In sims yes, in practice (for most) no
Yes and no. I love it when I pull it off and figure out how to push the envelope. I hate it when I drop my rune and then someone runs bad directly over it… or a completely RNG mechanic happens to pick my rune to blast. If I had the option of not using it… I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t.
Those momentary ultra-highs just aren’t worth the number of headache lows that accompany it.
For fire it is a very large DPS increase. In sims and in practice. Can’t speak for arcane though. The majority of fire’s damage occurs during the combustion window, so buffing that with rune is essential to doing high damage.
Fair enough, as you surmised I was really speaking only to arcane
I liked Rune of Power when Missiles stacked. That made the use of RoP more than being pigeonholed into one more button to press during your burn phase.
There’s no reason or advantage to using outside of your burn phase now that the spec is mindless. YOu’re better off taking IF to make up for the dismal sustained damage arcane suffers from now. Use RoP wrong during your burn and BOTH your phases suffer.
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Just as much for arcane, but sure, you need to achieve a certain level of performance to take advantage of it
I hate RP as well. I’ve used it on and off, but it gets so annoying.
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For arcane I think it depends on the fight.
Arcane’s burn phase consists mostly of spamming Arcane Blast. Hit POM once during the burn either near the end of the burn or earlier if you need to move during the burn. Other than that it’s just a matter of putting up Rune of Power, Arcane Power, activated trinket (if you have one), and possibly potion.
It’s a lot easier to manage than fire’s burn which involves more buttons and more than one damage spell.
Since arcane’s burn is so easy to manage, Rune of Power can give noticeably better results on easy low-movement fights.
However, on higher movement or learning fights, I tend to prefer IF since it’s one less thing to think about. Also if unless you’re playing near perfectly, IF performs better than Rune.
In our progression attempts, we’re making good progress on Orgazoa. 21% on best attempt last night. I have not attempted to use Rune of Power since I don’t want to have to worry about while running out to drop off the debuff.
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I’m not saying it doesn’t serve it’s purpose damage-wise.
With arcane burn consisting of popping TW, CU, AP, and PM already RoP just seems like another button to push that only helps one single aspect of your dps now whereas before you could interchange between one for your burn and one for a moment where you had a 3 stack of missiles.
Movement issues aside, RoP has even become another boring aspect of arcanes current gameplay as there’s only one real time to use it to any real advantage.
The entire spec is just one monotonous smash of buttons all meant to buff one single solitary spell.
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Agreed.
Arcane was awesome in Legion. So much fun!
- We had top-tier AOE with huge radius making us feel like AOE gods. And with Slooow Doooown we could easily kite while AOEing.
- Shoulder legendary added some skill to AOE since you had to plan and aim on the assumption an Arcane Orb would fire when you barraged. And when it did it was really satisfying.
- High damage bankable AM gave arcane an element of strategy since you could plan for AOE or burn phases.
- Arcane never had to maintain mana near full. Instead Legion featured a return to classic arcane gameplay from BC and WOTLK where the goal was to gradually deplete your mana pool as the fight progressed so that you ran dry just as evocation came off cooldown or the fight ended.
But in BFA, the devs took a colossal step backwards with arcane in just about every respect. laaaaame!
I think it still plays better than in MOP or WOD. At least now we can AM and evocate while moving. But in pretty much every other respect it’s worse.
Arcane doesn’t have terrible mobility when compared to Fire and Frost, and having Slipstream makes it the single best caster in the game for managing constant micro-movement in an efficient way if Shimmer isn’t a necessity for that encounter. Not “being able to afford to lose” a cooldown is how all CD-reliant specs in the game operate; Arcane is not unique in this regard.
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Movement in this game isn’t random, and any player with boss mods(and their built-in audible countdowns) should be more than capable of avoiding mechanics during AP and Evocation. Bosses are usually designed to allow for immobile classes to have windows to burn their CDs, and even when they aren’t, Slipstream/Shimmer trivializes forced movement. There has only been 1 boss in three raids that Arcane struggled on in terms of movement. Arcane excels at mitigating constant, consistent movement(Sivara) and handily beats even the other two Mage specs for infrequent long-distance mobility too(Mekkatorque.) The only time Arcane struggles is with long-duration periods of long-distance movement, and those bosses are incredibly rare.
Arcane is in a rough place due to a limited damage profile, Slipstream/Ice Floes/Searing Touch sure would be nice to have baseline, but manufacturing mobility issues on one of the most mobile casters is reaching at best. If you’d like to try an actual immobile caster I’d suggest Destro.
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There would be no need to “white knight” Arcane’s mobility if the common consensus among incompetent Mages wasn’t that their lack of damage on movement fights was their spec’s fault. All three specs have different types of movement beyond Shimmer, and fare better than another in different situations. None of the three specs are immobile.
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Just finally tired of seeing the same misinformation repeated by the same handful of people at every turn, in every thread, regardless of topic, for months.
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I would sacrifice Displacement for Shimmer if they were to trade out Slip Stream (putting it baseline) and add Displacement into its place in the talent rows.
I think what hurts the most about taking Shimmer over Slip Stream is the AM mobility loss. Particularly on Radiance and Ashvane (should you get Arcing Azerite—and to a lesser extent—Upsurge, Briny Bubble, Coral Growth). Ashvane, in particular, would see much benefit from Slip Stream baseline + Shimmer talented more for the utility reasons of being able to get to distant coral quickly and return to boss DPS quickly.
I feel super-mobile on arcane rushing down the gauntlet between rooms on Orgazoa.
We’re one of the fastest specs and classes for that gauntlet. As arcane, spam Barrage on cooldown at Orgazoa as you sprint down the ramp. If done right you can keep up the +50% sprint you get after casting barrage for the entire trip.
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If anyone knows how mages work and what they are talking about in this community in regards to mages it’s Keestus…check his logs and go on the mage discord if you need to but I wouldn’t argue with someone who knows their stuff 
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Folks have sure strayed from the topic
I HATE the entire 45 Tier, replace the whole thing. MI back to baseline. RoP is always going to be best choice, MI the worse. Probably sub 1% of the mage player base desire the “play style” RoP offers, basically forcing the other 99% to either “suck it up” or spec IF.
There are other ways to complicate rotation besides RoP, we’ve seen it via legendary and currently bracers for fire for example.
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I think the talent intent is great. It does reward skillful play for the most part…
RNG is a factor on some fights which can be frustrating. One misplaced RoP can destroy your parse.
I’d love to see it instacast and off the GCD. Either that or make the RoP bigger so it’s possible to move a bit more while in it.
I don’t like being anchored to one spot to be able to dps. I refuse to use it now even though it’s better by a decent amount. If it went to some kind of buff that followed you I would be ok with it. Even a buff you apply to the MOB. Shoot, anything except being anchored to one small spot.
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To be fair, it’s graphic isn’t anywhere close to as large as it really is. I have a TMW button pop up when I still have the RoP buff and it stays up quite a distance off the graphic.
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