Here are some pieces of feedback about the newly unveiled mage tree and arcane tree.
Radiant Spark: I was dreading seeing this ability come back. I absolutely despise the playstyle of Spark, but that’s primarily because it doesn’t function as it says it’s supposed to in Shadowlands. It considers each arcane missile a separate spell, and thus you cannot use arcane missiles with Radiant Spark (that is, without wasting it and consuming all of the damage amp with one cast). This has led to a clunky “cast four/five arcane blasts and then barrage with full Arcane Harmony stacks” playstyle that depends on your distance from the target - usually requiring a weakaura to track if you can fit in the extra blast or not. Since this is coming back and will likely be the go-to playstyle for single target, I would like to see the ability changed to count each channel of arcane missiles a separate spell, rather than each individual missile itself.
Arcane Echo: Unless Radiant Spark is fixed to work with arcane missile, having these two in the same tree is a non-bo. Arcane Echo triggers on each instance of a missile hitting it, so you typically want to spam arcane missiles into your touch of the magi target to get the most benefit from this ability, whereas Radiant Spark (as it currently works) does not want you to do that. These two abilities seem at odds. This can be alleviated by either fixing Radiant Spark as above, or by moving Arcane Echo to a different spot in the talent tree.
Evocation/Arcane Orb: Evocation and Arcane Orb not being baseline is very strange. The intent of the arcane tree seems to be to use Arcane Surge as close to maximum mana as possible, and without Evocation that is going to be extremely difficult. This will make many builds feel “pigeon-holed” into taking Evocation, ultimately removing any real choice in the trees. Along with this, Arcane Orb was always a must-take talent for arcane as it smooths out the rotation by giving us some on-demand charges after a barrage. Arcane mages have been asking for baseline orb for a long time. I would like to see either Evo and Orb made baseline in Dragonflight, or have them moved higher in the talent tree to not make it a pain to have to get some of our abilities we’ve always had back.
Impetus: This ability should modify Arcane Blast in some noticeable way, the talent as it stands just feels like a begrudging pick along the way to Amplification. Maybe if the chance was increased to like 30% or there was some other fun modification (10% chance to fire two blasts instead of one, giving us the second charge) it would feel better.
Rule of Threes and Arcane Familiar: These abilities have been completely unimpactful to arcane for their entire existence, which is a shame. Arcane familiar is cool, and unless the damage it deals is impactful, I think we’ll go another expansion without utilizing the cool visuals of this talent. Rule of threes is similarly unused by arcane, being a small mana save doesn’t really make as much impact as say, barrage returning mana to us. All in all, these two talents have always been unused and I fear they’ll be unused here as well, unless they’re tuned to be strong or they end up being changed in some other impactful way. It’s really tragic because we’re going to need to take Rule of Threes to access Improved Arcane Missiles.
Any input is appreciated, let’s try and make Blizzard aware of our feedback so we can hopefully see some changes for arcane!
It provided a different way to play the spec. The introduction of the new trees, however, makes it obvious that it’s the ONLY way they want us to play the spec. I like the spell, don’t get me wrong, but I miss the burn / conserve style.
I’m very interested to see if we can make a build without Evocation that works, however, Arcane Orb absolutely needs to be higher on the tree.
This should be swapped with Improved Arcane Missiles. It looks like it’s flat out on the wrong side of the tree.
Familiar is useless. However, Rule of Threes is something that may actually help us create a build without Evocation. Yes, it hurts our proc generation, however, it’s still conserving mana.
the radiant spark window hitting playstyle is what made this class fun imo the old burn conserve is so sterile. having a spec with a lower up time but focusing on hitting these big windows was a nice change which is why i disliked frost cause if you got a bad combo of mechanics your dps can tank and fire towards the end of sl are in cumbustion so often and still have high up time just have better ways to move and do dmg and execute movement. and i dont ever see a world where you would ever cast missles in radiant spark since you are pairing with touch of magi max stack blast are gonna do more and get them out faster to dump harmony stacks and still get a smaller barrage before touch pops
It’s fine if you like enjoy that playstyle, and there’s nothing wrong with it carrying over into Dragonflight. It just shouldn’t be the only viable playstyle for Arcane. Some people, like myself, enjoyed the old burn/conserve playstyle you find “sterile”. There should be more than one viable way to play effectively and competitively.
that is true but looking at the tree would have to be moved around i to make that style feel good the orb tallent seems meh even getting to a point of getting what you want for kyrian arcane you still feel like your missing what you want and taking things you dont want. so far mages have the worst tree i feel the general tree is terrible kills each specs uniqueness frost mages with meteor and dragons breath… there are so many defensive nonsense points you would think we are tanks. and the random nonsense like time anomaly i hate random nonsense procs of your big cds
I would agree the tree needs work. I’m not so sure Arcane Familiar will be all that bad now that we have Arcane surge and enlightened being easily accessible, its arguably a DPS gain now.
I play a variety of arcane playstyles and they all benefit from orb, I feel that should be mid tree for sure, its augments can be towards the bottom if they are strong.
I don’t think Mana gem being a bottom talent makes sense, sure its nice to have, but that’s a large investment and reverberate in that cluster seems out of place as well.
You don’t need evocation if you are taking arcane surge - it’s basically a high risk/high reward version of evocation.
I think people are looking at it like it’s a mana dump high dps ability (and you can use it like that), but need to realize that its a passive lesser evocation.
EDIT: Time Anomaly will also grant 25% damage increase along with the extra mana regen.
I’d be shocked if we didn’t see some significant adjustments to both the class tree and spec trees before Dragonflight goes live. We’ll just have to wait and see what Blizzard does in the coming iterations.
I don’t hate Time Anomaly, though I do understand why many wouldn’t enjoy it. My only real issue with it is that I’d prefer the random procs only occur when I am in combat just because it’s kind of annoying to hear and see it happen when you’re doing non-combat related things like RPing, crafting, exploring, etc.
The class tree really does seem like it needs some work. There’s a host of frost and arcane stuff but only like 3? fire related talents in the whole thing. That seems like it needs to change.
I would like to see more options among the capstones for both class and spec trees and more pathing options to reach them as well. I’m also hoping that the five 3 point talents we currently have in the class tree see some adjustments before Blizzard locks everything in stone.
Time Anomaly is less detrimental to arcane mages than fire mages. In fact, its a random 25% damage increase if improved arcane surge is taken along with 6 seconds of the mana regen.
It’s not nearly as bad as having combust occur during a downtime phase or something along those lines.
There are SO many issues with both trees. The more I look at them, the more problems I see. Most of us seem to agree on the majority of them, but I have a couple more to point out:
Only 3 talents in the Arcane tree impact Arcane Explosion. One of those three is clearcasting (which still doesn’t buff it, just makes it free to cast). This makes building an AoE tree a bit difficult since we don’t seem to have many options to actually influence our AoE. I know there’s a lot more to the AoE rotation than just explosion, but that’s the core of that rotation and it’s pretty bland, with basically nothing offered here to make it not feel bland.
The Kyrian rotation is here to stay (which I’m okay with), however, it’s problematic that TWO capstones that are 9 points apart (if I counted correctly) are essentially required to make that work. Since we were only given three capstones, I would expect the third option to be something built more for either the “burn / conserve” or the “save clearcasting procs for TotM windows” playstyles. Instead its… arcane orb? The talent that we’ve wanted baseline since at least Legion? I like the spell, but I don’t typically take it for its damage, I take it for its utility. In a single-target raid fight it does about 3% of my damage. So unless it gets a MAJOR damage increase, it should be moved up in the tree.
My biggest gripe is the placement of Arcane Orb in the tree…there doesn’t seem to be a viable M+ build that can use orb. That completely screws up the AoE Spark rotation.
Please move it to make it more accessible for all builds.