It looks like arcane surge might be a talent that replaces arcane power (hopefully not baseline). But depending on the tree layout - it appears you have to evocate into surge to benefit from siphon storm = ALOT OF CASTING
I’m assuming its going to be like Vendetta getting replaced by Deathmark for Assassination Rogues and they are going to completely remove Arcane Power from the game.
Seems to be a flat out replacement, seeing as they seemed to have changed Arcane Power to be a passive talent that increases the effects of Surge, Overpowered was changed to affect Surge, and the datamined tooltip for Time Anomaly only lists Surge where it would list both if there was an option.
Surge is a better cd either way, it doesn’t lower your chance to proc CC because instead of lowering mana costs it gives you a bunch of regen instead, it does tons of damage and will probably guarantee you a CC proc if you spend your whole bar of mana. I have a hard time imagining someone would pick AP over Surge if given the option
Let’s do some math:
- Enemy team gets cross-CCed.
- You use ToTM into Arcane Surge.
- Arcane Surge gets kicked on let’s say 1.5 second of cast.
- You wait 3-6 seconds being locked.
- You cast Arcane Surge again for 2-2.5 seconds.
By the time second AS cast is completed (if they will not disrupt it with CC again), there were 1.5s (GCD of ToTM) + 1.5s (kicked cast of Arcane Surge) + 3-6s of being locked + 2.5s of second cast = 8.5-11.5s passed, reduced by your Haste. Usual amout of cross CC is 8-9 seconds, simply because Rogue stuns last for 6+2+1 = 9 seconds totally. So, with Arcane Surge and even in perfect situation, you start bursting right when cross CC is off, ToTM is about to expire (8.5-11.5s passed from his application) and at least 1 enemy is potentially already free - he can CC the cast (no need to kick it second time, any CC would interrupt it) / he can pop a defensive (if he is the target) / he can use a massive heal (if he is healer).
You might have 6-7 instant GCD to follow Arcane Surge cast, but they do not matter as without Arcane Surge you lose both the burst damage and decent spell damage increase and people can just not let you cast it via mentioned method.
My argument is that 2.5s cast would ruin burst attempts of Arcane quite much. And I do not want all his burst being instant, I want it to have reasonable (1.5s) cast time and / or a tool to deal with interrupts, so they are less disrupting for Arcane.
Arcanosphere has the downside of being a channel, thus when you’re kicked it goes on CD so it feels awful to be kicked on it.
Arcane Surge is a cast so you wouldn’t need to wait out its CD if kicked. The only thing you would potentially lose out on is Touch of the Magi if you used it first before you used Arcane Surge and that’s only 45s, not 90. Like Mythlos said you’d just wait for the next go and they’d have no trinket and you’d have all of your CDs back. Also, you’d probably bait out kicks before your goes. People from every rank of Arena kick random abilities on the regular without any strategic thought, so throw a random Arcane Blast or two to get kicks out of the way.
Your next go would be next ToTM, so in 45 seconds. When it is available, another enemy can use his 2 min trinket to ruin the go. Third go - third enemy could use his trinket to ruin the go. Fourth go - trinket of first person has already recharged (2 min 15 sec passed). This cycle might sound unrealistic, but coordinated teams already try to spread their trinkets to avoid getting cross-CCed without single available and they can use this strategy to disrupt every single Arcane’s burst attempt.
Baiting out kicks is not extremely reliant, as some of them have 12-15s CD. Until you bait all 2-3 of them, first kick can already recharge or recharge right when you are casting the Arcane Surge.
The number of hard casted abilities will stay the same as now though, as Arcane Surge is being added, but in its place Touch of the Magi is now instant, meaning we have the same number of hard casted abilities as before.
Number of casts is the same, but cast time difference matters. It both gives enemies more time to react and requires more time to recast the spell after it was kicked / disrupted by CC. These several seconds might be the difference between successful burst go and disrupted go.
I can give you a live example - Holy Priest has a PVP talent called Greater Heal. It is a 3 sec cast, 12 sec CD, but it heals for 65% of maximum health and is not affected by healing reduction effects. In theory, it sounds awesome - you can top your allies ignoring the mortal strike effects and have an answer to burst goes every diminishing return. In practise, it got kicked so much that most people do not play it and prefer to heal with weak, but faster Flash Heals. For me, Arcane Surge is the Arcane Mage’s analogue of Greater Heal - sounds cool in theory, but hardly useable in real PVP circumstances.
I don’t find Arcane struggles as much with this as people think and I think too many people used it as a crutch as to why they can’t achieve high rating or succeed in PVP. Arcane’s bigger issue is more the lack of reward for the amount of risk taken. Arcane is by far the riskiest Mage spec to play in Arena, but it lacks the damage or utility of both Fire and Frost which are both much more forgiving to play in PVP. Arcane isn’t necessarily bad, its just not as OP as Fire atm and if you’re goal is to climb the ladder you pick the spec that’s the most OP.
That’s not to say that its not a weakness that Arcane is only a single school, and its 100% frustrating to keep getting interrupted for sure, but I don’t think this is what stops Arcane from seeing play on the ladder. If anything, it’s what stops Arcane from playing at a tournament level, which is far different from the ladder.
While your point is correct, it does not contradict mine - Arcane’s major vulnerability is kicks in all forms of PVP. As Venthyr Arcane, you can gather several stacks of Clearcasting, pop ToTM and try to blast it with Arcane Echo, but single kick ruins the burst - when you recover, most duration of ToTM is gone and even if you continue using your CC stacks, not all of them would proc Arcane Echo. Kyrian Arcane has other problem - Radiant Spark is both dispellable and can ruin cross CC with Covenant legendary waves, but nonetheless it is just as vulnerable to kicks, as has to cast two Arcane spells - ToTM and Radiant Spark - to start his burst. And as long as Blizzard does not address Arcane’s kick vulnerability, situation will remain. They could give him tons of damage / mobility to compensate this vulnerability like they did in Legion, but that would lead to people compaining about Arcane again and will get it nerfed again as happened after Legion, so is not the best solution.
As a result and TLDR, current Arcane Surge is not good as is for Arcane Mages in PVP, who are an already underpowered PVP spec, and requires adjustments.
Solutions:
- Make it a choice node with normal Arcane Power, so that people can pick what they prefer - castable burst + damage increase or instant damage increase only.
- Reduce its cast time to 1.5 seconds, so that it gives enemies less time to react and requires less cast time to recast after being kicked / disrupted by CC.
- Give Arcane Mages a tool to remove applied silence / interrupts effects with decent CD, so that they are less disrupted by them.