I totally get that Arcane likely won’t feel great until after the hero trees come out but… It just doesn’t feel very fair that we have to wait for that in order for the base spec to feel strong. AoE is hot garbage. Arcane Explosion as our AoE option just needs to be removed. We are a mage for godsake. Putting ourselves in melee range to do AoE damage kind of defeats the purpose of being a mage and is horrible in M+ …
Speaking of M+ I’m very confident that I am doing the rotation correctly. In ST on boss fights I am most often on top. However in AoE situations I am doing barely half of these other highly tuned classes. So at the end of the dungeon it averages out to about half of these other classes… maybe 250k-300k?
Also after our big burn (Evocation, Arcane Surge and Magi) the dmg fall off is insane. The mini burn in between doesn’t really help and we are basically just stuck useing Arcane blast… managing nether precision after getting our seemingly rare CC proc… and not really having any incentive to actually use our resource spender unless we have over 14 stacks of Arcane Harmony (Which we need to proc CC twice to get) and Nether Precision too boot… Using Arcane Barrage just doesn’t feel as rewarding as it should and is overcomplicated to spend correctly.
The rotation and spec itself feels a lot better but overall I just feel weaker as a mage. Frost feels so much more powerful and is far easier to use in AoE situations.
I mean… To switch from AoE to ST you simply swap out one talent in the Arcane tree… which just doesn’t feel like there was a lot of thought put into the spec when it comes to AoE. I feel like we are going in the right direction but with this lackluster damage and not a lot of viability in AoE situations… it’s just not worth it to play still.
Which is very disappointing because I was really looking forward to maining this class next expac.
As it stands the hero classes are going to have to bring 250k more dps in order to compete with these BM and Ret pallies putting up 700k in M+ …
It also doesn’t help that every other week I look and see Arcane and Spellslinger getting nerfed in the beta… like wtf Blizzard?
Thanks for reading my vent.
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This has always been the case and will always be the case, it has nothing to do with the spec. Melee and ranged DPS rely on short, bursty cooldowns to deal the bulk of their AoE damage that are up for every trash pack and go off instantly requiring little or no ramp up time. In contrast, casters take a while to ramp up their damage and rely on longer cooldowns neither of which is conducive to good AoE numbers in short term fights which is the default in M+. M+ as a game mode simply favors melee’s toolkit over that of casters and that is an intentional design choice by Blizzard.
They definitely didn’t go far enough with the rework and while the rotation has been somewhat simplified it’s still clunky.
Again, this is always the case in the lead up to a new expansion because they continue to lock away an enormous amount of a spec’s potential behind borrowed powers. They’ve learned nothing in that regard and frankly I don’t think anyone should bother playing the game atm because of all of this imbalance. I personally haven’t played much at all this year since DF effectively ended back in November. If you’re getting frustrated with the current state of things I’d suggest taking a break.
Im not sure where youre getting this idea from… that melee is more optimal for M+ and always has been… a balance druid just did 800mil damage in a +11 BH I just did.
The AoE kit for Frost is also more intuitive… easier to use and has way more application.
I undestand prepatch kinda puts things in the air and everythings out of whack… however the fact is Arcane doesn’t have a competitive AoE toolkit in comparison to other classes and specs. Theres no reason for it not too.
disagree here , while there have been some OP melees on every other season , if anything mage has been the more stable ranged dps by far. The issue is that its “always” fire.
and if u invite a fire mage…its to do combustion pulls otherwise u are just wasting that dps slot and u are better grabbing another Rdps
I’ve always had a sneaking conspiracy theory that if either of the other two Mage specs ever outperform Fire, Blizzard intentionally nerfs them. Like the Fire Mage consortium has some kind of contract with the developers. 
Thanks.
Lol yes… if you read you’d see that I am disagreeing with them… which means youre agreeing with me? Either way thats not what we were discussing at all…
Arcane mage in M+ is dog water. Prove me wrong.
I really enjoyed the old rotation, and now I’m just kinda feeling blah about the whole game because that was my main spec. I guess I play fire now because it is basically guaranteed to be meta every season.
I think a good deal of arcane’s damage was that the complex rotation allowed players to be extremely good, and eke out a lot of extra damage by really expertly stacking damage within the touch/spark window. Now everyone has been brought down to “average” because there is less play, and the “average” baseline is so low in comparison to what was possible when played perfectly
I can def appreciate why people liked the old rotation for it’s complexity… however I gotta say I was not one of those people lmao. I do enjoy the direction the rotation is going in… the only issue that I currently have with it is the weird balance of incentive to not burn our resource spender (AB) and also keep it at 4 arcane charges…
As far as I can understand in ST scenarios… You use ABarrage when over 14 stacks of arcane harmony… on the last stack of nether precision (preferably both) and or when youre low on mana… in order to keep optimal dps… the issue is the rng of procing CC… so oftentimes you’ll run out of mana before youre able to optimally burn ABarrage…
IMO there just needs to be more guaranteed ways to proc CC.
Like maybe presence of mind could not only make your next arcane blast immediate and proc CC?
I def feel you when you say you liked the complexity… however for me personally it kinda sucks to put in all the work for dps just for a ret pally to come in… press 3 buttons and put out more dps without a thought in their head… which was frustrating because for me personally the class fantasy of mage is always something that i’ve loved more than others and wanted to be a part of.
I really enjoyed the complexity in large part to having the opportunity to blow a ret pally out of the water in a really good group in a big key. As I mastered the previous rotation more and more, I would find openings. For example, in some really big pulls it was still very advantageous to blast-weave which gave a really nice damage profile and could do extreme amounts of damage.
The complexity gave flexibility, essentially. Perhaps my opinion will change over time but ever since the beta dropped I’ve been mourning losing my favorite spec. And nothing else is calling to me in the game. I’m not saying I’m unsubbing but I’ll probably be spending a much higher percentage of my gaming time in other games unless I find a spec that resonates with me.
I 100% agree with you. Arcane mages aoe rotation is not fun. I’m not sure why they keep insisting that a rage class needs to be in melee range in order to use their aoe. It feels so clunky to spam explosion and just barrage, throw an ocasional orb and hope a free orb procs