Yeah, frost is bottom 3 the first week of raid with arcane dead last.
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It is actually laughable that they have done some minor work on other specs since the expac started … tweaking talents and mechanics … but their answer for arcane is “add a damage buff.”
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Yeah, arcane is scraping the bottom of the charts and unless you’re running no-IL, Frost is right there with them. The current raid design really sucks and makes me believe that the whole class needs a redesign with more instant procs, not the anchored casters we are. I am now 8/8N and it is terrible once you get to Azshara due to all the movement and forced soaks on the wards, along with a host of LoS issues since the bosses get dragged behind pillars and you’re constantly having to re-adjust
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I haven’t tried the no-IL build yet.
My frost traits are such that I could run with FFx3, 1 Tunnel, 1 crit trait, and 1 packed ice. Not sure what i can get my mastery up to but I think I can get it to 25% or so.
Running the conventional Glacial Spike build did NOT go well last week. I was prepared to run fire this week.
lol relax, the spec IS fine for casual content. everything is fine for casual content. sims and statistics are pointless if you aren’t pushing top-end or at LEAST trying to prog far into mythic, and even then, people make it work. that’s why arcane parses exist, that’s why sub rogue parses exist. people like the spec or want to try it and they kill the boss anyways.
of course the spec needs help and of course it’s floundering right now, it’s the least movement-friendly ranged dps, but if somebody really loves arcane (for some reason) they can still play it
Well if you really love arcane and are ok fighting to beat the tank’s dps in TEP then you can still play it. I actually really do like arcane but even I’ve given up the ghost. I’ve lost any faith I had left in Blizzard after today’s “6% will fix it” buff.
The problem I have with the entire situation is that no spec should be designed for use in purely casual content. While it’s cool to have “that person” in your guild who plays “that spec,” it’s actually doing a serious disservice to your guild/friends to play it. I despise class design that puts people in that position. Shame on Blizzard for letting the spec rot.
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Wow thats awesome gj blizz.
Agreed. When was the gauge for if a spec is decent or not set at “good for casual content?”
Any spec is good for casual content. Clearly the context of this thread (which is right in the title) is “raiding” and arcane is definitely NOT good for raiding unless your benchmark is clearing LFR.
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Why wouldn’t someone who is a heroic raider run sims to try to be the best for the content they are doing?..you’re kidding right?..it’s not pointless to them…
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I hate to point this out, but with all the dps checks built into the Eternal Palace, and the way that Blizz is forcing movements in raids, we HAD to kick people under 15k DPS otherwise we would have never progressed. I run no-IL frost and there are some parts of the raid (especially Queen Azshara) that I had an issue keeping my dps up through. Most fights are absolutely TERRIBLE for casters that rely on stationary traits and abilities like Rune of Power. It is simply a nightmare to keep your dps up high enough even in normal groups to justify keeping something like an Arcane mage in the group when you can pick up that Ele Shaman or SP that just popped into the waitlist.
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It’s just massively unfortunate what they’ve turned arcane into.
Thematically, it’s THE mage spec for me. I don’t particularly like being locked into one elemental school of magic. To me (and this is just my own thing), a mage should be throwing out balls of mystical energy and harnessing arcane power. It’s why I chose a mage as my main when I started playing (ignoring my brother’s taunts about choosing arcane).
Then BfA happened. And I switched to frost. Then “movement in raids” happened. And I’m now fire.
I do honestly feel like the game has “lost” something for me having to play a spec not because I like it but because the spec I like is, for me, unplayable. I debated switching mains but can’t seem to bring myself to do it.
If arcane got a decent rework (or returned to what it was in Legion) I would come running back to it in a heartbeat. I don’t think anyone on the current development team cares enough about it to invest the time or energy to do it though.
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Why wouldn’t someone who is a heroic raider run sims to try to be the best for the content they are doing?..you’re kidding right?..it’s not pointless to them…
but it should be. this isn’t elitism, because i’m not good enough myself to be elitist, but at a heroic level things are intentionally tuned to be less comp restrictive. you can make anything work at a heroic level; it isn’t about sims, it’s about player skill.
there’s an arcane mage with a 36k dps log on mythic radiance. it’s possible.
i’m not saying arcane is optimal, or easy to play on certain fights, and i’m DEFINITELY not saying it’s a well-designed spec, because it’s not. it needs a ton of changes and fixes. but if someone raiding in a heroic guild for AOTC wants to play arcane, they can play arcane regardless of what charts say.
It is simply a nightmare to keep your dps up high enough even in normal groups to justify keeping something like an Arcane mage in the group when you can pick up that Ele Shaman or SP that just popped into the waitlist.
you’re absolutely right, but that doesn’t make it impossible. i’m getting almost into semantics here but it’s absolutely possible to make any single spec work in this game - sometimes it’s way too much work and you’re better off with something else, but there’s always an element of skill involved and you can always excel at a given spec with enough research, practice, and skill.
arcane definitely still needs a rework though. the spec is far too punishing to exist in its current state and it hasn’t gotten nearly enough attention in the past few years
Lmfao same
It is simply a nightmare to keep your dps up high enough even in normal groups to justify keeping something like an Arcane mage in the group when you can pick up that Ele Shaman or SP that just popped into the waitlist.
you’re absolutely right, but that doesn’t make it impossible. i’m getting almost into semantics here but it’s absolutely possible to make any single spec work in this game - sometimes it’s way too much work and you’re better off with something else, but there’s always an element of skill involved and you can always excel at a given spec with enough research, practice, and skill.
There is a certain point where skill just isn’t enough and the mechanics just don’t or won’t wind up with you even being in a competitive spot in heroic, and that’s definitely what arcane is heading to if it doesn’t get a redesign. Hell, I’d even say that Frost is also quickly following. The only reason I still have some of the throughput I do is because it’s easier to build up icicles with Lucid passive, but our DPS absolutely tanks hard without procs, and the only way we get those is by standing still to cast FB.
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A major redesign at this point is unlikely as this dev team would have to admit they screwed up with Arcane’s design and they’re not going to come out and say it … hell, they won’t come out and talk about mages at all like they do other classes.
People that play frost or arcane know there are issues but the devs turn a blind eye and all we can do is hope that whomever worked on them for this expansion is NOT the person who works on them for the next one.
I really want to go back to arcane.
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lol… too funny
While I agree with you, I am primarily a Heroic Raider and I have made Arcane work for me each tier since I picked it up at the start of ToS, I do not think it is fair to essentially force players into a spec. I’m not saying I’m forced to play fire, but when raid design is rapidly pigeon-holing classes into certain specs there is a major issue.
Personally, my dps is usually fine as Arcane, but that does not mean in the slightest that I am not sick of being bottom of the barrel, gimmicky, and having to work a lot harder to stay remotely competitive. Sure, every spec has their downs, but Arcane has been such dumpster-fire for three tiers now. It’s getting old. It’s also consistently getting worse and worse each tier. Fights right now like Ashvane have hard DPS checks, and although it is more of our patchwork style fight, there are still mechanics that require light movement which does effect our already lackluster DPS. God help us if we get the Frost Chimera Arc on Commander . . . And U’unat lolololol I legitimately thought I might get benched during AoTC progression on that fight.
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I literally cry when I get the frost mark lol ![:slight_smile:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")
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The 6% buff to arcane is great but it only means frost will be in the bottom 3 specs in EP now lol.
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Lol Arcane is still dead last bud.
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