The expansion has been out for 6 months now, and we are still as clueless as we were on day one. The changes brought to Arcane with BfA were, to put it mildly, puzzling. Blizzard has yet to give any form of explanation so we’re left scratching our heads. However, we can’t just sit back and wait for 9.0 without trying to make things better.
Currently, Arcane is much too simple. 80% of our damage comes from one spell, which is both a builder and a spender. For some reason, Arcane missiles has been gutted in BfA and is now not even worth using during our big burst phase. We were given the ability to use it whenever we want, but no reason to ever use it without the Clearcasting proc, making it work in practice exactly like in Legion, except that we can only store 1 charge of it instead of 3, and it deals less damage. This is probably the most puzzling change since it leads nowhere design wise.
I think the simplest change that could be brought to Arcane to make the spec more involved and to make BfA better is to make arcane missiles more important. Give us a reason to use Arcane Missiles without the clearcasting buff, or to be able to stack a few clearcasting procs that could either be spent one by one or cumulated into one big spell. Here are a few ideas of how it could go:
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Same as now clearcasting wise. New passive: When Arcane Missiles is cast below 50% mana (clearcast or not), the damage of your next Arcane Blast or Arcane barrage is increased by X%. It would have to be balanced so that when you’re in you’re burn phase after Arcane power, you weave arcane missiles with arcane blasts and a final arcane barrage. With Equipoise, this makes your burn phase have two phases, one at 80%+ mana with arcane power and one below 50% mana where you use arcane missiles a lot. Currently, once youre done with Arcane Power you just spam arcane blast until you reach 0 and it’s really boring and uninvolved.
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Clearcasting can now stack to three charges (make them last longer). At 3 charges you can activate a new spell called Arcane Assault, which consumes all 3 charges and blasts the enemy with a very strong volley of Arcane Missiles. The idea is that during your conserve phase you’ll want to use your clearcasts procs to save mana, but during your burn phase you’ll want to get that fat assault and if you’re good you could line it up with arcane power. This would probably require more frequent clearcast procs closer to Legion otherwise there would never be a choice.
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Literally just bring it back to how it was in Legion: proc based, 3 charges, interact with arcane charges, generate an arcane charge, more damage. You can keep the proc tied to mana spent and keep it tied to arcane explosion, just make it useful again.
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Basically, any and all feedback was more or less ignored. We did get some changes we asked for, but for the most part the most important thing: let arcane missiles scale with charges was ignored.
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Preaching to the choir, Adéliana, and I agree.
Personally, I’d love to have arcane as it was in Legion.
I had a rather lengthy rant (again) about Blizzard’s lack of class communication, but I cut it because I don’t like adding to the negativity in the community. I’d rather be constructive where I can.
I don’t have much else to say on this, though. I feel the ball is in the devs’ court to respond to the spec design issues at some point.
Lets not forget our silly AOE. Stand in melee and be disco-mage. I agree with missile charges, but also would love to see mark of aluneth back again as well. Fights like Opulence where you could time your mark with the adds appearing would require skill, yet be very rewarding.
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It is a shame, Arcane is by far my favorite spec and flavor of mage. GCD is painful and the class plays slow, sluggish, and boring. I am not saying you can’t do well as an Arcane mage but I would love to see some major changes of playstyle, not the ole “Arcane Missiles damage increase by 1.2354% when playing with a left handed keyboard”
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Ohhh yes! I forgot that lovely GCD thing. Lets put AP on the global cooldown, so our 10 second buff is down to 8 seconds before our first cast is off, then POM while SUPPOSEDLY instant cast is really on the GCD as well, so those 2 INSTANT blasts are more like 2+ more seconds off your AP is borked even more. That was an absolutely fantastic decision by blizz.
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just change the mastery back to increasing all our damage vs just arcane charge damage.
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The problem with AP being so short and also on the GCD is that it just doesn’t feel powerful enough for long enough to justify the GCD interruption. I understand that numerically it is, but it doesn’t feel that way. It feels like an interruption to our flow for minimal gain.
The thing is, Ion has already addressed this exact issue in the general sense. He said that if a particular buff doesn’t feel powerful on the GCD, then it should be made more powerful to justify the GCD wait time.
I actually agree with this sentiment, except nothing has (thus far) changed. So, while I acknowledge Ion had a good point, it hasn’t yet applied to Arcane.
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Arcane needs a redesign from scratch.
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Beating a dead horse. I’ve posted numerous times about this on this character and two of my others. I’ve always known that the feedback wouldn’t be heard, I think it was mainly a way to vent my frustration.
Anyways, you hit the nail on the head, like so many others have:
They gutted Missiles, making it irrelevant—even the buff to the Pummeling trait only really becomes competitive if you talent in Amplification at the cost of Rule of Threes.
While I personally do not mind being in melee for AE, what I hate about it now is that it no longer scales with charges. Incentivizing a rinse and repeat of AE spam -> Dump, just like our Conserve Phase.
The loss of Mark of Aluneth really made the class feel barren. I wish they would have replaced Nether Tempest with Mark because NT is just an awful talent in my opinion.
The GCD is just nightmarish when it comes to how this spec feels.
Just a personal gripe: I completely despise Rune of Power, and take IF instead. Call me lazy, but I really hate Rune and I always have. We are trying to cram a lot in already to get that Burn phase a going, and Rune is just too much of a hassle to bother with.
I agree for the most part, it’d be nice if mirror images was relevant, maybe make it baseline and add a row of talents that make the images do something different.
Nether tempest really should do more damage as well.
Missiles off the charge system is something I didn’t like either.
Mark of Aluneth was cool, I don’t think the mana regen aspect is really needed anymore, but I still liked the ability.
I think super nova should be changed to something else and the knock up effect added to resonance or another ability. Maybe every 3-4 th arcane explosion does something.
I feel like NT and orb should be baseline and maybe even supernova.
Mark of Aluneth should have been a talent. They could have added a Disintegrate beam as a talent (channeled ability that damages everything it pierces),
The spec, even with talents selected, feels incomplete: you talent for single target at the very significant expense of aoe and vice versa. And it lacks the baseline defensive abilities of the other specs. It shouldn’t be like that.
I agree with your thoughts on not not having mirror images as a baseline. It is tragic–especially for the arcane spec.
I would like to see nether tempest redesigned, I always found it a tad lackluster in regards to look and damage. I always thought it would be look better if it looked like a pulse of arcane that did a.o.e. damage say 100% damage to target and 50% to all targets within its range.
I liked supernova when they first introduced the idea–especially as it served as an interrupt. And as a quick thought on how it might function, it could be like how missiles used to work with the damage increasing with AB stacks. using it for an interrupt could reset the stack to offset it being overpowered.
As far as the spec beging underwhelming, in the latest round of TW in TBC, I found that all I needed to do was spam AB. that was the ONLY spell I used for the last run I did. I did not even need to evocate. It was kinda sad.
(edited for typos)
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