Nether tempest seems like a over kill keybind wise. They removed rune of power which was a good first step to reducing the bloat though
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I mostly feel it with Fire.
Maybe it’s the clunky playstyle that relies on crits, having to wait for Fireballs to land for the crit to count to use the pyroblast, weird AoE talents, too many buttons to push, too much effort for less DPS than other classes that doesn’t feel enjoyable. Oh, I had a bad streak of crits so my DPS sucked.
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I just can’t enjoy Fire. Combustion is my least favorite cooldown ability, and damage outside of the Combustion window is low. I have played Frost so long that it feels very natural to me. The base Arcane rotation is fine, but the stacking cooldowns don’t feel good. I’ve actually leveled three warlocks this expansion, and the damage toolkits of the three specs feel nice and smooth.
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the exact reason why I dont play Arcane its feels like a ton of build up and lots of buttons I hate radient spark but theres is also syphon storm, neather tempest, TotM, and the stupid gems that you have to use in a perfect order to do damage… kinda feels like a chore tbh
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Totally cool if you find Fire clunky and it’s not your cup of tea, but just FYI you shouldn’t ever be waiting for Fireball to land. It’s for sure gonna feel clunky if you’re doing that.
Easy or not it’s annoying as hell and easily the least intuitive and most obnoxious arcane rotation we’ve had in years and I’ve played since Legion.
Radiant Spark, Shifting Power, Temporal Warp, and Siphon Storm are big offenders.
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This right here! Just because it’s not hard doesn’t mean it’s fun. WoW in general is not a very difficult game. Most problem areas are due to annoyances not the level of difficulty.
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Totally cool for you to not find fire clunky, but I’m not sure how you do it without casting fireballs. Maybe you just have some special rotation simpler than the list that is recommended at icy veins.
I didn’t say not to cast Fireballs. I said you shouldn’t be waiting for them to land. Nothing in the Icy Veins guide or any other guide tells you to do that either.
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I probably shouldn’t have said it’s never been easier to play the spec than right now, because every spec takes time to master and become proficient at. What I meant to say is, I think the spec and class is at a good spot to start learning. I don’t any class should be so easy to just pick up and become good within 1 week of playing. I feel like that’s half the fun spending the time to learn a spec and knowing you’ve improved while also picking up tips and tricks in the smaller details of the rotations. I only started playing wow during eternal palace bfa so I’m just speaking from my experience.
Radiant spark definitely feels less impactful now then it did in shadowlands when you would try and combo 20 harmony stacks and a 4th stack radiant with barrage to do big crits compared to now we’re blasting most of the time unless it’s aoe. The window was much tighter back then compared to now and with rune removed it’s even more enjoyable. I know I’m like 1/1000 mages who can’t really say i don’t like the spec but i genuinely enjoy the hell out of it and that’s all of it. Im not a theory crafter or someone that’s got great ideas to improve the class so I just make the best of what we have. Even siphon storm I enjoy it looks cool as heck and most of the time you are using it because you’ve ran out mana and why not get a intellect buff after you’ve just charged yourself back to full that’s kinda cool. Now mana gem yeah that’s kinda annoying i guess, even though you can be lazy and macro trinket gem pot racial and barrage all into one key bind so you don’t even have to worry about mana gem unless the fight goes long enough and you have to conjure one 
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Same here, and I wonder how much of that plays into my enjoyment of a spec. I tend to try Fire and/or Arcane at some point in every expansion, but can never seem to enjoy it and always go back to Frost. Sadly, with the stat weight balance between specs that is becoming more difficult to do.
I’d also be interested to know what % of Mages doing end-game content (at any level) change specs frequently. I imagine that most Mages, particularly long-term Mages, tend to stick with the spec they know.
Which is weird, because Fire in Wrath is very simple. Literally 3 buttons - one being an instant-cast, and one being a DoT refresh. The thing is, it’s also a super fun spec to play. I think it’s partly because >50% crit means Pyros for days, but also because I enjoy the slower pace and not having to get a 12-button combo perfect to do damage.
Also with Evokers - I will say that despite being simple, Aug is pretty fun to play in content as well. No weird mechanics, pretty basic rotation with a couple of procs, build-spend resource. Realistically, the theory behind it is no different from Arcane or Frost - but in practice it has literally half the abilities to worry about. Evoker has a lot of issues, but dps rotation isn’t one of them.
I suspect you are right about this. Obviously I have no data and can only speak for myself, but even when Fire is at the absolute bottom of the DPS barrel I tend to still play it. I’ve never been able to get next to Arcane. I have made brief forays into Frost at times and I’ve enjoyed that when I do, but at the end of the day I usually come home to Fire.
It’s silly but if I’m being honest it’s partially because in my head canon she’s a Fire mage. It’s even in her name. It’s just what she is.
That’s certainly been the case for me. And not just with mage which has always been my main. In fact, I’d sooner make a new character of the same class if I was really serious about playing a different spec. For example I have 2 warlocks. A BE Destruction lock with the green fire aesthetic (who in my mind was a fire mage that turned to fel after Silvermoon fell) and now I have a Man’ari Demonology lock (who in my mind would have a completely different dynamic with their demons, especially the humanoid ones, than any other warlock race would).
If I had to guess I would say those of us who take RP a bit more seriously and who are more attached to our characters because we’ve played them for so long tend to have a harder time making changes because we’ve come to see every aspect of the character, including their spec, as intrinsic to them.
I’m mostly surprised there are still people playing mage when the devs obviously don’t care about that class.
People saying this class is fine are hard on the copium. Nobody enjoys a bloated class with 45 somewhat impactful abilities. You have to rotate to be below average regarding your performance compared to other DPS classes.
The only people who enjoy that garbage are contrarians or those who pretend to play a mage but are, in reality, players who don’t enjoy mages because they lost to RMP sometimes in the past.
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I would describe arcane playstyle as: Lots of extra steps to get to your damage.
Alternately, it could be described as the “Fishing” spec, since you spend most of the time fishing for CC procs
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I made a whole thread describing the issues with Arcane. Probably better to just link it.
I just don’t think Arcane is in a good place right now, even though it’s good numerically. Ironically the least enjoyment I’ve gotten from it in raids when it’s at its strongest. Probably because the biggest offenders are just massive force multiplier outliers that dominate the entire spec.
I play a different build in M+ that doesn’t have any of the talents I linked (except Shifting Power but what you gonna do though I just hit it on cooldown when my only major CD is Surge). Got 3K IO on it easily though I basically quit the expansion for now. It just sucks that it’s terrible on ST.
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Leave my class alone. Stick to your paladin. I do not want any of the dumbing down on my class. I like it complicated.
Mages need another look at because as it stands the class itself feels a bit too complex for what payoff there is.
I want Arcane to (somewhat) go back to the mana management spec it was once was and not having to juggle all these cooldowns. Siphon Storm, Radiant Spark and mana gem needs to go. Nether Tempest needs to switch talent rows and no longer must pick for ST.
I don’t like how RoF, CmS and GS feels mandatory (for ST anyways) which results in button bloat for Frost. I just want to spam IL and nothing more for peat sake! Shatter probably needs to go and FoF needs a redesign to where it procs less from frozen orb if it hits more than 2 targets. Shoot off a free IL for a small % of damage if FoF is at max charges (or something else entirely from my two suggestions). I would like the Fractured Frost and Cold Front talents to be replace by Glacial Fragments (torghast legendary power) and maybe an improved version in its place.
Fire needs to be far less reliant on Combustion but buff the crit chance for other fire spells to make up for it. Increase Phoenix Flames crit chance the more target it hits up to 3 targets and remove its GCD while combustion is active. Make crit for fire great again! SKB at max stack needs to reduce the cast time of pyroblast while combustion is active. Double down on how the Unleash Inferno talent works so that it can compete with SKB.
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I don’t think our standards for good specs should be devastation and aug, they are both incredibly simplistic specs (ignoring augs raid prep which is horrendous).
That’s actually the worst possible outcome. Losing large amounts of ST, cleave, and AOE to spec into the other severely hurts your specs viability in m+ and hurts your enjoyment of raid.
considering they are all used together in 45s intervals, there is no juggling required.
What you suggested before actually makes crit worse, if you buff the baseline crit chance on other spells (and make PF a guaranteed crit at 3t) you are massively decreasing the value of crit as a stat. We are heavily invested in crit atm though because of our tier set.
Arcane doesn’t have a complicated ramp up, its the easiest spec to play well. Generally when people say this they mean the opener, which just exists for mana efficiency, but is literally Evocate → Filler rotation for 12s → Arcane Surge Burn (which is scripted and never changes, learn it once. I’ll write it out for you - Radiant Spark → Nether Tempest → Arcane Surge → Arcane Barrage → Touch of the Magi → Arcane Blast x3). And then you do your filler rotation again. If you think thats rough to learn, its one of your two cooldown sequences in ST, where the second one just removes arcane surge and does one more arcane blast to consume radiant spark. Which again, never change.
That would be nice for trinkets, but would also hurt mage quite a bit on excelling at various raid fights, where now you can change your shifting power to align cooldowns far better. For instance, frost would be far worse on tindral without shifting power as it couldn’t align comet storm.
Ah yes, fishing for them just to cancel our arcane missiles early because they are balanced so poorly.
Radiant spark does in that it empowers you to use arcane blast 3x or 4x depending on your burn in a row. Otherwise its just Barrage → ToTM → your filler rotation. I find RS to be a nice change up from the filler rotation every 45s or so.
As for siphon storm, it existing doesnt really matter so I’m fine if they remove it.
what is this vanilla? Press a two button rotation and then every 2 mins use a cd that just increases your damage? Arcane power was horribly designed given it reduced your chance to get CC procs. I far prefer totm and arcane surge to it.
Simply because it was off gcd? Arcane surge gives us far more mana return than the equivalent reduction from arcane power, it generates a clearcasting, and doesnt impede our ability to generate more. I’m sorry, but arcane power was one of the worst designed buttons in the entire game.
Do you want every spec in the game to be a builder spender? Frost already is with GS given you instantly cast it once you hit 5 icicles (bit delayed in AOE), Arcane has a unique makeup, and homogenizing class design by forcing it into a more traditional builder spender would make it less satisfying.
I just want better sustained damage in pvp. Why does every other class seem to do better sustained damage? The only class I often see at the bottom of the meters after a solo shuffle match is sub. Everything else is lightyears ahead.