Arcane Mage Suggestions (instead of Buffs)

Classes Mage
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Hey Blizzard,

This is a thread discussing the recent buffs to Arcane mage. While many in the community are happy to see us get some love and you have correctly identified that Sunfury is falling behind Spellslinger, especially in dungeons, I’d like to address more of the root causes of why this is so. I would also like to address some concerns previously mentioned regarding Arcane’s target cap, as well as some dead talents.

Suggestions

Below are some suggested changes in narrow format (for easy readability) for Arcane:

  • Touch of the Magi now deals 50% of stored damage to all targets hit beyond the first, reduced after 8 targets.
  • Prodigious Savant (reworked) no longer affects Mastery; now causes your casts of Arcane Blast to also cast Arcane Explosion at your target’s position at 50%/100% effectiveness. This Arcane Explosion generates Arcane Charges and is affected by talents such as Reverberate and Static Cloud
  • Arcane Rebound (reworked) consuming 4 Arcane Charges with Arcane Barrage now grants 1 stack of Presence of Mind, up to 5 stacks. Consuming Presence of Mind also increases your Arcane Explosion damage (from Prodigious Savant) by 100%.
  • Leydrinker (reworked) no longer procs off Clearcasting. Instead, it procs its effect from Presence of Mind. Casting Touch of the Magi grants Presence of Mind.
  • Nether Munition (reworked) now causes your Touch of the Magi to store an additional 10% of all damage dealt by Arcane Barrage
  • Sunfury changes:
    • Spellfire Spheres now gain 2 stacks per cast of Arcane Barrage (remains 1 stack per Arcane Blast)
    • Arcane Soul (reworked) is now active whenever you cast Touch of the Magi for 12 seconds. Each cast of Arcane Barrage increases the damage of Arcane Barrage by 15% 10%.

Explanation for Suggestions

  • Touch of the Magi: As previously stated, one of Arcane’s biggest hurddles is the lack of uncapped AoE. You can’t uncap Arcane Barrage or Aether Attunement so Touch of the Magi makes the most sense to me.
  • Prodigious Savant: This talent is currently holding the entire right side of the capstone portion of Arcane’s spec tree hostage. In addition, Arcane explosion is currently underutilized. Why not solve 2 issues in 1? This change allows Arcane Blast to gain a large amount of utility in AoE, acting as an easy Arcane Charge generator (given it gives 1 charge from the Arcane Blast cast and at least 1 charge from the Arcane Explosion it procs). This also opens the rest of the right capstone side to more interesting options than the current setup of “more % damage” on ability X or Y
  • Arcane Rebound: This talnet comes from the Legion Artifact trait, and while it is a cool effect, I believe it would be better to have it function in the context of Arcane Blast/Arcane Explosion, as befits the right capstone area of the tree
  • Leydrinker: As with the proposed rework to Arcane Rebound, this would allow Arcane Blast and Presence of Mind to gain significant cleave utility and damage, synergizing well with the use of Arcane Barrages that come up with talents like Intuition, Glorious Incandescence and random Arcane Orbs from Orb Barrage in AoE (namely looking at its use for Sunfury here).
  • Nether Munitions: This talent is currently giga-dead, not only because of Spellslinger’s Signature Spell hero talent that locks in Magi Spark, but even before the existence of this hero talent Nether Munitions was never picked. I propose to give a choice that is more fitting to Sunfury, especially with the proposed changes to Arcane Soul, as we’ll see below. This provides Sunfury with increased damage to Arcane Barrage in the form of funnel, which fits Arcane’s theme.
  • Spellfire Spheres: Having played both Fire and Arcane, I can safely say you cast Pyroblast/Flamestrike a lot more than Arcane Barrage, even in AoE. I think that given the above, it would be reasonable to help Sunfury Arcane reach that 6-stack proc to get Burden of Power/Glorious Incandescence more easily.
  • Arcane Soul: This is the most impactful rework to Sunfury. In single target, Sunfury isn’t bad and doesn’t feel bad to play. In AoE, Sunfury feels awful. It feels like you are constantly starved for Arcane Charges, which is a stark contrast to Spellslinger. Arcane Soul provides a brief reprieve from that, but it only happens every 78 seconds, which is such a stark contrast to Fire’s Hyperthermia, which happens every 20-40 seconds. I think it would be reasonable to allow this effect to persist during Touch of the Magi and unhook its duration from Spellfire Spheres. The damage of Arcane Barrage in ST isn’t great, but the rotational flexibility of being able to just spam Barrage as needed and move around at will is a true blessing to high-mobility/mechanically loaded encounters.
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Hi Brainard,

Thanks for the suggestions. I particularly like the ToTM one:

If I may, I’d like to add one for consideration, open to discussion, of course:

Could we take a look at the range of Touch of the Magi’s AoE, as well as the distance between targets required for Arcane Barrage to cleave effectively?

I was running Gallywix yesterday and noticed that the larger the target’s hitbox, the less likely it is to cleave from. It’s also quite noticeable on encounters like the Rookery’s final boss and the One-Arm Bandit in the raid.

My suggestion would be to have the AoE and cleave range scale with the target’s hitbox, with a defined minimum and maximum distance starting from the outside of the hitbox.

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Yeah I’ve heard a lot of complaints about that on Gallywix especially. I think the problem tends to happen when he flies to the middle circle which annoyingly puts him out of range of other mobs.

No criticism there, I agree with what you’re suggesting, and I think the only reason this hadn’t been done before is that this issue would only manifest on a boss like Gallywix which hovers over a void zone (also Archimonde from HFC during P2, but that was back in WoD)

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I always appreciate your suggestions, though I sometimes find them a bit difficult to grasp—likely because I can’t see the broader vision as clearly as you do. That said, your proposed rework sounds like it could form a viable tree path, especially if all options were selected in a single-target rotation playstyle, much like Fire.

Ideally, the tree would allow for some flexibility—moving a few points around rather than being locked into a rigid build. For example, I’d love to incorporate Presence of Mind into the current setup, but it just doesn’t quite fit.

I don’t think they’ll backtrack on target caps, but I do believe they could refine our current spells to compensate in other ways. Execute seems like an easy win—it would solidify Arcane’s identity and playstyle.

Take Arcane Barrage, for instance—it could prioritize low-health mobs when cleaving. We often suffer from target caps, on top of losing out on key bonuses during certain pulls.

Arcane Rebound definitely needs better scaling. It’d be great if it functioned more like pierce/recurve mechanics in other games—hitting the target initially, then having a chance to rebound and strike it again.

As for Prodigious Savant, you’re right—it feels off because it’s a two-point talent. Personally, I don’t think they should use two-point nodes unless they’re part of a capstone. That could actually be interesting—giving the player the choice between keeping a capstone at half power or fully committing to it.

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