Finally a buff for Arcane, but is it enough?

Classes Mage
#1

With 9.2.5 Blizzard finally decided to buff arcane.
+8% to arcane missiles.
+10% Arcane blast.

While this is nice and a step in the right direction it is little more than a band aid for the problems that arcane is facing. Even taking just damage alone this moderate buff does not put arcane anywhere near destro for dps. At the same time destro has none of the drawbacks arcane has for mana usage.

The real problem is the mana spender design of the class. It needs a total rework. For now, we need a cut in all mana prices for spells to make them more affordable and in turn buff our damage by allowing us to stay in our burn phase longer. A -10% mana cost for all spells would give arcane a little breathing room to work.

Thank you for the buff blizzard, but it is simply not enough. Arcane needs a lot more.

3 Likes
#2

Forget destro. In truth this buff doesnt even put it on par with fire or frost :sweat_smile:

5 Likes
#3

It also makes [Clearcasting] undispellable, which is definitely a welcome addition for Arcane in PvP, but I doubt it’s going to be enough.

#4

Good question, I’m not sure, its hard to say before we try it, we also pickup more in the TOTM windows.

#5

uhhhh if you’re playing kyrian (the only competitive arcane covenant) mana isn’t an issue, you just evocate if you ever go oom

i’ve never been in a situation as kyrian arcane where i’m out of mana AND don’t have evocate up, you’d have to seriously misplay to run into that scenario lol

3 Likes
#6

-Arcane orb still isnt baseline.
-Nether tempest still does 0 damage
-Supernova still does 0 damage
-Radiant spark is still dispellable
-Clearcast proc chance is still REALLY low

4 Likes
#7

True, but they seem to be working on some promising QoL changes for the spec for dragonflight, judging by the wording in the dev note. Time will tell what they decide to do.

#8

step in the right direction but wow is so full of doomers cant see that

2 Likes
#9

I love it! Finally getting a little attention.

I wish they would give us a boost to explosion damage or give us some new talent to make barrage splash onto more than 5 targets for reduced damage for the big AoE to make us a little more competitive in those types of pulls. Happy with ST and thrilled with 3-5 target cleave, but would like some more deeps in the 6+ target range.

1 Like
#11

The buffs they gave arcane are still pretty garbo, tbh.
They might pull arcane out of the gutter, but the spec wont break outside the bottom 1/3rd.

Did you notice that they are finally doing some class balance on a .5 patch, and what, 2 weeks after people finally got sick of the 27% dps gap.

1 Like
#12

Blizz was never going to make any actual changes this expansion, that’s not their style. They’d rather double down on bad design and then give token buffs if they feel like it. The best you can hope for until 10.0 is some % buffs to one of the 2 spells they recognise.

Hopefully someone in Blizz recognises that 10.0 needs to pull a lot of rabbits out of its hat in order to impress people. 3 lacklustre expansions in a row will not be good for their bottom line, and continued sub losses (or the inability to encourage people back) for 6 years running will not be looked at kindly by shareholders.

#13

I honestly think people are overplaying the talent trees. While i love their concept, they dont necessarily mean the lackluster spells they place in the trees are going to change, leaving the specs much closer to live then what we expect to see.
Blizz will definitely limit the ability to take multiple major spells, thats for certain. We know that they are spending most of their time on the trees, not on the spells. So most likely we are going to see alot of cool “oh this links with this now,” but we are also going to get " uh…o. we got THAT spell that didnt change and was garbo back then" experiences as well.

#14

Yeah, that has been a big question of mine since they first showed the talent trees. Will there be any change in how they approach tuning, or will it continue to be a set of mostly required “choices” with aura buffs/nerfs thrown in a few months after a tier opens? They first need to set up a solid base for the specs, and then they need more frequent tuning passes with fine grained adjustments.

The new trees look interesting, but we’ve had too many tiers of wretched talent tuning for me to go so far as to call the trees promising. I’ll hope for something good, but they’ve burned through old built up capital that would have once had me expecting something good.

2 Likes
#15

In raids, so long as fire does close to or more damage than arcane, fire will always be preferred over arcane.

#16

The biggest thing, from my perspective, is that it means that somebody is at least slightly aware that arcane is suffering, even if they’re not aware of how much.

I’ve seen the same requests being made in the mage forums for arcane for what, three expansions? Most of those requests we’re still waiting on, but it’s enough to give us some hope.

Regarding the talent trees, we’ve struggled for a long time in arcane with a very cookie-cutter build that doesn’t leave a lot of room for options, and that doesn’t just count the “major spells”. It also includes our utility. For example, I don’t think I could ever give up on Slipstream or Chrono shift. Without those two talents, we’re oddly one of the slowest classes in the game (Note: that’s just based on trying to race fellow raid members when messing around. Feel free to prove me wrong).

The hope for the talent trees is that maybe we’ll actually be able to take some of the talents that currently share a row with so many of our must-have talents. Opening up the talent trees gives us a chance to try something different without gimping ourselves. It may also alleviate the “Make Arcane Orb Baseline” request because they may design it in the tree so that we don’t need to give something up for it anymore. And although Supernova is SuperWetNoodle, I still wouldn’t mind having it as a last-ditch interrupt when needed.

1 Like
#17

Having supernova right now would be great, especially in dungeons like Taz with the murlocs.

Unfortunate. But, yeah their wording does give some level of optimism moving forward.

#18

That’s pretty much my take on it too. After the past several years of pretty bleh decisions, I don’t really expect them to make the new talents work but I really, really hope they can. SL was the first expansion I took an extended break outside of the end of expansion content drought, and 10.0 really needs to pick up the ball to make me come back.

#19

Anyone who still lists mana as a problem for Arcane within the last 10 years doesn’t understand how to play Arcane (especially in this expansion where mana has basically become a cosmetic resource for Arcane with how forgiving Kyrian is).

4 Likes
#20

Let’s uncap Arcane Explosion. Boring but effective AOE, much like our destro lock overlords.

Also say hello to Monks getting key slots too

1 Like
#21

Uncap arcane explosion…

To make it competitive with survival hunters, destro locks and now our new WW Monk overlords.