestly I would argue that frost is the easier spec since theres no burn or conserve phase focusing on mana, your rotation is the same throughout the entire fight.
At the same time, Arcane is the only caster class that has full control over its damage output and resources at ALL times, which is a very, very powerful perk of the spec.
The downside being the need to waste 5-6 gcd’s to get rolling.
No, not really. Charged Up removes the ramp up
For me it’s:
Charged up
Ring of power
Trinket
Arcane power
Then arcane blast spam.
My fifth GCD is actual damage.
Your trinket isn’t on the GCD.
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Touché. So only 4 gcd’s to deal damage.
Firstly, i think AB could do with some more love visually, alternatively to the beam it could have more feedback on the casters end like runes around the hands while casting and then a shockwave or something when it goes off as well as on the target.
But another component comes in play that we don’t really have a ‘wow’ moment in our rotation. I think that was filled in nicely in legion by pummeling the enemy with 3 charges of arcane missiles and rule of threes proc, so perhaps getting arcane missiles back to a place where they feel powerful again could help aleviate this as well.
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