thought i’d bench my mage from the start of SL but looks like no other class fits my playstyle. im bored af playing just frost and fire as well.
so im wondering is arcane worth maining for fun/+15 keys/heroic raiding. i can’t raid mythic due to work schedule/life and idc much for M+ tbh if i get into it maybe i’ll go higher. i dabble in pvp here in there mostly rbg’s im not very good though but i try.
just wondering on thoughts
Yes, it’s perfectly viable for all content unless we’re talking cutting edge stuff but you said you weren’t doing that in SL. The problem is Fire is simply better at everything and in some cases (like mobility, which is key in CN) by a fairly large margin. So unless you have the luxury of playing with people who don’t care that you are not playing the clearly superior spec for your class you’re going to run into a lot of resistance.
yea im trying to find a guild cause rn i have to pug everything and have been for many years. it’s pretty bleh in general i mean i get stuff done but there is no relationship built up with other players.
i mean i can always swap to fire but i just rather not. main reason i benched my mage to begin with is im sick of playing just frost and fire it’s so stale especially since mage is what i mained for 6 years straight and just played that with alts on the side mostly just leveling um.
Arcane is garbage in arena but slightly viable in BGs. Here’s my list of weaknesses:
I’m lucky enough to have such a guild. They also know that for whatever reason I pull more dps as arcane than I do Fire because I’m an old boomer that can’t keep up with the Combustion rotation so I usually always mess it up.
Hey I hear you. I am not a boomer but I also steer clear of Fire because I don’t want to give myself carpel tunnel or early on set of arthritis because some looney dev decided it was a good idea to create a spec that has to go from virtually doing nothing for the majority of a fight to suddenly having to be possessed by the spirit of Rachmaninov for 10 seconds every 2 minutes and smash the keyboard like it’s showtime at Covent Garden. To speak nothing of what your body goes through during that short window with the adrenaline pumping through your veins because you know that if you mess it up even a little your DPS will tank. Unlike Arcane and Frost, Fire’s design may yield great results but that doesn’t mean it’s a good design.
Arcane has a reputation as a trash spec, and I wouldn’t complain if it received a buff lol, but you can for sure pull your weight. For m+, it will never pull the ridiculous numbers you see fire pump in mdi, but depending on the dungeon I usually end with 5-7k overall dps, which is perfectly respectable for 15s. It’s super easy to play in 5 mans because it does consistent good aoe with the bombardment legendary, and with prideful regenerating your mana you can get big boss numbers. If BGs are your thing over arenas, arcane is not too bad. Chrono shift sprint feels really good.
If you find the spec fun, you can make it work. It’s far from unviable for any of the content you described.
Exactly how I feel about fire. 
Yup, that’s about it. M+ is our only niche in SL so far and of course it’s by far the worst way to gear. 
Except I don’t really think most people believe Arcane to be a “trash spec” it’s more the fact that they realize it simply can’t compete with Fire and is objectively worse at just about everything but burst AoE (hence why we are doing okay in M+).
So from their perspective I totally get it. Why would other people put up with us when it was our choice to play an underperforming spec? A rhetorical question, of course. Some of it is down to people being unreasonable and even toxic but the real onus falls on Blizzard and their failure to balance classes and specs. No one would be complaining or making a fuss if the difference in performance was within a reasonable margin but it’s not, not even close.
Balance has always been a huge problem in this game but in SL it’s just nonexistent and that’s the root cause of all the problems in the expansion so far.
Personally, right now I am most looking forward to ESO rolling out their next expansion a week from tomorrow and putting this hot mess on a timeout until, or rather if, they can get it together. Going forward it’s just gonna be log in on Tuesday to check on the Great Vault of Disappointment, doing a 14 to prime it for next week and quickly knocking out Choregast. Not sure how long it will take them to fix the game but 9.0.5 definitely won’t do it and 9.1 doesn’t look like it will either. If this is gonna be it in SL I am gonna be unsubbing pretty quickly.
Honestly, Arcane is better than fire in pugs because most pugs aren’t going to pull the massive coordinated pulls that make fire exceptionally strong in M+ via firepatch. That’s literally the only area where arcane is better at anything, and even then it’s only barely better. Arcane might have more consistent damage, but when fire does 15k dps for 10s, every minute, it really doesn’t matter that they do 2k DPS for the other 50s of downtime, which is more than arcane does during our conserve phase to boot.
Does ESO have a good raid scene? Raiding with a guild/friends is about the only reason I play WoW anymore. Can’t seem to scratch that itch with any other game I’ve tried thus far.
Yes! It’s actually very prevalent and there are literally folks looking to form raids in every major city all the time. ESO uses a different targeting system than WoW, every spell can be cast on the move or is otherwise instant, and everyone can battle rez with no cooldown making a wipe almost impossible, it’s just about persistence.
If you find the right guild that’ll accept your arcane fetish, you’ll be fine.
M+ will be a nightmare though, if pugging. Have seen a lot of non-fire mages kicked when the lead realizes, before run starts. The few that i’ve seen not kicked also did pretty poor dps. I think i’ve seen 1 frost mage be competitive, and no arcane, in what must be a couple hundred keys now across my chars in SL.
Like is always the case, the best players gravitate to the meta specs. Unfortunately that means that most of the people everyone sees playing unorthodox specs - are highly likely to be clueless.
There is very few people playing frost, survival, bm or feral and pumping numbers in keys. So this just reinforces the community perception that those specs are bad. People get told those specs are bad, they play with 1 or 2 people who do poorly on those specs, then they never invite those specs again.
However, in saying all of that - if you’re good you’ll impress people on any spec and be able to build a network. Good luck pugging though.
yea its sad cause i dont want to be forced into playing fire/frost i mean i don’t mind but coming off 6 years just playing those 2 specs it gets boring especially since not much really has changed so it seems.
i do see some but rare people playing those “bad” specs and getting pretty high keys like +20-23’s but im sure they are good at their spec by now and have a set team.
i mean i can always switch later just rather not. almost all the classes atm the best spec is a spec i don’t care to play like hunters and locks. shaman not too bad since i rarely mained a shaman just lost interest cause im so far behind on him
Follow your heart man. I main arcane and enjoy it. I’m in a mythic raiding guild, push high keys (17s and up), and pretty much do whatever content I want. And other than raiding I’m mostly pugging it. Just know that the path in doing so is difficult. To excell at the spec you simply have to work harder, better, and longer than our fire mage cousins. Most people will also judge you until you prove them wrong.
Yeah unfortunately I am no longer willing to put up with that nonsense when it’s not my fault that Blizzard just doesn’t want to give every spec the attention it deserves. At this point I am just relegating myself to playing my Arcane mage only when the nostalgia strikes.
P.S. Love the name, get you some black robes. 
I share your experiences regarding Arcane. I’ve been playing Arcane since the end of Cataclysm and I can pull my weight in Heroic Raiding and in M+. Luckily I have never been kicked for being Arcane but on the other hand I don’t pug a lot.
I want to continue as Arcane but I must confess I’m getting tired of swimming against the tide… It’s not cool putting more effort for sometimes inferior results. I really don’t like Fire but I’ve been considering switching to frost lately.
Well red robes work as well 
Not really, no.
Fistandantilus downvoted this post. 
