So you’re one of those guys. You’re in a scrub mythic raiding guild that never get’s past the first few bosses in a raid, but that makes you so awesome in your own mind that you never have to actually discuss topics on point unless the person you are talking to can prove they have higher numbers on their character sheet.
Just to put your mind at ease a bit, I wasn’t putting your ability into question, in fact I think you played just fine on the last two fights. Which is the entire point, you have half the DPS of the top player on the most important fight in the raid. The question you refused to answer because being in a scrub mythic raiding guild that never makes it past the first few trash bosses on mythic was don’t you think your group would have been better served if you were on another class?
To put it another way, do you think the other players in your group would have doubled your DPS if you’d been on the same class as them? Probably not right? So just by being arcane you made the last and most important fight of the raid harder on everyone involved.
That’s not right. No, I don’t think every class should have exactly the same damage on every single fight, but arcane is at the bottom of them all. Most importantly, arcane is at the bottom of the most important fights… time after time, expansion after expansion.
That’s why I can justify being arcane. I can’t justify bringing a class to the final fight of the raid, the most important fight, and then ask the entire group to carry me to victory when everyone is already struggling just to carry themselves.
I just wanted to pop in and say that I had more fun running mythic dungeons (for the weekly) with Arcane Orb than I have in a long time. That spell makes the whole spec feel so much better and fun and we should not need to give up Overpowered in order to use it. Plz Blizz just move it to literally any other talent tier
I have to agree with this. I’ve seen significant drops in Jaina, U’unat, and now Zaq and Azshara. I legitimately started feeling like a burden and dead weight on U’unat, and that feeling has just continued.
Same. My RL was all for me playing arcane cause he knew it was my favorite spec but after two weeks of spending time running around without being able to cast and hearing “cleave down these ads” and feeling terrible knowing all I could do was tunnel the boss I went back to frost (again).
When the best thing a player in a certain spec can do for their raid team in the most important fight of the raid is either to step out or change specs… that’s just the definition of broken spec right there.
Ok, here is one issue with Arcane that doesn’t get enough press. Too many pointless buttons to push. So, let’s look at what you push for burn phase (in no particular order):
Time Warp, Charged Up, Arcane Power, Rune of Power, Presence of Mind, Arcane Blast, and then after you go OOM, Evocation. Okay, so that is a total of Seven abilities, but how many actually do damage? ONE!!!
So, I have 6 buttons I have to press, just to be able to use one freaking damage ability. How is that not the absolutely worst, most moronic, incompetent spec design in the history of WoW? Yeah, hyperbole, but I think I make my point.
Agreed: Charged Up and PoM are pointless abilities. No other spec that I play has those type of non-functional-setting up another ability abilities in their kit. The only thing I can think of is my affliction lock applies damaging dots and then has two abilities that work off that … but all 4 abilities do damage. PoM and CU do nothing. Let you start a burn with 4 charges and get off an extra cast.
How exciting.
When I was trying AGAIN to play arcane last month I actually created a forum post about them and if there was some strategy to using them … no one had anything outside of “use them in your burn.”
The total kit for arcane from spells to talents to “is it a mana management spec or a build/spend spec” are so completely disconjointed and chaotic. Charges only affect blast, Rule of threes affects blast and missiles (don’t even get me started on missles) and clearcasting is for blast and explosion?
Hot. Bloody. Mess.
I knew the minute I played it in Beta I was going to have to walk away from it. Every time I miss it and go back and leave it again. Whatever the intended “class fantasy” was for arcane, it doesn’t work.
And I WILL vent about missiles cause the change from it being our big damage doer that you could stack and plan around to a “ignore it unless clearcasting procs” and it not doing much more damage than a 4-charge arcane blast is THE stupidest change of all the stupid changes.
And let’s talk about Arcane Orb: probably the funnest spell (imo) in the arcane kit and yet all it does is a pittance of damage (for a top tier talent) and allow you an extra barrage if it hits enough people. Frozen Orb has WAY more impact for Frost mages, does more damage than Arcane Orb and it’s baseline for Frost Mages.
And why do fire and frost mages have clearly defined talents in their rows but Arcane has AoE and ST all mashed together? And the talents are awful! Want to double blink like other mages? Sorry … you have to take Slipstream cause if you lose an evocation your damage will be even worse than it already is. RNG proc chances everywhere IN THE TALENTS and there sits Overpowered as the most boring must-have/no change to your playstyle in the game.
And why are the best Fire and Frost traits functional in both AoE AND ST situations but Arcane is stuck with traits that make you good in one and terrible in the other? And even THEN the AoE traits are even more RNG/chance to proc/heaven forbid we should use traits to make the playstyle more exciting than it is crap.
If I were a violent person I would genuinely want to shake the living daylights out of the dude who designed arcane for BfA. I’m assuming the doob he was hitting ran out and he created half the spec stoned and the other half when the munchies ended.
It’s not total crap, but it’s definitely not in a good place and hasn’t been for the entire expansion and much of the last 3-4 expansions. We had our moment in HFC (which we seem to still be paying for) and some success late in Legion due to how AE worked (so naturally they had to break that). Arcane has found some success in pvp as a frustration spec for melee and a sheepbot to which most mages in comps are relegated.
Unfortunately, arcane suffers from a damage design that is inconsistent with modern raid design and is the most antithetical to their stated class design, namely that they don’t want a “pop all cds at once and go to town” spec. We have 4 core issues currently (note that’s 4 core issues, not just 4 total):
We have non-existent cleave which really, really hurts when the majority of bosses in raids have adds.
We have unsustainable aoe and poor burst aoe unless you sacrifice all cds (see above) and, even then, you’re doing mediocre numbers for around 20 seconds then you’re gassed.
We are completely pidgeonhold into being ST or AOE and cannot successfully do both like virtually every other damage spec in the game. If you gear for ST your aoe will be poor and if you gear the reverse your ST suffers dramatically. In addition, forcing all our dps into small phases guarantees at some point you will be interrupted by a mechanic. Blizzard has (again) stated that they don’t want ST talents to compete with AOE ones, yet several times that very thing happens with arcane. Then of course are the azerite traits. The (by far) best in slot ST ones are utterly useless for aoe and vice versa. Not being able to switch gear in mythic + magnifies that exponentially.
We’re the only remaining mana-dependent spec in the game. Some may say they love it (or at least don’t hate it), but overall it’s an antiquated system which doesn’t fit modern class or raid design. Not only are you focused on boss mechanics and staying alive, but you’re playing a mini game of mana management which, if you fail even slightly, completely destroys your dps with no way to get it back. Aka the “screw up a burn, enjoy your terrible parse” syndrome.
Even fixing 2 of the above would do wonders for us; but as of right now, it’s just hope and pray for 9.0. That being said, if you love arcane (and so do I), play it. As long as you’re not pushing super high mythic+ keys or mythic raiding world firsts, you’ll be ok. Just expect to be looking up on the meters and not downward.
Our AOE isn’t great, but that said, we don’t run out of gas after 20 seconds of AOE unless you fail to stack mastery.
Checking your armory you have 26% mastery. When I run mythic+ I aim for around 40% mastery minimum. I still have to sit and drink, but can sustain AOE for a lot longer than 20 seconds.
I’m down a bit in mastery from last week actually, but my crit is higher than it used to be.
Lucked out and got 6 upgrades on Tuesday. Guess I’ll see how the new gear performs in raid tonight.
One thing I’ve found with high mastery: The spec is more forgiving to play. It’s easier to keep yourself above 70% mana for Equipoise if you have high mastery.
I can imagine it is, but the flip side is the loss of crit and vers which it takes is a dps loss for me. Of course the biggest hurdle for me as arcane currently is pugging with dipsh*t guilds who ignore the pugs. I was over 40k on Shivara and then near the last quarter I got the impale and literally NO ONE would click the spear - went 30 seconds straight asking for a click with nothing. Went from a 90 something parse to a 62 because… reasons
I want to say taking equipoise with TA(temporal anomaly) talent is bad. I know TA is not considered meta, but between the mana conservation on random AP procs and extra mana from evo procs, it keeps you out of conserve phase most of the time (with memory of lucid dreams passive). I’d lose mana regen from TA if i tried to stay above 30% because it’d go past my bar.
I finally messed around without memory of lucid dreams active and realized it’s not necessary at all if you have TA. The passive and TA are plenty when combined with evo. Also note i wasn’t rule of 3s when i did this test.
I don’t know what you’re running but that’s my 2 cents. i just want people to know to stay away from equipoise if they’re running ta. I say go pumelling all the way for ST (and use and take surging tides or other +dmg trait if you use ta. Also take the missiles talent for extra damage on AM with arcane pummeling. One equipoise can’t hurt ST because the mana conservation is nice below 30% and i’m running that because i don’t have anything better.
TA + Pummeling will net you vastly less dps than EQx3 + OP. It’s not even close. You can mess around with TA for questing but for dungeons and raids, it’s EQ and OP or nothing. But for fun, casual playing, rock on with whatever floats your boat.
I was able to clock a +8 in a PuG @418 ilvl just fine last week tyvm. I know that’s not the level you play at because I don’t spend nearly as much time on this game as you, but there’s something to be said for being creative and making a build that you can personally execute well. It may not be the best HUMANLY possible, but it may be your personal best. And that’s you actually performing your best for the people you group with.
Also, all the sims I saw on Simulcraft show 30k dps at my ilvl on arcane ST using azerite traits that come from mythic CoS (Equipoise and a trait that gives ~400int at above 50% health), something I don’t have access to. So that alone may mean making an equipoise build isn’t viable for me.
Meta builds only change due to experimentation. A better Meta build will only be found until someone tries something new. Now it’s entirely possible people have been simming Arcane pummeling x3 with the talents I mentioned and it’s still crap but it’s still valuable to keep that in mind in case something changes. Icecap wasn’t super viable for DKs at the beginning of BFA but I’m hearing rumblings it’s becoming viable against BoS now in BFA. I was actually running an icecap build before then because I was TERRIBLE at burst windows.
Relax friend, my commentary was neither a personal insult nor an attempt to undermine anyone’s “creativity.” It’s simply that 3 EQ is head and shoulders above any other trait combination; so much so that’s it’s led to the “3 EQ or don’t play arcane” meme. It’s your game and you play how you want, so if pummeling is working for you and you’re accomplishing what you want, keep going. But, given that the OP was asking for a guide, it’s not constructive for me or any of the other arcane mages who “spend nearly as much time on this game” to tell them anything but the optimal way. That doesn’t mean it’s the only way, but it is the best way. That part isn’t in doubt.
I just do my mythic+ as frost now. 1 IL lower and QOL is twice as good.