all of them suck.
needs to not be every 2 or 3 or whatever. Something that leads to less complex burst windows or even clipping missiles. I want to actually fully cast them. I would say something like,
- 2 piece consuming clearcasting improves arcane blast damage by -%
4 piece - For east missile fully consumed, the cooldown on arcane surge is reduced by - sec.
I like the idea that the set could reduce the cooldown of surge down so that if used properly it would line back up with TotM. I love the burst but I also hate rng with a passion.
1 Like
Before you do anything about s4 fix the dam false cc proc. I’m sick of wasting arcane battery when I don’t actually have one. Or not being able to use slip stream at times. Also change the way battery hits multiple targets… barrage cleaves nicely in aoe now but off the same target arcane battery can’t hit any aoe targets?
We don’t deserve a permanent 10% damage buff from 2 piece but there’s nothing more frustrating to spend all your mana between a pull or long transition in combat just to get a proc the second your buff drops off…
I’ll be voting s3 tier set either way
4 Likes
The quality of life in S2 4-piece is unbeatable, changed our rotation for the best
2 Likes
That mana buff? Yeah, it’s fake quality of life, the spec has ZERO mana issues without it.
2 Likes
y’all are trippin. the season 2 4 piece set is easily the strongest arcane has been in years. in mythic+ it enabled you to play pull to pull and sustain mana through out boss fights or in 6-8 minute raid boss fights.
as it stands now our openers and damage profile dont work well with the varying mob hp values. example, one mob has 10m hp and the 3 other mobs have 5m hp. by the time you finish casting evo/spark 3 blasts into surge touch that’s about 11 seconds depending on haste. with the instant damage classes that are meta currently the pack is dead by the time you finish your opener. oh dont forget you lose 20% of your damage on touch because the mob is dead in aoe pulls by the time the 12 seconds of touch expires after your 11 second opener.
although the arcane missile cleave feels sick af and cool. 50% of the time you dont get procs in your surge window or you dont get to leverage your spark/touch windows cause you have to spend 4 clear casted missile gcd’s just to get a 4 piece proc. oh and none of this even considers when you have to move left or right to dodge a swirly in raid or m+ or waste a gcd on alter time/ice block/prismatic barrier. so essentially out of your overall surge/touch windows youre really only getting 1 4 piece proc per window unless youre double lusted youre lucky to get 2 because of the amount of gcd’s and clear cast procs you can get.
on the other hand, all that considered, the tier 2 4 piece at least enables you to load your ramp up all together inside your surge/touch windows and playing ice flows reduces your ramp time cause you can cast while moving. it mainly also gives you an insane amount of damage outside of your surge windows and mini burn windows because of the additional mana regen and spell damage. this allows arcane to keep up with other classes because its already a challenge to play the spec with the hard casts and way the damage is dealt during most mythic + scenarios. Additionally it makes you insanely bursty when double lusted and pi’d because you can hit haste caps and min max your damage in touch windows to increase that 20% damage whether its aoe or st.
so although the missile cleave seems fun, its some what of a bait cause we really only get like 1-5% damage from it in an overall dungeon. but the benefit of the tier 2 4 piece, you get maximum uptime on it every time you press your surge.
9 Likes
I think what easily gets lost is parity versus other dps specs. yes you can take any of the 3 tier sets and learn the rotation and get it down. but what gets lost is the encounter types, mob hps, duration of boss fights, the way arcane deals its damage. all of these are factors that need to be considered. arcane is also the only spec in the game that has to manage mana and directly correlates to how it deals damage. being mana starved and watching your evo/surge countdown from 20-25 seconds of cooldown feels REALLY bad to play knowing you have to just sit there and do nothing. when you compare that playstyle to other classes, i legitimately turn my brain off, manage dots every 3-4 gcd’s and blow resource generators/finishers. so as people think about how cool the aoe missiles feel, how relevant is your damage when youre ripping 1 aoe missile proc per pull for 20-50% less damage than other specs that have a 4 button/gcd rotation compared to the galaxy brain arcane rotation. the season 2 tier set mitigated that suck factor by a ton cause you never felt like you were oom for 20 seconds and couldnt do anything, or like you were gimping damage behind other specs because of the nature of the rotation and how arcane does damage.
3 Likes
Please everyone, keep voting s3
1 Like
Season 2 defenders keep showing to everyone that they don’t understand how Arcane works.
Vote for Season 3 or 1, vote for good tier sets.
Not gonna lie: the season 3 tier set has me playing arcane again on my mage.
Voted for Season 3, me.
1 Like
Arcane Battery is a lot of fun when it can actually cleave and is available at a good time. The reliance on CC RNG and the continued presence of bugged CC left me voting for season 1.
6 Likes
If only people could understand that
You are missing the big picture here: different players have different priorities. A boring, passive tier set bonus may bring higher numbers to the table but a visually impressive one leaves a better impression regardless of how well it performs and makes people feel better.
WoW is first and foremost a game that the overwhelming majority of players play for fun, not as a competitive sport like the top 1% of professional gamers or as their full time job like streamers. What you have here is democracy in action, it doesn’t have to make sense and definitely will not please everyone.
1 Like
Oh they do, they just don’t care about the same things you do. If someone else’s position doesn’t make sense to you just try to look at it from their perspective. You know, “walk a mile in their shoes” type of thing. Having your AMs unleash a massive barrage of missiles on a group of enemies feels much better than doing more damage passively. As I said in the post above, not everyone’s goals in playing the game are the same.
1 Like
You couldn’t even fully ramp up the season 2 4 set bonus in M+ without playing the spec wrong in AoE (even before the rework blessed us with the best talent of all time Orb Barrage) without even talking about how irrelevant mana is in AoE.
That set was objectively worse than the other two.
1 Like
But that’s after 3 Clearcast procs.
In AoE (where this applies), you run Orb Barrage.
In the best case scenario, you proc an Orb with every single Barrage (most possible damage).
Because you don’t get a single clearcasting with that, the best possible scenario for AoE has no tier set interaction (aka no tier set at all).
It isn’t a surprise that Arcane is doing worse now than last season.
Season 2 bonus was boring, but it helped in all scenarios.
FOR SEASON 3-ONLY VOTERS (BEFORE YOU SPAM ABOUT HOW I SUCK): I voted for Season 2 not because I don’t like the current 4 piece and think S2’s was more well-thought/interactive; I think S3’s tier set is much more creative, but there needs to be a reason to cast Arcane Missiles in AoE. In Shadowlands, there was the Arcane Harmony build, which did that, but currently that build is significantly behind the Orb Barrage build in AoE and behind Gem in ST.
It isn’t a coincidence that I pushed to 3540 io in S2 and quit Arcane / WoW in S3 only after reaching 3100 io. Arcane sucks in M+ now
5 Likes
If you hate RNG, why are you playing arcane where you only get good parses if your ToTM and arcane blasts and Arcane Surge during spark CRIT, and if they dont crit its GG
1 Like
Lol that’s funny because it’s so true. I pug all my raids so I’m at the mercy of slower kill times, “will someone screw up lust?” and “will the healer heal me at all?” issues which causes me to get ok parses, but God-awful ones for arcane of my item level.
3 Likes
Well that was season 2, this is season 4. The general pug key range will be north of 22-24, so we might get a little more ramp room.
Not that i hate s3 set, but keeping it for 8 months seems kinda meh. Not sure how it will work with the transition, unlikely the s3 and s4 set will mix and match, if thats the case, we will have a 2 pc and others will have a 2p +2p.
I always enjoy that transition period with a mix of the sets and this 2p+2p period could be interesting with the choices above.
I think they are starting with the vote to see if the majority poll across all classes is to change the set or stay the same, if the major is to keep s3 perhaps we will get to mix and match with s4, as keeping the bonus all season really hurts the item progression aspect of the game, but would make sense if the majority of people wanted it. Either way we have winners and losers for that first 2-3 weeks.
Let me know, how do you folks think it will workout?
Side note - Shifting power will be arcane damage, so we get a small bump with that in AoE, but once again not the best with s3 ( not a game changer, i just wanted to bring it up, LOL)
1 Like
I love that you guys are doing this, really neat.
I think the S3 set theme was great, but the execution was poorly thought out. Could you please look into the feedback on the rest of the mage forums on suggestions and recommendations to improve the set? The main things that come to mind:
- Consuming Clearcasting grants increased spell damage by 2% for 20 sec, stacking up to 10%.
Works against the 4 piece bonus, which lasts 30 seconds. Could you make them the same duration? It is frustrating when we lose the 2 piece bonus and still have the 4-piece bonus active.
- After consuming Clearcasting 3 times, your next Arcane Missiles consumes Arcane Battery, dealing 150% increased damage to your primary target and fires at up to 4 nearby enemies dealing 100% increased damage.
The 4 piece bonus is simply beautiful, fun and amazing to watch. One of the best set bonus to date, and the only frustrating thing about it, procing Arcane Battery, and not having any Clearcasting procs (Even worse when we lose our two-piece bonus and not have Clearcasting and having to FISH for it, wasting precious time).
Please have Arcane Battery inherit the aura of having Clearcasting, so we can cast it while moving and benefit additional waves. This would be the most welcome change. I believe the Mage community would agree with me on the sentiment.
A bug I also noticed, Arcane Concentration does not interact well with the Clearcasting, often not enabling a proc, having to click off the proc to keep the 2-piece bonus.
Lastly, if Arcane Battery can’t inherit Clearcasting, could it proc Clearcasting? So we could use it the way it was meant to? Thank you!
2 Likes