Thoughts on Recent changes
Recent changes that happened last week were fantastic, bringing the tree from a solid F to a mid-tier B. Fantastic upgrade.
There’s a couple of weird quirks / talents that need new positions/replacement/reimagining, and I’ll go over them here.
Philosophy
I think Blizzard is running into the same conclusion that I ran into when I made my tree. There are essentially 2 builds for Arcane: the current meta Kyrian build and a Clearcasting dump build (which I made with the Charged Up talent, Blizzard simply put that same effect onto Mana Gem, which is functionally identical). In the spirit of this design, I simply teased out the tree to reflect these two choices a little more.
Changes suggested (explanations below)
For visual representation, see the tree here:
https://pastebin.com/vMzeb3Mn.
You have to download Tobias95’s Talent tree editor to use:https://github.com/TobiasM95/WoW-Talent-Tree-Manager
Here’s an image of the tree here:https://imgur.com/gallery/tWUvRQt
Changes:
1st change group:
- Improved Arcane Explosion: removed
- Prodigious Savant: Arcane Charges further increase Mastery effectiveness of Arcane Blast by 15/30% (down from 20/40%) and Arcane Barrage by 30/60% (up from 20/40%). Moved to Improved Arcane Explosion’s current position
2nd change group:
3. Amplification: moved to Impetus’ position
4. Impetus: moved to Amplification’s position
3rd change group:
5. Arcane Familiar: In addition to granting 10% mana, also makes your Arcane Surge do 10% of your maximum mana to your target and all nearby enemies
6. Rule of Threes: Modifies spell damage as follows:
a. 1st spell: 20% damage reduction
b. 2nd spell: 0% damage bonus
c. 3rd spell: 20% damage bonus
d. Repeat… (i.e. 1st spell: 20% damage reduction)
4th change group:
7. Nether Tempest: In addition to current effect, now also grants 1 Clearcast charge on cast and ever 6 seconds thereafter (3 total over 12 seconds, similar to Mirrors of Torment). 90 second cooldown.
5th change group:
8. Mana gem: No longer spawns a consumable item, instead is just a button that you press for the effects listed (QoL improvement). Cooldown reduced from 2 minutes to 90 seconds (to line up w/ Arcane Surge), but no longer grants 5% spell power for 12 seconds. Moved to Evocation’s position.
9. Cascading Power: Moved to Siphon’s Storm’s position
10. Further Beyond (new talent): Mana gem grants an additional 1 Clearcasting charge (total of 3) on use, and 5% spell power per 12 seconds.
6th change group:
11. Illuminated Thoughts: Moved position below Arcane Echo and made into 1 point talent.
12. Concentration: Moved position below Illuminated Thoughts.
7th change group:
13. Everlasting Touch (new capstone talent): Every Clearcast charge used during Touch of the Magi increases Touch’s duration by 1 second.
8th change group:
14. Enlightened: Moved position, now a capstone talent.
9th change group:
15. Evocation: Moved position, switched with Mana Gem
16. Siphon Storm: Moved position, switched with Cascading Power
10th change group:
17. Orb Barrage (new effect): Every enemy hit by Arcane Barrage grants 1 Orb Barrage Charge. At 30 charges, you launch an Arcane Orb towards your target. Moved position below Siphon Storm.
Explanation for Changes
1st change group:
- This first change was put in because Arcane Explosion is in no way a significant portion of our DPS. To prove this, I have here a DPS breakdown of my +24 DoS key back in Season 3:
https://imgur.com/gallery/JlpjMf0. As you can see, even in high-AoE keys like DoS, Arcane Explosion only accounted for ~6% of my overall damage. Meanwhile, a spell like Arcane Missiles, which is purely single target, did almost double that damage. My point is Arcane Explosion is used in AoE because it generates Arcane Charges for Barrage, not for its damage (except in HUGE AoE pulls, like 15+ mobs, which are rarely possible). For this reason, I would rather buff the damage of Arcane Barrage and Arcane Blast than Arcane Explosion, since those two do more AoE damage (especially when using Harmonic Echo) than Arcane Explosion, even in keys. - The reasoning for the changes to the numbers behind Prodigious savant is as follows: as I described in a previous post, the actual damage gain from mastery for Arcane Blast and Barrage, point per point, is less than Versatility (see this post for math and sims: Arcane Wishlist for Dragonflight). In fact, Arcane Blast gains 31% more damage and Barrage 67% more damage from 100 points in Versatility than Mastery. You may have noticed that this is close to the numbers I put for that talent for these spells (30% and 60% respectively). That is the reasoning behind this numbers change.
2nd change group:
- Impetus isn’t really a great talent. In fact, we currently prefer hard casting Arcane Missiles (without Clearcast even) over casting Arcane Blast at 0 charges, as that would be a DPS loss. Combining that with the Improved Arcane Missiles means there is exactly 0 chance that we will ever cast Arcane Blast at sub-4 Arcane Charges. However, this talent is a forced choice because Amplification, the talent after it, is absolutely mandatory. As such, I simply flipped their position.
3rd change group:
- Arcane Familiar and Rule of Threes are pretty weak talents that were combined in a choice node in the previous update. I think the devs realize these talents need an overhaul to make them viable, similar to Nether Tempest in my mind. This is my take on it, feel free to do whatever with these talents, but as it stands these are DPS loss talents.
4th change group
- Similar to above, Nether Tempest is pretty undertuned. Rather than buff it into relevance (which, in my opinion, would need way more than a 15% buff), I simply decided to alter it into a talent that combined the Venthyr Clearcast proc ability, while putting it on a large cooldown. This would then fit with the Clearcast dumping build that Venthyr Arcane has been using this past expansion (great for those who dislike the Kyrian build!)
5th change group
- In an effort to bring alive this Venthyr-style build, I think we need to lean on this Mana Gem effect a little more, even if that means needing to nerf Arcane Missile’s damage. The first change is QoL, mana gem does not need to be a consumable that you have to resummon everytime you use it. The combination of all 3 mana gem talents gives you 25% mana, 5% damage for 12 seconds and 3 Clearcasting charges, which is a huge boost to your Clearcast dumping rotation, all on a 90 second cooldown. I also repositioned it so that it was in the same capstone portion of the tree as Arcane Echoes, which this build relies on.
6th change group
- These talents are more fit for the Venthyr style build, not the Kyrian style, so I moved them to that side.
7th change group
- One of the best features of this talent is that it works similar to a ramp, but with Touch and RNG. Ideally, you want to get as many CC stacks as possible in this to maximize duration and damage of Touch, as well as Arcane Echo uptime as a result.
8th change group:
- Enlightened is a good talent that both builds plan on using either way, so I just put it in the middle of the tree.
9th change group:
- I simply switch Evocation and Mana gem to make the tree symmetrical, but likely both builds will use Evocation + Siphon storm
10th change group
- Orb Barrage is in a weird spot where the devs want you to spam a single target ability in AoE to get a small AoE buff, but that doesn’t really work out in practice… I simply switched the proc to instead be based on number of targets hit by Arcane Barrage, so it is far strong in AoE (intended use I think?) than single target.