Short and sweet, arcane mage needs to join the critical strike game.
Idea number 1: Every 2% of critical strike grants a 1% bonus to the 1% mana spent = 2% Clearcasting proc.
So critical strike would behave like versatility with 1% damage/0.5% damage reduction for arcane mages, but 1% critical/0.5% Clearcasting. At 45% critical strike, Clearcasting would occur on a fully charged AB at 33.69% instead of 27.5%. That’s a whole lot of gearing, and talenting… for a decent reward.
Focus Magic would be a great talent for arcane mage if there was another mage to trade with, maybe better than RoP.
So a buff to Arcane Power then.
Idea number 2: Arcane Power still reduces mana cost, without reducing proc chance for Clearcasting.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to stack 3 Clearcasting going into AP. I think AP should be used to spam AB and generate Clearcasting for the burn cycle afterwards.
Arcane mage has baked in haste, so they go for critical. The other specs have critical caps/forgiveness. Arcane needs to be the high critical number mage then. Baking our lagging spec proc into that only makes sense.
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I cannot express how much I absolutely love this idea. This seems like it would work really well to create some variety in playstyles (theoretically). If you want to go a high mastery build focused on arcane blast you go enlightened with RoP rule of 3s or mana familiar. If you want to go machine gun missiles you run high crit.
The idea that this brings focus magic up quite a bit seems like a great way to make it viable without really changing much about it and I love the possibilities it has for playstyle. Legit this is my favorite idea so far and I hope Blizz implements it in some way!
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My take is to add bad-luck protection: “For each 250 mana you spend, you have a 1% chance to gain Clearcasting, making your next Arcane Missiles or Arcane Explosion free and channel 20% faster. Every time you cast a spell without gaining Clearcasting, you have an additional 0.25% chance to gain Clearcasting per 250 mana spent.”
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Thanks for reading and liking my idea! Yep, I’d like to see Critical Strike boost the proc on CC.
I looked into my second thought a little more, and it turns out Arcane Power reduces the mana for CC procs. At level 50 I get 1% for 50 mana, when I flip on AP the Clearcasting tooltip changes to show 35 mana for 1%, 25 mana with OP talented. So that’s already a thing.
I think the bad luck protection idea sounds like it could be nice, it’s just like taking the Rank 2 Fireball critical miss forgiveness effect and slapping it on Arcane for Clearcasting.
The buff might be too much during Arcane Power, I personally don’t see there being a problem with spamming Blast during Power and winding up with a full stack of CC procs… but it would definitely be nice for the idea of getting CC AM before hitting Arcane Barrage in the regular conserve rotation.
Having that forgiveness mechanic is actually very close to a flat 20% Clearcasting proc buff, which I would like to see us work up to with Critical Strike gearing. Suppose AB spam during Arcane Power… with that forgiveness mechanic you’d have a 104% chance to gain Clearcasting with your 3rd Blast (adding the values of the 3 Blasts together.) A 20% proc buff on 27.5% (33%) and your 3rd Blast would have a total 99% chance to gain Clearcasting. That’s pretty close, and in the conserve rotation you might be able to squeak out 3 full Blasts before needing to Barrage.
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