IMO the complication of Arcane has been largely because it is a melee caster, and doesn’t have immediate damage. Neither of this has changed. Clearcasting feels worse now to me, either that or I’ve just had a full night of bad luck on clearcasting procs. Another big part of what makes the spec difficult is that it has a lot of hard-casts in a movement based game and the casts don’t feel strong. At least fire’s hard pyroblast cast feels impactful.
Further, it seems like the “oomph” of what Arcane was good at is gone. Arcane had been really good at pumping damage into a single target before, now that prio damage seems to be gone but it is still just as AOE capped as it was before.
I feel like I’m endlessly arcane blasting without getting clearcasting procs, and even getting the proc doesn’t feel exciting because it doesn’t show up on the meters. I really hope I’m missing something, or it just needs tuning, but my initial impression is that the spec no longer has a cohesive design.
I know a lot of people didn’t like the way it was for Dragonflight, but I don’t think those people are suddenly going to start playing Arcane with this design. I would do a lot to get my old spec back, personally
I think the Single Target is fine, my problem is exclusively with the AoE, I really, really wish they would let go of Arcane Explosion already, it’s a spell that simply doesn’t feel good to press, even less than Arcane Blast.
Blizzard has a lot of designs that are the way they are “because they have always been” and Arcane Explosion is exactly that, I would love to have all my spells be ranged, in both AoE and ST, I don’t really play a Mage because I want to be in the middle of everything.
Arcane explosion could be fixed IMO pretty simply – give it a talent that puts the arcane explosion on your target.
That would be a minimal change as far as number-crunching a rotation goes but an infinite change to play-ability.
Often it is awkward to be ranged-but-not. Mechanics call on you being ranged, but you’re in melee. It is an added layer of awkwardness with the spec that was not addressed
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking, although they would most likely ask for a trade-off, either by making AE being less than 40y which would make it VERY awkward considering our other spells are, or adding a cast time. If the cast time was low enough I don’t think it would be much of an issue, but I am not a theorycrafter, so what do I know.
I do theorycraft my own builds though I don’t think that counts me as a “theorycrafter” by the community’s definition.
That being said, I’m not sure how you are not losing a ton of single-target damage. I am doing much worse prio since pre-nerf on every build I’ve tested so far. Maybe I haven’t found the right one, but then I would think if it were that strict it would mean everyone would run the same build when blizzard has said they are trying to move away from scripted stuff. I think a formulaic build just as bad as a scripted rotation.
But the previous spec, while it had a scripted build that everyone followed, was actually much more flexible than I think most gave it credit for. I think something that Arcane had this reputation of was that if you hit a button out of order your whole rotation was messed up.
I found, particularly in lower keys before this rework, that it wasn’t the case. Often that we were built around spending mana before gave a lot of flexibility.
For example in a given shorter pull it might have not been the BEST damage for that moment to not stack every buff and then do the perfect rotation, but as far as damage in the key overall went it did make sense because I could dump mana in a shorter pull, and then use surge to get it back … maybe even without evocation. So overall I wasn’t doing the “best” thing but the spec was actually quite flexible after learning not-perfect-but-appropriate rotations as the circumstance arrived.
Now it all feels kinda flat. It feels like we won’t do good damage unless we check all of those boxes, but that the damage overall is less even after checking all of the boxes. In a weird way, it was more forgiving before.
I really want to be wrong here! please someone show me the light!
Keep in mind, I didn’t really care about Arcane previous to this current rework, so I can’t draw comparisons and neither my gear is anything to write home about, I just found decent enough success with the current build(using the term loosely as I’ve only done a few low keys and hit the target dummy in the pre-patch), having tried both Preheat’s NP spellqueue build and my own slightly modified one that didn’t rely on it, I seem to be able to keep a 260k DPS consistently with a pretty massive burst in my ST opener, which is a bit more than my similarly geared Paladin even though geared and optimized Paladins are doing far better than geared and optmized Arcane mages, as I understand.
The only real thing I found annoying is that the Cooldowns don’t seem to line up properly… I think Evocation CD scales with haste? It’s always off-CD almost 12 seconds earlier than Surge and TotM and even after full casting AM and Orb Barrage I still usually have to wait 3-4 seconds, which is more than a full AB cast, so I usually have this 1 second of awkwardness before my Surge is off CD and I can properly do my opener again. Of course, the smart thing is to hold Evocation until the CDs are lined up a bit better, but it’s still a puzzle I am breaking my head against.
look at spriest and shaman , now both aoes are casted on target or like before w/o trade offs.
Arcane aoe at least is simple as hell , outside Cds u are using orb > abarr > hope for orb proc > abarr , if no proc u use your own orb or arcane explosion to build charges…
just need an aura for Aether attunement , AM on aoe its cool as hell.
the issue is nether precision on aoe , the leydrinket that on paper sounds cool …but far from it.
This is the part that feels very bad. If no CC procs happen then this feels very unsatisfying.
DF Arcane was super fun because you could use nether precision for AoE with a high-health “pack leader” as I call them. Then once touch finished swapping into AOE for the rest of the pull. It doesn’t feel like that results in as much damage currently…
What I have done in the past is burn some mana, then evo early. I haven’t tested it now, but as long as there were about 15 seconds left of the touch CD, I could still get a full big burn with the siphon storm buff. Also an added benefit was those 15 seconds were free mana since AS would refill it again. I’ll spend more time in front of the target dummy, I really want to like this spec still.
I spent so much time learning it, and it feels like a lot of that effort was wasted
Edit: Re-adding the nether-precision double-dip seems like a good plan, stuff like that needs to be considered when balancing the spec IMO since removing it winds up being a pretty big nerf