I believe the Blizzard team is struggling with how to make Arcane’s unique damage profile fit into M+ and I think I have a solution:
Problem: Arcane is known for its single target damage. If this is buffed too much, then it is dominant in raid. But nerfed too much and Arcane becomes quite low-output in M+
Discussion: The tuning knobs seem pretty dialed-in in regards to the balance between AoE and ST. Arcane still has its use in dungeons with this damage profile. The main loss of damage comes from the awkwardness of the pulls – a tank needs to pull in a specific way for Arcane to do well (They need to essentially chain and always have a high-health mob to target which isn’t always feasible, and conflicts with specs like assa)
Solution: Extend the duration of buffs like Nether Precision and Aethervision to something like 30 seconds, and give touch of the magi a second charge. This somewhat restores the flexibility that Radiant Spark brought (you could use Radiant Spark at the end of a pull or boss fight and still be able to use it again in the next one) and allows the tank to pull the way they pull without greatly, and un-knowingly, destroying the Arcane mage’s ramp.
Or we let arcane keep it’s skill expressivity when it comes to coordinating w/ tanks and having super high prio damage making it an ideal fit for certain comps and scenarios.
Like firemage has flamestrike for equal spread AOE damage, frost has a lot of random cleave and AOE leading to a good mix of aoe and prio dmg, and arcane has heavy prio dmg.
We have 3 mage specs let’s not homogenize them. Let’s stop thinking the overall damage in M+ means anything. Fire mage in S4 in TGP had pulls they were out damaged by the tank does that mean fire mage was bad… Overall damage in M+ is a small part of what makes a spec good in M+, and in many ways proper prio damage is FAR more important and impactful.
Yeah that’s great in theory, but why then pick a mage when you have a ton of other classes that can do both priority single target AND can melt packs. I GUARANTEE you no one is looking for niche fits when putting a group together.
I would say Fire is known for its basically perfect prio damage when flame patch is not talented, historically
I’m not sure how you got this from my post and wanting to extend a couple of buffs’ timers. In my OP I also talk about maintaining Arcane’s damage profile. It doesn’t seem like you’re commenting on what I wrote and instead are filling in blanks with stuff I didn’t say.
In all my time playing wow, even with dedicated key groups, I have never once been able to coordinate with a tank to pull around MY cooldowns. Not a single time.
Anyways, right now the prio damage is worse than many specs. Arcane is literally at the bottom of the dps rankings for this week, only beating out aug.
My guys people are looking at whatever appears on the top of the raider io meta when making groups without thinking past that… People were snap inviting fire mages in S3 and S4 for any level keys at any io when they were objectively wrong to do so. In S3 anything less then like a +23 ignite fire was trash and Flamestrike fire was sub par compared to other classes and they were still getting invited.
People just look at the top end meta when putting groups together in pugs.
This would be true until Blizzard has come out and said that they wanted to move away from the ignite spread fire build w/ the fire mage rework that happened in TWW.
I/m commenting because changes like this forces blizzard to change our damage profile to be flatter especially w/ the 2 TOTM, which in turn would lead to a loss in prio and burst damage. (I don’t mind the buff extensions) Other mage specs have the damage profile you are asking for, why ruin the uniqueness of arcane mage. Fire mage w/ SKB and frost overall have fairly flat damage profiles why mage all mage specs have the same damage profile all that does it hurts the ability of our class to better adapt to different groups and metas.
Does not take much to coordinate past a linked route. I don’t play that high keys got a bit north of 3k in the past (this season I hate the game for other reasons), and a tank posting a route is all you need to be able to coordinate and have a good idea of your CD usages in a dungeon.
I want to be clear I am not commenting on the current balance and state of mage it’s abysmal. Deathchill in frost is the worst talent known to man kind, Aethervision is clunky garbage, random orbs from spellslingers sucks, living bomb is a piece of trash ability that has never once managed to be balanced and yet we have half the tree dedicated to it, SKB a highly skill expressive and fun to play w/ talent has been pushed out of the meta…
Mage balance and overall state suck. I just don’t want us to lose what makes the specs unique and original resulting in 3 2 minute cd specs w/ relatively simmilar damage profiles and mobility options. Mage having 3 unique specs is one thing that mage so great in the past and something I don’t want to lose.
i like your idea - it def is our trash numbers that are down - what would you think about this -
leave the spec as it is - but make a branch for “mark of aluneth” -
what mark of aluneth does - yes i miss him - is to combine arcane surge and touch of the magi - it has the cast time and buff effect of arcane surge but the cooldown and aoe abilities of Touch of the magi -
that way our big burst will still be dependent on evocation - but our trash wont suffer so much and we can aluneth on almost every trash pull - very much like paladins…