I’m all for the buffs to arcane, I just wonder how impactful they will truly be. Anyone willing to experiment with new buffs that has good level gear and can report any changes or findings to this thread tmrw? People are saying one equipoise might be worth it and the revival of the missile only play style might be able to come back with the right stats. Would love to hear what others are thinking.
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Preliminary info suggests that equipoise is now insanely good if you play around it and stay high mana when possible… And equipoise is on a lot of gear right now. If things stay as is arcane will be in a very good spot for progression.
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It’s the answer to a question that no one asked.
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Still stuck with only working on ST traits, so Arcane will remain only good on ST fights - a very niche spec. Still has zero cleave and poor AoE, which requires melee range.
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Pretty much. Arcane is broken thematically. They knew the things the players found frustrating with it and instead of changing them they doubled down on the ST damage and reduced the melee range for AoE.
It’ laughable that missles, which was always the big spell, now needs an azerite trait to make it viable.
smh
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Our AoE is far from poor with the right talents and traits and Arcane Barrage is a cleave spell.
As for single target, Equipoise is being mathed out as a ~16% increase to single target damage, this is far from niche.
Any site you look at will tell you that yes barrage is technically a cleave but it’s not a GOOD cleave and doesn’t perform like any other spec when it comes to cleave.
And yes the right talents can make your AoE just grand. It just means an RNG chance to proc extra AoE damage AND you have to have it on all three pieces.
But yeah: Arcane’s doing great. Just … great.
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The problem is that Arcane is almost entirely AoE vs ST for both talents and traits. Sure, Arcane can do decent AoE, if you choose all AoE talents and traits - but say goodbye to your ST. Or vice versa. I don’t think there is any other spec in the game where the choice is this stark. Most content, apart from a couple of raid bosses, consists of both AoE and ST, so, yes, being consigned to only ST is just a niche. I think people are saying there are at most two bosses in the new raid where Arcane is good. That is niche.
Also, Arcane is generally not wanted for AoE, anyway, because of the melee range requirement. People generally invite mages to their groups as a ranged caster, not a melee.
And barrage is cleave . . . sort of. It isn’t on demand and using it clears your arcane charges, so can gimp you overall.
Arcane is just now a collection of only marginally related abilities that don’t work well together.
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These buffs aren’t live like they said. Equipose still does the same damage.
Edit: seems as though they fixed it shortly after. It’s quite the damage buff for both.
Until they figure out the theme of Arcane this expac, they won’t be able to come up with any interesting talents that will make it play better.
If they’d just made AoE range like every other caster and addressed mastery scaling Arcane would have been great. It did NOT need another rework.
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My idea for a solve would be to make Resonance a baseline passive for cleave and replace it’s talents spot with something like Arcane Explosion can now be casted on a target. This would give us cleave as baseline and a more useful version of Arcane Explosion for aoe but still a talent choice to maximize that aoe.
Sorry I did not notice that I didn’t post from my mage.
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ive been suggesting this for the whole xpac ![:confused:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/confused.png?v=6" ":confused:")
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Interesting.
Obviously, Blizzard will nerf Equipoise and Arcane Pummeling in a few weeks. But until then I guess we should trying them out while they’re good.
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True, if they had gutted treacherous covenant then we might have seen some nice synergy between Equipoise and Pressure for ST and cleave since a bunch of pieces have both.
Still hoping for a big change to the spec at some point, missiles needs to flow better into the rotation.
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I actually don’t see them nerfing either. As equipose transforms your playstyle to that of almost legion like state. It’s actually a well balanced trait. Yoi can’t just mindlessly burn through mana or the damage buff is lost.
Arcane pummeling is fine at the moment due to low proc rate of clearcasting. I dont find myself casting it a lot. And the traits damage is tied to the proc chance. Thus the reason why I see it staying as is.
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We’ll see lol
Equipoise is now the best trait even if you don’t use it properly
If you do it is… really good.
FWIW I do kinda like the playstyle. It makes your mana management mean something, and you’re punished for doing it wrong.
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Yes, this is exactly how I feel. Its a nice rewarding gameplay mechanic. Hopefully its a sign of things to come in the future.
Well I’ll keep a watch on how things go. I miss arcane a lot … the theme of it at least.
I’m still needing some shoulders with decent traits to finish off my frost set. Then i’ll work on getting an arcane OS and maybe try it out on pure, non-cleave single target fights.
Honestly could have lived with most of the changes but the reduction of missiles to one stack of a forced cast of something not much more effective than a 4 charge arcane blast just gutted arcane for me.
For those of us less talented with mana management how does this change our rotation. I’m guessing you think it’s essential to stay above 70% during our arcane power burn phase rather than the 50% I’m used to? Then continue burning to zero and evocate like normal? Just wondering what I can do to optimize my play. Thank you!
Seems like you pretty much want to stay above 80% when possible
Do your opening burn like normal with ap + 2 rop charges, then evocate, then go into 3rd rop with charged up so you have rule of threes (hope for some missile procs)
Then hard conserve to be at 80+ mana by the time ap is up again, then after you use it just burn down to 0 and evocate and repeat