Arcane feels like it has a lot of potential in m+, but the low target cap on Barrage feels really bad, and Arcane Rebound and probably even Leydrinker being so poorly tuned it just cannot compete at all.
The tools are there: Arcane Rebound could be good, but its really poorly tuned, and buried too deep. Aether attunement isn’t bad, but need a 3 stack really slows it down.
Arcane could use some m+ love
I kinda wish they’d build around:
The talents and modifiers are already there, they just need to commit more.
Arcane target cap is a major problem in M+
Arcane Rebound is a great talent, which is unsurprising considering that it was one of the original Aluneth artifact weapon traits from Legion, but its place in the talent tree is ridiculously hard to get to and not worth the trade off or talent point investment. Ideally it needs to be baked into ABarr as a baseline perk but I’d settle if they moved it somewhere more accessible. It won’t fix Arcane’s AoE problems but it would help and if tuned properly it might even go a little ways towards making up for the major target cap disadvantage we have.
Arcane has had potential since SL when the Radiant Spark giga crit Barrage build first came to light.
The problem is it always falls short in tuning, and they never ever buff it for M+.
Fire will ALWAYS get buffed but not arcane and it pisses me off to no end, especially when you consider how quick they are to nerf us if we are ever OP (see S1 of TWW)
It’s infuriating! With all the extra hoops Arcane has to jump through we should consistently be at least middle of the pack or higher otherwise where is the balance between difficulty and performance?
I don’t mind the target cap if we do what arcane is supposed to do – really good single target (with some funnel)
While overall damage was never all that great like this, bosses/mini bosses/pack leaders died fast with arcane.
but they’ve kinda flattened out health in the dungeon design and arcane blast is doing what … less than a quarter of what it used to (partially from nerfs, partially from radiant spark)
spark of the magi should be for casuals, radiant spark should be there so that the spec can function like it was designed – at a point where the design made a lot of sense
It’s so disheartening to see newer players think that’s all Arcane is good at when even as recently as Legion Arcane had amazing AoE before they completely butchered the spec in BfA. Fast forward 3 expansions and there is no trace of that. 
Friendly reminder that that was 10 years ago. (okay more like 8, but still not exactly recent)
And that arcane was very different back then.
7 but yeah. I guess I’ve repressed all memories of BfA and SL so it seems like less to me, lol. It’s just so sad that everything has been downhill since then. DF sort of broke the bad streak but it ended so abruptly and we got stuck with another season of nothing, and for what? TWW has been mediocre at best. Even if they somehow manage to turn the expansion around with the final patch so many specs have been utterly ruined that even if the story and gameplay is good the players won’t come back because they can’t play their favorite characters.
I have a ret pally that I can play. I started playing arcane because of the cool damage profile. I find it fun blasting bosses in M+. I want that back.
I’m not saying arcane is bad for boss damage current. It’s just that with the hard target cap being so bad we should have something to compensate for that. And I hope they continue with that design.
pure aoe is kinda boring and simple for a spec like arcane which is supposed to be a very nerdy wizard
The big problem is the mess that our bottom talent section is in. Aether Attunement and Arcane Harmony are 100% mandatory talents in all situations - that’s 5 points gone right there. Orb Barrage is mandatory for AoE since it’s how we fuel Abarr spam, so that’s another 3 points gone. That just leaves us with 2 points to move around, and a case can be made that Magi’s Spark is also mandatory so really just 1 point left.
Leydrinker and Arcane Rebound would have to be crazy strong for us to consider dropping Aether Attunement and Debilitation.