Arcane Mage Change Wishlist

Classes Mage
1

So with the upcoming listed changes for Mage in 10.1.5, I wanted to add some other thoughts I’ve had and would like to see going forward specifically regarding Arcane.

Prismatic Crystal: this was an old talent from the days of Draenor I believe? This would easily help manage the problems arcane mages face where enemies don’t live long enough to justify using touch of the magi or arcane surge on them.

CD reduction on arcane surge. I find it interesting that there isn’t a talent based around reducing its CD. Also a CD reduction in touch of the magi would feel good too.

Please remove siphon storm. Even with the change being made to the talent where it channels faster, I just still feel like it’s clunky.

Radiant spark should have died in the shadow lands. It felt good in shadowlands because of the conduits to make it feel really good.

I would love to instead see some black hole type talent in the tree. Something that pulls enemies into the center and damages them.

Give us a talent that is similar to the deathborne talent from SL. Something that allows arcane blast to cleave would feel good I think.

I also really love arcane orb, and I love the idea behind arcane barrage as it is, but it just doesn’t work. I think that talent should be looked at further because an orb based build would be fun for some fights.

2

This isnt going to end well for you.

And no Prismatic Crystal should stay dead.

3 Likes
3

Why is this not going to end well for me?

And what’s wrong with Crystal?

4

You lost me here already.

Simply one of the worst designed abilities in the history of this game and even more hated than RoP by virtually everybody.

2 Likes
5

How is it bad? You essentially place a target dummy that takes increased damage and converts ST damage into AOE

6

Just say no to Prismatic Crystal. Then, take a deep breath, and say no again.

7

You suggested bringing back Prismatic Crystal.

Whats not wrong with Crystal?

This ^

Raven and I almost never agree on anything either :stuck_out_tongue:

8

Okay but like how is it a bad ability? Why is it so “universally hated”?

9

Drop crystal, tank kites away from crystal

crystal worhtless.

1 Like
10

Also have to target the crystal, sometimes with too many nameplates makes it annoying. Iirc /tar macros could target other mages’ crystals as well.

[Touch of the Magi] is [Prismatic Crystal] but better. Also turning ST fights into cleave fights all of a sudden made it difficult to balance. Some interactions in the last patch made Arcane Mages absolutely broken. This ability is just way more trouble than its worth both for us and the balancing team.

11

Because it’s stationary. If the tank moves the mobs out of its range or if it’s a boss that moves out by itself due to a mechanic you’ve essentially wasted the cooldown. The entire notion of abilities that work like that (TotM is another variation on the theme) is deeply flawed and problematic for a variety of reasons.

Having a cooldown that deals delayed damage is just a bad idea any way you look at it. Too much can go wrong: targets move away, target dies too soon, you accidentally put it on the wrong target that you were trying to CS, the list goes on.

It also encourages unintuitive and downright degenerate playstyles like cooldown stacking and ignoring priority targets which generally have lower health pools in favor of tunneling beefier but less dangerous mobs.

12

As others have mentioned, this talent wasn’t a great option back in the day, and will be even worse now. Yeah, it definitely had some elements of fun and some nice aesthetics and themes, but it wasn’t ideal in practice. Nowadays, with as much movement as we have in a lot of content, it would have to do an absurd amount of damage to be worth taking.

If you reduce the CD on surge, you also need to make sure that the CD on Touch of the Magi, Evocation, and Presence of Mind are all also reduced at the same rate so that the cooldowns don’t desync. Short of reducing Surge by a full 45 seconds (50%), I don’t see them giving us something to reduce that many spells at any substantial rate. The abomination that was Arcane Prodigy will not be missed. As it stands, most mages take Shifting Power and a good number of them don’t even like taking that because of how weird it makes things.

Now that arcane doesn’t really care as much about mana, I don’t see any reason why this needs to be removed except that it’s just another buff to press. Considering Evocation has been part of arcane’s kit for a very long time, I don’t see any reason why siphon storm can’t stick around to buff it.

There’s noting wrong with Radiant Spark. It’s not a hard spell to figure out. Not everything in our kit needs to be a giant laser beam of instant kill. All you need to do is not cast missiles for a few seconds.

I’d take this one. I honestly didn’t think I’d like it, but I did. At least, by the end of the expansion when it was all nice and buffed it was fun. Giving us another AoE / Cleave option to replace Touch of the Magi would be nice and interesting. Something like this would require a lot of testing and balancing, however.

What about arcane orb doesn’t work? It’s not really meant to be a primary damage dealer. It’s got decent damage and the utility of getting charges out of it is fantastic. An orb-based build would be interesting (my mind wanders to Diablo 3’s wizard a bit), but the number of game-changing talents we’d need to make something like that work and be balanced is probably a bit more than the devs can handle right now.

13

Thank you for going through and commenting on each of these individually. I appreciate it.

I mistyped at the end. I want an “orb barrage” build to be more viable. I also was thinking something more like the wizard orb build from Diablo.

I hear what everyone is saying about Crystal and I understand that. I just always felt like it was more “Arcane-y” than some of the things we have.

As far as radiant spark goes, I loved the ability in shadowlands. But I loved it when you were using it to buff a beefy barrage. That’s not really how we seem to use it anymore though. Plus the conduits we had made it do like 80% more damage instead of only 40%?

I loved arcane in shadowlands and I just haven’t been able to get back into it this expac.

1 Like
14

You seem to be among the minority (at least on the forums) unfortunately. Most mages who have played arcane for a long time seem to agree that the playstyle that started in Shadowlands is a fragment of what arcane used to be. It’s very… different… now.

I think, in all honesty, there were a lot of things that shadowlands tried that were interesting and decent attempts at making some unique ideas. The problem is that there were too many of them, and they opted to keep too many of them.

RS felt a lot better back then. But all the “borrowed powers” did. Things like Radiant Spark, Shifting Power, and Arcane Harmony had a lot of limelight because they were supposed to be the new special powers that we gained because we were in the shadowlands. They did a great job at that. At least for mage, there were a decent number of covenant abilities, conduits, and legendaries that felt really good to use.

The problem is that we’re not in Shadowlands anymore. In most cases, the abilities we gain in one expansion almost completely disappear moving into the next. To be honest, I’m surprised at just how much from Shadowlands we kept moving forward. The problem now, though, is that those abilities aren’t special anymore. There’s no real reason why they need to be these uber spells that do as much as they did. The intention was to try to scale things like that back a bit, and honestly I think they succeeded.

One of the big complaints I see a lot on this forum is that Shifting Power doesn’t feel as good as it used to. I mean… yeah… that was part of the point. Aside from the argument about its spell school and the ridiculous animations on it, I think that, had Shadowlands not happened, most mages wouldn’t have such a negative opinion about this spell if it were added, as is, into an older expansion (with maybe some more tame animations and a mage-appropriate spell school).

Something that we should come to expect is that spells and abilities that were borrowed powers but became permanent powers should not be as strong as they were during their primary expansion.

When it comes to RS, I feel as if increasing its damage increase and cooldown by 50% would actually help a lot. It gives it a little bit more oomph and lines it up more appropriately with the rest of our cooldowns. A 45 second cooldown instead of 30 seconds. 15% per stack instead of 10%, going up to a max of 60% instead of 40%. It wouldn’t be a hard change to make and would probably also help us get some of our burst back with RoP gone.

15

With the current talents to augment TotM, doesn’t that function similarly to the crystal? When you hit it, it radiates damage to everything around it.

I feel like if you wanted prismatic to return, just having a button to detonate TotM early (as many many others suggested before this) would suit that middle ground fairly well without worrying about tanks pulling away.

But that trinket from Mannoroth with arcane missiles…so juicy <3

16

I agree. Especially with the radiant spark idea. If it were to be increased in damage and cooldown like you said, it would feel much better.

I also really wish supernova was better. I think it’s such a cool spell

17

I feel like there was once a time where supernova felt better, though I don’t remember when that was. Maybe it was when it was first released?

For some reason I think it used to scale with Arcane Charges the way that Arcane Blast does, so it was a very rewarding AoE spell when your charges were high. Unfortunately, barrage has basically filled that role as our AoE, and I don’t see that changing any time soon.

18

A thread where Desolation Kerathus Raven and I all agree?

The end is near!

On a serious note.

While I personally prefer the traditional arcane mage style SL harmony wasn’t awful. It was mikes better than the DF version.

1 Like
19

I’ll be honest, I didn’t hate the way it played in SL either. I think, in terms of how much I enjoyed each particular iteration, it’s BfA < SL < DF < Legion for the most recent expansions.

Personally, I don’t think that the style changed much between SL and DF, but the things that changed I generally liked. Granted, I played the Kyrian rotation for the entire expansion - from CN to WhateverTheHeckSeason4Was. I’m glad to see Arcane Prodigy gone. I’m glad to see Newfound Resolve gone. I’m glad that the damage on Touch was brought in line. I’m glad Harmony stayed. I’m thankful to have Blast Wave. I’m thankful to have Ice Floes.

The things I’d roll back are Arcane Surge, the stack limit on Harmony, and maybe Shifting Power. All in all, the good outweighs the bad for me. My biggest issue this expansion has been our general lack of love and iteration which, as we all know, is finally changing next patch.

20

Yeah, I am remaining cautiously optimistic. I just hope they take feedback to heart because these reworks have kinda been a mixed bag. The Ret one was largely a success but the Shadow was a complete bust. I guess the Devoker was a win too but it was more of a streamlining and QoL stuff than an actual rework. Still, it shows that they know how to do things right when they really put their minds to it so let’s stay vigilant but hopeful for now.