I played Mage as my main this expansion thinking they would have nice options for dps with 3 specs and each spec having two hero choices. Boy was I wrong. In pvp you can be frost and… well that’s it really Mage gets one spec for pvp. You will instant cast ice lance and flurry and basically never hard cast a real spell unless its a pvp talent.
Then in Pve I am at 607 Ilvl cleared all normal raid and 4 heroic raid bosses, Arcane has a single spec that can reach near the top for the first 30 seconds of the fight but in a long fight it falls off, and any unplanned movement at all is a major dps loss. Meanwhile melee classes are doing 150% of the damage and losing nothing to movement.
All the other specs and hero talents can barely make it to the middle of the meter if you play perfectly. And the difference in button pressing and proc management in a spec like fire mage compared to virtually any other caster class is massive, why would I kill myself doing these tough rotations to do bottom damage?
It makes no sense to me how mage has ended up this way, with so many options to choose from how can there be only one viable spec in both forms of content? and even if you play these specs its often relying on cheese mechanics to reach viability.
6 Likes
Spellslinger Arcane was very powerful in early beta and then Blizzard spent several beta builds nerfing it into the ground until it was significantly behind Sunfury. It was definitely intentional. I don’t know why, but they did it on purpose.
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arcane is A tier its fine fire is C
No sunfury arcane is a tier. We have hero talents now. It’s the only mage spec that feels like you’re not trolling others
Fire was s teir for years in m+
Fire mages got more titles each season than almost every other spec.
As a player whos been arcane for a forever, its kind of annying seeing fire mages complain so hard.
Fire keeps getting buffs, arcane keeps getting nerfed. Pretty soon arcane will be trash again and fire will be back in the meta god comp.
But hey, at least arcane got to shine for two weeks during heroic content.
If you think fire is in a bad spot switch to arcane. Switch like we had to do for the past half a decade in order to be competitive in high keys.
Its arcanes time, chill.
5 Likes
Wait I want to be perfectly clear you’re complaining about mage mobility options…
And what do you mean by fall off lol our DPS does fluctuate but we don’t fall off?
Not true at all. Arcane does not struggle with movement given it has slipstream and shimmer, and it also does not fall off. It is the best st spec in the game atm, and raid statistics reflect that.
Fire has like 4 priority lines, never been simpler. Combust for instance: If hotstreak, pyroblast. Convert heating up to hot streak with Fire Blast > instant scorch procs/improved scorch stacking > phoenix flames > scorch.
Fire sucks atm. Everything else you said is just wrong. Arcane is as strong as it has ever been and both hero trees are strong in their own right. I’m having a blast playing as Spellsinger Arcane… I often actually beat SF Arcane mages at their own game. In large AoE pulls in M0 I can do upwards of 1.8mil dps if I burn my CDs. In raid I’m floating around 700k-800k ST dps on bosses. Class feels great. Youre trippin.
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This is what I mean. You compare your preferred spec to other players spec and say “mine isn’t doing as well as it should, nerf arcane so I can have my time in the sun”.
Mages constantly compare each other’s spec, and never to other classes, or at the minimum, asking for buffs to be brought up to other mage specs. Nope. It has to be take from y to give to x.
Sucks.
It’s pretty well known at this point that Sunfury Arcane was like 20% ahead of every other class/spec… what are you going on about my guy?
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Fire hasn’t been a raid spec since 9.0, with arcane and occasionally frost being played. Fire has been busted in m+ for many seasons, and yet right now, it’s so bad that you’re and trolling to bring a fire mage to either
Im speaking from a m+ perspective as a player who plays around 3k io.
Trying to join a high key last season was almost impossible if you were arcane. I was removed from groups all the time after people found out I was arcane. Even tho i did good damage, used my entire kit, brought a lot of the same utility and had a high io and item level.
Its been like that for a couple expansions. Fire dominated high keys for mages.
Now for the first time in years arcane is doing well and fire isnt the golden child. Everyone is complaining incessantly. Fire keeps receiving buffs and arcane keeps being nerfed.
Were never going to acheive perfect balance. There will always be classes at the top and classes at the bottom. If you ask me, if you want to be fair about it, augmentation evokers, fire mages and shadow priests should be a boarderline meme spec and bottom of the pack. They got their time in the sun for the last two years.
If the game cant be fair and balance specs perfectly, the next fairest thing to do would be to switch up whos on top every expansion.
“x was too good now it should be bad” is a loathsome take. The game should be balanced. It currently isn’t, fire is unplayably bad. By your own logic arcane should be a meme spec in raid. It serves no one to “punish” specs, and the goal of balance shouldn’t be a rotation of overpowered specialisations, but a consistent level of power for everyone like in df season one
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I never said “x was too good and now should be bad”. I said “if the game cant be balanced, then to make things fair they should change up whos at the top”.
Meaning if you were part of the god comp meta for two years and were way over represented in titles, your spec should be closer to bottom teir for a while.
Blizzard cant balance things perfectly, so next best thing would be to switch up whos on top.
Its not a hard concept to grasp.
Aug, spriest, fire mage, ret, resto druids, veng demon hunters, should all be close to the bottom
Affliction warlocks, arcane mages, feral druids, resto shaman, warrior tanks, should all have a chance at being desirable.
Again, im not saying tank all the meta specs from last expansion. Im saying if you cant find perfect balance, then make sure classes that were bottom teir FOR YEARS get the favorable outcome when it comes to balance.
Sure, Fire was great at very high keys, but was decidedly mid in raid and PvP. Now it’s pretty much terrible across all levels of content. No one’s suggesting it should be top dog or beat out Arcane/Frost (agree they should have their time in the sun), but I don’t see why Fire should somehow atone for the sin of being great in bleeding edge keys last expansion (which the majority of players never even saw) by being laughably bad at everything in this one.
3 Likes
Arcane mages have been suffering for some time.
Happy to see the spec shine early in TWW.
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Except Meteor…god the most useless hero talent in game. Mobs are either dead or have moved by the time the land.
It feels like its a RoP jab at mages again.
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So once again as pointed out following your logic arcane mage should be completely unviable in raid considering it was the meta raid spec for all of DF…
1 Like