Exactly. It’s just not worth taking, but if it were worth taking and perhaps had some synergy with our own spells (maybe applying a debuff of some sort), I could see myself taking it.
What you said there makes no sense because AF does none of that and never have…
I wouldn’t say we don’t “need” those talents in the tree. They have to put something in the talent trees so there’s a variety of options after all. The issue I see is that those talents you listed just aren’t impactful enough to justify the investment in most cases.
I’m an oddball. I don’t take Arcane Orb. I don’t like it. I nearly always end up aggroing things far away that I don’t want to due to its range. So I take Supernova, which is more surgical and self contained in where it hits. The knock up is nice for a pseudo-interrupt too. The problem with it is that it just doesn’t do enough damage IMO, and doesn’t interact with charges (neither generating or consuming) in any way.
Nether Tempest might be worthwhile if we could multi-dot with it, but Blizzard doesn’t seem to want that for Arcane.
I was actually excited to see the improved mana gem talent (Cascading Power) that made using the mana gem a damage buff like the old days with the Serpent-Coil Braid trinket. I think that was a good talent to add actually. That said, I wouldn’t mind seeing the mana gem restore twice the mana it currently does.
I do agree that buffing and condensing some of these into choice nodes would probably be a good idea.
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I think it looks cool to have this lil arcane wisp following me around pew pewing at my targets. 
The fact that it’s just doesn’t do enough to be worth taking has always been it’s problem. That’s something Blizzard could fix if they want to keep it in the tree. If they refuse to buff it then it should be removed.
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The only way they could make it interesting is if we spawned more familiars based on something else (like consuming CC or Charges) but then we just become Demo locks…
Yea I wouldn’t want that -_-
I gave up on Demonology on my lock when it turned into what it is now.
I don’t disagree concerning appeal, but with supernova and tempest they don’t do nearly as much as they used to up to this point. They’ve been nerfed and changed so much over the years (along with arcane itself) to the point where arcane orb invalidates all of them in general. Familiar was always dead, but that additional mana means nothing without the playstyle and design to make it worthwhile.
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Familiar only use - is it buffs surge damage. Its an annoying talent to use in PVP.
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I agree with you. Many of these talents need to be buffed to be worthy of remaining in the tree alongside Arcane Orb, and even after that, some of them could be merged into “choice” talents to free up space for other cool things.
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I will at least say that they did at least make time anomaly more appealing to use and they did resolve issues with movement concerning what is in the tree for arcane.
I just wish Time Anomaly would only proc while in combat. It’s annoying to suddenly grow, glow, or start sparkling randomly when doing non-combat stuff >_>
I agree, maybe have it mimic the mage’s barrage cast and have the amount of barrages scale with the charges. Damage is reduced for balancing sake.
Or have the mage spawn an additional familiar dependent on their Arcane charge, granting additional mana increase.
I would say that supernova should have been a single target nuke. I have said that in the past on the forums, but with Surge now being a thing, that’s no longer necessary. Its multitarget damage is nothing to write home about and the knockup is barely noticeable. And with it not being able to generate resources like arcane charges why and where would I use it especially when the cc can practically be ignored like a slight breeze? Either buff the cc component of it and remove the damage part like blinding sleet for frost dk or remove/keep as is and buff the multitarget component and remove the single target.
With nether tempest they have to revert it to being able to apply to multiple targets at once and not just one.
With Arcane familiar I’ll just throw some ideas out there and even suggest truning it into a pet with supernova baked into that pet as a controllable unit or have familiar apply some form of debuffs to enemies or buffs for allies.
Reverberate need to get rid of the rng, retain the target requirement and buff arcane explosions damage.
Evocation and the talents that goes with it needs to be higher in the tree for arcane.
As for rule of threes, as Numbing have said, it completely reduces your chances to proc cc by 100% which causes a major problem in arcanes rotation. If they intend to keep that then they have to remove the cc procs from being tied to mana spent.
As for nether precision it can only be worthwhile if the flow of the spec concerning weaving blast and missiles almost seamlessly as you used to be able to do (during WoD or legion as examples). However, because they intend to keep arcane as it is relatively to how it functions now in shadowlands, it just doesn’t work and neither does it add anythinv and it will never give much reason to invest into it. Right now as a conduit, no one takes it because it’s something that would only work for old arcane and the buff after a cc proc missiles doesn’t even last long enough for anyone to get full use out of it for this radiant spark playstle that they’re pushing. The same goes for enlightened, but that depends on how effective the mana regen with these talent and arcanes mastery will be in df. Enlightened isn’t taken now because it just flatout doesn’t work for how arcane currently works. It’s just a relic of what arcanes mastery used to be and is there just because, much like arcane familiar.
As for one point in the general tree, I think they should really reduce the time it takes for Incanter’s flow to build up its stacks and increase the damage buff by maybe 5% - 10% for it to even be considered an existing option for arcane and fire. Maybe frost will take it, BUT… I highly doubt that. Incanter’s flow cannot exist as something in the same choice node (or row as it is live) with RoP as it is now, because that just makes it something that’s DoA.
Edit:
I’ll also add that with dragons breath and blast wave being in the general tree there’s no point for supernova to ever exist at all. Arcane orb should also be higher up in arcanes tree because of how prominent it is and how much of the specs functionality is tied to it and arcane charges.
Another Edit:
All of the arcane barrage nodes soley needs to connect with each other and not all over the place and with other spells and then split into a st and mt focused nodes. The same goes for the ones working for arcane missiles in that they all should connect with each other and not split off in different areas with spells that are unrelated to them.
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Nether Precision was one of my favorite conduits. The reason it wasn’t taken wasn’t because of the flow of the rotation, but because they nerfed it into the ground. By comparison, the conduit at 265 is an 11% boost, but the talent is 20%. It does switch things up a little bit, and I felt it helped pump more damage into our TotM cooldowns, but it doesn’t do a lot for the Radiant Spark rotation they’re trying to push so hard.
Exactly my point with what I said. Because of how Radiant spark arcane works, nether precision is not a good choice.
100%. For all the talk of “new and improved” talent trees, these are realistically just the same old talent trees with some baseline spells and a few old borrowed power abilities thrown in. Nothing new, and very uninspired. For what was their chance to take a step back, make massive changes and breathe new life into a near 20 year old game, they have failed miserably.
This right here. Numbers can be tuned, but at the end of the day the specs need to be fun. Now admittedly, what I find fun and what others find fun might differ but that’s why you (in theory) have these talent choices. Some people like mana management, some people like Kyrian, some people want to have more than 3 spells to cast in a 3 hour raid. From what I’ve seen so far, there arent enough sweeping changes to make the specs play that different from currently and that’s a big red flag.
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The biggest thing a lot of us asked for coming into DF was the ability to use some of our “dead talents” more often. This current iteration is, in my opinion, the opposite of that. Not only are we still ignoring our dead talents, it looks like we’re forced to choose between some of the best talents and abilities that are currently baseline.
We asked for choice in our talent trees, but not like this. It’s currently not possible for me to make a tree that’s even remotely close to what I’m playing right now. If these trees aren’t adjusted, we’ll be once again losing a significant portion of our kit just so that we can have the illusion of choice.
I understand that there’s something to be said for leveling up and building the kit that you want to play, but taking spells like Arcane Barrage and splitting their current baseline version into 3 different talents - just to get back what we currently have - does NOT feel good. (Originally I thought it was 4, but Resonance is still a talent right now. 3 still hurts though)
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To be fair… baseline Arcane Barrage is just damage. At 31 it gains the “hit additional nearby targets” and at 52 it gains the mana return. So much like other abilities we gained as we leveled, those extra perks added to Arcane Barrage were moved to the talent tree. They might be passive upgrades to a baseline spell, but those effects are not actually “baseline”.
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That’s why I added in the “something to be said for leveling up” line. But having to allocate that many talents to get that back means we’re giving up on a lot of other things, which is what’s going to contribute to our dead talents staying dead.
I do agree dead talents need some love (or to be retired), but to be fair… every class and spec are in the same boat as far as having to allocate many talents to get back what they currently have. Arcane is no exception. It’s the new paradigm that we all have to adjust to.
It probably helps to think of it less like getting 61 talent points for lots of extra stuff, and more like getting the freedom to customize our full kit of abilities… at the cost of not being able to have everything we might currently have but picking up a few things we didn’t have before in recompense.