Fed up with it. Between the having to jump around like [snip] sea biscuit because of these damn redic mechanics and getting to the point of just keyboard smashing a 16 button rotation.
Its disgusting. Its not fun. Fix this garbage and bring fire back to the top.
It’s freaking confusing and I get totally lost if I mess up or am interrupted by a mechanic…no idea what to do sometimes.
Do the other dps classes have to work so hard?
No way they do. I did raz last night on LFR, wiped 9 times but my gosh, bottom the dps chart while trying my best to stay alive and get out SOME resemblence of this damn rotation.
It was so cupcake unbelievably stressful.
Its unforgiving and just stupid. Its so unfun that i have to believe whoever put this together and said THIS SYNERGIZES GREAT!! was a total bot. Like a literal AI tool that CAN output damage in this rotation came up with just to sly us filthy humans.
This needs to change and PRONTO. The average mage player who picks up arcane CANNOT satisfy the current rotation requirements and output dps that exceeds a friggin tank.
lol. I’m super casual. Only get to play a few nights a week. Still just getting into heroic dungeons and on a given pull in either 2nd dps or struggling to stay in 4th. And half the time I’m not sure what I screwed up to hamstring myself so bad. It’s enormously frustrating. Maybe I should just play frost. 
Or maybe I should just level an alt.
I refuse to roll another toon. They just need to fix this and we need to complain louder.
I’ve played mage since vanilla. I don’t want to switch.
It gets better, like a lot better. I strongly suggest watching some videos (if you were only using written guides), they help a lot.
The entire rotation is muscle memory, and once you get it down it becomes insanely consistent and easy to pull off. Tons of fun too.
Also rasz is one of the toughest fights for mage but also THE boss fight for mage (there are 0 other specs that can contribute as much to shield damage as we do). There’s tons of damage stops, target swapping, movement and downtime that makes figuring out how to line up your cooldowns quite tough, so don’t feel too rough about underperforming on that fight. Best general advice I can give is do spark into TotM on the first and third big add in phase 1.5 (no evo/surge, unless you can hit it on the first), this will set you up to evocate right as rasz lands in phase 2 and get full burst on each of her shields. GL!
Is the rotational drastically different in AOE?
I’m finding the multi-layered priority system shadow priest has to be unfun. If like a stack logic of numerous if—>then statements.
The rotation for AoE is basically the exact same as ST. At surface level, it doesn’t change at all, but requires you to target a mob that wont die in your combo and to have the surrounding mobs not die to others cleaving. At a deeper level, you’re tossing as many arcane missiles as you can during touch, throwing extra barrages in with extra orbs, keeping nether tempest up, and situationally using explosion.
It can be quite the challenge in M+
I find a consistent rotation more appealing than what I perceive shadow priests current rotation to be. I may look into arcane because I’ve always loved their theme.
Thanks for sharing this with me.
The arcane rotation is absolutely a lot. Before I say anything, I want you to know that I don’t disagree with that. Arcane, however, has always been unforgiving. And I’ll be honest, it feels more forgiving to me now than it was in the past (however, I’ve been playing it for more than a decade, so I may just be more accustomed to the concept of “make a mistake and you’re useless for a full minute”). The real issue is that we have to jump through 20 different flaming hoops just to be beaten by classes that “push the button that glows.”
The best I can suggest to you is to practice. I’m told by the other mage in my raid group that the mana gem build is a bit easier and a little more forgiving. If you find a slightly easier variant to play, don’t be afraid to try it out.
Movement really can hurt arcane, however, running ice floes makes a lot of movement negligible. The only times I truly feel screwed by a mechanic like that is if I’m targeted with a “run out” debuff that could wipe the raid. Otherwise, ice floes and a stutter-step will do the trick. If you need more than that, just blink. Spending a global to blink is worth not dying, even if you lose dps during cooldowns.
Finding that on some pulls you’re pushing for top and on others you’re losing to the tank is going to be normal. So much of the damage in arcane is locked behind cooldowns. During cooldowns you can be pushing 100k dps, but when nothing is up, you’re only doing 10k. Is it satisfying? For most people, no. But know that it’s normal. You can do everything perfectly, but the timings of the buffs and pulls might make it look like you messed up. The other day, my M+ tank made a comment about how much faster bosses die when I’m there. Cooldowns tend to average out better on longer fights, and I’m often noticeably above the rest of the party (but they average better on trash pulls).
All in all, I’ve been pretty frustrated with the changes to arcane over the years, but there’s something really satisfying to finally hitting that 1.1 million crit on the adds during one of our heroic Raszageth wipes. For an incredibly brief moment in time, I was 28% of my 30 man’s dps. We may not have killed the boss, but damn did it feel good.
People dont underestimate the value of spending an thirty minutes to an hour on a dummy can improve rotations.
It is. The gem build is also close to harmony for ST (I sim higher as gem in ST) but gem is much better in aoe
It really is, and it didn’t used to be like that. Hell, in BfA it was a meme 1 button spec. Not saying that’s better or worse than what we have now but it definitely was never “a lot,” certainly not before SL and now DF.
That’s the big one. Until that disparity is addressed I will continue to be critical of the direction they’ve taken the spec. Half of those “flaming hoops” can be eliminated by either merging their effects with other abilities or giving the spec flat % damage increases. The damage multiplier stacking meta is an abomination.
So have I, almost 2 decades, and this is by far my least favorite iteration of Arcane.
And I get why that kind of “moment of glory” appeals to people, I really do, but for me it’s made meaningless but the absolute ridiculousness that has to precede it. I’ve often equated it to setting off a Rube Goldberg machine and I think the analogy fits perfectly.
I’ve played quite a few different classes in DF so far and overall I can find an enjoyable build in almost all of them. Though there is always something very common sense missing and it’s annoying that the devs missed it, like not giving Arcane the Mantle of the First Kirin Tor effect as the Arcane Orb capstone talent. But the real problem is that virtually all of those fun builds do gutter trash damage even though it was Blizzard’s stated goal that this not be the case and that the whole point of the talent tree revamp was to allow for more build diversity.
With that in mind I can’t consider DF anything other than a failure as far as class balance and the talent reworks are concerned. The absolutely bug fest doesn’t help either.
hahaha arcane mage complicated, that’s a good one.
Very true, the funny thing is the “Gem” contributes very little to the gem build. You basicly get high value from spamming Arcane blast and the 2pc bonus. You don’t even need the clearcasting part of the gem.
Rank 1 Arcane Mage Mythic Raszageth - 93.6k DPS (Highest parse for lowest externals) - YouTube
The thing is fun does not always equal big numbers. “Play build A to do big numbers, max dps! Yet you may not enjoy it”
The bigger perk of the gem build is the fact you get enlightenment talent, which helps mana management after the mini burn.
It’s also just faster in terms of cd usage. Not having to prep harmony stacks is so nice, and gives more focus on when to use cds.
I’m a pretty terrible arcane player but even I manage to be decent with the gem build. Whether a person finds it fun is another issue, but it certainly helps people get over the difficulty hurdle of the spec.
I just ignore all that crap, 3 button rotation ftw, and fun is most important, well I mostly pvp anway~
I’ve been using a version of that build since DF launched except I don’t take RS (I suspect I never will because I hate it even more than RoP) and instead take Cascading Power and Orb Barrage. It’s even simpler to use and since I also don’t take RoP not having RS doesn’t make much of a difference.
Pros are: better sustain damage in both ST and AoE, no cooldown stacking, almost no setup, massive burst every 1.5 min, and full mobility during that burst. Cons: the damage just doesn’t compare with the cooldown stacking build, minimal mini burst every 45 seconds because no RoP or RS, a little harder to manage mana because the Gem is always used offensively.
My build is so much more fun to play and I would be fine giving up DPS for ease of use and enjoyability but the disparity in the numbers is staggering. Arcane’s entire damage profile is tied up with RoP and RS which in turn encourages even more cooldown stacking and because the Talon trinket from Uldaman (and other trinkets like it) is also a thing the spec will never be able to get away from the damage multiplier stacking this expansion. Unless of course major changes come to pass.
I can pull my own weight and being a veteran players gives me an edge when it comes to mechanics so I am not a drag on a raid team but I definitely could be contributing more in the damage department if I went with the cooldown stacking. Because of that I’ve given up on doing any serious content on my mage this expansion and that’s entirely on Blizzard and their failure to do what they set out to achieve with the talent tree reworks i.e. create the opportunity for more diverse and balanced builds.
So you went with a much easier build, it does a lot less damage but you’re still able to pull your weight in raid, and have fun while doing it! Sounds like Blizzard’s talent tree rework was a success no?
Or is your definition of success having the bare bones simplified build deal equal or more damage than the complex robust build?