A consistent problem with Arcane mage compared to the other two specs, is Arcane has to sacrifice a tremendous portion of their Single Target damage, to do mediocre AoE.
While Frost and Fire have innate cleave in their kits. Arcane has to handicap what makes them great to even do comparable AoE.
In Shadowlands Arcane mages will be looking at The Kyrian and Necrolord abilities most likely for their kit.
Kyrian: You mark a target, it does a dot, and the next 4 abilities do 10% damage stacking to 40% ending after the 4th ability. This is great for Arcanes opener and melds with the spec really well.
Necrolord: You become a Lich and your main filler ability, I.E Arcane blase. Hits up to 2 other enemies next to your target. Giving Arcane a strong cleave on their strongest ability.
The Arcane changes Blizzard have made are a good step into fixing Arcanes flaws, but these covenant abilities push them back into the corner once again.
Yeah, arcane has a meaningful choice to make. But think about how much better the necrolord one is for arcane vs fire or frost. Your filler is your nuke. Lucky you!
Of all the buzz phrases to come from Blizzard to be parroted by people in defense of flawed systems over the 15 years this game has been alive, this has gotta be the most annoying one.
My mage will go necrolord without batting an eye…A shield that increases my survivability up to 50% health, plus turning into a lich to cast AND mirror image of liches? sign me in.
While their signature ability is absolutely useless compared to other covenants, the mage ability Radiant Spark is great for the Arcane Opener and burst phase.
And if i’m going to be forced into Single Target v.s Mediocre AoE, i’m going to go Single Target, since its what Arcane excels at.
It’s hilarious to me to see a hater talking about parroting when the haters just ape what Preach says over and over and over. We get it, Venthyr has you spooked. Give it a rest.
A hater? I love Arcane Mage and i’m expressing my concern of the systems that may hinder my enjoyment of Arcane mage for the next two years I play this game.
What reality do you live in where concern and criticism is “hating.”
This isn’t even about Venthyr. Read again. Venthyr is not even on my radar as an Arcane mage. I have invisibility. A teleport is null to me in regards to skipping trash.
High-end world first raiders already maintain multiple classes. Covenants are just advanced classes. Seems like a natural and reasonable extension of the way the game is approached at the top level to me.
That would be a neat argument if High End raiders weren’t the ones expressing the most concern over Covenants.
And besides, this is more about Arcane Mage specifically. The alpha changes to Arcane show Blizzard understand it has a problem compared to the other two specs with AoE. So they’re buffing Arcanes innate AoE.
But Necrolord and Kyrians kind of undermine that design mentality. It is a flaw in the design i’m hoping for Blizzard to address.
High-end raiders, or pseudo-high-end raiders? I feel like if you’re participating in the world first race and you don’t like maintaining multiple characters, you’re probably in it for the wrong reason because World of Warcraft, at the absolute top end, is literally a game about meta/class-stacking, taking issue with maintaining multiple characters is literally taking offense to the World First Race in the first place.
The problem isn’t WFRers, it’s the pretend-high-end players who aren’t really in it for the right reasons and try to ape what the top players are doing without understanding who they are as players and where they sit in the grand scheme of things. If you aren’t participating in the world first race, you don’t need that many alts. If you don’t already have several classes lined up for content, you aren’t going to change anything with Covenants.
I think Arcane Mage has bigger design issues that are more important, you have 6 GCDs before you can do anything during your burst window regardless of what Covenant you pick.
Yeah, that’s what i think too, but I figured since i have to experience the kyrian story at least once, let it be with a class that has a good covenant ability and has both good mobility and defenses by itself so the venthyr teleport or the necrolord shield wont be missed, so DH it was. Makes terrible sense that a demon hunter would pick the paladin order, but SOMEONE had to, lol