How hard is arcane mage to learn in pvp, & whens the new pvp season starting? Mainly just wanna get some honor gear and learn before season starts up. Seems fun tho
Hardest ranged dPs in the game
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Very steep learning curve.
About a month.
Honor geared newbie arcane into aff, feral, bm, ele every game sounds like pure agony.
Arcane is fun when you learn it but the meta is so anti arcane currently you will hate every second of the learning process
Would not recommend sadly
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Hey, it’s not all bad!
157 (0.64%) representation for arcane mages in all rated PvP brackets above 1800.
Only fire is slightly worse at 102 (0.42%)!
But yeah, arcane is rough. A spell lockout and you take some serious damage:
Can’t use barrier
Can’t use alter time
Can’t use poly
Can’t use any arcane offensive spell
Can’t use Gravity Lapse (CC)
Can’t use Slow
Can’t use Blink
Can’t use Temporal
Can’t use Displacement
Can:
Use Ice Block
Use Frost Nova
Use Ring of Frost (Jk, just got stunned or interrupted again)
Use “/cry”
Cheers mate.
All in all though, arcane is fun though, just interrupts suck.
Its a fair bit of fun, and you can kinda just dome people that aren’t aware of how it works. It becomes less fun when people understand how your damage profile works.
I don’t think its super complex, its basically separated in to 2 different "go"s.
- Evocation → Surge → ToTM → Dump Missiles → PoM → Dbl Blast → Missiles if procd → Spam Barrages as ToTM is winding down.
- ToTM → Missiles → PoM → Dbl Blast → Missiles → Spam Barrage
You can min max it beyond that to a really high level, which is where the added complexity more or less comes from. But for just doming people to 2.1k~ or w/e (if that’s where you enjoy playing), you don’t need to know all of it to dunk ppl
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Rep is never an accurate portrayal of Arcane in PvP.
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arcane mage players acting like juking kicks and running behind the pillar when u channel arcane missles is hard
I don’t understand this statement. Because of the specs that people are most vocal about tend to have the highest representation. Even racials players are concerned about (shadowmeld) has the highest representation on the ladder.
Arcane is a meme spec, and because it is, you can clearly see that there aren’t enough of them in higher rated games. I quit at 1800 (I only want the elite set) and if that elite set was 1600, I’d stop there too.
There just isn’t enough incentive for me to push higher, even if I could or wanted too, I could never break 2k, because I don’t have reliable friends to play with. I get 2 hours a week, and that time is spent mostly wqs and random bgs.
But, I digress. Sorry for the rant. I just feel that arcane is a terrible PvP spec plagued with issues, but my goodness, when you aren’t focused, it is magical.
In conclusion, why isn’t rated representation a good indicator of performance of a spec?
Highest rated player NA is currently an arcane mage in 3v3 @ 3084.
Should we buff it?
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I wonder how come TOUCH of the Magi has a 40 yard range
why didn’t they name it something like
“Line of Sight of the Magi” or “Sniper of the Magi” or “Mark of the Magi” or something more intuitive
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That was my point earlier, mate. That there will always be those exceptional players and so when do we use representation to buff or nerf specs? Do you believe that arcane mage player could do better as frost? Seeing as how it is much more forgiving?
But, generally, and I hope you agree, arcane is not on the same level as frost.
But thank you, I genuinely and sincerely do appreciate the engagement.
Cheers 
Representation can correlate to a spec being good or bad, but there are a plethora of other variables that you aren’t taking into consideration
Arcane isn’t bad at the moment, but why play arcane when frost exists? That’s just one example. Arms warriors and ret paladins are two of the most popular specs in the games history which is why they are always near the top rep wise regardless of whether they are strong
Outlaw for example is insanely strong right now but why play that when sin exists and is half as complex to play?
Outliers only should be tweaked one way or the other, but we are talking Ret Paladin DF s1 and Outlaw Rogue DF s2 levels of outliers
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It’s hard, players are far more likely to go to what they know and what they have resources for. Why play arcane at all when Frost is much easier? There are far more mages that play it, Kubzy also doesn’t stream.
That doesn’t mean arcane is bad, it just means that frost is that egregious. Take you for example, you’re choosing not to push to 2k because you think it’s not possible. But it flat out is. If you ever want to stream some games in cord, I’m happy to watch or stream mine for you.
To answer directly, there’s not a clear answer on how to balance. Both sides have good takes. It’s hard to balance it.
Lowering the skill floor isn’t something I’m a fan of, I think most dps specs should be like arcane in terms of difficultly. I should be able to notice a gap in skill as I go up, as I do vs arcane. But there’s like no difference between an 1800 bm and a 2400 bm. Same with fury warriors.
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I’m having a hard time as frost mage, so I can’t imagine arcane. For me, I just tend to have trouble doing much of any pressure if I’m being focused. Whether I fake cast, bate interrupts with poly, etc, I feel like there are 10,000 micro cc’s that just keep me from casting frostfire bolt.
Thank you everyone for the replies. I am actually very happy that you all kept it cordial and friendly!
Personally, I feel that arcane could use some tweaks, but then again, that would make it so the truly exceptional players are going to be even better.
I completely agree with your statement that frost mages are just nasty and have too good of a toolkit.
I’m not a PvP dev, but even I can see that there are some true outliers that just make PvP a bit more miserable.
I don’t watch streams, but I’ll be happy to watch what you recommend.
Thanks,
Khadgar said if I brought him 5000 crystals he’d let me play on the swing set but instead he just gave me a touch of the magi
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dont worry, this is a safe space. you can say frost mage, hpal, feral and believe it or not warriors.
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Very hard, but also super fun and rewarding if you can get past the frustration points.
Arcane mage vs double melee gives off anime main character vibes. Strongly recommend watching vultz play it.
No official date, but likely 3-4 weeks.
Harder specs are always significantly underrepresented and, in general, casters are lower rep than melee.
Classes like mage, rogue, and boomy are some of the lowest overall rep, but highest on ladder and in tournaments.
I think it’s actually stronger. Frost is good, but REALLY reliant on its 2 min cd veins for kills. Arcane has 45s and 90s burst windows that are harder to rotate defensives around.
Arcane is just harder to execute on than frost.
Same to you!