I tell you I’m having a lot of fun with the arcane these days.
Its rotation is much freer and I feel much more mobile. The only reservation I have is being forced to use Arcane Familiar to get Arcane Tempo, as I never liked the Arcane Familiar talent.
For me, arcane only needs a few tweaks.
That kind of makes sense, but at the same time, the opposite could happen:
A lot of players are starting to get at least 2p of the new tier, and since we are one of the specs that benefit the most from the 2p bonus, the numbers should currently be in our favour.
However, once everyone gains access to 4p, and given that we are only mid-tier in terms of overall DPS gains from the full set, the gap will likely widen again.
Ulria’s Season 2 Tier Set DPS Estimate Spreadsheet - Wowhead News
arcane orbs damage should be doubled. launching a crap ton every few seconds and still being the lowest on damage feels wrong
The reason for that is that the people at the top will be great at their rotations. If you go lower you’ll get into the territory where people are figuring stuff out. For arcane this is particularly important since a spec like ret will not have the same learning curve.
Great work here. There is a brutal thing that happens with arcane mage in keys though. The spec is so hard-capped that damage will be really bad in comparison to other specs for big pulls. Before TWW, the explosion that happens at the end of touch of the magi was a lot more powerful but when they brought in hero talents they completely nerfed the whole spec, including that explosion, expecting the hero talent to step in.
I do like how they increased the amount of larger pulls in these newer dungeons, but this is a 1-2 punch to arcane since we lost a bunch of uncapped aoe at the same time.
The second thing is arcane blast was nerfed completely to the ground. This was another defining part of the spec to me. We had much better single target damage before.
Arcane Blast was doing about 20% of our damage in DF in a good log for M+. Now it is doing under 4%. The nerfs were extreme.
Touch of the Magi was doing about 14% of our damage, now it is doing more like 10% – not as extreme, but we also had fewer targets for it to hit last season in general.
That being said, I don’t think it is all doom and gloom. I am still top dps most of the time in my runs, but I’m lagging behind what I normally do for M+ because it is hard to motivate to play when I feel like I am swimming uphill!
I am 659 with 4 set, Mechagon staff, and BiS M+ trinkets. Our damage is still hot garbage compared to other players in my raid group with 10+ less ilvl and no 4 set. All of my Normal parses are 99s. It’s not looking good for Mythic raid.
Bumping this we need some number tuning for sure!
Of course, I’d prefer a bigger rework, ideally adding back double dipping in some form etc. However, here’s my personal “simple” suggestion so make M+ feel a little bit better.
Orb Barrage: Increase the chance per arcane charge to 15% or even 20%
Increase arcane orb damage (by a lot)
Double the proc rate of intuition
Some of the most fun I have in AoE is resetting arcane charges via orb barrage procs. Couple that with more intuition procs and I think it would feel much better than it does now. This doesn’t solve the core issues, but I think it’ll make the rotation a little more fun, at least in AoE.
Those changes aside, just please buff us lol. Its depressing how low our damage is in keys. At least last season, even after the egregious nerfs, we had an identity - big prio/single target damage. With current tuning, that’s not even the case anymore.
We’re happy with where Arcane’s gameplay has landed after their 20th Anniversary Celebration update changes.
We’re happy with where Arcane’s gameplay has landed after their 20th Anniversary Celebration update changes.
“We’re happy with where Arcane’s gameplay has landed after their 20th Anniversary Celebration update changes.”
That line is so out of touch. Are you happy with Arcane being lower than augmentation evoker?
He’s being sarcastic; this is what Blizzard said on 11.1 PTR
This confirms what I suspected - Fire’s tier set is way, way better than Frost and Arcane and helps explain why Fire has become the runaway spec for Mage this tier.
Not only this:
Fights like the super annoying 5. on hero is SO MUCH a pain in the…for frost. (not playing arcane so dunno)
I see firemages there rocking…while my dps is rly bad (if i not died at progress grp last time…ofc i died at the kill try early ^^)
But even when i was alive, i had NO chance @ coming near the fire mage dps.
Same at scrap boss…same at all other bosses, except the firemage died:P
And Arcane seems to be even lower…so PLS buff Arcane and Frost (a bit).
Same. Thinking of cancelling my sub over this tbh
After 18 years of this game, this is precisely where I’m at now. Arcane has always been the red headed stepchild of Blizzard, but the last time we were this bad was in the Odyn raid in Legion.
That’s legitimately frightening.
Did you race swap AGAIN?
Good Lord.
Because it would mean admitting that they f***** us so badly, it’s effectively beyond saving.
Having full 4-piece isn’t going to boost us 20% or whatever asinine number the math guy came up with for making us competitive.
I looked up your character to see what you were enchanting/gemming/etc. and you were fire. I took that as a bad sign.
Lol, yes, I was out of control, but couldn’t help myself. Dragon mage was too tempting to me. I’m not even sure if they fixed the Dracthyr delay barrage cast bugs, but I’ve pretty much quit the game now, just checking the forums for a reason to come back and finding every reason to never come back. I think my game time expires next month or something.
One of the main characteristics of an arcane magician is his resilience and insistence on not giving up, even in the most difficult moments.
Insist on your duty and fun, for the Order that governs our universe.
What porom said is a direct quote from blizzard. Lol
Which is interesting really because right after that they changed to intuition gameplay.
Oh I remember it. This is definitely not the Blizzard of old. Bares zero resemblance to what it used to be. I just thought it was telling that when I checked his profile, he was fire 
Questing IN UNDERMINE is a testament of how poorly tuned Arcane is for regular mobs and AoE. It’s exceptional in single target, when used with coold downs, but which class really isn’t?
Hitting for pathetic arcane blasts and missiles, feels so bad. My ice lance regualry hits harder than an arcane blast. Every spell under arcane is outperformed by a frostfire mage.
On demand Comet Storm that can be reduced via procs and under 30 seconds is amazing.
On demand burst with flurry and ice lance.
A one minute CD (ray of frost) that hits harder than Arcane Surge and Arcanosphere, like… Come on Blizzard.
Please tune the numbers. Bring the base damage up, and lower the modifiers… Just not fun, and I’ve been an Arcane Mage since The Burning Crusade.