This is a post geared towards mostly mechanical feedback regarding Classic SoD’s Arcane Mage as both a healer and damage roles to provoke discussion about what it does well including possible improvements. This has a more holistic approach to the experience and includes it’s state outside of the PTR currently as I believe it to be a more earnest discussion.
Post-06/27/24 changes feedback
Updates to mages from post
Initial personal experience
Conclusively I’ll have to say this is a significant short term DPS increase to reinforce the same perfect play niche that arcane healers already exclusively existed for and homogenized mage builds. Changing hot streak to the head slot has made the head slot a role definer for mages exclusively as healers will use temporal anomoly/advanced warding, frost will use deep freeze and perhaps fire mages will use hot streak but I doubt it. This means the only flavorful difference in mages exists almost entirely out of which runes they use to support frostfire bolt, balefire bolt or both.
In challenging play other mage DPS role specializations have more sustainability, utility and better long term numbers beyond 30second fights. Every other healers has better sustainability, reactivity and most importantly group utility. In pvp you won’t see these changes effect desired healers for the same reasons. This was objectively an improvement to arcane DPS roles but leaves the swathe of arcane healer problems unaddressed.
Pre-06/27/24 changes feedback
Damage Roles Current State
It is the lowest performing raid specialization by a massive margin of being around %30-%40 worse overall compared to the next damage specialization however its very much the cosy mages choice. The sustainability and output alongside it’s toolbox creates a fun solo experience for most challenges and fills a fun but rare niche in PvP most refer to as the three minute mage. It lacks majorly in group benefits and long term dps in challenging activities when compared to other mage specializations. Recently it performs so poorly and provides no buff/debuff significant to the raid that practically nobody wants to bring one over any other damage role.
Arcane Damage Pros
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Sustainability - far less of a problem due to the emergence of many mana recovery and management becoming obsolete it still outshines the other specs in all other forms of gameplay for point of resource taken for output.
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Simplicity - Although everyone’s familiar with the role of stacking debuff than spamming a single ability those specs do change outside of boss raids. Arcane generally approaches every problem in the same way regardless of content and is easier to approach than some of the other combos of specs concerning buffs and their timing may be less approachable than the simplicity of arcane.
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Minor defensive abilities - although frost obviously takes the cake concerning this arcane does have a neat feature typically used in pvp or a very specific pve scenario with their magic absorption and with the new rune causing mana shield to be more practical seeing reliable use.
Arcane Damage Cons
Arcane Damage Cons
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Damage - Outside of the absolute meme of someone popping all their global cooldowns two abilities and arcane surge for a short window to potentially drop 5k damage it just does far less damage. Fights don’t last long enough for their GCD’s to be on a rotation and the raw spells simply deal less damage for their charge up of four casts of arcane blast and their proc of arcane barrage or balefire bolt not hitting as hard as the other specializations repeated cast spell.
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Utility - That temporal orb is somewhat ridiculous in its current state which feels designed for a different game. The amplify/dampen spells are typically silly over useful and not talented into regardless leaving it available to every other mage. There’s no unique benefit to any tank, healer or damage dealer in the group or raid due to an arcane mages presence.
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Range - Every other spec has greater range on their spells which also deal more damage or at least the option to while having a greater benefit to the cast. It has a close range AoE which of course has it’s own benefits but the other specs benefit far more from their ranged AoE spells due to talents or runes. The class functions best exclusively at range in %99.99 of scenarios and this hinders the specialization in raid mechanics but especially in PvP scenarios.
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Scaling - There are extremely few group abilities, buffs or effects that specifically add to arcane damage or other forms of play that benefit from their target receiving arcane damage in comparison to the availability of elemental, physical damage and shadow bonuses which benefit many classes on their own. Which means the specialization specifically is more adversarial to group play.
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Class Fantasy Flavor - Not typically something that given a great deal of feedback but it’s always present. We strongly see the fantasy of an elemental mage or master demonstrated and felt thematically in the other two specializations. Exploding in fire, burning away at their foes flesh and throwing a fireball the size of a fully grown dwarf or the constant freezings alongside the overwhelming force of winter and ice are so well presented. When it comes to arcane mage in classic we don’t see what most may imagine the wizardy or nerdiest of casters fantasy standout like the other two. All specs grant their allies portals through the realm, reshape their foes into something comical and make them a little smarter. Without being too expansive it lacks a uniqueness on it’s own what we see in other fantasy presentations of a wizard, familiars, animated objects, extremely long cast times for magical effects, magical effects, talking hats, glyphs, warding of an actual useful kind, necromancy, magically booning weapons.
Healing Roles Current State
This currently plays well towards the mage classes inherent sustainability in their solo content making mistakes a little more forgiving when attempting some of the more wild pve things mages get up to and fills the extremely rare niche of being more fitting to hyper elite group speed running content due to it’s overheal and damage output specifically.
Arcane Healer Pros
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Damage - Since it’s feature debut I believe everyone’s been happy to see a leech style healer typically represented as a blood sorcerer or the similar in other fantasy games.
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Pushing the solo limits - It’s always been fun for everyone to watch what some of the more dedicated can do with a hundred(s) mobs and a mage in classic wow and mostly before the living flame nerf this was showcased it has obviously made some things possible which weren’t before which is fun and entertaining.
Arcane Healer Cons
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Sustainability - This is one heck of a mana muncher to the point any other healer takes massive preference due to their far extended arsenal and procs to restoring or fortifying health for any serious fight or non speedrun activities. Even in regular dungeons the amount of drinking and breaks required are such a massive hinderance over healer roles that practically never need one or only need one rare break due to an overpull that somebody will only take a mage healer as a last resort.
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Upkeep - The slow response time of always needing a pre-cast whether it’s regeneration or chronostatic before a second cast means there’s a large amount of time wasted upkeeping the status effect to an annoying amount of downtime reapplying or alternatively not being in the position to provide healing when needed to any party member that’s not the primary target for healing.
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Hard Cast - Although a general complaint of the class that the fire specialization see’s less of, in this form of the game movement is the main mechanic of challenging scenarios. It is worse to have to sit still and cast than not. There is zero ability to provide instant or emergency aid due to the rune placement of rewind time disregarding the extremely rare clutch PoM arcane blast on an already beaconed target I suppose.
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Rewinds Time - This will be more extensively explored in the suggestions for improvement but it doesn’t cover nearly enough time, needs to anticipate the hit, takes placement over arcane blast, doesn’t fix stacks or debuffs and has probably never seen use in PvP due to a myriad of reasons.
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Regnerations Healing - It’s so pathetically small despite that almost every use of the spell results in the caster cancelling the channeling early so they can start dealing damage, it’s only used as a movement stopper to apply the temporal beacon buff.
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Buffs - There aren’t any. There is no overheal barrier, jumping to an ally, death save to one health, extra dispelling, fortification against damage, nor buff to movement or armor, no proc on next hit, none of the wide utility of buffs that other healers provide.
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Wands - It’s nice they were added at all to the healing I suppose. The class which should be best with them still doesn’t provide anything to make it feasible to use. It’s always best to cast an arcane spell and if you’re so out of mana you’re wanding you’re not going to be able to cast the spell to reapply temporal beacon due to mana issues.
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Gear - Double edged sword however since damage is your healing. There has been no set tier in this phase or the last to support arcane healers in PvP or raid sets, healing power is a greater number than spell power but it doesn’t benefit a mage healer meaning they directly heal for less.
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Clearcasting - Obviously the description of clearcasting covers this but it is so absolutely ridiculous in the specialization which has gone OOM quicker than any other hasn’t seen this changed or tested. This is the most widely agreed on complaint I’ve come across concerning the specialization.
Arcane Damage PTR Changes
Reflection of my testing and simulations. This will take into account the tier set despite the fact it’s the outcome and prize of the function of the tool which is the specialization. Rendering the benefits of the set somewhat null and void as upon most gaining the set they’re ironically finished with that tool for the phase.
Arcane Damage roles prposed phase 4 PTR changes and feedback from testing
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There’s not nearly enough damage in comparison to the other two specs. Although the tier set provides the extra fingers of frost chance and a pure arcane spec will be able to get shatter that possibly additionally utilizes deep freeze it’s just nowhere near enough. So far testing shows it to be somewhere around %60 as effective with regular buffs and just less than half as effective when world buffed compared to the other specializations.
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Overheat is better than Barrage. The proc chance of missile barrage is already so good that an additional cast spell as weak as missile barrage isn’t worth not using overheat in it’s stead, especially if the arcane mage is using balefire and ignite which is the current specialization choice for PvE challenges.
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Set is very nice and clearly has a PvP focus to it’s benefits that mesh well with PvE but grants practically no bonus that the other damage specializations won’t make a superior use out of.
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Arcane blast scaled rather average and so did surge, living flame absolutely did not scale well at a higher level. In comparison to the damage outputs of the other specializations staple cast spell they perform better in comparison to the tool to cast a quick magic missile with %60 more damage.
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Overall surprised by the lack of changes.
Arcane Healer PTR Changes
Overall it’s been improved rather slightly with the movement of rewind time and functions just as did previously. This feedback makes the same assumption regarding the gears tier set as above.
Proposed phase 4 Arcane Healer role changes and feedback
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Rewind time has been vastly improved by it’s movement to the wrist slot but it still competes with some extremely good choices that other healers don’t have to make. It’s tier set bonus is extremely unclear in it’s wording but it’s fundamentally strange in it’s state to focus on using this as a staple rather than an emergency as it means you will not be casting your damage spells which are likely healing more nor maintaining your buffs.
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Tier gear is honestly a very nice step in the right direction. It’s not enough to provide %88 healing instead of %80 and even less on yourself for a regular group or raid to make it better over another healer class.
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The advanced warding change so a mage can dispel as well as decurse is good though it’s strange to compete with the buffed temporal anomaly shield and comes off as a selfish choice for a healer. You can of course swap between fights or swap right after casting the orb before a fight it’s still a weird choice to make that other healers don’t contend with.
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More mechanics of movement still means lots of damage downtime that other healers won’t suffer from. In future raid phases beyond P4 this will become a more prominent issue. There’s the option to spam mass regenerate and go completely oom I suppose but this is a growing problem that’s not addressed and will likely get worse.
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The anomaly shield pre-cast isn’t enough of a buff to picking a mage as a choice of healer since every mage can use it and then swap before a fight either by gear switching or manually changing rune. Not to mention it’s awkward line and movement during a fight is a pure detriment for the very small amount of barrier it provides, it’s just weird and bad to aim your barrier in the way it functions.
Suggestions and Improvements
This is the section in which I’m mostly excited to see discussion. Obviously there’s always the hope of development on the class based on feedback but I also don’t have the best fixes myself. Personally I’m just throwing an idea out there to be bounced around and gain feedback.
Arcane Damage roles suggestions for improvement
Arcane Damage Suggestions
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Improving Arcane Blast - The first thing that comes to mind is the damage improvement per cast affecting itself and only ending upon another damaging arcane spell. This creates the option to simply drain your mana for extra damage and an overall boost, this isn’t enough to catch up the other specializations on it’s own however and is realistically only a slight improvement overall.
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Improving Balefire Bolt - Two things come to mind. Creating a magical damage debuff or a pure damage increase. Perference would be each cast of balefire bolt increases magical damage taken by %2 stacking alongside your own stacks. This would create a nice utility for the group but also a terrifying cost in a long fight with nine stacks as you’re tempted to do a tenth. Opposed to a pure damage improvement I personally haven’t tested this in the simulator enough to figure out how much of a pure damage improvement would be needed as it really only shines in a fight between 25-40 seconds specifically.
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Make Wands Useful - This will double into healing improvements later on. Like me you would have also noticed there was no hit improvement ring rune for wands. The main idea for this that crossed my mind were two different ring wand bonuses. The one for damage I thought of a wand attack proccing on a chance with a cast if you have the talent for it, this could use some serious expansion in concept.
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Promoting Arcane Surge into Damage Rotations via Clearcasting - Initially I thought this was silly due to the obvious problems in PvP but the more I thought about it the more it made sense and it would put the spec on par with frost if it can be repeated as often as deep freeze including improved maneuverability. At first thought it didn’t appear to be enough damage due to it’s cooldown. However if it granted the mana regeneration on top of not consuming mana due to clearcasting and had some sort of long fight PvE function to repeat it’s casting more often it could provide enough damage to match the other damage specializations since it’s only slightly more damage than a deep freeze with ice shards with four arcane blast charges. The core issue is obviously somebody double dropping this in PvP or even a basic PvE mob and it needs to be a higher or comparable DPS increase to it’s competitor icy veins but I’m honestly not sure how to handle it in that regards.
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Arcane Barrage AoE’s - As far as I’m aware this is somewhat how it functions in retail. It climbs with arcane blast charges and hits as many targets, this way you could possibly guarantee an arcane barrage charge which would be very nice if there’s five targets. Alternatively shortening the cooldowns of PoM/Arcane Power significantly per cast, naturally lowering their cooldown by having it worn in the head slot could work too. It needs to be more useful than overheat.
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Just swapping arcane barrage for a more thematic wizardy choice. Familiars come to mind first since I’m bias in that way, having a little mini leywalker who shortens certain GCD’s or buffs all arcane damage in the party, blue dragonwhelp that gives all your arcane damage spells one more target, little lich skeleton that causes you or a party member to go to 1 health instead of dying to a hit once every now and then, mini chromie randomly applying temporal beacon or extending its duration to people in your party. Possibilities are endless but completely removing barrage in its state and giving a class utility would be great, could lean into more time magic like things.
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Improving Arcane Missile - This would be a replacement for arcane barrage. There’s a lot of ways to do this and the goal would be a raw DPS increase. Increase targets by an amount equal to your arcane instability talent points, increase critical chance by %50 or critical damage by %100, double the amount of missiles. Lots of options, it’s just for the pure necessity of DPS increase from arcane barrage procs and I don’t see a lot of possible utility benefits.
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Arcane Meditation is group wide - Stacking with similar effects it would be a very nice utility that’s honestly not too powerful to make the specialization stand out and do something to help your fellow casters even if its not much.
Arcane Healing roles suggestions for improvement
Arcane Healing
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Clearcasting works on every spell - Not much else to say. This would add a reactive proc and extend the massive cost of that mass regeneration consumes. Not sure what the downside is here.
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Extend the time of temporal beacon significantly - I’m honestly thinking by %50 and it stacks with the extended time of the set bonus. It’s such a pain, it’s so constant, it’s annoying to track, it consumes too much mana.
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Remove Regeneration Channeling - Provides maneuverability and means you could cast while moving, I’m not sure changing any cooldowns is necessary. This could also be improved by improving the healed amount I suppose but it’s just so annoying especially if your racing to tag one person with the single target regen out of place and get locked in for a moment to cancel and step back into position.
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Wands heal better - This is following up on my wand rune for a ring but themed for healers. It could restore mana every hit but also provide some form of utility, such as reducing next attack damage by the wand damage, restores the mana of your temporal beacon targets by %80 of the wand damage, extends the time of temporal beacon by one second upon hit (I’m genuinely unsure if there’s an arcane wand with a sub second cast time), it could improve the attack/cast speed of your temporal targets per hit until the beacon is refreshed by a stacking amount, or just improve the wand healing done to your targets by a small amount but that wouldn’t fix it’s failed function of being used while OOM and temporal beacons not applied anyway. Lots of options, could use brainstorming a few more.
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Granting improved decurse as a skillbook default - Also gained similar to the dropped books in scarlet monastary or whatever, it simply should be included rather than a choice in the healers toolkit.
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Temporal Anomoly is completely redesigned - It could be static, have a greater area and only reduce damage by it’s amount for X amount of hits or to all allies raidwide within Y amount of hits or until it’s dispelled. Alternatively it could just grant the full barrier amount of all it’s stacks and you shoot it to a selected ally, it would grant everyone between the two of you the buff but honestly that’s still really finicky. Would appreciate suggestions on fixing this.
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Rewind Time rewinds most debuffs and stacks - Simply stated and I’m sure there could be limits figured out such as only removing a maximum amount of one stack or such, it’s so difficult for a mage healer to deal with most of these effects if they can’t remove them due to the downtime of their need to upkeep the buff. It could also be improved if it resurrected a dead ally to their state five seconds ago as long as they had temporal beacon on them but that seems a little much, unsure how to properly balance that since I think it would wipe all buffs and positioning might be an issue, perhaps thats alright. It could also be improved by restoring mana every time it’s cast on somebody by an amount relative to the healing perhaps or a cap. Lots of options, it just needs to be a better choice than it’s wrist competitors.
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Reliable resurrection - Increasing the stacks of this scroll to twenty could be a good fix. Going on a quest causing some of the mage scrolls to be infinite or deciphering infinite rare versions would be nice too. This is just a quality of life increase and not a requirement but its weird being the only healer who can’t resurrect due to a limited auction house or inventory management issues.
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Rework dampen/amplify utility - Changing the talent so it only changed the beneficial effect of other might be a nice option but I’m not sure it still provides utility enough. The goal would be to make the talent useful therefore making the specialization tree more useful or aiding healing. Perhaps temporal beacon could nullify the negatives? The talent could also similarly half the negative effect equally. There’s likely a way to change the talent so it provides wider and more useful group utility.
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Magic Absorption Talent is Shared - Either simply group wide or possibly it also effects the targets of your temporal beacon. The goal is to add more utility to it and adding resistance in this manner would make the specialization standout in a way the others don’t.
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Advanced Warding grants the ability to cast shields on others - At the cost of your mana it could aid utility and standout, I would presume to a lesser effect of %50-ish of the amount absorbed for balancing reasons but it would be cool to see them gain the benefits of talents that benefit them as well.
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Arcane Resilience works on your temporal beacon targets - Another attempt of adding utility, honestly just sharing your passive arcane talent effects onto your beacon targets would be a fantastic way for the class to standout. This enhances choosing this talent tree, committing to it, does something other healers don’t and causes your temporal beacon to be a buff more valuable to cast on others.
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Chronostatic Preservation has Charges - This would ideally trigger or occur with the pairing of another talent or rune. Perhaps triggering arcane power causes it never to deplete? Could hold as many charges as arcane blasts were used when casting it. It would greatly enhance the mobility of the healer and give some more healing per mana spent.
Starrockets Arcane Barrage rework suggestion
Starrockets Arcane Surge rework suggestion
Zifnabs Frostfire & Balefire Bolt suggestion
Timewardens talent & rune reworks suggestions
Gathrans healing & arcane ability rework feedback & suggestions
This is certainly throwing a lot of things at the wall to see what sticks or appears to be a good idea, always love a set of fresh eyes and what other people think about the arcane specialization or how they’ve been using it in the PTR so far. I’d love to hear what others have thought, I can see similar complaints in feedback posts so far but not as many ideas for solutions nor many calls for utility additions which I’d enjoy hearing more of if you have any that come to mind.
EDIT: Cleaned up the post into clickable expansive parts to make it much easier to scroll through and navigate.
EDIT2: Added actual suggestions relevant to the thread at the bottom for clarity of browsing between commentary and mechanical suggestion. Hopefully there will be a lot more.
