Boomer Arcane VS. Zoomer (kyrian) Arcane

Classes Mage
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EDIT: I shouldn’t have to put it here, but can we please keep it civil?

I want to have a talk about emerging arcane mage build that isn’t intended (to my knowledge I could be absolutely wrong in this though) from the designers perspective and suggest a possible “fix?” to the current iteration of “boomer” Arcane.

How did we arrive at a build that involves playing arcane literally backwards from conventional play styles? I want to take a moment and recap events leading up to the current situation / build that is Kyrian Arcane:

Radiant Spark: an ability that encourages the use of Arcane Blast/Barrage rather than Arcane Missiles during Touch of the Magi, as well as a spell that is currently working slightly different than the tooltip states.

Interjection point: Why is there inconsitency with legendary names? honest question.

Arcane Harmony/Infinity: spamming Arcane Missiles rather than Arcane Blast/Barrage mana management, building 15-18 stacks depending what part of the burn / fishing / building phase you’re in then dumping your “stacks” instead of building any arcane charges (outside of burst windows)

A Lack of suitable legendary’s for “boomer” Arcane aside from Temporal Warp:
having to be creative and find a solution through Arcane Harmony/Infinity / developing a new spec? (did this build exist in legion?)

Radiant spark is supposed to be a stacking buff in the damage that you deal starting from 0%, then 10%, 20%, 30%, and ending on the 5th strike at 40% damage increase. The variation / bug in this is the 5th strike, if you have a large enough spell queue window, and cast Arcane Barrage at the same time as finishing an Arcane Blast both spells gain the 40% damage increase which compounds drastically as you look at the window in which burst is made with this build.

another point of noting with this specific play style is all of the multipliers that are going into this very finite window which in turn leads to many potential hard balance issues:

Radiant spark 0-40% (+9.5% with maxed out conduit) Touch of the Magi 25% (+9.6% with maxed out conduit) Rune of Power 40%, Arcane Power 50% (with Overpowered talent) and lastly the Arcane Harmony/Infinity legendary effect that grants you 144% (+15% with resonance).

compressing that much damage into an 8 second widow presents many challenges being able to line up the window and making sure that you can do everything you want to in that time. (yes I’m fully aware there is more that can be done inside the Touch of the Magi window, aiming for 2 barrages with Lust/PI)

look… if this is an intended gameplay build fine I will try it out adapt and see if it’s something I can make “work.” My argument still stands that the 5th cast shouldn’t buff both Arcane Blast AND Arcane Barrage when it’s clearly not stated to be working that way.

suggested changes to boomer arcane.

Arcane missiles can now only be cast via Clearcast.

Increase Arcane Blast’s chance to proc Clearcast drastically:
(currently 27.5% at 4 Arcane Charges) up to 45/50% at the same charge level. if that means increase mana costs to match that works too.

Give Arcane Barrage a 25% chance PER Arcange Charge spent to proc Clearcasting and increase the mana refund to scale with haste.

EDIT: last thing that I wanted to add, if I could change a talent or make a legendary, it would be something that allows arcane missiles to trigger a micro Arcane Explosion on the target and hits enemies in a 5-8 yard radius (yes basically built in touch of the magi, but machine gun arcane go brrr).

These suggested changes are only 1 possible solution to “fix” the unintended play style of Kyrian mage (If it is intended I withdraw myself from this discussion but I haven’t seen a response from blizzard saying either for or against)

thanks for coming to my ted talk?

1 Like
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If it was unintended then they would have fixed it by now on the ptr. That or they saw how people are able to maximize it and just decided to leave it as it is. It is a very tight window and sometimes my precision with it tends to fail, but it’s worth it.

You don’t really have to use arcane harmony for kyrian, though. Temporal warp and bombardment is still good.

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Actually in a min/max world you do.

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But, no one said anything about min/max.

Bombardment is still a solid choice in mythic+. Temporal warp still can be used effectively for mythic raids as well.

But, back on topic for radiant spark. I don’t think there’s really anyway for them to “fix” it if it’s actually broken.

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It’s kind of implied if we’re talking about maximizing damage.

Not if you’re Kyrian. You’re 100% correct if any of the other covs. Kyrian only uses harmony.

I personally don’t consider it broken. I think it’s part of the min/max aspect and a reward of properly executed windows.

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Even for kyrian bombardment is still good in mythic+. Even for encounters such as denathrius, Bombardment is still a good choice.

Just because they’re not the absolute optimal doesnt mean they still aren’t solid choices to use anywhere.

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I’m not going to argue with you because you’re wrong.

Kryian harmony is the only leggo you play as Kyrian. It’s one of the benefits of going kyrian.

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Okay, bye :wave:

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Kyrian Arcane completely falls apart as viable without Harmony, stop spreading misinformation.

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You actually do. The whole point in your burst is to offload a 18 Harmony stack Barrage into the final hit of your Spark with AP + RoP running

All non-Harmony builds on Kyrian fall behind other “normal” versions of Arcane with other covs and are a DPS loss vs what you can do as Arcane if you weren’t Kyrian.

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I understand what everyone is saying, but it also why I put that it wasn’t the absolute optimal and that it wasn’t about min/max.

I know all of this and it wasn’t misinformation. It wasn’t intended to be, at least.

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The thing is, non-Harmony Kyrian is literally min. All other covs are ahead of it in everything, so I don’t know why anyone would rationally think that it’s still okay. Even some defensive/tank soulbinds are ahead of non-Harmony Kyrian.

You could do the min/max argument if it were competitive. It just isn’t, in any relevant format.

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Which is why I stated it wasn’t absolute optimal while also saying it wasn’t about min/max.

I’m sorry, but are those words redacted here or something? It feels like everyone is ignoring those points, focusing on me and going way off topic from what the op asked about radiant spark.

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When you say Kyrian Arcane is okay without Harmony, it’s not about giving sub-optimal advice for those who don’t want to min/max, it’s about giving the wrong advice to someone.

You will still min/max with Harmony Kyrian depending on a lot of factors: your distance from the target, your Haste, any borrowed power, your race, your other secondaries, fight timings, your CC procs, the Harmony stacks per mini burst, etc. That’s what min/maxing is.

If you’re saying you’re not talking about min/max, to the average player that sounds like just doing their rotation to the best of their ability with the correct base setup. In fact that’s what most people who are new to any spec do. They try to get the best cov and lego combination, and then they work on their rotation. At this point they aren’t min/maxing; they will min/max when they’re comfortable with their basics.

You caught a lot of flak because essentially you were offering the absolute worst lego + cov combination and saying that’s okay if you’re not interested in min/maxing (that is just terrible advice). Even if one doesn’t bother min/maxing, it isn’t about picking the worst possible lego + cov combination.

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I know all of that. But, I’ll just stop anyway to prevent more side tracking.

I acknowledge I was completely wrong on this, so I’ll just stop here.

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Why are you so hell bent on being right?

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It’s not viable let alone optimal.

Just saying.

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Well because one is the name of the “memory” you return to the Runecarver and the other is the name of the equipable item he crafts for you. I agree though, it’s pointless and needlessly confusing.

As to the Kyrian Harmony question, I do believe the unique functionality was completely unintentional on Blizzard’s part but that’s not anything new. Every single expansion since borrowed powers were introduced there have been certain interactions between powerful items and one or more of said powers that the devs didn’t think of at all.

It’s players that find these and the resulting play style is often so convoluted when it comes to execution that the vast majority of players never touch it even though when executed correctly it yields better results than the more conventional builds. So Blizzard normally don’t mess with it and just let the try-hards do their thing.

That or it either goes completely under the radar or they just don’t know how to fix it without breaking even more things in the process and just leave well enough alone. It’s to be expected with an ancient game like WoW where taking out one piece of the Jenga like code can bring the whole thing crashing down.

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I actually think Ark is correct on bombardment being good in M+, even as Kyrian if you’re talking low-mid keys where things aren’t staying up super long. If you use your spark in execute range, that’s still 130% bonus dmg compared to 144%, so not super low. In a situation like low end M+ where you’re hitting that execute range as frequently as you would be your normal 18 stack spark, bombardment works because now you’re also getting every execute barrage hitting harder than it otherwise would.

If you’re pushing a 20+ key I would def use harmony, though. Those prides need to die, and bosses take longer. Also, I could see harmony being better in any ToP or PF, maybe spires too.

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First mage thread that is looking like those in which people can :popcorn:.

I’m still working to get Arcane Harmony leggo to test it, but the play style seems a bit weird to me. Spamming AC, that much, with no CC charges.

The AH play-style, Is it fun?