Arcane Identity; Problems? Solutions?

Classes Mage
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So, I was thinking as I was playing my mage today.
Blizzard hasn’t really changed arcane…Ever. So, and you can disagree with me,
I just want to throw some ideas out there and get a discussion going. Currently, if you want to play meta PVP or PVE your choices are fire or frost, and usually that’s how the scales fall.

SCROLL DOWN ALL THE WAY TO READ SUMMARY IF YOU DONT WANT TO READ THIS ENTIRE POST.

It’s not factual to say arcane in PVP isn’t competitive or has its place, but usually frost and fire reign supreme.
Why is this……?
Fires meta game is to cc into its greater pyroblast for crazy burst.
Frost is to cc and sustain great damage.

        While arcane seems to be a mixture of both.

Where arcane lacks, in my opinion is its damage. YES arcane can do some great burst.
And yes arcane can do some cc. But the playstyle of the arcane mage is to keep the enemy team slowed cc’d and spellstolen while waiting for a full poly on the enemy healer in order to do its burst rotation.(My source is method) This works, but, it seems like its fire’s playstyle without the burst potential
of fire.

In PVE arcane has wonderful burst damage. It has its place in single target fights. BUT where it seems arcane lacks is AOE, not that arcane can’t AOE. But, over a prolonged period of time if a fight has a ton of AOE, the arcane mage will be forced to go into its (single target) conserve phase. And, if you compare it to its fire/frost counterparts it lacks in overall AOE like frost and cleave like fire.

So where should arcane fall?
Is arcane destined to be the middle of the pack? (ok at one thing, ok at another.)
or can we find a place for arcane to shine?

This is a question I cannot answer. All I can do is start a conversation and throw out my ideas.

Has arcane ever been redesigned? I don’t actually think it has, it’s been tweaked but never redesigned.

My idea is to redesign the class(slightly) to address the issues it faces.

So let’s start off by thinking what the main class identity of the arcane mage is. The arcane mage over the years is the ultimate spender/builder. While most classes build something to spend on something the whole identity of the arcane mage is to spend all of its resources and regenerate its resource to start all over again.

At this point you’re thinking, I hate this dude… Get to the point. BUT this is important, class identity is so important.

So, let’s keep the identity that makes arcane unique. but let’s add to this. first thing arcane missiles should be part of the rotation, not just a chance to proc.

Arcane Missiles
(X) Mana
(X) second cooldown
launces five waves of Arcane missiles at the enemy over 2.2 sec, causing a total of (X) Arcane damage. while under (X% mana) this ability will regenerate
(X%) mana over its duration.

(Clearcasting is still a thing.) This can still proc.

*** Let’s also make arcane missiles castable while moving. This opens up a world of change for the arcane mage. In PVP the arcane mage will now have a mobile damaging spell, this is a wonderful addition to our sustained damage. In PVE this opens up a mobile spell for hard fights that require mobility. As far as our conserve phase is concerned this will give us a spell to use other than evocation to regenerate mana. AND, check this out, because of this the more haste
we get, the longer we can stay in our burst phase. :smiley:

Oh right, and slipstream go byebye (or just make slipstream affect evocation and arcane blast) yea that would work and not be too op. (in my opinion)

Imagine this, you’re at 15% health kiting the enemy player around, doing your arcane thing (blinkblinkblink) :stuck_out_tongue: and BOOM 3 arcane barrage procs in a row. This is not about being overpowered, simply, because of its proc rate. It’s a chance to happen. It is all about moments of glory and I sure would feel amazing if this happened.

The next one is a simple change to fix the AOE problems we have, please keep in mind this isn’t to fix damage if blizzard wants to keep us as single target kings that’s fine. Blizzard can simply buff/nerf accordingly. Also keep in mind fire/frost, in my opinion are perfect the way they are and don’t need to be changed. This isn’t about making arcane the best spec. This is just to fix fundamental problems (in my opinion)

Arcane Explosion
(X) Mana
Causes an explosion of magic around the caster, dealing (x) Arcane damage to all enemies within 10 yards and marks the target. Each target (or up to (x)targets)
is/are marked with an arcane rune, arcane missiles will fire to each target marked with this rune.

**Fixes our AOE / Cleave damage, also fixes our AOE sustain(not damage, mana sustain) with enough haste.

So here’s the thing, arcane has a spell called slow. This is nice and it is very nice when you take the chrono shift ability. The problem here is barrage makes slow redundant. So, let’s make chrono shift baseline and redesign the slow ability. Keep in mind, frost/fire have many cc abilities. Fire leans towards off-balance/freeze and frost is freeze/slow.

Supernova (baseline)
(x) second cooldown
pulses arcane energy around the target enemy or ally. Dealing (x) arcane damage to all enemies within (x) yards, and knocking them back (x) yards.

** Thats right, give us a knockback. fire/frost have their unique styles of cc why can’t arcane :smiley: at first, I wanted to put the slow effect on this but after thinking about it, that’s super OP. So just the knockback :smiley: This could be awesome for PVP and used as a possible way to win. This could also be useful for PVE, if a tank needs an add brought closer to them, it would also help arcane immensely while questing.

These next two, no one will agree with. Because meta right? Well as far as I’m concerned If I play arcane, I want arcane abilities. So, lets remove ice block
and frost nova and replace. :slight_smile: I told you you’d hate me, just wait and read on.

Greater Prismatic Barrier (name is lame I know)
Pulls all arcane energy surrounding you to create a barrier of arcane energy. Protecting you from all attacks and damage for 10 sec, while channeling this ability you may not move, attack, or cast spells.

** it’s iceblock but arcane, still hate me? :slight_smile: I can totally see my gnome with both arms held out pulling all the arcane energy around and creating a massive arcane shield. Pretty cool if you ask me. Also switch from frost/fire to arcane real quick( Because I know you’re frost/fire :P) and check out the Ice Block tooltip.

**And I quote “causes hypothermia, preventing you from recasting ice block for 30 seconds.” this talent was obviously skipped over. Tool tip is still the same for the frost cold snap :stuck_out_tongue: just some proof that blizzard skips over arcane, and there are no arcane players because you guys didn’t notice either. :stuck_out_tongue:

Stop
(x) Mana
Stops time within 12 yards of you. Enemies are stopped in time for (x) seconds, damage may interrupt the time anomaly.

OR

Stop
(x) Mana
Slows time within 12 yards of you Enemies are slowed in time for (x) seconds, damage may interrupt the time anomaly.

** Ok, maybe this is a bit more OP than frost nova, that’s what the (x) seconds is for, nerf the time its active if it’s too OP, but it makes sense.

Yea that’s about it. I have now fixed identity, AOE, cleave, mana sustain and cc with these few ideas.

What do you think? Do you hate me? Do you love these ideas? Do you have ideas of your own? Let me know :smiley:

SUMMARY INCASE YOU DONT WANT TO READ EVERYTHING CUZ YOU KNOW YOU DONT :slight_smile: (Although I explain why, but who likes reading anyway)

–Make arcane missiles castable while moving with a cooldown and mana regen.
–Make arcane explosion mark targets so arcane missiles can target each enemy and add to our AOE/mana sustain during AOE/cleave.
–Supernova should be baseline and knock targets back, instead of up.
–Take slow away and make chrono shift baseline.
–Replace Ice block with Greater Prismatic Barrier (just looks cool and adds to identity)
–Replace frost nova with Stop (stopping or slowing enemy within 12 yards in time) possibly OP but who cares about arcane except for me right? :smiley:
–Oh right I almost forgot, slipstream is still a thing (because of arcane missiles) it just now affects arcane blast/evocation. Who knows maybe with all abilities castable while moving shimmer won’t be THE thing anymore, probably not though. :stuck_out_tongue:

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** Saved to highlight some good ideas from others, and revisions to my original ideas in case someone else has a better one :smiley: :smiley:

AS A NOTE: It seems like the majority of players want the identity of Arcane to be “improved” Arcane abilities such as blink/mirrorimage/slow…etc.
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new redesign of arcane explosion thanks to @Moonshayde
Arcane Explosion
(X) Mana
Causes an explosion of magic around the target, dealing (x) Arcane damage to all enemies within 10 yards and marks the target. Each target (or up to (x)targets)
is/are marked with an arcane rune, arcane missiles will fire to each target marked with this rune.
**I had forgotten that arcane explosion is annoying being in melee. I’m just so used to it, HA!

I was thinking to myself last night. You know what? Arcane blast really needs a spell animation. I know it’s instant damage, but it doesn’t feel impactful, why not have a wall of arcane force quickly blast towards the target?
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@Moonshayde
–Slow added back to Arcane Blast
–Arcane Missiles - more damage
–Mirror Image, Baseline
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@Frowstmourne
– The problem with my idea is becoming spell locked
–Solutions? So lets take a few spells out of the arcane school, spells that could be taken out, blink/shimmer.

my personal solution for this - The spells “Stop” and “Greater Prismatic Barrier” could live outside of time, being time based spells themselves. And, neither do arcane damage or say they are arcane spell type. So they can’t be locked. This should fix the problem with being attacked by double melee.
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@Lyhrian

Arcane explosion toggle, while on all single target spells explode with arcane energy at the cost of X% more mana
slow becomming Time anomoly powerful slow or a speed boost for enemy players or allies
Mirror Image more impactful, copying our spells instead of just casting arcane blast, IE. build charges/ defensive cooldown to get a quick invisibility
shimmer baseline, let it free us from roots and stuns

Presence of Mind rework to fix the impact it has on our spec
1 Let our next Arcane Blast be instant and fire twice and at 4 charges
2 Allow us to Blink or Displacement regardless of cd
3 Allow our next Polymorph to be instant cast
4 Make our next Spell Steal take all of their buffs
5 Cause our next Evocation to also heal us.

mana shield needs to be better
150% damage to mana, maybe more

(the following is my take on the mana shield idea)
Prismatic Barrier
30 second cooldown
vastly improves your absorbtion from prismatic barrier doubling the health
it absorbs, removes the cooldown, but your mana is drained by 10% of the damage it absorbs.

Arcane Deflection
X mana, X cooldown
Instant
Throw up a barrier of Arcane magic making the caster immune for 1 sec.
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@Illy
Resonance triple mana regen out of combat (to combat mana regen between targets)
chronoshift affecting arcane explosion by 70% (replace frost nova)
Arcane orb teleporting enemy players X yards from caster

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Some well-thought out ideas, I just don’t agree with most of them, and you fail to address key issues.

I’m fine with Ice Block. I want to be an archmage - I want to cast spells from all the schools, not be pigeonholed into just one.

Arcane Explosion has plenty of problems, and you ignore one of the biggest ones. Melee range. There are too many mechanics in modern WoW that require ranged to stay . . . at range. This is a huge liability for Arcane, and it needs to have ranged AoE.

I’d rather keep slow, but give me the old glyph effect back so Arcane Blast applies it automatically.

The problem with Arcane Missiles is that they suck. They need to do good damage again.

Talents need to be buff/replaced, so that we aren’t forced into the same talents. Hello Mirror Image, which should just be baseline for all three specs.

The whole spec needs to be redesigned so every talent row isn’t ST vs. AoE - something Blizz themselves have said is bad design, yet it remains the case for almost every single talent row.

2 Likes
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ahhhh arcane explosion, yes. ok new redesign let me know what you think
Arcane Explosion
(X) Mana
Causes an explosion of magic around the target, dealing (x) Arcane damage to all enemies within 10 yards and marks the target. Each target (or up to (x)targets)
is/are marked with an arcane rune, arcane missiles will fire to each target marked with this rune.
** that should fix the melee issue

With the slow idea, it simply is added to barrage, and gives you a speed boost. I’m not sure if putting it on arcane blast would change anything. Be that as it may, I don’t think we need the actual ability, we should just make it a passive ability tied to either my idea or yours :smiley:

Arcane missiles suck outside of clearcasting, my idea is to increase damage, make it castable while moving and still able to proc.

Yea I totally forgot about Mirror Image, it should be baseline you are 100% correct on that one.

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Yes, I’d love Arcane Explosion to do damage around the target, or, if nothing is targeted, around the caster. Your arcane rune idea might be interesting, but would have to be balanced in a way that makes it worth using over just explosion. Making it scale with arcane charges, maybe.

I’m not sure we need arcane missiles castable while moving. Shimmer should just be baseline for Arcane, since we are screwed if Evocation is interruptable. Then we can just take the existing Slipstream to cast while moving, on a CD.

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Well, I will admit. I am not super clear about separating my PVP ideas from PVE ideas, the reason why I made arcane missiles castable while moving, simply, was for PVP. It is super easy to stay on top of an arcane mage in PVP outside of their blink window, the only thing we have is chrono shift which many classes can negate. Considering all of our damaging abilities other than barrage are solid casts and frost has many instant cast abilities and fire has a cast while moving attack and instant cast abilities I added this to arcane missiles to close the gap between frost/fire and arcane.

But yes I totally agree, if anything, add slipstream or shimmer as baseline to bridge this gap.

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Blizzard has totally changed and re-designed arcane, more than once. If you doubt this, check WOD arcane vs Legion arcane vs BFA arcane, just for starters. It’s why so many of us want Legion arcane back, or at least the aoe part of it.

But as I gather your point was more “it’s boring and we want the devs to listen,” I’d say best of luck; we’ve been trying for years. You couldn’t fill a single page with the amount of arcane blue posts over the past 8 years.

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I will admit I have always played fire until last Xpac, yes legion arcane was really good I totally agree! The point of my post was just to get a discussion going on ideas you would have to change the spec for the better. :slight_smile:

I will also admit maybe my post was a bit more on the PVP side of things. :stuck_out_tongue:

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The problem is, what do you do when you get spellbook locked after your changes, then you’re really screwed because there went your defenses along with your offensive. It’s good to have some diversity with your spell schools rather than having only 1

1 Like
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That is a really good point! However, to be fair. Iceblock/frost nova are currently the only two spells that aren’t of the same type as all other arcane spells. I think with the added effects of my STOP ability being a bit more Overpowered than frost nova it evens itself out. But I do see your point, do you have any ideas for this? Should we maybe have a second school of magic added to some of our abilities like “time” damage? (Just spitballing) :stuck_out_tongue: Or maybe we just take certain abilities off the spell type list so they don’t get locked.

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Honestly, if blizz was to implement your changes, I would say take poly and blink/shimmer off the arcane spell school so you would have some sort of option to get away/cc break whenever melee leaps and locks out your school. Otherwise they would need to add in a interrupt cooldown for when you get interrupt locked (ie. More than 1 melee training you)

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That’s a great idea! We could even spin it as those spells to live outside of time disallowing them to be locked by other schools of magic. I would really love to see a redesign of arcane mostly being time based, but I know that’s unpopular opinion so I never addressed that idea :smiley:

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What if Arcane Explosion became a toggle-able ability causing all of your single target spells to explode on impact at the cost of more mana per cast? Or mana each time it triggered like per target hit by barrage or each wave of missiles. This lets us stay at range and doesn’t really affect our rotation at all, that I think of any way. Cast for Arcane Blast that will each trigger the aoe. Then launch an Arcane Barrage, each missile could trigger it as well.

Slow just doesnt feel impactful enough to me. It feels like a waste of a global in pvp and I have never used it in pve. What if it kept its current aesthetic and became time stop. I super powerful slow on a single enemy target or a powerful speed buff for an ally? It would be far more impactful in pvp and tanks could use it to get large pulls off in M+. There could even be a talent that caused the effect to also lower or increase the targets haste.

I’d love to see Mirror Image not be a talented worse version of the windwalker ability, Storm Earth and Fire. Let it do something more than it does now. It could build charges. It could be a defensive cd that let us go invisible, kind of like the priest talent Spectral Guise from WoD. It could at lease mimic our casts.

I love the idea of a knock back. Just a huge blast of arcane energy focused on us that sends opponents flying away.

Id like for arcane to have improved blink. It should be better at it than frost or fire. Make shimmer base line and let it also free us from roots and stuns still. Or keep it at double charges and not let us cast. Let us be better than fire or frost at something.

Presence of Mind could be significantly better. I feel that it could empower our next spell. Some ideas include:

  1. Let our next Arcane Blast be instant and fire twice and at 4 charges
  2. Allow us to Blink or Displacement regardless of cd
  3. Allow our next Polymorph to be instant cast
  4. Make our next Spell Steal take all of their buffs
  5. Cause our next Evocation to also heal us.

I’d love to see Mana Shield have a 1:1 ratio on mana per damage instead of 150% of the damage to mana. Make it toggle-able and allow us to decide when it turns on or off. Letting us choose between taking damage or losing mana instead.

These are just a few ideas.

As for a new spell, I’d like to see something similar to that which Jaina uses in BoD cinematic. I was thinking something like

Arcane Deflection
x mana, 30s cd
Instant cast and off of the GCD
Throw up a barrier of arcane magic making the caster immune for 1 sec.

It gives us some sweet out play potential and allows us to avoid some interesting boss or affix mechanics with great timing.

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I’d like to see Mirror Image made baseline with a heal on blink replacement talent, I’d like to see Resonance changed to triple our mana regen out of combat, I’d like Chronoshift changed to effect Arcane Explosion instead of Arcane Barrage, I’d like Reverbate changed to make Arcane Explosion a target-able ability, and finally I’d like Arcane Orb replaced with an ability that teleports an enemy target away from you.

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OMG I love the idea of the arcane orb teleporting enemies away from players, I would instead put it on supernova to make that a more impactful spell. Imagine lining up your cc and then finally blinking the target away from you possibly behind a pillar! When I get home from my trip I will work this idea into my possible solutions and comment on the rest!

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You my friend, have amazing ideas. I love that you’re on board with the Idea of our spec being the knock back spec of the mage class <3

I will speak about your ideas in chronological order, or as I wrote them down. Please correct me If my reflection of your ideas is poor.

Arcane explosion toggle. This is a solid idea. However, I think I like my earlier rework of it a bit more, the toggle would feel too much like arms warrior/outlaw rogue toggles. I think the main point between the both of us is a RANGED aoe considering we are a ranged class, lol.

slow rework, I will be changing the name in my shoutouts to Time Anomaly, I hope you don’t mind, I feel like time stop didn’t make sense for speeding up players. however, i freaking love this idea mate! this could give us a spell that would make other players actually want an arcane mage in their raid/mythic+/pvp.

Your Mirror Image idea is spot on aswell, Arcane needs to shine at something and (in my opinion) suffers from spec identity, I love any “improved” arcane ability. YESYESYES

shimmer baseline. It seems like the theme to everyone’s posts about this is improved arcane aspects of arcane. I love everything about this idea.

The best Idea of yours is the presence of mind rework. My question is would we get all 5? Would it be like the thunder focus tea from the monk and it would just be a choice? Instant poly is amazing :smiley:

Mana Shield
I think mana shield should be passive and grant us a bubble every X seconds. So lets throw both of our ideas together, and, every X seconds grants us a bubble for X% health. Then lets use your idea.

Prismatic Barrier
30 second cooldown
vastly improves your absorbtion from prismatic barrier doubling the health it absorbs, removes the cooldown, but your mana is drained by 10% of the damage it absorbs.

Arcane Deflection would give us a shield against stupid fire mages and demo locks( which everyone needs :stuck_out_tongue: ) I agree!

Thank you for your amazing post. It was fun theory crafting with you.

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I can now properly respond to your Ideas! Firstly, and again, I love your take on making the mirror Image ability baseline. It seems as though all the posters are asking for this. Heal on blink replacement would give us the current azerite trait in the future and I can’t say no to this idea. It would be pretty cool to have some version of heal. I don’t know if I love the chronoshift affecting arcane explosion, but I can see why we would want it! what I did in my quote of your ideas is replace nova with this, I also made the slow 70% instead of 50% so it would feel better. If I didn’t take nova away, It would probably be too powerful. Arcane orb teleporting, again super good idea, I would just simply put it on our supernova ability. I love the idea of blinking people away instead of blasting them away (this would truly be identifiable)

18

There are many, MANY problems with arcane in BFA. It feels like it was in the middle of a redesign, but then Blizzard ran out of time and abandoned it.

One of my main issues is with explosion. I wouldn’t mind Arcane Explosion being a melee spell if it wasn’t for the fact I am bringing ranged mechanics to the melee if I AoE because I am still being targeted by those mechanics. It would be nice if we got that targeting exclusion mistweavers had in… wod(?) where ranged mechanics would not target them due to them standing in melee to fistweave. I think Arcane needing to be in melee to AoE gives it something unique that sets it apart from other ranged specs. If a ranged AoE option was introduced for Arcane, I’d prefer if it was an optional alternative instead of just completely replacing AE.

Legion’s design for explosion was perfect. It scaled with your charges and was your highest damaging aoe spell. You had complete mobility while AoE’ing, and Barrage served an important purpose of being a tool to throttle your mana usage during aoe. You didn’t just cast it every 4 charges. You instead used it strategically to slow down your mana usage. BFA’s design is terrible. You have a Fixed AoE rotation where you AEx3 -> cast Arcane Blast while still standing in melee -> Barrage, repeat. There is no thought involved.

Then there are the problems with talents. We have the 90 row where AoE talents compete with ST. Synergy between two separate rows with Rune+OP killing off the other choices on their rows. Useless talents such as Supernova, Mirror Image, and Mana Shield which got a 500% hotfix nerf in PvP that is not documented in the tooltip.

Azerite traits are also a problem. Equipoise is far and beyond any other trait. Then we have traits such as an Arcane Explosion trait which is useless in ST, but is a massive boost to AoE. Unlike other classes, or even mage specs, if you focus on AoE or ST traits, you completely gimp yourself on whatever you didn’t choose.

Arcane is an example of a design failure in BFA.

19

One reason AE was better in Legion was that with your artifact weapon, it had a significantly larger diameter. Now, in BfA, you have to be much closer to the melee, exposing you to cleave and, as pointed out, bringing ranged mechanics into the melee pack.

Arcane Explosion just needs to be centered on your target, and if nothing targeted, explodes around the caster as now. Now you can actually be a ranged caster without losing the iconic Arcane Explosion.

Ultimately, mages are too squishy, and have no heals, so have no business being in melee range.

20

Just revert Arcane to Legion, implement Legion legendaries, and give back Alter Time and my mage would be in a happy place.