I fully agree, but I didn’t want to be too radical all at once.
Arcane Surge is… an attempt. It’s trying to do too many things at once and not really being good at most of those things. Although I don’t like it, I do appreciate that Blizzard wanted to try something different and gave it a shot. However, you’re right, the old Arcane Power was just flat out more enjoyable.
Touch, on the other hand, I blame for most if not all of our current problems.
To this point, at least for me, all of my “suggestions” that I offer tend to be along the lines of “let’s do this and then see where we can go with it.” You’re 100% right that we can’t just remove spells from the kit without ensuring something is there to compensate. In the past our lack of spells was bolstered by our need to manage our mana (and our arcane charges) - something that I feel Blizzard could have leaned more into but from what I understand 3 buttons and a mana pool was “too difficult” for most players to understand.
I’m a strong proponent of bringing back the old “manage your mana, not your cooldowns” rotation (with actual burn and conserve phases) and trying to iterate on THAT instead of what we have now. The mana management made arcane very unique, especially once other classes had their mana dependencies stripped away. Now it constantly feels like something that Blizzard is constantly forgetting about, then suddenly remembering for a patch only to forget again.
Another controversial opinion: Rune of Power (at least a specific version of it) was better for arcane than Touch of the Magi. A 45 second recharge with 2 charges was more flexible than what touch is now. Sure, we had to plant our feet for a bit to use it, but Touch requires that whatever target we’re hitting doesn’t die before the spell ends. This effectively gimps us on fights where there are priority targets that don’t live long or if someone decides to hard CC the mob you were planning on bursting (those darned death knights…). Though I do agree that it was a wise decision to remove it from the general mage tree, I’d rather see it come back and replace TotM for arcane. Or at least make it a choice node.
The old burn / conserve let us be flexible. We essentially had 3 cooldowns: Arcane Power, Rune of Power, and Evocation. Since Evo wasn’t on the same timer and RoP was a recharge, our burst didn’t have to happen every 45 seconds like clockwork. We could hold a few seconds or go a few seconds early depending on the fight. The fact that I could call that shot myself when I needed to is what drew me to arcane in the first place.
Having to track and manage Surge, Touch, Spark, Evo, Mana Gem (and making more of them), Shifting Power, and Time Warp (when I can squeeze 2 into a fight) while also trying to watch my mana, my charges, my clearcasting, my nether precision, my arcane battery, my arcane orb, and my harmony (if talented) while ALSO trying to pay attention to fight mechanics is a lot. It’s doable, and I have been doing it for a while, but it wears me out faster. I find that I’m not playing these seasons as much as I used to because I don’t have the energy to focus on all of these things at once anymore. insert old man yells at cloud meme
If Blizzard wants people to spend more time playing (and paying), pruning / unbloating mage will probably help this little subset of players do more.
