When you state you’re buffing underperforming specs, then buff a spec that is performing better in every metric than another spec, you need to communicate with your player base why this is so. Warcraft logs, subcreation, raiderio…every data analysis site I can find has arcane performing below frost, both in terms of damage & spec representation.
I’m happy for our frost brothers to receive a buff, as I was when they received the last aura % increase, but I’d love to understand what data the mage developers are looking at to justify this tuning pass.
While we’re on the topic of aura % increases…is there any reason this couldn’t happen earlier & more frequently? I understand mechanic changes require time & careful planning to ensure buffs or nerfs don’t have unintended consequences or are too powerful, but if you’re making small damage aura % changes that can easily be iterated on why can’t this be done every couple of weeks?
I love playing arcane, but I’m feeling very unloved by those in charge of class balancing. It would be nice when raiding that if I’m parsing 20% higher than other raiders, I beat them in dps.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. I think most if not all of us who have played Arcane consistently will agree that the spec needs a major overhaul to address its underlying issues but a simply % aura buff is such a simple and easy tool to use in the short term I am beyond perplexed as to why they are being so slow about it.
I’m assuming it’s another WoD-Demonology situation:
Because we’d rather you didn’t play demonology
So, we’re not actually terrible at math, we weren’t, just, you know, intending to nerf them a little bit and we are really bad at numbers and overshot the mark a lot. We have some concerns about how Demonology plays as a spec mechanically…
We have plans to pretty significantly overhaul the Demonology Warlock as a spec going forward, that’s not happening in the 6.2 scope, because we don’t wanna make that massive type of change in a patch. Uh… Demo is still viable, it’s probably not the best spec, I would probably not expect to see tons of them in Method’s raid or Paragon’s raid or what have you…
Blizzard is incapable of properly executing their vision for how Arcane is supposed to play, and they’re afraid to make any changes because (as they admitted in BFA beta) Arcane has a “fragile” rotation that could easily be broken by any change. They’ll just let it rot since, according to their metrics, so few players play arcane that a complete redesign of the spec just wouldn’t be worth the investment of time or resources.
The worst part?
There is already a working example of Blizzard’s intended design for Arcane: FF14’s thaumaturge/black mage.
Unfortunately, Blizzard has too much pride to take inspiration from an outside source since it would be admitting that every one of their attempts has failed, so Arcane will continue to be the neglected mage spec.
I don’t want anyone nerfed, I just want people to be boosted to where we can be competitive. I don’t even want a rotational change. Just give us the flat percentage buff that our Frost mage friends received. I will take 10%.
I’m assuming it’s another WoD-Demonology situation
Wow thank you for this…watching this interview, seeing Ion say what he said & his own community manager having to stifle a laugh at how bad he was at explaining their reasoning helps put this all in perspective. I would strongly recommend all arcane mages look up this interview to help understand the state we’re in. A few other things I took away from the interview:
He said “the fact that we saw people who preferred to play affliction & destro gravitate overwhelmingly to [demonology] made us feel like it was a problem”…that’s exactly what’s happened with fire this expansion. They’re not learning from their mistakes and it’s disheartening.
Also very interesting was that Ion said “a complex spec performing the best” was seen as a bad thing as average players gravitating towards the spec would be “led astray”. Makes a lot of sense that fire is on top with their consistent, guaranteed 100% insta-cast burst.
Finally, Ion spoke of giving specs “turns” to perform the best. I think it’s a really odd mindset to have, and it seems the goal isn’t to really level the playing field but to have a clear best performer with each major patch/raid tier, whilst in another breath saying he didn’t like that players had to gravitate towards playing another spec.
You switch to frost and all your MP regenerates extremely quickly. Switch to fire and you can burn it all just as fast. You even have a short cd spell which swaps you for free, so you can switch to frost after combat to recharge MP between pulls or while questing and then instantly switch back to fire when it’s time to kill. Of course this is oversimplifying as there are additional cooldowns and procs to manage. It feels much more fluid than current arcane and is a perfect example of burst/conserve phase done right.
Such a system could work in wow. Mages already have frost and fire spells, and it would encourage using all 3 schools of magic to deal damage.
I was thinking about this the other day and how much I would prefer something like this. I remember BM being sort of boring rotation wise, but the higher lvl you got the more fun it became.
The issue is Arcane doesn’t need a % aura damage buff. It needs small QoL changes (increase change to proc clearcasting, increase clearcasting duration, make slipsteam basline, etc.), which Blizzard does not appear inclined to do.
I agree I would prefer QoL changes over a flat % aura buff. Increase clearcasting proc rate/duration, make slipstream baseline, and other suggestions that have been posted on these forums many times. If there was a developer note saying “we have spell/toolkit changes for arcane mages coming in the near future and therefore have decided not to increase arcane damage aura” I’d be totally fine with it. Unfortunately, it feels like this isn’t happening, and so I think it’s reasonable to have a damage aura % buff over nothing.
Arcane is a dead spec, considering blizzard’s priorities towards the other specs. They really don’t care about the Arcane community and how the other community views us. Hence why i’m thinking of quitting the game all together. Player experience is not fun when the rest of the community won’t even let you participate in the game when they find out you play Arcane.
This is absolutely terrible, unbelievable design strategy, but explains so much. This is coming from a long time feral main, and someone who prefers arcane mage over fire and frost.
There are only 2-4 specs per class, some restricted by role. Players should be able to choose what interests them. I don’t understand why it’s so much to expect that everything is relatively tuned. It’s not rocket science, and this is supposed to be a AAA title from a large company.
Let us play what we want to play. Blizzard’s job is to make it work. If Ion can’t handle that then perhaps he needs to be replaced with someone who can.
Well said OP! I am happy as well for our frost friends but I am confused. Arcane was dead last the past 2 tiers and it took quite awhile before they gave Arcane any type of buff and which actually didn’t even do much as they still were last. Now here yeah Frost was bad but they sure buffed it quite quickly and now receiving their 2nd buff so quickly and still nothing for Arcane. There are plenty of heavy movement fights again this raid and basically makes arcane useless.
They don’t yet understand whats wrong with arc. I would implore them HEAVILY to just read our forums and see what countless people are saying in so many posts.
In short, arcane is based on rng and when you run it through a sim or simple calculator like they’re doing it, our numbers seem alright. This is because in a simulation, you force the proc within the percentage parameters its attuned to, which is mostly accurate in other mathematical circumstances. For example, you have a 1 in 4 chance to win a ball-and-cup game. You may play the game and lose it 4 times in a row… you may lose it 10 times in a row actually. But a computer-simulation of the instance would say that you won 1 out of 4 games. You seeing it?
Arc is based on RNG (clearcasts) and so we need procs IN ALIGNMENT with arcane charges, IN ALIGNMENT with cd’s in order to deal our biggest burst. Aka, stars aligning. Balance druid the astral spec? Think again…
That’s not even talking about the major problems with arc being that our burst (ap) does not synergize our mechanics the way combustion does. A fire mage WANTS crits. Can’t get them? No problem, you have a few spells in to cheat the mechanics when you want. Still can’t get enough? Combust will force the mechanics to your will.
If they wanted to fix frost, give icy veins the ability to treat ALL targets as if they are frozen for the entire duration. This isn’t OP and anyone who says that its OP is blatantly in denial. They don’t want to accept that combust is OP in the exact same way that veins would be OP with a synergistic mechanic.
Rather than addressing these core issues (not to mention instant cast mechanics in depth) they are just going to boost % damage so they won’t have to do hard work. And arcane, being an incalculable variable, will take much longer for them to get to.
