Arcanosphere needs to be rewarding to land — not just harder to cast
Don’t make Arcanosphere hit harder; just make successfully landing it more meaningful
It is a huge, highly telegraphed Arcane projectile with a long cast time, a long cooldown, and the ability to pass through terrain. It is not something you casually press in PvP. If an Arcane Mage successfully creates enough space and time to land one, there should be a meaningful reward for doing so.
I don’t think that reward necessarily needs to be more damage.
1. Keep the current damage
I would leave Arcanosphere’s current damage exactly as it is.
It should continue to be affected by Arcane damage modifiers, meaning that it can hit harder when the Mage properly sets up Arcane damage modifiers, but it should not be able to critically strike.
The spell already has significant burst potential when properly set up. I don’t think it needs to become another massive crit lottery.
What it needs is a reason for players to respect the spell beyond its raw damage.
2. Change it from a 2.5–3 second CHANNEL into a 2.5–3 second CAST
This is an important distinction.
Arcanosphere should be a casted spell, not a channel.
Currently, if you begin Arcanosphere and then move, get interrupted, or otherwise lose the cast, you can end up suffering the full cooldown without actually getting the spell.
That is an enormous penalty for a PvP ability that is already extremely telegraphed and difficult to land.
Make it a normal cast:
Start cast → complete cast → launch Arcanosphere.
If the Mage completes the cast, the cooldown begins.
If the Mage is interrupted before completion, the spell is interrupted like a normal cast.
If the Mage moves before completion, the cast is cancelled like a normal cast.
This alone would make the spell feel considerably less punishing without making it easier to land.
3. Give it a meaningful secondary effect
This is the part I think Arcanosphere really needs.
Don’t simply increase the damage.
Give the giant Arcane sphere an impactful battlefield effect when it hits players.
There are several possibilities that could work:
Option A — Arcane Blind
Enemies struck are afflicted with a short Blind-like effect for 2–3 seconds.
Not Rogue Blind.
Rather, something closer to the Final Fantasy concept of Blind: affected players can still act and move, but their attacks, offensive spells and healing spells have a chance to miss.
A giant, incredibly bright purple sphere temporarily disrupting everyone’s ability to accurately hit anything would make perfect thematic sense.
Option B — Short Incapacitate
Enemies struck are briefly incapacitated for perhaps 1–2 seconds.
Something closer to the short incapacitate effects available to Paladins, Frost Death Knights or Druids rather than a full-duration Polymorph.
This would make landing the sphere meaningful without turning it into a long-duration mass CC.
Option C — Supernova-style disruption
Use the existing Supernova-style effect: enemies struck are briefly launched upward for 1–2 seconds.
Essentially a short mass interrupt/disruption.
Option D — A REAL pushback
Arcanosphere already has a pushback component in its design, but if this is going to be one of the spell’s primary rewards, it needs to actually matter in PvP.
Give it a pushback comparable to Thunderstorm or at least Typhoon, rather than a relatively minor displacement.
That would create some fantastic opportunities around objectives, cliffs, bridges and chokepoints without requiring the spell to do absurd damage.
The important part
Arcanosphere should remain:
Long cast.
Highly telegraphed.
Difficult to land.
High damage.
No crit.
But if an Arcane Mage actually manages to land that enormous purple ball on a group of players, something should happen.
The enemy team should see an Arcane Mage standing there charging a giant purple sphere and think:
“We need to stop that Mage.”
And if they don’t?
They should pay for it.
Not necessarily by losing 50–75% of their health.
Maybe they get blinded.
Maybe they’re briefly incapacitated.
Maybe they’re thrown into the air.
Maybe they’re pushed off the objective.
That’s the kind of PvP interaction that makes a difficult spell memorable.
Thunderstorm doesn’t need to kill you to be satisfying. Sometimes the reward is sending three people flying off a cliff.
Warlocks have similarly powerful positional tools that can completely change an engagement when used correctly.
Arcanosphere could have that same identity for Arcane:
A highly telegraphed spell that is dangerous not simply because of its damage, but because of what happens when it successfully connects.