Hey Blizz,
Expanding on my recent post about Sunfury Arcane, I wanted to comment on some of the changes I would like to see for Arcane in the next couple of patches/expansions to really round out its playstyle and spec tree. I’m also going to be referencing Porom’s post on Wowhead, which I think has a lot of good takes about potential new additions (see below):
Suggestions
Here’s the compounded suggested changes for the spec tree, split into various categories:
Sub 8-Point Category Changes
- Amplification: Now baseline
- Reverberate: If Arcane Explosion hits at least 3 targets, it has a
50%100% chance to generate an extra Arcane Charge. - High Voltage: Talent location moved from current location to the position of Amplification as a choice node with Reverberate
Developer's notes and Explanations
- Developer’s Notes: This helps to set up 2 things:
- Amplification being baseline: Making Amplification baseline because even in M+ this talent currently makes up a large portion of our damage (~15% of overall). Amplification essentially acts as a 60% buff to the baseline damage of Arcane Missiles, meaning this talent alone, even in AoE situations, accounts for ~5% of our damage. Having Amplification compete with Reverberate, even in AoE where Reverberate should (in theory) be better, is a non-choice; it’s Amplification every time. Furthermore, removing it and buffing Reverberate to be significantly better would also feel catastrophic. For the Arcane Mage developer out there, try casting the current Arcane Missiles without Amplification; it feels terrible and slow to see 5 little missles shoot out of you in 2 seconds (as opposed to 8), without even mentioning the massive damage loss
- Reverberate vs. High Voltage: This is the real meat-and-potatoes of this change. In my mind, there is a choice to be made about how you want to generate Arcane Charges since the introduction of High Voltage: either you spent Clearcasting procs on Arcane Missiles to generate them or on Arcane Explosion. Fundamentally, I think this makes Reverberate vs. High Voltage the first branching point to the downstream talents I’m going to propose below.
Capstone nodes (left side)
- Aether Annihilation (new talent): Your spells and abilities have a chance to grant Clearcasting and Aether Attunement. Casting Touch of the Magi always grants this effect. 2 ppm, located where High Voltage is currently located
Developer's notes and Explanations
- Developer’s Notes: Porom talked about it in his post above, and I completely agree with him: this season’s tier set is amazing (same with Intuition from last season despite the short duration of the buff). Besides being strong, it feels great to be able to guarantee a Clearcasting proc with Aether Attunement when you use Touch of the Magi (and thus need it most). Pairing this with the High Voltage talent above, this guarantees 4 Arcane Charges on 2 targets or above, which is fantastic for the rotation. I really hope you decide to incorporate this tier set into the tree, either next patch or next expansion. Great job on that tier set.
Capstone nodes (right side)
- Prodigious Savant (new effect): now increases the damage dealt by Arcane Barrage by 5/10% and increases the cleaved damage of Arcane Barrage by 25/50%.
- Leysight (new effect): Increases the damage bonus of Nether Precision by 10%. Arcane Blast and Arcane Barrage can now consume 2 stacks of Nether Precision in a single cast.
- Aether Fragment (new effect): Intuition’s damage bonus increased by 50% and increases the proc rate by 50%.
- Leydrinker (new effect): Your spells and abilities have a chance to grant Leydrinker (2 ppm), causing your next Arcane Blast to echo again on your current target and up to 4 nearby enemies for 250% of the damage dealt. Casting Touch of the Magi always grants this effect.
Developer's notes and Explanations
- Developer’s Notes: Here is the explanation for these suggested changes, talent by talent:
- Prodigious Savant: Not to labor on this, but besides this talent being weak, it’s also very uninspired, similar to Leysight and Aether Fragment. The changes proposed here would aim to increase the throughput of Arcane Barrage, which is a large part of both our single target and AoE rotational damage for both Sunfury and Spellslinger.
- Leysight: While the talent itself is currently strong, it is quite boring on its own. Pairing this new effect with the new Reverberate talent above, especially in AoE, it would allow your AoE rotation to become Arcane Barrage → Arcane Explosion (which grants 4 charges if used with Clearcasting and the new Reverberate above 3 targets) → Arcane Barrage (consuming both NP procs to prevent proc-munching). For Sunfury specifically, this might even replace the need for Orb Barrage in AoE given the consistent Arcane Charge generation of Reverberate and the Nether Precision damage buff granted. The application to Arcane Blast is mainly used to synergize with Leydrinker below.
- Aether Fragment: Besides also being boring (similar to Leysight), it’s quite a weak effect in my opinion. For this effect to be competitive, I would increase its damage and have a proc rate increase as well, so that you really feel the effect of picking up this talent.
- Leydrinker: I think this talent should be the equal of Aether Attunement but for Arcane Blast given it’s location. Currently, I don’t think this talent comes close to Aether Attunement, both in damage output, utility (Aether attunement generates Arcane Charges w/ High Voltage and 2 Nether Precision stacks) and ease of casting (you can cast while moving with Arcane Missiles, but not with Arcane Blast). Comparing the top single target logs for this current raid tier, I came up with the fact that Arcane Blast does ~1.46 mil per cast (with Nether Precision) while Arcane Missiles does ~ 2.68 mil per cast (without Aether Attunement), so roughly 83% more damage. Assuming this and the fact that Aether Attunement increases the damage of Arcane Missiles by 100%, I think it would be reasonable to decrease the proc rate of this talent but massively buff the damage of it (1.83 * 2 - 1 = 2.66 or ~266% damage; which is how I got to 250% echo damage). Log source:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/JmYACz1rg2XG6jWp?fight=45&type=damage-done&source=197&ability=7268&sourcebuffs=458388
Capstone nodes (middle)
- Nether Munitions (new effect): Spending Arcane Charges has a 2.5% chance per charge spent to grant you Arcane Soul for 3 seconds (or extend your current Arcane Soul by 3 seconds)
Developer's notes and Explanations
- Developer’s Notes: This talent is inspired by Deeply Rooted Elements from the Elemental Shaman spec tree, which I think is quite interesting. Many will say that getting a random 3 second proc of Arcane Soul doesn’t do much, but this isn’t the main purpose of this talent. The main purpose is to serve as an RNG extension of the Arcane Soul window after Arcane Surge, since that is when you will be consuming most of your Arcane Charges by spamming Barrage. That being said, this talent is usable by both hero trees
Sunfury Hero Talents
- Spellfire Sphere: In addition to its current effect, it also reduces the duration of Arcane Surge by 3 seconds but increases the duration of Touch of the Magi by 8 seconds.
- Invocation: Arcane Phoenix: Duration fixed to 15 seconds. Duration increased by Savor the Moment hero talent, if selected.
Developer's notes and Explanations
- Developer’s Notes: This change is meant address that weird 3 second window after TotM blows up where you’re just waiting for Arcane Soul, while at the same time compensating for that large damage loss (20% reduction in CD window duration) by increases TotM such that the Arcane Soul window ends up happening during TotM.
Spellslinger Hero Talents
- Force of Will (new effect): Now causes Arcane Orbs to detonate on contact with the first enemy, dealing its damage to all enemies within 12 yards of the impact point and generating 4 Arcane Charges.
Developer's notes and Explanations
- Developer’s Notes: Force of Will is a boring talent at the moment that could use some novelty. This new talent aims to provide 2 things: the first is to try to address some of the problems with Orbs randomly shooting out from the Spellfrost Teachings talent and pulling extra mobs in dungeons. Many will say this is a skill and positioning issue that comes with the territory. Although I do agree with this take, I think there are better ways to distinguish player skill, and this can be key-wiping in many scenarios. The other (and more important) reason for this change is to allow for these random Orb procs to be more useful in single target, serving a similar role to Intuition where if you get an Orb proc you have to quickly react and cast Arcane Barrage to consume your charges and get them back with this Orb effect. I’m not sure if this is worth the same amount of damage granted by 2% crit and 5% crit damage, and if it isn’t then you can always increase the damage of Spellfrost Teaching’s Orbs.