Hey Blizzard,
Here are some thoughts regarding the recent changes for Arcane:
Overall Feedback
Great changes (outside of the Clearcasting change, which may have some issues)! Just a couple of nit-picks and some unresolved problems remain.
Changes from 5/21/24
Energized Familiar
- Energized Familiar now fires 4 bolts during Arcane Surge (was Time Warp or other similar effects).
- Feedback: Very good change, will have much higher uptime than if it only procs during Time Warp since we’ll gain this effect every 78 seconds.
Wizened Wit
- Wizened Wit decreases Arcane Blast cast time by 5% (was 10%).
- Feedback: I don’t think you are addressing the issue here. Wizened Wit is a DPS gain (via cast time reduction) for every single Arcane Blast, while PoM makes 2 Arcane Blasts have a 1.9% cast time reduction every 45 seconds. Even if you nerf Wizened Wit to be a 2% cast time reduction, this would still apply to every Arcane Blast casts, unlike for PoM. I have a suggestion lower down in this thread to address this issue but currently I don’t think you’re addressing the problem.
Clearcasting
- Clearcasting’s chance to trigger is no longer tied to mana spent, and now has a 10% chance of triggering when casting any damaging spell.
- You can no longer trigger Clearcasting by casting damaging spells while out of combat.
- Feedback: Starting with the obvious: removing the Clearcasting fishing out of combat is a great change, thanks for doing that. The other change to Clearcasting where it now happens on every spell cast is good in AoE but seems rather bad in ST for 2 reasons:
- Arcane Blast currently has a 27.5% chance to generate Clearcasting at 4 Arcane Charges, dropping that down to 10% feels bad
- Arcane Surge is no longer guaranteed to generate Clearcasting proc when used at max mana
- I think you can change this to simply say “Arcane Barrage has a 10% chance to generate Clearcasting when cast at 4 Arcane Charges” and keep Clearcasting as it was, maybe that would be better? I’m just worried this choice of proc nerfs single target pretty severely.
Arcane Battery vs Arcane Debilitation + Time Loop
- Arcane Battery removed
- New Talent: Arcane Debilitation – Damaging a target with Arcane Missiles applies Arcane Debilitation, increasing their damage taken from your Arcane Missiles, Arcane Barrage, and Arcane Blast by 0.5%/1% for 6 seconds. New stacks do not refresh duration.
- Time Loop has been redesigned – When you apply a stack of Arcane Debilitation, you have a 10% chance to apply another stack of Arcane Debilitation. This effect can trigger off of itself.
- Feedback: This from Arcane Battery to Arcane Debilitation is significantly better than the prior buff since the previous buff ran into the possibility that people might not talent into Aether Attunement and simply keep the +10% damage buff permanently. With this new version however, Time Loop feels significantly weaker, since before it not only gave you an extra stack of Arcane Battery, but it also got you 1 stack closer to Aether Attunement proc’ing. I would consider tuning the numbers for Time Loop (pending logs obviously), but 10% feels low to me.
Aether Attunement
- Aether Attunement has been redesigned – Consuming Clearcasting has a 15% chance to grant you Aether Attunement, causing your next Arcane Missiles to deal 150% increased damage to your primary target and fires at up to 4 nearby enemies dealing 100% increased damage.
- Feedback: Fantastic change; I love it.
Leydrinker
- Leydrinker has been redesigned – Consuming Nether Precision has a 15% chance to make your next Arcane Blast or Arcane Barrage echo, repeating its damage at 25% effectiveness to the primary target and up to four nearby enemies.
- Feedback: Even better change; phenomenal work
Surging Urge
- New Talent: Surging Urge – Arcane Surge damage increased by 5% per Arcane Charge.
- Feedback: So this is a cool idea, but it falls way short on damage. Arcane Surge, at the moment, only about 1% of total damage on Single target (Source #1 below) and only about 2.5 - 3% of total damage on AoE (Source #2 below). This means that Surging Urge only provides between 0.2% and 0.6% damage in the best of scenarios. I personally think this talent would need to get buffed by a good 500% - 1000% before people would consider taking it (i.e. Arcane Surge damage increased by 50% per Arcane Charge, up from 5%). I like the idea though
- Source for ST fight (Volocross, top Arcane Log US/EU):
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/kGzpqn4bRjNLPCQJ#fight=60&type=damage-done&source=157 - Source for AoE fight (Top Brackenhide Arcane key for US/EU):
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/fQk2RJpTjdCVXHyc#fight=107&type=damage-done&source=1
Suggested Changes
Improved Arcane Missiles, Crackling Energy, Chrono-Shift and Presence of Mind
- Feedback: Yeah we’re here again (for the hundredth time). Improved Arcane Missiles and Crackling Energy are still terrible talents that are very uninspired but increase your DPS by so much that they are unfortunately mandatory in all scenarios. I would like for these talents to be removed and replaced with Chrono-Shift (replacing Improved Arcane Missiles) and Presence of Mind (replacing Crackling Energy). I would love to be able to play with Chrono-Shift for the first time in 2 years, and I would also love to have Presence of Mind not compete with Wizened Wit so you can tune Wizened Wit however you want without worrying about making it kill PoM’s choice
AoE Build Problem
- Feedback: When you make a single target build with the current tree, you have a lot of options for different talents to pick and the tree feels very open at this time. I’m not seeing the same thing for AoE builds, where I’m forced to lose 2 of the three: Charged Orb, Arcane Tempo and Illuminated Thoughts. This feels really bad. One solution would be to just make some of these talents (i.e. Arcing Cleave) baseline; I’ll leave you to decide what to do about this
Siphon Storm
- Feedback: While I appreciate the nerf to that talent, I would like for an entirely separate choice node on it. I don’t want to keep pressing Evocation before Arcane Surge just to stack damage buffs for another expansion. Please Blizzard, I know you can do this. Many have suggested plenty of ideas before, you choose what you want to do.
Spellslinger Visuals and Scaling with Secondaries
- Feedback: I addressed this in a previous post, but I would like for you to make Splinters scale with secondaries (i.e. Mastery for the upfront damage, Mastery and Haste for the DoT portion), otherwise they run the risk of scaling poorly into later patches (like all specs w/ poor secondary stat scaling; i.e. WW Monk). Also, from a visual perspective, people are sad that this doesn’t look visually that great; these seem to look a lot like icicles. I was wondering if you could give this a lightning-esque aesthetic to make them look like they are little bolts shooting into their targets. Just a thought, but right now the visuals aren’t great
Thanks for reading, let me know your thoughts below! (Or not, sometimes I just post into the void; that’s fine too)