The weakest class now in the game IMO. Did a Legion raid to farm transmog.
All my other characters melted the bosses and mobs. No problem.
My Arcane Mage since the “update”?
Had struggles. And doing Radiant Echoes? Getting thrashed.
Epic nerf.
Low damage, slow-casting, no Arcane Missiles (‘muh Clearcasting muhst proc now’), no healing, weak armor (maybe allow mages to wear plate? lol) it’s just pathetic. Loses attacks, abilities. WTH? This is no longer a fun class to play unless you like spamming Arcane ‘Barrage’. There’s literally no other attack ability unless you want to run up and spam all the stupid “blast/erupt” abilities. There’s an old saying “ranged shouldn’t melee”. (see Nightmare on Elm Street 3 “Demon begone!” caster charging Freddy)
The whole point of Mages being high DPS/range is to offset their weak armor and lack of healing abilities (no self-heal except prismatic barrier which should be called ‘paper mache barrier’).
Now they’re extremely low DPS. Arcane Blast is useless and the Arcane Charges don’t increase spell damage at all, especially not of Arcane ‘Barrage’ which is the one it’s really intended for. About 90% of the time, ‘Arcane Barrage’ I’m seeing is doing roughly equal OR LESS damage than Arcane Blast. Hence, might as well dump Arcane Blast and just spam
Arcane Barrage.
The demolishment of this class is now (almost totally) complete.
I literally destroy anything I am up against as Arcane compared to any of my nearly equally geared alts. Why? Because I know how to play Arcane Mage. It sounds like you have a skill issue.
Dungeons are super easy and things die fast, which is kind of a positive for arcane. Were mobile and do crazy burst. Bosses die so fast you can just unload. I was doing like 1.5m dps on bosses and had like 900k dps overall in the dungeons ive been running.
Ive done up to teir 3 pretty easily in delves as an arcane mage.
I actually leveled my sub rogue first thinking id switch mains. My arcane mage blows my rogue out of the water when it comes to dps
Your right, they should buff arcane by atleast 500%. I was playing with a bunch of lvl 70s in a dungeon, and they blew me away, its like they are scaled to specifically be better then arcane. Arcane should be the best all the time.
I love your idea about wearing plate, but i don’t wanna lose all my cool caster items. i think they should let us wear both, like if i had plate armor on, i would definitely have some clothing on underbeneath it, they might as well be magical.
Erupt is like our best move, i don’t think they should change that one much, its kind of a staple, but maybe we could have an ability to pull them to us, that way we can stay at range until we want to erupt.
Don’t get me started about arcane barrage, it uses up all your charges, i worked hard for those charges, i am not going to just throw them away. I just take it off my bars that way i am always charged up and ready for my next erupt.
I’ve been a frost mage for many years, just switched to arcane - even after a few hours of arcane, I can already see how I can do a lot of damage, and my rotation is not even properly correct.
Some of the most insane dps I’ve seen yet has come from a rogue. Haven’t seen very many of them, so I’m thinking the secrets still not out, or maybe a high skill cap not being met by most. Don’t remember this guys spec, but I think it was outlaw.
Regardless of what others are saying, I agree with you. I have a level 71 Arcane mage. She has Sunfury heroics. Her item level 467. She keeps getting killed on the Isle of Dorn.
I have been playing a Arcane mage for years. No matter what talent build I use or what combination of spells she uses, she keeping getting killed. She literally has to beat the mob one at a time with her spells until they die
Simple question, I know I don’t have great gear, but how much better does it have to be to play The War Within?
It’s not the same in dungeons and probably raids. Open World Arcane Struggles because we only have two CCs now, Frost Nova and Cone of Cold, with the Removal of Chrono Shift, kiting is significantly harder. It’s possible to level as Arcane, absolutely, with proper use of CoC, Frost Nova, Alter Time, Ice Cold and Mirror Images, you can survive some pretty big pulls, but Frost will forever be a simpler and more controlled way to level mage and just do world content in general, even if more boring.
As for dungeons and raids? In dungeons we can top the charts every other trash pull and will typically be top DPS on bosses unless we are missing a cooldown, unfortunately, chances are Sunfury Arcane is getting nerfed on the pre-raid tuning, so it probably won’t be idyllic like this for too long, then we will see which spec gets the spotlight.
If they nerf arcane to be unwanted like, you know, every time they swing the nerf-bat I think I might quite WoW forever. So tired of their over the top nerfs.
Arcane just doesn’t ever get to live in the spotlight and it’s my favorite mage spec. It’ll probably be the same Blizz employee every season that shows up to the meeting and pushes Arcane nerfs and Fire buffs, so we all have to play Fire…again…
I completely agree with OP. Without free AM, all you can do is spam AB. Before the update, you could pummel your enemies before they even reached you. Now enemies get to you and thus take down your defenses. Mage is supposed to be a ranged class, not melee. Arcane Mage was so much better for the stupid change to AM. Now we have to wait for procs just to use the spell, which is stupid. Plus CC only lasts for a limited time, which causes a sense of urgency to use the spell before CC goes away.
My proposed “fix” to this issue is to make it so Arcane Blast casts as quickly as it does at 4 Arcane Charges no matter how many charges you currently have. Let each Arcane Charge still affect the damage output that Arcane Blast does with each level, but make the cast time the same at all levels as if you already had 4 charges from the start. Basically, Arcane Blast should not feel like it has an impediment (slow starting casts) in the modern game.
This change would make Arcane Blast feel less sluggish for the players that want the instantaneous damage they are missing from the Arcane Missiles change. I personally did not like feeling required in any way to spam or fish with Arcane Missiles for Clearcasting procs.
In the meantime, I recommend getting the hang of building charges with Arcane Orb and its supplementary talents, using Presence of Mind to get 2 instant cast Arcane Blasts which is nice for building the first 2 sluggish charges, and making good use of Touch of the Magi for 4 instantly generating Arcane Charges.
My other fix would be to bring back “cast anytime” Arcane Missiles, but the non-Clearcasting casted Arcane Missiles would NOT generate Clearcasting. Only the Clearcasting Arcane Missiles casts would be able to generate more Clearcasting procs.
This is the way an Arcane Mage is supposed to work
I created a level 10. Froze her at level 10. She took the quest to go to the Dragon Isles. Now that she is there, no one will give her any quest. Right now she is killing Primal Proto-Drakes with two Arcane Explosion. Smaller things take only one
Yet my level 70 on the Isle of Dorn can barely kill anything and keeps getting killed.
Been playing arcane for years, and I’ll admit, at first, it was rough. But once I got the hang of it, it felt great. Not easy-mode, certainly, but with the right rotation, and approaching fights with a bit of planning, it felt pretty untouchable. Coming into Pre-patch, with the various nerfs and rearrangements, it instantly felt weak as hell, though, once again, getting the knack of a slightly different approach, and USUALLY I feel like a powerhouse… except when I really really don’t, and at the weirdest times. Like, I’m terrified of kobolds now. Kobolds. They mob me, trash my barrier like INSTANTLY, and are ridiculous little goofy damage sponges for some reason. Overall, I miss the “magic missiles”- I’d be crazy not to! -and my prismatic barrier feels like pretty much everything just laughs at it and shreds it instantly. Conversely though, I do love the power of Touch of the Magi and Arcane Surge, apart from the cooldown, which leaves me in the lurch more often than I’d like. My orbs do feel like they pack a punch, at least. The overall vibe I’m getting is, they wanted to force us to change up our routines. Play differently. I… still don’t know how I feel about that.
I’m annoyed just as much as the rest of you. I’m also upset about the remvoal of chrono shift for kiting mobs. I actually miss nether Tempest for tagging (fireblast isn’t the same, since it has a CD, and using barrage can work, but you risk losing your charges.
I’d love ice lance to replace Frost Bolt. It makes sense to have instant spells, since fireblast and Arcane explosion are both instant.
I hate how sluggish Arcane Blast feels, I was at 1.1 seconds in DF, and we’ll get there again, eventually. It doesn’t help we still have spell push back, so it is just a tiny bit more punishing.
I do love Aether Attunement, but sucks when you don’t have a clearcasting proc, so you gotta burn evocation to generate one. Would be a welcomed change to have presence of mind treat a spell as clearcasting.
Anyway, use slow to help with soloing. Weave it in, and use blast wave to generate distance and gravity lapse to keep things at bay or dragon’s breath.
It’s funny, everyone is saying sunfury is broken but only because top tier mage players say it is. I have beaten every sunfury arcane mage as spellslinger arcane so far out of the water dps wise. The only thing I can think maybe we need help with is our aoe. We are nothing without our CDS, if you hold them for whatever reason on trash mobs our aoe is not the best.
Meh. I have a feeling you’re being disingenuous. Need to do apples to apples comparison. Most you are playing against probably aren’t 587 ilvl with gems and enchants.
