Arcane Fix Suggestion
I believe the current version of arcane has major flaws in its design that make the spec feel terrible outside of the “burn phase” and also, in my opinion, don’t quite fit into their class fantasy. I’ll start with what I think is the most glaring issue:
#1 Conserve phase rotation. When you enter conserve phase, the typical “conserve” rotation consist of 4 arcane blast into barrage or orb + 2AB into barrage. First thing to note, is that arcane blast deals no dmg until at least 3rd charge to 4th charge, what this means is that we are CONSTANTLY ramping up damage during our conserve window. We are not a DOT class, its like having a lock refresh dots every 6secs and only getting 1 sec of full dmg on their dot. I would propose that Arcane Blast deal a flat dmg irrelevant of arcane charges. Secondly, dumping the 4 charges into barrage also feels terrible in single target rotation. To elaborate, the sum of the rotation makes it feel terrible, you ramp up your arcane charge for 3-4 secs to dump in barrage, which incurs a global cd making it feel slow. I would propose that barrage be reserve for cleave and aoe scenario and that arcane missile CAN be used (as strong as clearcast) for ST rotation, not ot mention we barely cast the ability to begin with when its possibly the most iconic arcane mage ability… odd design choice.
Lastly, I would make arcane blast mana cost negligible and move the mana cost to arcane missiles. With the right tuning, the conserve rotation would be a straight 4 AB (flat dmg) into AM + clearcast AM and it would feel great, smooth out the dmg profile and remove the ramp up and global cd that barrage adds to ST.
#2 Class/rotation fantasy. So the design is to burn mana to deal damage. I would argue that arcane mage would be best at handling mana, why would fire and frost not burn any mana at all, but the master of arcane does? On top of that, arcane power presumes that the arcane mage enters like an overcharged state and yet… we conserve more mana? Doesn’t quite make sense? I would suggest the opposite, move away from the constant burning of mana design and instead make it so that arcane power spends MORE mana. So that your burst window consist of burning mana just the same, but its because arcane power and not our ability normal mana cost.
The reason why is that Arcane mage is the only dps spec that feels burdensome to play. The best example is M+, where you feel tempted to sit down and drink between pulls whenever you can… this is the only dps spec that goes through this. Picture you’re in TOP on a high key, you’re 2 pulls away from the boss. The first pull is a big group of adds that hit really hard, so you use a complete AOE rotation to maximizes dmg and when done your group immediately goes to the next add. This 2nd pull is a beefy add with a lot of HP (specially on fort), ur already on 50% mana because you were spamming aoe on the prior pack. Your options are #1 conserve mana (and do no damage) and #2 use arcane power (it wont be up for boss). You may choose to use mana agressively, but you may be forced to use evocation and not have it up for boss. The point is no other dps spec has the need to sit down and drink or feel like they would benefit if ideally they could get 100% mana. Fortunately, prideful does help with this… but its only a band aid.
Thanks.
I forgot to specify, on #1 what I meant is ideally to move the mana cost from AB to Arcane Missiles. And instead, have the arcane charges empower AM AND lower its mana cost.
Actually, I like arcane’s design and think the gameplay is fine.
Unfortunately, as a spec it still fails to deliver. Frankly, I think arcane needs just one thing to make it better: Clearcast does not proc nearly enough.
Triple the proc rate and the rotation would be much more engaging and it would provide competitive dps.
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I disagree, thats pretty much frost gameplay (heavily dependent on procs), except frost can reliably proc fingers on command with orb. We don’t really have any iteration of that in arcane plus it’s technically the same thing I’m suggesting? What are you going to use the clearcast on? Arcane Missiles.
Also, by engaging I think this is where talents should step in. I main MMs hunter, and the rotation is very straight forward, but depends on the raid fight you change multiple talents for cleave, aoe, two target cleave and its a smooth gameplay that doesn’t really interrupt the core rotation for MM. Or you can also think of destruction warlock, they just manage embers and decide if to spend it on chaos bolt or rain of fire. You can transpose all of that with 4 arcane chages and your choice is AM or Arcane barrage with clear scenarios for both.
Unfortunately, Blizzard has proven time and time again to be unable to balance Arcane as it is currently designed. The role of the DPS is to be doing as much damage as possible at all times, which contradicts Arcane’s design. This will become extremely apparent the next M+ season when Prideful is gone and Arcane will be forced to either be stingy with mana on trash or sit and drink between pulls.
Arcane needs a complete redesign. I see 3 possible design futures for the spec.
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Arcane Charge is turned into a resource bar, and Arcane becomes a builder/spender spec which is divorced from mana.
- New Secondary Resource: Arcane Charge. It’s an actual resource bar.
- Builders: Arcane Blast / Arcane Explosion / Arcane Orb
- Spenders: Arcane Missiles / Arcane Barrage / Nether Tempest
- Arcane Power - Increases Arcane Charge generation and reduces Arcane Charge costs.
- Clearcasting - Allows a spender to be cast without consuming Arcane Charge.
- Evocation - REMOVED
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Blizzard copies FF14’s Black Mage design which has a much faster burn/conserve playstyle with rapid switching between cycles that isn’t gated by a cooldown like evocation.
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Blizzard gives Arcane the Survival Hunter treatment and completely redesigns the spec into something completely different. I could probably see them turning it into a melee battlemage spec.
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I like your first suggestion, that seems very clear cut and intuitive. I would be very grateful for the removal of evocation. I’m fine with No.2, but I think that would require adding new spells to justify the ramp up and down of a black mage. No.3 LMAO that would be interesting, like a Diablo 3 build of arcane.
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That would help bring us more in line with the way the Arcane functioned in Legion but it will still come up short because we don’t have the massive power boost that Aluneth gave us (both the weapon itself and the active ability). On top of that the SL legendaries are a joke when you compare them to their Legion counterparts. This holds especially true for Arcane because we actually only got 3 legendaries instead of 4. Both Fire and Frost got the legendaries that proc Meteor and Frozen Orb respectively but for whatever reason Arcane did not get their legendary that can proc Arcane Orb on ABarr cast, arguably the most fun of all the Mage legendaries in Legion. So when you take all of that into account even if the CC proc rate is dramatically buffed we still won’t be at Legion levels of strength.
The problem with Arcane is that it’s torn between being a pseudo combo point spec (Arcane Charges into ABarr) and a spender spec (burning mana). Unfortunately, it fails at both of those which is why it fees so lackluster.
It fails at being a combo point spec because that kind of play style requires instant cast abilities which can generate those points quickly and while on the move which then allows them to throw out their nuke and keep up a dynamic pace throughout the entirety of an encounter. Arcane can’t do that because AB is an ability with a cast time and dropping the charges makes the cast time glacially slow. On top of that ABarr doesn’t hit nearly hard enough, even with legendaries and Resonance, to make up for the enormous DPS that comes from the subsequent long and tedious ramp up process.
Arcane also fails at being a spender spec because it has no build potential. That is to say the archetype is a builder/spender. Arcane has the spender part down but has no abilities that generate a resource aside from Evocation which is on a very long cooldown. This is further complicated by the fact that Arcane’s resource is mana, a slowly regenerating resource that is antithetical to what the modern game demands of a DPS spec.
With all of that in mind I believe that the only way to address all of the issues facing the spec is to give it a major overhaul and turn it into a builder/spender spec not unlike what was done with the current iteration of Shadow. The alternative would be to double down on the combo point play style but that just doesn’t work for casters, it’s a melee thing. Either way though something major has to be done because Arcane is currently a hodgepodge of outdated and mismatched toolkits that simply do not address any of the modern mechanics the game throws at DPS players.
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There’s a 4th that you missed: arcane goes away like Blizzard wants and mage joins DH as the only classes with just 2 specs.
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We have a winner!
Also doing DHs with only two specs would be Hunters and Warlocks as well with the deletion of Demonology and Survival.
Demonology–I honestly just can’t fathom why they can’t make that spec work. It’s a fricken zoo spec that should be so much fun yet it just really ends up failing all over itself.