Be brutality honest with me on this spec. I love to PvP and casual raiding. I don’t mind M+ but it’s not my main concern.
So I never see Arcane mages. People told me Unholy DK was terrible in PvP before I made one, then I made one and realized they were exaggerating and it’s kind of insane how much single target you can do with it… Admittedly, UHDK is miserable in M+.
I wouldn’t invest much time into figuring them out tbh, likely gonna be seeing a pretty major rework in 10.1.5.
But, to answer your question – they are decently strong in PvE at least, but they’re pretty difficult and extremely punishing. If you make a mistake in your damage window, you lose a lot of DPS.
And you won’t if they are playing their pvp right. We are a sneak around and look for the perfect alignment type. Kinda like a rogue but with less ways to stay out of sight.
Mu husband said it was a horrible exp as a mage. He’s playing Wrath and was speaking of Random BG’s or Epics. I have no feed back on Arenas or solo shuffle.
He does have an Unholy DK which he says does much better PVPing. This is in Wrath -
I just made this Destro Warlock and am amazed at the power they have. I’m just questing , now in Azuna. I leveled her to 30 in 3 days. When I came across Destro’s in DF BG"s they are a devastating force to deal with.
I played ARCANE in actual Wrath, not classic, and it was a BLAST in PvP.
Your husband might be doing something wrong.
If you like raiding, arcane is great. UHDK is also great in the raid. Both are terrible in M+ but UHDK is even worse in M+.
Immobile. Suffers from many affixes. Cooldown dependent. Terrible cleave. Great single target but just too dependent on army of the dead cd.
And of course they’re melee so it compounds the problems here. At least they’re really, really survivable and have a brez… but yes, I hate it.
I would say that the biggest reason why you don’t see too many Arcane mages is because of button bloat. IE making things complicated.
New players don’t like this. If you wanted to properly burst as Arcane mage… well…
Arc surge —> Spark —> ToTM + PoM — Arc blast —> Arc blast —> Arc missiles (if proc’d).
Then you cast Arc blast two more times after Arc missiles. Rince and repeat.
BTW, ToTM + PoM is a macro. I’m sure new players love to use macros.
And that is just burst window 1. There is a 2nd.
There was about two months where the range of slow was greater than melle’s charges. Kind of like the old Hunter’s dead zone but a ranged version.
I could kill anything for a short while.
There’s a reason why you’re called Glass cannons. We blast but are fragile. Pvp is a no go.
Well, that could be because Arcane is consistently weaker than the other two mage specs, or even weak among DPS specs in general, and people who prefer Fire and Frost generally don’t like Arcane’s less straightforward playstyle. Right now, Wowhead and Icy Veins rank it at C-tier in M+ and A-tier in raids, where it’s still outperformed by Demo and Destro, but that’s at least better than every hunter spec right now.
I have a few mages and tried Arcane for a bit and…look it feels crap to play. Like fully feels like crap. I have to go through 3 GCDs of prep before I even think about max DPS and rotation. It feels like too much.
Maybe it was because He is focused too much on Uldular…ugg~ He plays a Fire Mage. He has his times, but the rogues were very annoying to him 