The big difference is knowing when it is ok to do an arcane mages burst window. Need to now when there is a brief pause in mechanics to do your thing. I think this is what sort of demolishes average player parses.
The good news is for all the struggling new Arcane mages out there Frost and Fire are now Viable.
I agree 100%. Donāt let my satisfaction in hitting big crits fool you, Iāve often made the point that just because you can hit hard or do a lot of DPS doesnāt mean youāre getting the most enjoyment out of it.
On a similar note, I find myself incredibly excited to have Blast Wave easily accessible in the general tree because I feel like I have an actual utility to provide to my M+ runs besides biscuits and hero. Discovering that I can interrupt the Eye Storm from the one type of add in Court of Stars was probably just as exciting as critting for a million because I felt useful. I was able to provide something for my group that wasnāt just damage. I could participate in mechanics in useful, repeatable, and predictable ways that will help shape the way we do our runs in the long term, something that āthis guy can hit hardā doesnāt really do.
And anyone who thinks arcane has always been easy was probably the mage who couldnāt outdps the healers in past expansions because they didnāt understand how to save their mana. Arcane used to be āeasy to play, hard to masterā but itās now just all around frustrating.
Success would have been 5-10% difference in overall output, their numbers not mine. Not taking RoP alone is almost a 15% difference and it only snowballs from there because the damage multipliers are all additive, the fewer you have the more you get punished.
Itās hardly bareboned, all I am doing is not taking two talents, RoP and RS. No spec should have so much power tied up in just 2 abilities one of which didnāt even exist until the last expansion and the other is universally despised.
I looked at wowhead for the rotation. 16 buttons? no thanksā¦
Thatās over the top
I preferred the WotLK rotation. But not enough to play Wrath Classic without a dungeon finder.
If I can play eyes-up and not watching button cooldowns Iām a happy mage.
When someone says Arcane is easy, just follow the simple 21-step guide at Wowhead. Seriously? If thatās easy for you, hereās my taxes.
Changing mains is like playing a totally different game. Maybe Mage is actually your least favorite class to main and youāve never known it because youāve never tried the others! Probably not, but you never know lol.
Lol. Iāve had Alts but just never felt connected.
Sometimes you donāt connect with somebody until youāre handcuffed together while hammered drunk outside a White Castle at 3 am. Iām not sure how this applies to your situation, but stillā¦
I believe that this is a problem generated by the players.
Blizzard designs something (dungeon/raid/class/etc) ā
players develop an addon ā
Blizzard makes something new with said addon in mind ā
players do something to try to reduce the impact of Blizzardās changes
Iām sure some classes are only functional because you have different addons and 7 auras that tell you second by second your rotation or what enemies are doing.
At the same time you have classes where it is not necessary
Fury Warrior and Frost Mage are an example.
I liked Arcane Mage in its BFA version.
But what was seen in Shadowlands was a mistake and the Dragonflight version should never have left the drawing board.
How many more years do players have to complain about RoP ? Talent that was never very well received
Honestly, I prefer classes with less CDs and whose basic skills have more damage.
Probably until people learn to use it properly.
Thereās a reason why the complaints are ignored because itās mostly by people that donāt know how to use it properly.
It makes no sense to me.
The talent that adds the most damage is an anchor.
Other classes with self-healing and stronger shields can move more freely.
Letās say the class is based on kite, knowing kite is much better than self-healing or any shield.
How can Blizzard give a CD that makes the class an ANCHOR when the class itself survives by kiting ?
The overall design of the class clashes head on with the design of RoP.
Why would we say that when its not the case?
Different classes have different damage profiles. Arcane and Fire are designed around doing all of their damage in small burst windows which is why RoP is a thing.
You arent kiting in 95% of PvE situations.
Not at all. I started playing around on some other classes like monk, warrior, and dh, and am extremely disappointed in what has become of mage.
While you can optimize your playstyle on these classes and do the best dps, you can quite literally press 2 buttons back to back and just spit out DPS. Unholy DKs suffer from button bloat, for example, but if you look at the charts you can clearly see its top heavy, mash all of your cds at the start of the fight, and be done with it.
Weāre playing this game on a harder difficulty by being mages.
What about frost? Doing well right now and I find the rotation pretty straightforward and fun.
People donāt like Rune of Power because itās a crutch and gimps the entire class when you donāt use it. Mage has become far too CD reliant and Rune of Power exacerbates that problem to an extreme.
Once you get timed it all fall into places
what are you talking about, Mage is the most kiting class in the game.
You arent suppose to take upfront damage.
Its not a crutch. It separates good and bad mages.
Because in raid none of that matters. You arent kiting a raid boss.
Raids are a very small part of the game, something people do once or twice a week for a few hours. And in any case, while you donāt kite bosses in a raid or a dungeon (unless something has gone terribly wrong) in those environments you still have to constantly move around due to mechanics so the same problems apply in those situations as well. Casters in general and Mages in particular simply cannot do good damage (or really almost any damage) on the move yet every activity in the game typically requires heavy movement.
Over the years the movement requirements the game throws at players have only increased exponentially but precious little has been done to offset that for casters and itās now become a real handicap. If anything Blizzard have only doubled down on stationary turret builds even more and the prevalence and mandatory reliance on things like RoP are a prime example of that.
Itās a fundamentally flawed design and players are right to call it out and voice their concerns as well as offer feedback on how to address this uniquely WoW issue. Many other games have long since transitioned to unrestricted casting on the move and playing those coming from WoW is a night and day difference.
Speaking as an arcane mage: Rune of Power makes our damage outside of cooldowns abysmal. However, Rune of Power is not difficult to figure out. Mages excel at having knowledge of fights and knowing when to and not to use cooldowns. That said, a disproportionately large amount of the player base does not seem to be in favor of RoP existing in its current format / power level. Itās almost second nature to me at this point, but considering how much of mage theyāve managed to change without reworking us over the years, Iād be shocked if this was the one thing that went untouched.
Iām more mobile than I have EVER been. Blink. Ice Floes / Shimmer. Alter Time. Master of Time. Displacement. Slipstream. Chrono Shift. Foresight. Presence of Mind. Blizzard has handed us the tools to learn how to manage movement-based fights (which is just about all of them). Itās now up to us to learn how to use them. I donāt use half of the available movement talents because we donāt need them, even with RoP. Take the time to learn the mechanics of what youāre fighting. Wait 10 seconds to make sure you donāt get targeted by something. Make use of your utilities and your defensives. In both dungeons and raids I very rarely run out of ice floes charges, and if I do itās usually because I made a mistake.
In shadowlands, as arcane, I had access to Blink, Alter Time, Master of Time / Shimmer / Slipstream, Presence of Mind, and Chrono Shift. Thatās 5 talents / spells the benefit movement. I now have access to 9 movement enhancing abilities, should I choose to use them. Thatās almost twice what I had before. I canāt speak for any other caster, but as an arcane mage, movement is annoying, but completely manageable.
Yet raiding and mplus are what they are balanced around. Not open world content.
Yes mages can kite but in organized pve they arenāt considered a kite class.
Stop being argumentative