I believe thanks are in order because it seems like Blizzard has listened to one of the big criticisms about the Arcane rotation
Yesterdays datamined changes show Arcane Barrage has been separated from nether precision, and instead has been buffed by about 10%. The damage bonus from Aethervision has also been increased a little.
I do think the community will like this more than what we have now because it brings back the community favorite blast>blast>barrage cadence.
I am mainly posting this to acknowledge that they did seem to pay attention. Thank you for listening.
Please consider a talent to extend the duration of proc buffs in M+. I believe this is the reason Arcane’s tuning does not reflect real-world numbers, since simulations do not account for procs dropping off between packs.
after missiles, you’ll have 2 stacks of NP. You can then spend them, and have 2 stacks of aethervision. so one barrage to spend that, and then hopefully you’ll have another stack of clearcasting to start over again.
It seems like this is meant to replicate the blast>blast>barrage rotation that double-dipping NP essentially caused, since aethervision will buff barrage. So while the buff on barrage changed from NP to AV, it is functionally very similar.
I see the mage discord is unhappy, though I think they are more unhappy about having the rotation change again. But if we are not happy with the rotation, it will have to change at some point for people to be un-unhappy with it. I think this is the most-likely-to-succeed choice they could have made regarding how to fit in aethervision
There may be some nuance I’m missing. Like it may be more beneficial to cast missiles before the barrage for arcane harmony
I think you got Aethervision and Nether Precision mixed up. It’s NP that was changed not Aethervision. It’s just that the two are tied together since you get Aethervision after consuming Nether Precision. I made a post about it as well.
Aethervision was given a talent that buffs the damage. My original post is correct in this regard, though admittedly I did not include that you need to take a talent to have it be buffed.
What they really need to do at this point is make touch of the magi feel impactful. It used to feel really impactful (thinking of DF here) but since so much damage was moved into the hero talent tree, it now feels pretty weak. Also Arcane Echo is broken in the bad sense – it is not copying everything.
Yeah the confusion is understandable. Not only do all the talents sound the same but it’s kinda bonkers that there are 3 levels of procs involved. You have to get and consume a Clearcasting proc to get a Nether Precision proc which you then have to also consume to get an Aethervision proc. I got a headache just writing that…
At this point they just need to go back to the drawing board and redo the whole spec from scratch coz this is getting out of hand.
I don’t see how I am confused. You will get 2 charges of nether precision, which will only be usable on arcane blast. arcane blast gives a charge each of aethervision.
So you’ll spend 2 blasts to get 2 aethervision charges. since nether precision no longer buffs barrage, you will be free to fire the barrage without a nether precision stack. Once that is done you will have 0 stacks of NP or AV, so you will start building again. What is not correct about that?
I do agree that there are a ton of really similar procs and talents that build up damage, and that it is what is holding the spec back. As far as them successfully balancing the spec for 11.1, removing Big Brained and Arcane Tempo is going to be a huge dps loss, that I don’t think they are prepared to tune.
I predict 5+ buffs for Arcane between now and a month into 11.1 because they didn’t realize how impactful both of those talents are, since they will be sharing a choice node when previously we would have taken both of them.
This change was horrible and totally against what really needed to be done.
Now we will have to cast more Arcane Blast, leaving the specification even more stationary and vulnerable, especially in high movement fights and PvP scenarios.
Furthermore, focusing on Arcane Blast will never be a good path, as this ability has a bad look and is the center of excessively monotonous gameplay with few buttons.
It’s also worth remembering that this change causes Spellslinger to generate fewer splinters and will force us to cast Arcane Blast even in AoE damage scenarios, which will be a disaster.
First of all, “nethervision” is not a thing. I think you meant to say Nether Precision. Second, you said Aethervision’s damage bonus was increased by “about 10%,” which it wasn’t. A new choice node talent called Aether Fragments which increases Aethervision’s damage bonus from 10% to 15% was added further down the tree. Arcane Barrage’s baseline damage was also increased but only by 3.5%, if that’s what you meant.
I think you understand how it works you just didn’t explain it very well in your original post and confused the names and numbers. That’s what I meant by “confusion.” Which of course is completely understandable since these are made up words that all sound similar.
This is a fair point. I’ve often just blamed the encounter design for this but arcane is one of the only hard casters anymore
TBH I miss nether tempest and radiant spark because it made the single target experience more exciting
Ah I see your point about “nethervision”, it was just a typo. That being said, arcane barrage HAS been buffed in the datamined changes:
Arcane Barrage Launches bolts of arcane energy at the enemy target, causing (34.74%38.214% of Spell power) Arcane damage.
For each Arcane Charge, deals 90% additional damage [ Arcane: grants you 1.5% of your maximum mana]
Consumes all Arcane Charges.
This problem could be easily resolved if Blizzard gave more strength to Arcane Barrage, which already has the worst penalty for the specification, which is zeroing the number of arcane charges.
Instead, Blizzard is making the situation worse by forcing us to always cast 2 Arcane Blast.
They nerfed arcane barrage so many times to fit it into what they wanted to do with sunfury and then moved the spec away from sunfury. They basically took an expansion’s worth of balancing and gutted it for nothing. But I do think this is a step in a positive direction. Hopefully it is the first steps of many, and they are able to make both aoe and single target more interesting.
Arcane orb is another example – it’s on a (short) cd and is basically just a builder at this point. But it LOOKS cool. Nether tempest also looked really cool. Radiant spark was fun to cast (and it was great having some damage on a 30s cd for say … the end of a boss in M+
It’s not a step in the right direction, because it’s decoupling Arcane Barrage from the main resource of one of the hero trees, Spellslinger. This discourages us from using Arcane Barrage freely as a Spellslinger.
With the arrival of Aethervision we are now forced to cast at least one Arcane Blast to guarantee reasonable damage from Arcane Barrage. With the next change, however, we will have to go through Arcane Missiles, 2 Arcane Blast and then Arcane Barrage if we want to deal reasonable damage and make the Spellslinger tree work.
This change is highly damaging because it further freezes arcane rotation and completely ties Spellslinger to Arcane Blast.
It makes us have a single possible rotational path, with several predictable and long casts.
I think it’s a step in the right direction because it fixed the awkwardness between blasting and barrage and resets that specific action back to how it was before TWW, but I do agree it opens up other issues.
Unfortunately they broke a lot of things when shoe-horning in hero talents. Hopefully what this means is that they can buff barrage back up to what it was before they tried throwing 40 different procs at it.
The mistake they made is that to play effectively now you have to juggle a ton of different procs to make arcane barrage do more aoe than a ilvl 450 ret paladin spamming divine storm. If they are going to buff up arcane barrage more, baseline, and only have us juggle a couple of buffs that should then mean that one could use arcane barrage in aoe without those buffs and still do moderate damage.
I really hope they can pick a basic rotation and stick with it. We will be on our 4th/5th rotation in an xpac which is, as far as I know, unprecedented for any spec to change so much that people actually have to change their rotation more than playing around a tier set multiple times in the same expansion.
I do often wonder if they have anyone on staff who actually PLAYS arcane. Not target dummies or looking at simulations but someone who has actual skill. Someone who say has 12’s timed on arcane. I do not think they have anyone on staff like that, at least anyone with any kind of say in the direction of the spec.
You’re not going to be using Blast, Blast, Barrage though, you’re still stacking multiple buffs together for Aethervision before you Blast, all that changed is now we have to Blast more often in AoE and Arcane Soul was completely gutted in functionality resulting in lost DPS for reaching 3 Clearcasting procs during it.
Dematerialise also doesn’t interact with Arcane Barrage anymore forcing it in to being an entirely single target only talent.
This isn’t what people were asking for. Aethervision cannot be saved, it has to be deleted and double dipping reinstated for Burden of Power and Nether Precision.
We no longer have an AoE rotation, we have to constantly ST at every target count now.
To be fair, Arcane has not had a true “aoe rotation” since I started playing it. After the specs I came from, it is more of an aoe filler. It is one of the only specs in the game that is almost completely hard target capped.
It was a lot better in DF, I remember I could do passable aoe damage outside of cooldowns.
The real issue here is that arcane barrage was nerfed into the ground at the start of the season, making it a button that is not worth pressing on its own. In the current rotation, it is such a casino that often I don’t want to bet. I know I’ll move the key forward doing a funnel rotation instead of the pure aoe rotation.
What I’m saying is that the current “aoe rotation” is effectively useless. It is just pad damage. In the majority of cases today, one is just doing it to bring overall numbers up but it is not moving the key forward in any significant way. The funnel rotation will move the key forward in most cases, but look horrible on the meters.
We have an AoE rotation on live though, it revolves around prioritising Barrage and Orb as much as you can with Blast being a fallback button for when you have nothing else to use (as Sunfury); removing Barrage from NP hard locks us in to Blast to empower every single one of our Barrages further locking us in to being a 1-5 target spec.
You no longer react to Orb procs as Spellslinger in favour of Missiles - Blast - Blast - Barrage and Sunfury will spend a lot less time using Barrage in favour of Blast more often as they rely even more on empowered Barrages even at the detriment of Arcane Soul.
I think you’re missing the point I’m trying to make. My point is that the current aoe rotation both feels bad and has low numbers and is often not the rotation you want to be doing even when in an aoe situation. Of course it exists.
I disagree. If arcane were tuned better, then the arcane echo and eventual explosion of touch of the magi would be allowing us to do good prio damage while still doing aoe.
It sounds like you want to be able to spam barrage more which makes me think of the ret paladin rotation and damage profile. I’d prefer a more interesting rotation with good prio damage.
Now, I will agree that spamming blast is not fun. I wish they hadn’t removed radiant spark, that was fun and useful.
I know what your point is but I just disagree with it being a good thing.
Only way we’re not going to be playing around Aethervision in AoE is if they remove more modifiers on Barrage that go in to the decision making around when to Barrage, this spec is just too heavily tied around Barrage for Aethervision not to matter if Barrage doesn’t consume Nether Precision anymore.
A live example of Barrage’s dominance is Explosion being dead at all possible target counts because there is nothing in the current design of the spec that incentivises casting Arcane Explosion. Everything worthwhile has to contribute towards Arcane Barrage hence why no matter how much you buff anything else your rotation is now going to 100% be based around Aethervision + stacking other Barrage buffs.
I am hoping they do this and hope that this is one step in the right direction toward that. They did buff barrage by 10% baseline in these changes. Hopefully they remove another random interaction or two as well and also buff the baseline. Then we would be continuing on the path to where I think both of us would be happy.
My core thought here is that if arcane barrage is buffed baseline, and these random buffs/procs in particular are given a thorough haircut, then the spec will be a lot more enjoyable for everyone. Tryhards (like me) will enjoy building up procs/buffs still, and more casual players will find the spec more approachable
I do think it is too bad explosion has become so weak. I don’t love the melee range aspect. I think an example of a solution to many problems at once would be a multi-capstone talent that made arcane explosion do a lot more damage baseline, and be localized to the target instead of the caster. That would feel really fun and create funky interactions with spell travel time etc.
That’s with the current tuning. I really hope tuning happens.