Hi all, been frost on my mage forever. Not my main but I like mage and usually play it to around 3k. In any case, about to craft 6 pieces and can switch to arcane and learn it. My question is will arcane be great going forward for mythic+?
Frost has never been that great in mythic+ but good on raid. What happened this season that made arcane s-tier and is this going to be the case going forward? It does huge funnel damage but didn’t it always do that?
it has exceptional priority damage (killing the most dangerous or high hp mobs)
it’s also surprisingly defensive
Ok. But has it always been this way and will it stay this way going forward? Just trying to figure out why it’s s- tier this season because it’s usually a dumpster fire for mythic+
I highly doubt arcane will continue its meta in S3. Although possible with some rework.
Frost isn’t terrible if you want to do 14s and lower. The issue is that frost is big cleave, and the mage role for comps right now is priority damage. With big pulls integrating a high HP mob and lower small ones. The damage to the smaller ones is less important than the big one. What happens is that the mages burst actually increases the teams overall output with their priority.
Not even Blizzard knows, so how can one expect us to? Any spec could literally turn into F tier by the whims of the developers in the next patch, and Arcane has been pretty volatile in its design this expansion.
The reason Arcane is meta is because it has incredibly high priority damage and has a lot of survivability. You probably won’t be top damage if there’s a Balance or Unholy in the group, which is the meta comp, but Arcane compensates it by blowing up dangerous mobs and bosses. Good groups usually pull a few mobs along with the boss so Arcane can funnel the damage.
You can play literally anything to 3k IO and even higher, so I really recommend playing what you enjoy if that’s your personal goal.
Frost has the downside of snaring and slowing everything so it’s hard to group up the mobs. For this reason Frost will never be enjoyed by your group mates.
I’d suggest arcane.
Thank you. But is this funnel prio new this season. This was fires trait as well. I’m guessing fire and frost are low in the rankings because arcane is s-tier.
I’ll probably stay frost for this season and reassess. Pushing 3k and probably not much higher. Maybe all 14s by end of season.
Thanks for the feedback.
Arcane always had funnel/prio damage, it just got better this season. The reason Fire doesn’t anymore is because it’s moved away from pure Ignite build since Ignite got nerfed.
No. Arcane has historically been a strong ST spec with mediocre to poor aoe and non-existent cleave outside of late Legion and the current season in TWW which effectively reversed that.
Highly unlikely. Blizzard has repeatedly proven over many, many years that arcane is never to be good/great for long. Expect nerfs incoming, including the loss of the remarkably good s2 tier set.
Agreed. Once Blizzard figures out arcane is good, they’ll “fix” it and return it to “oh right, mage does have three specs…” status.
Very few comments on the forums have ever been this accurate.
Yes and no, our ST is ok right now for m+ but is noticeably weaker in raids.
Ok. Thank you. I’ll probably go up to resil 14s so I’ll stick with frost for this season. I do like the arcane aesthetics though so maybe I’ll try arcane in s3.
I was more talking about bosses in M+ where it’s possible to bring in more mobs to it and Arcane can get that funnel damage going. If the team is well coordinated and don’t AoE, the Mage really can dish out a lot of damage on bosses that way.
Arcane is easily the most unreliable of the mage specs historically. Sometimes it’s great, sometimes it’s terrible. Having said that its damage profile and current M+ design lends Arcane to being pretty damn good most of the time with its absurd funnel damage. But the nice thing about mage is that they almost always have one spec that is meta, so if you learn how to play them all you’re in a good spot.
No one can say for sure, but I’d recommend giving Arcane a shot now—it’s the most exciting it’s been to play in a while. Who knows what the next season will bring?
I got to play one season as 100% crit firemage, and I’m glad I got to experience it before it was taken out forever.
I’ve been almost entirely Frost for several expansions in M+, but am really, really enjoying Arcane right now. In some dungeons with tons of large pulls I will switch to Frost, but mostly I’m enjoying the change of pace tbh.
Same here, switched to arcane just recently from frost. In M+ you’re basically trading being in the top dps for mob pulls for being top dps on boss fights. That being said the rotation for arcane is pretty chaotic and I find myself having to pay a lot more attention than I was as frost… it’s a lot more unforgiving if you don’t nail your rotation.
Thanks. My son is a 3400 arcane mage and yes the rotation looks quite unforgiving but fun. The visuals are much better than frost too.
Dang just got really used to glacial spikes too.
To be fair it’s not just boss fights. As Arcane your job is to make sure the priority mob (ie the mob with the biggest HP pool) dies with all the other trash. Even though you do less overall damage you are arguably the most effective DPS when it comes to actually timing the key on-time.