New metrics came out yesterday showing Arcane is currently behind Aug in Mythic raid. We’re also not even visible in the Wowhead M+ recap for week 1 because of how few people are playing the spec. Please do something, my Arcane Mage is 657 with 4pc+BiS trinkets and feels like an alt.
5 Likes
Arcane seems to rely very heavily on Touch of the Magi to actually do anything. It’s like Fire relying on Combustion heavily to do anything substantial.
It kind of reminds me of Frost Death Knight’s Pillar of Frost, except Pillar of Frost doesn’t feel as bad as Touch of the Magi being that PoF is a personal buff on a very short cooldown rather than an enemy debuff like TotM.
For Mage, Frost Mage does the best sustained style DPS (no heavy cooldown reliance). Fire has the roller coaster burst windows (heavy cooldown reliance in Combustion). Then, Arcane is a slight blend of these two styles with mini burst from TotM and full burst with Arcane Surge.
I guess this is Blizzard’s way of keeping all three Mage specs feeling distinct from each other? I just personally find it boring to do SUCH piddly damage outside of burst and mini-burst windows. Maybe that’s the balance they’re trying to strike right now with Arcane. I don’t know. I just feel like TotM is a little gimmicky sometimes.
2 Likes
Arcane needs a buff indeed. It’s the lowest DPS spec besides Aug Evoker, and it’s not just the lowest by a bit, but by a lot. Warcraft Logs shows just as much. Sort by 75th percentile, 85th, 90th, or even 95th percentile, any difficulty, doesn’t matter, Arcane is second to last. Please Blizz.
3 Likes
I really hate the ToTM design being a debuff on an enemy. It causes problems and causes us to lose DPS in SO MANY scenarios. It really should be a self-buff like Pillar of Frost.
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Yeah, my biggest gripe with it I’d say. If the mob dies too fast or just literally anything goes slightly wrong, your mini-burst is outright ruined.
Arcane needs big damage buffs according to the raid logs right now, but even more than that, I think Touch of the Magi could be a 30 second cooldown and it would be fine. If they want Arcane to be so heavily pigeon-holed into Touch of the Magi windows, let us have the spell more often. OR, give Arcane Mage better sustained DPS overall so there’s some breathing room outside of Touch of the Magi.
My biggest request though would be to make Touch of the Magi some kind of self-buff, but I can see why it would be hard to implement that with the interactions in game like Arcane Echo which rely on it being a debuff on the target.
2 Likes
One thing that could help with Touch is if they bring the duration back down to 10 seconds and increase the amount of damage it stores, like how it used to be.
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It’s at the heart of all the problems with Arcane and has been ever since they made it into a cooldown back in BfA. I’ve pointed that out many times before as have others but Blizz don’t care and/or aren’t capable redesigning the spec without it being centered around TotM.
Won’t play Fire, won’t reroll, I’ll just stop playing if Arcane isn’t tuned correctly within a reasonable timeframe. Really hard to get excited about the new patch when community perception of your spec is this bad.
3 Likes
Buff our arcane pals <33
They need to be pushed to doing fine dmg…not always fire 
!
Atm im playing frost without glacial+ rof and it feels rly clunky at hero, compared to firemages.
Its still kinda ok, but it could need some buffs too ^^
But Arcane need MUCH MORE! <3
3 Likes
I like ToTM, but I can see that plenty of others don’t.
I think there should be 2-3 capstone trees instead of the 5 weak ones we have now.
and it made in a way that one can’t fully stack the two outer sides.
Right side: ToTM, and radiant spark. complicated, bursty, gameplay
Left side: talents that give consistent damage.
Of course the ToTM side will be popular in higher-end group content because that damage profile is what works better in those groups
but the other capstone side could still be tuned to still be good, and could work for people who either don’t like ToTM or don’t want to learn the more complex gameplay Arcane has had in the past half-decade
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Good idea. I think the cracks really just start to show when the overall tuning for Arcane is simply so bad like it is now. I’m all for various build viability as that was the literal aim of adding these giant talent trees into the game anyway. Messing up your Touch of the Magi is way more punishing when the overall DPS of the spec is so painfully bad is what I’m trying to get at.
3 Likes
Yeah arcane blast was nerfed so much it really does no damage on its own. I enjoyed the spec more when I could make the choice to dump some mana into doing unbuffed damage – say at the end of a pull
1 Like
12 Cinderbrew and PSF not timeable with current 650 gear and arcane
I say this as Rank 4 Arcane world
8 Likes
that graph was only +11s to +15s. Very very few people are doing that content right now
Arcane doesn’t need to be BiS or the best Mage spec, please just make it playable for those of us that want to
5 Likes
That’s what I did, haven’t even logged in for S2, was hoping to see you all raving about how good Arcane was now, but I’m seeing the opposite and I’ve just moved onto real life enjoyment.
It wasn’t long ago when I would get picked for a M+ team and then dropped when they saw I wasn’t spec’d fire, which I’m guessing will be the current state of play with where we’re at.
3 Likes
The spec is really fun to play right now, but the big moments that make it rewarding don’t match with damage like they should
3 Likes
I am having a look at the tables on Archon.gg
The War Within DPS Rankings and Mythic+ Tier List | Archon (WoW - TWW : www.archon.gg/wow/tier-list/dps-rankings/mythic-plus/10/all-dungeons/this-week
Total Parses (sample size): 1,742,725
The War Within DPS Rankings and Raid Tier List | Archon (WoW - TWW: www.archon.gg/wow/tier-list/dps-rankings/raid/heroic/all-bosses
Total Parses (sample size): 1,215,790
Now let’s do some statistics:
The weighted average DPS across all classes, considering the number of parses, is:
- Mythic+(+7 to +15) content: approximately 2.455M DPS
- Heroic Raid content: approximately 2.147M DPS
To achieve the average DPS and to be in the top 25% of all classes, an Arcane Mage would require the following approximate overall DPS buffs:
To reach average DPS:
- Mythic+ (+7 to +15) content: approximately 11.59% buff
- Heroic Raid content: approximately 19.29% buff
To reach the top 25% DPS threshold:
- Mythic+ (+7 to +15) content: approximately 13.64% buff
- Heroic Raid content: approximately 22.22% buff
This is just another confirmation that Arcane Mages are currently performing well below average and would need significant adjustments to be competitive. It also confirms my gut feeling, which I mentioned in my post at the end of last year: Did all the DEV's that play Mage quit? - #5 by Zirka-thaurissan
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Yup, 20% sounds about right and it also means we’re SoL because they will never buff us that much. They rarely buff more than single digits.
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I think a big issue is our S1 set was nerfed into hot garbage, and we all don’t have S2 yet.
I would imagine they would want to wait until week 4 then do this math again or do some ballpark with a 10-12% buff.
2 Likes