Arcane talent tree needs to be reworked

Classes Mage
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The Arcane talent tree has some major issues that need to be addressed, and I’m frankly a little shocked that it’s not talked about more often throughout my absence throughout the last year.

1 - Siphon Storm is too strong and Evocation’s purpose is weak.

It’s undeniable that a 14% damage buff with up to 40% uptime is a very strong passive buff at very little cost. Its apparent best usage is just before Arcane Surge, to maximize the damage of the ability and stack the damage modifiers.

However the actual impact of Arcane Surge damage is relatively minimal, and so it appears that the entire point of Evocation is wasted. Why even bother with the mana return portion at this point when you can just have a talent that maximizes Arcane Surge damage regardless of mana instead, and make the damage buff just increase Surge’s damage mod?

It’s also incredibly odd that we use Evocation at max mana.

Evocation either needs to be used for mana or damage buff. Mixing both leads to degenerate use cases. I would also suggest that gem be folded into it as a choice node, opening some pathing in T3.

2 - Illuminated Thoughts has high investment for little return, and limits the ability to grab Harmony and Arcane Concentration.

10% more Clearcasting is great, but in itself is weak in AoE. The tree lends itself towards ST with Arcane Concentration, but then Harmony itself is good on both ST and AOE. The tree already doesn’t make sense. Even if you wanted to grab Harmony for nice synergy with current tier set, you have to invest a lot of dead points on ST-focused nodes.

If you grab Siphon Storm (cause OP) and Orb Barrage (cause fun and strong) for AOE, as well as Arcane Echo and Bombardment (also for AOE), you have no talents to pick up Harmony. There needs to be easier access to Harmony.

So you just take Radiant Spark. Which brings me to my next point.

3 - Radiant Spark feels boring/terrible to use with current Arcane

On ST, you don’t even bother with using Barrage on the last buff because Harmony is not worth picking up (due to points mentioned before). But you can’t use Missiles with it (cause hit anti-synergy), so it’s just an AB buff. That’s lame.

On AOE, we have a new node that makes AE proc twice on CC. So we can’t even properly manage the RS without resorting to not using AE on AOE. Instead we try to manage it with orbs and barrages. But RS has a much shorter cd than stacking 2 orbs, so you can’t always do that. Also orbs proc randomly with Orb Barrage, so there’s no control to it.

So what is its purpose exactly? Just a flat buff to AB or a fire and forget on AOE with no ultimate Barrage cast? I don’t understand how it fits.

RS really needs to be a buff on the PC so that it works with all our abilities and stacks once per cast, ignoring multiple hits (like Missiles) or double procs (like Reverberation).

4 - Harmony should build off of Clearcast Arcane Missiles and stack more efficiently.

It’s clear that the current stacking system still assumes you use non-CC AMs to get to 20, But that has fallen out of favor a long time ago, and we only use AM during CC and even then only on ST. It was even optimal to clip missiles at some point just to get the Nether Precision buff.

If Harmony stacked off CC AM, then you can justify making the stack more efficient. You could also add some fun synergies like making a max stack harmony make your next Barrage free so that it’s no longer weak on ST without Radiant Spark.

5 - Improved Clearcasting makes no sense

Why does Arcane have to invest 1 (out of the way) point in making their entire spec work? The spec is built around clearcasting and many passives assume that you can bank more than 1 at a time.

The best example is Nether Precision. You want to consume CC and use 2 ABs after it (this is good!). But each of those ABs can proc CC. So unless you immediately follow an AB cast with an AM, you risk losing a CC proc. Why is this a thing? Not to mention we have a lot of abilities that can proc CC that we use in between casting Blast and Explosion. Do we just keep munching them? Why not just make CC stack to 3 like it always did back in Legion?

It doesn’t help that we need a WeakAura to display the 3 stacks because the ui only supports having 1, when we already had a lovely UI in Legion for it.

On the subject of Nether Precision,

6 - Nether Precision needs to stack

Why can’t Arcane just pump missiles into Touch for Arcane Echo without worrying about losing NP stacks? Why is it capped at 2?

Building Harmony stacks using Missiles means NP is just wasted on AOE and doesn’t even stack for ST portions. It feels bad.

Etc…

7 - Nether Tempest is required for 5 other important talents when it should be Touch of the Magi

Why? Why is NT required to pick up Touch? We only ever use NT to proc Arcane Echo (which is 2 points down the tree). Why not cut to the chase and have Echo auto apply an NT-like effect on Touch of the Magi and remove that dead node? It just feels bad. I constantly forget to use it because it’s such a low impact ability anyway.

Its use is also not that intuitive honestly, especially without echo. Its use is one of the most commonly asked question on Arcane social media, and the answer being “just cast it before Touch” confuses players because they probably don’t understand its niche use with Echo.

NT either needs to be buffed significantly so that maintaining it is worth it, or it needs to be baked into touch or echo passive. It makes no sense to be an important and bottlenecking prerequisite when it’s in no shape or form integral to the spec.

NT could last longer than 12s (like 18 or 24) or be extended with missiles casts.

Either way, Touch of the Magi needs to be the “required” point because it’s actually universally good for Arcane.

8 - Improved Arcane Missiles and Crackling Energy are massive point dumps.

20% increased damage on AM and AB and AE (which is most of our damage) is boring but fine if they were 1 point investments. But no they are both 2/2, severely limiting choices in tier 2. Even worse, due to current tuning, it’s recommended to drop Improved Arcane Missiles in favor of other talents. So our AM is just undertuned, leading to a chain reaction of other talents being worse (those involving AM).

What’s the deal here? Why not nerf these nodes, buff the base, and add some actually interesting nodes that affect gameplay.

9 - Rule of Threes is weird

Rule of Threes gives you a free AB or AM when you gain your 3rd charge. Why not just make it give us a free CC every time we cycle through our 3rd charge? I feel that this would be a more controlled way of generating CC while casting low cost spells.

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Most arcane mages seem to have given up on trying to explain the problems with our spec / talent tree to Blizzard. Almost all of the things you’ve mentioned have been issues that players have been bringing up since the beta for Dragonflight if not before. We, as a community, have disagreements about how to fix the issues, but I’d bet that most mages who play arcane can agree that our talent tree feels a bit lackluster. I probably missed something, but the only 2 real wins we had from “things that we asked for and blizzard gave us” are the removal of Rune of Power and getting Clearcasting to buff Arcane Explosion in addition to Arcane missiles. They’re wins, but they fall very short of what we were asking for. (I suppose we did also get the “Concentration works with Nether Precision” fix, but it came about 2 seasons later than we needed it)

I don’t want to get into every point you made (at least not right now) but I do have two things to add:

First, not every talent is going to feel like a gamechanger. Since Blizzard designed the talent trees to be both a leveling and an endgame process, some talents will just be “the things we need to make the spec function.” I understand their perspective, but it doesn’t feel great at endgame to look at our tree and realize that we need certain talents for the spec to work (especially when other classes/specs complained and got certain things baked into the spec, like hot streak and cauterize). I think it’s a major oversight on their part to design the trees like that. Regardless, I do feel as if our “required” talents are too spread out and we have too many that buff the same ability (looking at you, arcane barrage).

Second, the concept of siphon storm is kind of brilliant. The implementation is horrible. Conceptually, arcane is (was?) designed around mana management. The more mana you have, the more damage you deal. But what if you run out? Well, never fear! Evocation is here to save the day and give it all back! In this world, giving evocation a damage increaser is an interesting gambit. Evocation would typically be used at the end of your rotation to recover mana, but now you can pop it at the beginning for more damage - as long as you can manage to not go oom. Theoretically it should make Siphon Storm a talent that can reward good gameplay.

However, that’s not the world we live in. Mana management is a relic of arcane’s past right now. Over the past 3ish expansions, we’ve stepped away from that theme. Yes, it’s still present in our rotation, but you’re now significantly less likely to run out of mana while playing arcane - or at least not run out the way you could previously. The less we need evocation for mana, the more powerful siphon storm becomes.

I find arcane to be in an awkward place with its design. Blizzard seems stuck trying to figure out whether or not “mana matters” is supposed to be part of our kit. So they keep giving us things like “Siphon Storm” and “Arcane Surge” because they’re acting like mana matters, but I don’t think it’s something most mages even pay attention to while playing. If you look at some of the borrowed powers that have come out in the previous 3 expansions, there’s often a trend. The beginning of the expansion expects arcane mages to manage their mana (at least a little bit) but by the end, the powers we get make it negligible.

I liked the mana management we used to have. It’s what really drew me to arcane and what made me enjoy playing it. I’d love to go back to that playstyle. However, being stuck in the middle of “care about your mana” and “don’t care about your mana” is awful, and I’d rather our reliance on mana be removed altogether than have to sit through another expansion with a half-baked kit.

Part of why I bring up the mana management here is because I think that Blizzard’s lack of ability to commit to one side or the other is causing a lot of friction in our design. It fosters talents like “enlightened” and “siphon storm” that really aren’t interesting to play with our current kit and breeds talents like “mana adept” and “rule of threes” that would have been really interesting 6 years ago but are effectively a waste of space now.

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Good to see you again on the forums, Mythlos. I agree with pretty much all of your points as do most Arcane players, I believe, so I won’t reiterate. I have to echo Desolation in that most long time Arcane players, especially those who are capable of and willing to offer concrete and concise feedback, have simply given up trying because we’ve been largely ignored for a very long time now. It’s especially frustrating when most of what we’ve suggested over the years is straightforward and common sense, so much so it shouldn’t even need to be said. Many of the design decisions by Blizzard have been, quite frankly, so baffling that virtually anyone who has spent any time playing the spec could have probably done a better job.

Everyone knows what the pain points are, many of which apply to casters across the board and many others still, especially those related to the talent tree revamp, apply across the board to all classes. But not much seems to have been done about it. There was a flicker of hope in the latest rework that did away with RoP (can I get an Amen?) and implemented some much needed and long requested changes to our AoE but didn’t go far enough and largely left ST untouched. I remain somewhat optimistic that we might see some more good changes with the next expansion but that’s not going to be for a long, long time.

For my part I’ve been burned out on WoW and while I’ve enjoyed DF, certainly more than the horror that was SL, the spark has gone out and I am not at all excited about the new expansion either. Hence why I haven’t been very active on here lately. Which isn’t exactly uncommon as the forums have been pretty dead for a while now and that’s only likely to get worse as we settle into the doldrums until the next expansion.

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That’s sad to read honestly. They seem to be doing better maybe? I saw the Ret Paladin rework and was astounded by how clean their tree is. Really hope we get looked at to the same extent.

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The Ret rework was definitely a high point. They not only pruned and cleaned up the talent tree but also streamlined the rotation almost to the same level as Devastation Evokers but also left room to add more layers of complexity if the player so chose. If they can replicate that success and export it to other specs that would be ideal but so far that hasn’t materialized.

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The sad tale here is Blizz thinks they have already “looked at us” when they made some little tweaks to arcane (gave us orb barrage) then moved on to fire/frost rework.
I am doubtful we will ever see the changes we deserve.
To their credit, whenever I made suggestions in the PTR forums, they actually listened and made most of the changes I had asked for. My focus has always been more about playability of what they were already working on. So for example when they did the orb barrage update I was playing it a lot and kept asking for a reduced cooldown on arcane barrage to make the orb barrage work. They then dropped the cooldown on arcane barrage altogether, which was more than I was asking for, but much improved the playability. Likewise, I gave feedback on the new 4-piece tier which they adopted.
Not saying I have any real influence, but what they seem to be open to is improved playability of what they are already planning, but they seem to shut the door on any suggestions to fix fundamental breaks in the talent tree or core spells. They had many many points of feedback on rune of power over several years and they still wouldn’t drop it. They even seemed remorseful at the change, like they just really wished we wanted to play in it. I have seen so many very well reasoned posts (like yours) that express what many of us feel, that just get ignored by the developers. Many of the talent changes are incredibly small tweaks that would make a big difference, but they just don’t have an ear to hear it.

In my minds eye I imagine a single developer who’s only job is managing arcane mage and he spends most of his time lamenting “ugh they are playing it wrong!”

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i would just like to be able to understand the problem.

I tried my hand at arcane at the beginning of DF but felt I needed a PhD in WoW to play.

It haunts me to be so bad at it.

I don’t mind mediocre, but bad just feels, well, bad

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I am hopeful, however, that some of the things Ion said in one of the more recent interviews holds true - that they’re trying to reevaluate how players play the game. Hopefully that also means “being more receptive and responsive to feedback.” It took us a full decade to go through the life cycle of Rune of Power. I hope we’re not sitting here for another 10 years asking for the same fixes.

The short version: Too many spells that don’t deal direct damage that are required for our kit to work effectively. Of the abilities on my hotbar, I’d say roughly half of them I use for damage, and the other half are just buffs (or abilities that do both but the damage portion is so laughable that it might as well be just a buff).

So the “PhD” in arcane is really just knowing the timing and order to stack our buffs in - which is getting pretty old, to be honest.

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i see some streamers/youtubers running weakauras that paraded the next cast to be made on their screens as part of a weak aura. I am allergic to WA and dont really want to use that addon. I guess that gimps me with specs like this.

I gave up on in in 10.0 because rune was awful. Maybe i’ll give it a shot again. I mostly tank and heal, but i’d like to try my hand at a dps spec in mythics. mages seem to be in a good spot.

maybe i jsut need to be a BM hunter :slight_smile:

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I think my primary issue with Arcane at the moment is that we have too many spells that do the same thing: provide a static damage mod.

For example, Radiant Spark can be removed without it altering our gameplay at all and Siphon Storm (and Evocation) can be folded into Arcane Surge. This alone will remove a couple of boring % damage mods that don’t need to exist on their own.

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All of that and also taking a serious look at TotM because at the end of the day, making it a cooldown rather than a random proc, is at the root of the entire cooldown stacking mini-game that we’ve been forced to play since BfA.

I have no problem with the fantasy of gathering power and unleashing it in a devastating attack but the way we do that with Arcane atm is torturous. A much simpler way to do this would be doubling down on the Arcane Charge system, which has been neglected for so long, and buffing it so that building 4 charges and spending them every time (instead of spamming AB endlessly) becomes the norm in ST as it is in AoE situations. A new dedicated ST spender would go a long way towards facilitating that playstyle as would a baseline reduction to the cast time of Arcane Blast so that building charges in ST isn’t so painfully slow. Nerfing AB damage to compensate and turning it into a proper filler rather than both a filler and a nuke would solve any remaining concerns. That would be my ideal scenario anyway.

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Unfortunately, Arcane is feast or famine gameplay.

If all of the DPS classes/specs were organized this way, it wouldn’t be so bad. Then you realize, that some people must “like” that. It’s weird.

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There are ways to design feast or famine gameplay that don’t involve stacking 6+ buffs and debuffs at the same time to do optimal damage.

I think it’s good and healthy for the game to have damage dealers with different profiles, I just wish I didn’t need to jump through so many hoops to do the same amount of damage as someone in a different spec who’s rotation is “click the button that glows”.

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I agree. I find that it’s not the number of buttons, but that they all need to be available to do somewhat good damage. Otherwise, it just nosedives.

When I play something like Demo Lock, it’s just pretty much a fiesta of button smashing and numbers just fly everywhere.

Arcane needs some button consolidation to allow for more “fun” buttons.

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Speaking for myself only, I don’t like that, in fact I hate it but I still play Arcane just because I like its aesthetics. It’s literally that simple for me. That’s also why I am so vocal in advocating for change, because I am literally being forced to do something I don’t enjoy every time I log in and play on my mage.

Instead of looking at how we engage with the game and the playstyles we adopt they force us to do it their way or not at all. That’s why I don’t put any stock in what Ion has been saying lately. They knew full well we hated RoP almost since it’s inception but still forced it down our throats for almost a decade until just a few months ago. They also know most Arcane mages hate having to stack half a dozen cooldowns come every burst phase but haven’t done anything to address that.

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I’d be a little fine with it if there weren’t several in the “stack” that run counter to their traditional purpose (Evocation, Mana Gem are designed as mana regen, but now are %dmg increase? And used when I’m at full mana???) the other part of the stack is multi-casts that I end up macro’ing into one (NT, ToTM, as a single macro) and throw double lust on top of surge (macro’d to trinket) then throw out my spark so I can finally start using a damage spell and pray I don’t have to move too much during the 40 second rush.

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I agree with this and a few of OP points and nearly all yours, Mana management is a relic, it WAS interesting but lost all value nowadays. For it to be interesting we need alot more in game tools built around it and better ways to manage it or remove it.

I got the new spirit boots, thinking it would be interesting, but because arcane mana pool is so large, its useless ( as with any ingame mana effects for arcane.)

IF we did keep mana management, we need alot more conditions that apply during low mana and at high mana and support tools not only for our self but others, like innervate or maybe an aura that would buff allies based on our mana.

I think that would be interesting, but the challenge is also you do not want to incentivize external mana options from not going to a healer, limiting any interesting options and keeping most of our skills based on charges as the main resource.

Example :
When your low mana, Every spell cast reduces your cooldowns.

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Right. I outlined them in the main post, but I really think Nether Tempest, Evocation, and Radiant Spark are the largest offenders here in terms of active abilities.

NT can be folded into the Echo talent since that’s the only purpose it serves.
Evocation and Siphon can be passives that buff Arcane Surge.
Radiant Spark is obsolete with current Arcane.

Our talent tree sucks for the most part but Arcane is still very fun. Goes to show how some effort would make this spec perfection.

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you need to be near flawless to be “Good” i consider myself Ok to Good range but honestly it wouldnt hurt to get a straight damage buff to AB, we lose on long Single target fights, the downtime is ughhhhhhhhhhhhh watching folks jump ahead and i feel like im stuck in the slow lane for what feels like minutes until my cooldowns are up just to get “close” to other classes then to fall behind again ( rant over )

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AB doesnt need a buff. If anything Arcane Missiles does.

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