Orb Barrage Talent Rework Suggestion

Orb Barrage is an arcane talent:
“Arcane Barrage has a 10% chance per Arcane Charge consumed to launch an Arcane Orb in front of you at 100% effectiveness.”

Issues:

  • Resource Waste:
    In AoE especially, there are lots of moments where the valuable Arcane Charge refunds from the talent would be useful, but they are wasted because some other talent/ability has already refunded your charges. Sometimes you literally cannot play around this, as those other procs are naturally happening in your rotation. This is extremely frustrating in AoE, where every Orb feels really important to make use of.

  • Ninja Pulling
    Orb Barrage creates this very awkward dynamic where you need to constantly watch where your character is facing when you cast Arcane Barrage. As an instant cast spell, you often cast it while moving (repositioning or avoiding mechanics), so the fact it can proc orbs randomly means you can often find yourself shooting Orbs into unwanted directions.

Suggestion: Rework Orb Barrage.

"Arcane Orb is now off the global cooldown, and can stack up to 3 times.
Arcane Barrage has a 10% chance per Arcane Charge consumed to refund a charge of Arcane Orb."

This replicates the positive feeling of Orb Barrage (using Arcane Barrage can give you extra dmg/resource generation through more Orb casts), while mitigating the downside of resource wastage and ninja pulling. The difference here is that the player can choose when to cast the extra Orb’s. They aren’t randomly proccing when you are not in a situation to make use of them, nor are they shooting off into unwanted directions.

Although it adds extra (but off GCD) casts to overall gameplay, if you were to offer this to any Arcane Mage that plays dungeons… they would take this tradeoff in a heartbeat.

4 Likes

The current iteration is indeed problematic both because of the potential for unintended pulls even if you’re careful as well as the frequently wasted Arcane Charges. However, I think a much better solution would be to keep the automatic release and instead redesign Arcane Orb completely to make it fall on your target from above, like Meteor or Icy Comet but with a larger radius, rather than launch in the direction you are facing and travel along the ground.

It will also be the perfect opportunity to update its visuals because they haven’t been touched literally since the spell was first released at the start of WoD in 2014, a decade ago! The updated animation is even already in the game and has been for years but only available to NPCs. They could even add the special VFX from the Queen Azshara boss fight so that when the Orb hits the ground it cracks and releases a wave of arcane energy.

3 Likes

I like it. Especially the “off global” nature of orbs. Would give me greater control of them. But honestly, if this was the case I would macro orbs to barrage, so that every time I threw barrage I would auto throw an orb (until my charges were exhausted of course.) Which would give a much better ramp at the start of a fight. Come in slinging orbs/barrages, at the 40% refund rate could get maybe 6 or 7 in a row at the very start of a fight. Would be good stuff. I’m thinking more of AOE where each orb would be hitting multiple targets. In ST it wouldn’t be as hot.

1 Like

Sounds good to me, I like current barrage,but this also sounds good

Still thinking of this and it may be cool or problematic to be off global and three charges. This would mean I could instant cast all three charges. This would be incredibly hard to balance. Each of those orbs for spell slinger would generate splinters and probly cause an immediate splinter storm at the target in addition to strait triple damage from the orbs, so it’d be an absolute insane front loaded damage dealer. (I love it, but it may be too much)

I don’t know if they have such a thing as both off global cooldown, but with an internal cooldown, because that would work to stop insta-cast triple orbs.

I think they like the RNG percent aspect because they simply tweak one number and make it stronger or weaker.

2 Likes

I like this but I would honestly add one small caveat to make it feel more fluid being off GCD and castable while casting other spells. Off GCD offensive abilities feel pretty bizzare especially if its something cast so often, unless done like fireblast which feels great!

2 Likes

Yes! Just agreeing here in the off chance another reply will matter. =) I’m by no means a master at magery so I’m just going to add my two cents going on how it feels regarding group content. I’m not opposed to having to worry about positioning as far as the orb actually hitting the bad guys (although this is inconvenient for sure), but the worry over ninja pulling is sort of ruining my ability to enjoy group content. If I pull an unintended group alone I’ll deal with the consequences…but the anxiety over accidentally wiping a whole dungeon or raid party is enough to make me not do that type of content. And, of course, I must use that spell…so it’s either don’t use it and have no mana…or use it and deal with the constant anxiety. :heart: Pretty please fix because I love, love, love my arcane mage!

I’d prefer they just removed them entirely and did something completely different. Orbs are just another AOE trigger for cleaving higher damage spells. It’s part of the button bloat to “tune” a class feature.

Replace it with something like target explosions, where arcane energy erupts outward from the target and inflicts X amount to all surrounding enemies. Then it would be under players control and choice while still achieving the cleave feature. In addition they can retain proc abilities depending on how many enemies they hit.

1 Like

Yeah, my idea of having them drop from above and do splash damage aims at the same outcome but keeps the orb aesthetic since it’s been around for so long and if they used the updated version it would look really cool, not to mention it won’t take up any resources since the VFX for it already exist in the game files.

Changing it to work like Supernova would be fine too but they would need to create a brand new spell and frankly I don’t trust them with localized explosions and emanating wave spells, they’ve never gotten those visuals right, imo.