According to the folks over on Wowhead with the next patch Nether Precision will go back to only being consumed by Arcane Blast. Any mention of Arcane Barrage has been completely removed from the talent’s tooltip. Obviously this was done to completely eliminate the awkward playstyle that emerged after the double dipping was removed. This will, however, have a massive negative impact on Arcane’s AoE damage which was already pretty bad and also makes Nether Precision and therefore also Aethervision dead talents for AoE unless they expect us to work in Arcane Blast into the AoE rotation. They continue to be unable to get a handle on this and it’s like watching a train wreck in slow motion… /smh
More like real time train wreck, lol
But seriously, this news at least piqued my interest enough to login. If they boost Barrage enough, it’ll be a good change (maybe undo the barrage nerf of 10% and add some to it). I’m totally on the sideline right now though. When I see mages start posting how great it is to be arcane, I’ll log back on, but until then, I’m not going to slog through like I have for a couple years. They really jerked us around since TWW kicked off and I’m over it. I was the champion of Spell Slinger Arcane and they just sunk that ship fast as they could.
While I’m thinking though, you mention AOE, and I really liked the idea of AE being a big part of that, especially when they introduced the talent that would trigger-cast AE at your target. The talent is way under tuned, so non-effect, but I liked the idea of triggering AEs on my targets. Even if they linked it to trigger when ToM or Surge is active, or some other predictable window, it’d be so so cool. But honestly, whatever! It’s not my game at the moment.
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Yeah I really don’t think they realize how much this change will impact Arcane’s AoE output. And their answer was to buff ABarr’s baseline damage by 3.5%, like wut? Lol.
If they’re going to uncouple ABarr from Nether Precision then they need to add AE to it or buff it in some other way and make it a more impactful part of the AoE rotation, like you say. Right now AE is just something you awkwardly spam while waiting for TotM to come off CD to do your real AoE damage. Such a mess…
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you don’t touch AE right now except in some rare circumstances where you have 0 charges and absolutely no procs
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We’re forced to work arcane blast into the aoe rotation as arcane explosion cant generate splinters, harmony, aether vision, or spellfire spheres. 
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This marks the 12th rotational change they’ve done to Arcane Mage. At this point I am just not playing that spec. Whoever is trying to cook you are plain bad and should probably take consult from all the great feedback you’ve been getting since the release of TWW.
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Right? Might as well take AE off our bars at this point… 
Arcane has always had an inordinate amount of counter synergy with its talents but ever since Nether Precision was introduced it’s gotten completely out of hand. When players said they didn’t like having to swap between AoE and ST builds they didn’t mean scrap AoE rotations altogether… or at least I never did, lol.
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I miss peak sunfury arcane
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