Remove Arcane Surge and give us the old Arcane Power back. Us having to cast our most important buff IS SILLY AS HELL. It also being a 2.5 second cast? I mean come on.
I am not sure I want Arcane Power back as it was without some major changes but Arcane Surge has so many problems. (1) The long cast time which only adds to our already ridiculous ramp-up time; (2) the pitiful damage it does given said cast time and its 1.5 minute cooldown; (3) the fact that it drains all of your mana only to give you a buff that then restores it; (4) the incredibly brief VFX of the explosion which feels very unsatisfying assuming you even see it go off at all.
For over a decade AP just looked like a generic on use trinket that completely belied its power. We asked for it to be more visually appealing and they slightly modified it with an Arcane purple glow in Legion. They finally attempted to give it a proper visual makeover in DF only to make a slapdash job of it like they did with the entire expansion.
It’s really frustrating when all they needed to do was give Arcane a proper single target Arcane Charge spender, such as a cool looking arcane laser beam. But instead we got AS which tries to do be a major cooldown, a buff, a both a ST and an AoE nuke, and a flavor ability with its forced mana management aspect that’s apparently the extend of what Blizzard’s imagination can come up with when it comes to the Arcane Mage fantasy. Naturally, it fails to do any of those things properly as is always the case when you try to lump too many things together. With the end result seeing us stuck with yet another overburdened ability which tries to do everything, everywhere, all at once just like Arcane Barrage.
The fact that the devs don’t seem to see such obvious and easily apparent flaws is mind-boggling to me.
2 Likes
Its certainly pitiful in ST, but in AOE its potent, mine has an average hit of about 250k per target, though that’d be reduced past 5.
Its a great way to empower our main cd while avoiding the issues arcane power brought, at above ~30% mana you’re guaranteed a clearcasting from casting it, and you can afford to heavily spend mana during its uptime similar to arcane power.
I’ll agree it needed a lingering animation.
Arcane charge spenders wouldn’t really mesh with Arcane’s current or past iterations, unless you were looking at a wrath esq style of gameplay. I doubt anyone would actually want this unless they gave arcane blast a flat cast time instead of having it be reduced per charge. Otherwise building charges would be too painful. Perhaps a spender with a 20s cooldown or so, but then whats the point of barrage or whats the point of the new spender?
Well for me the chief problem with Arcane has always been their inability to decide if they want it to be a builder/spender spec with its pseudo combo point system of Arcane Charges or to just double down on the mana management aspect it’s always had. Personally, I would much rather have the first option.
By turning it into a modern builder/spender spec it immediately becomes more streamlined and every ability falls into place and has a clear and well defined purpose. AB can become the ST generator spell with reduced cast time and reduced damage so that you’re always incentivized to use a spender when you hit 4 charges rather than to keep spamming it which has always been unfun and turns the spec into a 1 button meme. By introducing a ST spender you will have a clear use for ABarr as the AoE/cleave spender and free up all the talents that try to turn it into a ST nuke as well and in the process create convoluted and counterintuitive playstyles. If they don’t want to introduce a new ST spender then all the talents that try to turn ABarr into one can simply be replaced by a single talent that just significantly increases its damage per Arcane Charge if it only hits one target. AE of course will continue to be the AoE generator spell. As for AM it can either return to being a proc as it was in Legion so that it can be banked for on-demand burst or alternatively be completely reworked to serve as the go to movement spell by making it castable on the move at baseline like Scorch.
All of these changes will not only streamline the rotation but also significantly lower the skill floor for Arcane and make it much more user friendly to new players. While removing the mana management aspect will bring the spec more in line with every other caster spec in the game and leave it with only a singular dynamic resource rather than continue to rely on an outdated and and slowly regenerating one like mana.
Finally, to circle back to AS. Ideally I would rework it to empower all of the main spells similar to how Archon works in D3 with accompanying visual improvements to each modified ability. While that would be incredibly cool, admittedly it will take a great deal of resources which Blizzard are extremely unlikely to devote to a single ability so alternately it can just continue to be a boring ol’ spellpower buff but at least give it a Combustion-esque visual.
All of this is really not that much work and will only require minor tinkering aside from the visual updates but it’s nothing the VFX artists can’t handle. Even so, I will be the first to acknowledge that it’s unlikely to happen but this is my vision for what Arcane can be in an ideal world.