Really, no changes are being done? That’s unfortunate. lol
Why does blizzard think they are in a good spot?
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Because there hasn’t been enough of us unsubscribing I guess. The last ptr-to-live with hotfixes to make you from top tier to garbage-patch just took me from cautiously optimistic to “I’m done.” There recent comment on arcane is where we want it, is reason to never look back.
But right before I stopped they got my $90 for the mount, so I guess they win. But a few quarters from now when they want that sweet revenue from the 40-something’s still playing, they’ll have a little less to vacuum up.
Well this might be a bit of a hot take but I actually agree that the rotation is in a better place, at least in so far as it is now simpler when played the way the devs intended. The problem is that the simple rotation combined with the ridiculously over-the-top baseline damage nerfs the entire spec ate even though only Sunfury was overperforming (and not even by that much) have left our DPS in the crapper. If you want to do slightly better DPS (but still nowhere near what it was prior to the massive nerfs) you need to use an even more complicated rotation than what it was before they removed the double dipping.
These sorts of back and forth between the devs and the theory crafters each of which have their own vision of how a spec should play and try to force it on the other is enough to give anyone backlash and it’s why I have given up trying to play the game in an any competitive way. It’s just not worth the hassle to me, not anymore.
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I will agree that the rotation has some fun aspects, but the implementation of it is not in a good place, particularly with M+
To do good damage as Arcane you need to build up a few buffs/procs. First, you need arcane tempo. you also need to go into your burn with a couple of stacks of clearcasting. You also get a lot of value from NP. Big brained is also quite a large buff (but will be combined with arcane tempo next season)
the problem is, in M+, all of these buffs are short and unless the tank chain-pulls they’re likely going to drop off. you can use evocation to keep your clearcasting stacks alive, but very often tanks won’t pull quick enough to even make use of it (and then you’ve lost your siphon storm buff too)
numerically, if you plug arcane’s numbers into a sim it won’t show this. If these buffs don’t drop then Arcane is actually not in a bad spot balance wise.
But in the practical application of running a key every time the healer needs to drink, or the tank is waiting for a pat, or there is some RP before the boss spawns etc, this winds up being a huge loss of damage.
Sure, you can build up the buffs at the beginning of the pull but then the other issue is that touch of the magi loses a lot of damage if the target dies before it is done. With how quickly stuff dies in keys these days, this means there isn’t time to start the ramp, then do the burn, before your target dies in perhaps half of all pulls on a 12 or 13. In smaller keys, it is MUCH worse.
Blizzard really needs someone actively playing each spec at the 2% level-ish so that they can understand this kind of thing
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For arcane I mostly just wanna see explosion buffed and given some more interactions, aethervision have a separate buff for arcane explosion so it doesn’t overly favor blast.
And that’s basically it for me.
I wanna see a world where blast is used for funnel damage in AOE with moderate AOE due to touch and the orb procs/ barrages, and explosion replacing blast if you just wanna deal massive damage spread evenly, so high AOE, but way less funnel.
I also really like how unique explosion feels for a caster. I’ve always been a fan of it.
So yeah I’m not particularly happy with them just being done with arcane, though… I’d prefer no changes compared to what fire and frostfire got, I also didn’t like the freezing wind changes much, but the fire changes are especially awful as far as I’m concerned, didn’t like that at all
Frankly I miss double dipping. That was when spellslinger arcane really felt good
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I personally liked double dipping as well ./
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Implying that the simple rotation is the way the devs intend the spec to be played, or that I somehow have any agency in what the devs do is kind of insane. They control all the tuning knobs, they can reduce the advanced rotation to dust if they want. It’s going to get worse soon as I have a calculator I’m working on to identify true optimizations around Barrage use depending on a number of factors and the spells actual damage. Yes, this will 100% require a weakaura and will be, again, as the devs intend since they hold all the cards.
Our devs just suck, they don’t listen to feedback or they’d know that people aren’t happy with things, the fact that you’re doing the wrong rotation and happy about it is great, but that also means that the change literally never affected you to begin with so I don’t know why you even care one way or the other.
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I wasn’t referring to you or any theory crafter specifically but since you brought it up, yes you guys do have a great deal of agency in what the devs end up doing even if they obviously always get the final say. By devising “optimized” builds that rely on unconventional methods and leverage unintended (or rather unforeseen) mechanical interactions you can push a spec in a direction the devs don’t like for whatever reason which then leads them to nerf it or at the very least to break that particular playstyle. This in turn then has a knock-on effect on all players: those who are constantly looking for the next meta build and now have to shift gears, as well as those who never used the “optimized” build but are also affected by the overall nerfs to the spec. The latter group, of which I am a part, actually gets impacted even more because our DPS was less to begin with since we didn’t use the “optimized” build but after the tuning passes and nerfs precipitated by the overperforming builds the baseline is now also worse. So yeah, what you guys do has a great deal of impact on everyone.
That’s not to say what you do is inherently wrong or that the devs reactions to it is inherently right, far from it. However, the constant seesaw effect this friction of competing ideas generates is just too much for me personally to keep on top of and I assume many other players feel the same way too. For what it’s worth I do agree that the devs are incredibly disengaged from what the players want and have oftentimes shown themselves to be detached from the reality their decisions lead to. I just don’t think the best way to deal with that is to antagonize them over this double dipping thing by constantly trying to find ways around it’s removal which so far has only lead them to crack down on the spec even harder and make it worse for everyone.
TL;DR: By proving an “optimized” rotation theory crafters do indeed have a direct impact on what the devs end up ultimately doing and an indirect impact on the players who didn’t use that rotation when the entire spec gets inevitably nerfed as a result. This isn’t inherently good or bad, it’s just the reality.
I don’t really agree with this. Finding flaws in their design or taking advantage of certain interactions to deal more damage isn’t pushing a spec in a direction the devs don’t like. They hold all the reins and the player base just makes use of what they’re given.
The current version of Aethervision does a very poor job at officializing the double dipping by not only making the gameplay loop worse, but also make the rotation more complicated and aggravates the dependency on WeakAuras. Arcane right now is a straight downgrade from what it used to be at the start of this expansion and it’s purely due to the devs’ selective crusade against the spec’s double dipping mechanic while this is how the game has worked since forever.
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If Blizzard isn’t testing their creations, then it’s not our fault that we can find better interactions than they intended. If they don’t QA the rotation, don’t Beta the rotation, and don’t PTR the rotation, then it’s truly their fault.
Speaking of which, there was a post in the PTR forums about how Aethervision was likely going to lead to us down the exact path we went down. Blizzard was warned within a few days of its release to the PTR, but they chose not to act. It’s not the fault of the theorycrafters or any other player in the game that Blizzard simply does not listen to feedback. If they respected the community more, there wouldn’t be as much of a “seesaw” of competing ideas. If they fixed issues as they arose, instead of waiting months, we wouldn’t have to go back and forth on things.
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Im not sure if ive ever seen porom actually post in here before lol.
It’s a mark of how bad Arcane gameplay is right now.
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I don’t think anyone disagrees with that. The question is how did we get here? At the start of the expansion Arcane was doing great even if you did not you use the double dipping rotation and even better if you did. So a lot of players kept on using the double dipping rotation even though they knew its days were numbered because the devs told us as much during the Beta when they reverted their initial decision to take it out at the time due to the massive backlash. I guess folks just assumed they’d won the argument and the devs won’t follow through on their promise to remove it but they did and then all hell broke loose. As a result Arcane as a whole got hit by successive waves of nerfs on top of the mechanical changes and is now objectively worse as a result any way you cut it. As I said before my position is that we are in this mess precisely because the theory crafters and the devs got into a dog fight over this issue and everyone else got swept up in it as well, even those of us who never used the double dipping playstyle.
Of course it is. Any time someone breaks the game it inevitably leads the devs to crack down and more often than not overreact with massive nerfs which is exactly what we saw. They’re not blameless in this, far from it, as you say they hold all the reins but they were pushed to this, repeatedly.
I don’t disagree with this and I went to great pains to avoid assigning fault. All I am saying is that actions have consequences and we saw that play out in the worst possible way with the double dipping debacle. To say that theory crafters have no impact on the game or how the devs react to the builds they create and the playstyles they promote is patently false. If they weren’t hoping to have an effect then why do they bother taking the great deal of time and effort it takes to make these guides in the first place? But perhaps that’s a question better directed at Porom, since he’s in this thread maybe you can ask him how he feels about that.
That’s interesting, for me it’s the other way around. When things degrade to the point they have over the past few months I just lose all interest and step away altogether. I just don’t have enough skin in the game to care anymore. But I imagine it’s different for someone who puts so much energy in trying to make the spec better as they see it. While I may not agree with the direction you’d like to see the spec go I respect your effort and can relate to it because I used to fight the same endless battle of wits with the devs for years. After two decades of that I am just beyond burned out and just want to try and enjoy playing the game as simply and causally as possible but apparently even that isn’t possible anymore. 
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I think people were well aware the double dipping as it were was going to be removed, but I don’t think anyone expected it to go the way they decided to take it. The way it was officialized via Aethervision was so poorly implemented and we told them as much, repeatedly, that it was bad but they still insisted on it. Now they come and announce they’re happy with where the spec is? That’s simply insulting.
I still don’t think that’s a healthy way to look ai it. Most of the problems any spec has is due to their poor QA and continuous insistence on not properly listening to player feedback. Several problems have been pointed out months, some even years in advance, and they still insist they are right.
I also think current gameplay for Arcane is pretty bad. AV is a horrendous talent that killed a fun mechanic and tried to replace it with a convoluted, clunky mess that went against everything they stated they wanted to accomplish. I also dislike how dependent on RNG Spellslinger is since it’s practically a slot machine.
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