So I recently leveled a mage just for fun but I found myself really enjoying arcane. It’s actually now on the table for one of my possible choices to reroll to from spriest. I originally wanted to stick with a dot spec but I’m not thrilled with any of the changes I see coming for them.
I haven’t kept up too much with the mage changes or feedback but I noticed people haven’t really been talking about arcane in shadowlands much at all. So I’m curious if anyone can tell me how arcane players are feeling about it?
I’m aware of the shimmer change, touch of magi baseline, mirror images baseline, and I believe the mastery being applied to all arcane spells. Again I don’t main a mage so to me I’m not really sure what to think about these changes. I hear one issue being the GCD with CDs making it feel slow at the start. While it sucks, it’s not a huge deal breaker for me. Would you say arcane is more or less the same going into Shadowlands? Are there any huge concerns for the spec?
As I said, I’m asking because I haven’t really seen much on arcane. Not on the forums and most of the videos I’ve seen are from back in like May but they didn’t even seem that in depth either. Sorry this was kind of long but thank you!
As a former arcane mage (who abandoned it this expansion) and has kept up on the changes on all the websites, mage discord, people I know playing it on alpha (who have called it slow and painful), arcane will be in SL what was in BfA: a spec for questing, leveling, and lower/middle of the road content.
Some of the changes are good … the mastery buffing all spells, the mana regen from barrage … but overall arcane will still have the same issues it had in BfA.
Your biggest concerns will be complete lack of cleave, being in melee range for AoE, the ramp up of buffs (which you said doesn’t bother you but believe me, it’s an issue), and the one that most concerns me is there seems to be an effort to make missiles viable again as they were in Legion but they’re doubling down on clearcasting as the mechanic to use them and clearcasting means missiles will proc less than they have expansions where they are viable. This seems to be another case of the Quickening debacle in Legion.
Also, arcane power being on a 3 min CD is a huge impact to the spec. Not only will you be doing the same conserve/burn rotation but you’re going to wait twice as long to put out big damage. Depending on the timing of some fights, this could have a big impact on arcane’s damage output in a game where everyone is meter-checking-happy-decide-if-you-get-a-raid-spot.
If you enjoy it in BfA, you’ll probably be ok with it in SL. Personally, I was hopeful I’d get to go back to playing it as my main spec again but I’ve given up on that dream now.
Oh I didn’t mean that it wouldn’t bother me, just that it wasn’t the deal breaker meaning it wasn’t going to be the thing that completely turns me away from the class/spec. Because tbh GCD issues on major CDs feels terrible across all classes and I still believe they need to revert the change across the board, not just for arcane.
But thank you, I really appreciate your opinion on it and I totally understand what you mean about giving up on it, I feel the same about shadow lol.
Hmm I guess I’ll have to wait and test it myself in beta (if I get it) or pre-patch.
Im an arcane mage at heart too , and leveled my mage in BFA release , it didnt last tho …it was a pain.
SL doesnt look good , yeah they added some qol changes , but the spec was in dire need of love , but im afraid is not enough
Aedred summed it very well ;
Long ramp up , lack of cleave (Magi but 45s CD and on 1 target that can die sooner and byebye / ranged caster w/o ranged AOE , i love arcane explosion but its not usuable on tons of encounters because ranged mechanics on melee or making melees suffer because of it.
if they fix the Aoe/cleave + ramp up …i would main arcane in a heartbeat.
Oof, sad to hear lol. But honestly the lack of aoe/cleave was one of my issues with arcane when I was playing it, more specifically like you said, at range.
A shame but here’s to hoping people give more feedback (because like I said, I haven’t seen much for arcane) and some meaningful changes come for the spec!
we have been giving feedback for years (hell i remember BFA beta ) , and nothing was done , so i dont expect any changes on that
the only way to make it work was said in wowhead , touch of magi proc on every spell , and no CD that could make arcane a very nice aoe spec (think Arcane missiles 1 proc every missil! ) would be cool to see too
for ramp up , charged up baseline add new talent that lowers its CD
Or make arcane gain arcane charges out of combat up to 2 ?
I gravitated towards arcane because thematically i love it. I played in Legion when “lack of cleave and melee aoe” was the only issue. In Legion however the aoe range on explosion was larger and Mark of Aluneth at least gave us some ranged aoe/cleave.
I tried it in BfA … twice … and it’s just terrible. They’re locked into it being the single target go-to spec but constantly create situations and encounters where cleave is almost mandatory. Azerite traits RUINED arcane this expansion. Taking missiles off a proc system, tying them to clear casting, and nerfing their damage … I still don’t get that one.
BfA and now Shadowlands just screams “I’m the dev working on arcane, I don’t understand the spec, don’t really care about it, so I’m just gonna throw a bunch of changes in and let the chips fall where they may.”
Pains me to hear so. Mage still has my favorite class fantasy and with all the customizations coming to Night Elves I thought it was a nice time to make him a highborne.
However, fire is too… Clunky for me? I don’t know, I like it but I always have a hard time with keybinds since my main keys are Q,E,R,F, so unless Scorch is on either of those, moving is really damn hard, however, E is my fireball, Q is my Pyroblast >.>.
Frost on the other hand is just boring to me, I never liked frost magic, no matter the game I played, it was either fire or raw magic for me.
Anyways, I am a bit disappointed, I honestly wish they would completely redesign the class. Having the master of raw master itself having to get into melee range to AoE is really stupid IMO, should have some massive gravity attacks, like crushing your enemies, a “Black hole” slow, kinda like an area that keeps pulling enemies towards the middle and Arcane Missiles should have three charges again but this time either increase single target damage by casting a massive barrage or if there are more enemies it casts the amount of charges and split them among enemies up to three targets. Also, they could bring back displacement but this time instead of just leaving a mark to where you are going to return when you blink, displacement should leave said mark once you press it, as well as leaving a ‘mirror image’ like clone in it’s place, dealing damage until the spell wears off or you teleport back to the mark. Basically also making it a DPS as well as defensive spell.
Yeah I have the same issues with fire and frost. I’ve tried many times to like frost but I just don’t and fire idk, something just feels off to me about that spec ever since it lost the artifact but again I never mained a mage. I’ve leveled them each expansion but never played long enough to get an idea of how they actually play in group content.
These are some good ideas. In my view arcane as a spec is screaming for a massive redesign. If an arcane mage is suppose to be a master of these mysterious and powerful energies, then they should be able to do things other casters can only dream of.
Casting while moving
Dropping in and out of invisibility to attack foes
Having defenses that enable safe AOEing while in melee range
A massive arcane laser beam that can penerate and cleave foes.
These are just some of the ideas we have come up with in other threads. Blizzard missed a great opportunity to redesign arcane and make it unique.
the thing is that arcane is just raw magic blizz can create anything with that
there have been tons of idea
Arcane beam is a classic and is a good way to give arcane an aoe, that exist in game from bosses and gasp essence of focusing iris …
black hole exists , VORTEX of druid do that
arcane is the only spec that cares about MANA , burn > conserve , time Cds and if u fail byebye dps , is not easy to recover , Evocation needs to be castable on the move period.
Arcane needs something for AoE , make arcane explosion ranged if u have a target , on self if u dont have any or target is out of range?
the rotation could add something for more oomph
fire has combustion (aka pyro fest), Ice has forb , glacial spike or ice lance fest crits , Arcane has Arcane power …yay your basic spell hits harder and thats it…AP should conver the mage into a killing maching a master of magic , maybe change AB into something or let the mage call an arcane storm / or dunno a powerfull spell ?¿
Im nervous for it… it played great in legion, but then they remove the AoE from it with decreasing explosion damage scaling with charges, removed mark of aluneth and then they think that banking on missiles being main damage without scaling would make it better also… its ridiculous how out of touch blizz devs are with how these classes play. I am hoping it gets more changes.
I may seem strange, but I feel the current mastery and toolkit for arcane (as of Legion) makes the mana management aspect of the spec less appealing. I don’t know the solution, but that may be my biggest annoyance of the spec. I’d like more tools than evocation. Mana gems are coming back, but I may stick to frost anyway.
Losing Displacement is the SL change that hurts the most for me. Alter Time is not even close to an equal replacement, and the other two specs get it, too.
While I admit they’ve done some good work making new talents for Shadowlands, you still have Charged Up as a talent which offers no DPS bonus at all and seems more like something that should be a baseline spell or built into Arcane Power and, my personal favorite rant: Arcane Orb.
Here you have a talent that’s top tier for Arcane where it’s equivalent, Frozen Orb, is baseline for Frost Mages. Forb does more damage than Aorb and actually plays into the spec mechanics in a way that Aorb doesn’t at all.
