That seems to basically sum up every borrowed power system since Legion. The devs either don’t care enough, or aren’t capable of, fixing the specs at the base level so they push these systems (and yes, the new talents are just another borrowed power system). How many times have these forums seen the words “the spec is ok to play once you get x, y, and z item/ability/talent”?
TWW was the opportunity to rework (and by rework I mean delete and start again) many specs that have been broken, unfun, or are just outdated. The removal of 90% of the failed new talent trees would have been a good start, but more was needed. We got virtually none of that - some bandaid “solutions” like we’ve gotten for the past decade or so, a new system, and the standard ‘we’re listening to player feedback’ from devs.
Lots of talent changes to buff the damage of clearcasted spells and Bliz’s statement that they want to make missiles more impactful. Just assuming/hoping it means the clipping for NP procs will not be a thing and that it’ll be more beneficial to fully channel your missiles.
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From what I’m tracking, Arcane Missiles will be our most powerful spell and you’ll always want to use it when it’s available and you’ll want to cast it until the end.
That definitely seems to be the intention but even if they achieve making CC the top priority, as opposed to NP which is the current priority, it won’t resolve the tension between them. It will just invert the problem. So long as there is both a desire to spam back-to-back CCs and the NP proc works like it does now you will always run the risk of overcapping one or the other.
Quite frankly, I think it’s time to do away with NP, especially if they want to focus on CC so heavily. We need to move away from procs creating more procs that actively compete with each other rather than synergize. What they’ve done instead is to change NP to also apply to ABarr but while that helps in AoE it doesn’t do anything to solve the ongoing ST issues.
The main problem with Arcane’s ST has always been the overwhelming incentive to spam AB at 4 Arcane Charges and the punishing ramp up to rebuild Charges if you ever chose to reset them. NP doesn’t really resolve that and never did. The only thing that would is to completely change how AB works by turning it into a builder and transferring its power to ABarr so that you always want to spend your Charges right away even in ST scenarios. NP actively conflicts with this as it directly empowers AB and we need to move away from that. It’s the inescapable conclusion and I honestly don’t understand why the devs are trying to avoid it or even worse can’t see it.
Due to the various talents strengthening Arcane Missiles, this ability will become very strong. And because Arcane Harmony and Nether Precision increase Arcane Barrage’s damage when using Arcane Missiles, this will also make Arcane Barrage powerful.
Add to this the fact that Spellslinger encourages the consumption of Nether Precision, so we will have gameplay in which we will have Arcane Missiles and Arcane Barrage as the focus.
If they do a pet, they should add a tome to opt out like warlocks. I don’t want a pet. Would rather have some other tool that would allow me to solo elites.
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I know what they’re doing and why they’re doing it, I just don’t agree with the direction they’re taking. I’ve been playing Arcane since before it was a proper spec all the way back in Vanilla. Ever since TBC and the introduction of Arcane Blast the entire spec has always revolved around spamming it at four Arcane Charges over and over and over again. That playstyle was taken to the extreme in BfA when the spec pretty much devolved into a 1 button spam. And nothing has been done to bring it back from that brink since then with the exception of adding NP which brought along with it its own problems.
At the end of the day there is nothing that can be done to alleviate all of Arcane’s single target problems outside of completely redesigning AB. Anything short of that is just treating the symptoms instead of tackling the underlying cause of the problem. The mana management issues, procs overcapping, canceling CC AMs early, the stale rotation, the need to rely on cooldown stacking, all of it comes down to how integral the 4 charge AB spam is to Arcane (and to a lesser extent the nature of TotM).
They’ve tried everything else under the sun and it looks like they’re planning to continue to throw everything but the kitchen sink at Arcane in TWW as well. So why not try the proverbial sink and just redesign AB instead? If it doesn’t work they can always go back.
I am so in for a Deathborne playstyle so long as casting Frostbolt, if that is what we’re forced to do during it like in Shadowlands, feels good to press. Unless Deathborne is going to let it affect Flurry and Lance and Glacial, and one again thrust frost into an anti-frostbolt playstyle.
Well it’s already going to feel better to press it no matter what because it won’t be Frostbolt anymore but FrostFIRE Bolt. 
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It so funny because when each unique ability was introduced it made sense at the time. What hasn’t made sense is the game itself has changed and we are dragging old mage playstyles along that really don’t make sense to current gameplay and are very punishing to sub optimal play. I agree with those that think Mages need a COMPLETE redesign ( and yes that may mean getting rid of Arcane Blast, Sun kings Blessing or even Ice lance) to mage specs that better align with the current game.
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Yeah as I said, it’s inescapable. WoW is just suffering major growing pains. It’s in the unique position of being a 20 yo game that’s still going strong. Meanwhile the genre and gaming in general has evolved tremendously over that time and the modern game plays nothing like it did in the early days. Yet they’re still trying to shoehorn mechanics from as early as Vanilla into the current paradigm. What’s worse, it seem that with every new expansion they try to make things better but end up realizing what a monumental task it would be so they just give up and kick the can down the road. So what we’re left with is this hodgepodge of bandaids and half measures that in many cases were first implemented to fix problems that no longer even exist. And they just keep pilling them on trying to make them work in a never ending viscous cycle that only succeeds in making the game more frustrating to play and needlessly complex.
It’s an existential problem and I don’t pretend to have all the answers but some of the solutions are painfully obvious to anyone who has played a certain spec for any length of time yet they aren’t being implemented. That’s the part I don’t get. What are they afraid of, changing things too much? After 20 years some measure of change is warranted!
Or even “this trinket, or ring, or leggo”
Looking at the arcane tree after the latest changes, it needs to free up at least 3 talent points for us to try to put together an interesting build.
As it is, I always need to give up interesting talents and in the end that doesn’t make me fully like what I’ve created, because I always have a bitter taste in my mouth of what I would like to have and can’t achieve.
It seems like the WoWHead calculator isn’t entirely accurate and both Crackling Energy and Improved Arcane Missiles only cost 1 point each and one other talent which I think is Prodigious Savant but I’m not sure.
It’s very likely that there are going to be more changes to the spec trees and I’m really hoping there are more changes for the class tree in the future as well. There some problematic and/or dead talents and talents that could just be redesigned or replaced like Incanter’s Flow, Improved Frost Nova, Rigid Ice and Accumulative Shielding and the Mirror Image choice node. Time Anomaly should 100% be removed and it’s probably every mage’s dream that Cauterize and Cold Snap become a choice node in its place.
if you only care about meta then you dont enjoy the game
I never rolled /rerolled bec. something was meta.
But if i play a spec i choose to spec into close to the optimun i can do (dps wise).
Atm there is (sadly) no other way than playing glacial bec. the current t-set ONLY supports this.
Hopefully in the next addon there will be another way to play 
but don t worry pal, i never care bout meta specs. Otherwise i would only play shadow/destru/firemage e.g. ^^
that’s playing meta though I don’t even use some sets if I don’t like that play style.
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Last season i played a bit without glacial, when i still had some t-pieces that were ONLY kinda 40 ilvl behind.
But now the new t-set is roughly 75 ilvl or more ahead. So its kinda hard not play with glacial but you are right. Just for fun you can play anything <3
Sadly in some serious content like higher keys or so, the dps is needed and there playing with for example non-glacial could be critical.
Hopefully in TWW there will be atleast 2 playstyles for each spec.
I would guess one of the biggest roadblocks to a mage class redesign is that Blizzard wants the class to feel versatile and not go back to the days where mages only cast one type of spell (in Arcane’s case, at times literally one spell) per spec. Abilities like Shifting Power go a long way towards capturing that “Archmage” fantasy, because you’re firing off a big Arcane spell even when you’re in Fire or Frost specs. I like casting spells from other schools frequently. It makes the mage feel like the master wizard it’s described as in character creation, rather than just a pyromancer/cryomancer or…purplemancer?
I wouldn’t even begin to know how to propose any sort of redesign that still accomplished these goals though. I only seriously started playing a mage in Legion. And even then, I only really played Arcane. I’ve tried Frost and not liked it, and never really gave Fire a try until DF, when Sunfury was revealed as a hero spec. Now I’m going to have two mages for TWW, one Fire and one Arcane. Probably both Sunfury.
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