Please Blizzard, the recent changes to nether precision are not fun and are not being taken well by the mage community. Arcane mage was being praised in TWW due to how fun the playstyle seemed. Numbers aside, we were more impressed how it felt and didn’t care if its numbers were brought down. The recent changes to NP make you almost never want to barrage in any scenario and only arcane blast. Arcane blast spam is:
Not fun,
A boring looking spell,
Contradicts any and all changes that were made to make the play style different for arcane mage and just brings it back to a time when no one liked it. Please consider rolling back this change.
Many classes and specs double dip in regards to buffs, mage is not the exception. So to label it as an unintentional bug is odd whilst other specs are still and have been doing this for a long time.
I am guessing the Nether Precision stuff made the level 80 with Hero Talents gameplay feel better more specifically? Because on the Pre-Patch after having learned the NP playstyle and now switching over to the more simplified no spell-queueing playstyle I can’t say I noticed much of a change on my enjoyment of the spec, it’s just feels slightly more intuitive and less reliant of tracking stuff on my Plater.
Anyhow, I gotta somewhat agree with the AB spam stuff, I wish they would make Arcane Blast look more interesting, I would love if the spell had a projectile like Fire and Frost, it is indeed very boring to look at when you are casting it.
So I watched Preheat’s YouTube video about this change and yes he also confirms that you almost never want to barrage in any scenario with this change and all his previous TWW arcane mage videos are wrong now.
But a lot of us in this mage forum complain about dumping arcane charges in a rotation is a bad design and Blizzard needs to fix this design.
Well, so they kinda fixed it? Right?
I agree it will make the spec a bit more bland, but your argument that other classes double dip is not a valid point in this context. Double dipping in this context drops CHARGES, which adds the BS of building charges back up with ORB/AM. This is no longer an issue and I like that.
I am very impressed by the sheer number of players in the TWW Beta forums calling for NP revert, it’s incredible.
The OP is exactly correct. Please revert the NP change. The new play style for arcane is only fun because of the way NP was working. Arcane Blast spam is just not fun.
So then what’s the point of free orb procs when you barrage if you NEVER barrage? Blasting is not fun. Not only is it visually unappealing, but it literally contradicts any changes they made to arcane mage. The majority were having fun with the rework and I was one of them and they killed it.
Nether Precision’s latest change needs to be reverted or Blizzard needs to bring something else to solve the problem it created.
The gameplay centered on the constant use of Arcane Missiles and Arcane Barrage is much more fun and makes the specialization much more mobile and agile.
Arcane is a specialization that needs mobility.
Then you’re the minority. I don’t see how just arcane blasting and only barraging to not run out of mana is considered fun
#revertnetherprecision
What is this change everyone wants reverted? No one actually mentions what was changed, lol.
Edit: Oh this is about the double dipping of NP with spell queueing? Come on guys! It was obviously not intended and a bug that took an unnecessary amount of coordination and precision to execute. I am all for using Barrage more often but this isn’t the way. All of this casting of spells one millisecond before a buff expires is ridiculous.
What they need to do is kill the 4 Charge AB spam entirely and transfer the power from it to ABarr so that the ST default is AB to 4 Charges into ABarr. Just as the AoE default is AE to 4 Charges into ABarr. Anything short of that will not achieve the goal we all want which is to be rid of the endless AB spam.
I am sick and tired of relying on these gimmicks and abusing broken mechanics to make Arcane viable. They need to remove ALL of them to expose just how bad the spec is without them and force a comprehensible rework.
I think you might want to either go read the feedback forum entirely to fully understand the change, go to ALTER TIME DISCORD or do both.
It’s not just about the one buff from nether precision. It goes further than that and the answer is in both of those places.
I imagine it was because I had dropped Arcane by the time it only did viable damage through a gimmicky build with Kyrian Spark in late Shadowlands and didn’t picked it up again until this pre-patch, which is to say, I don’t have a basis for wanting a more complicated Arcane since all my time with Arcane beforehand was as the “braindead” spec.
But I don’t have any strong opinions, if they revert the NP changes I will be just as glad as if they don’t, I can understand that those that remained with the spec through it’s more rough patches as it tried to find an identity outside of AM spam would prefer to have some measure of complexity.
Revert or we go warlock next expansion 
You can stay mage now 
Blizzard are just embarrassing at this point. They fully acknowledged that it was a bug but caved in to player pressure and reverted the fix because it was the easiest way out, once again kicking the rework, that is all but inevitable now, further down the road.
Anyone who thinks they did it because they respect your feedback is deluding themselves. They only did it to shut down the loud criticism and make their lives easier in the process. The fact that most people don’t seem to be able to see the reality, or worse, just don’t care anymore is tragic.
By all means, enjoy your “win” but keep in mind that settling for crumbs hasn’t gotten us anywhere for years and won’t do so now. Until the entire spec is holistically reworked from the bottom up absolutely nothing will change for the better. The spec can’t continue to be held together by bugs, gimmicks, and clunky mechanics for yet another expansion in a row. Something has to give and right now that’s the players… /smh
clears throat
Again! If you’d actually read the feedback forum posts and join alter time discord you will see that arcane in dire need for a rework has been discussed!
Ty for listening to me ted talk. You are most welcome.
Edit: also, the main topic about arcane for months on the feedback forums and discord have also been about changing the spec to be more accessible to those not doing higher end content and new players have been discussed constsntly.
You really need to leave this side of the forum and join the discord and actually read the feedback on this site.
I know all of this already. My point was precisely that the devs are completely ignoring ALL of that other feedback and instead choosing to focus on the minutia like this bug to make their lives easier and to score easy brownie points with the players. And sadly it seems to be working given how many replies are thanking them instead of calling them out on it.
This reply stood out to me in particular in that regard. This person is either incredibly naive or otherwise trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes. There is no choice regarding “opting into complexity.” If the option exists the spec will be balanced around it which means that those who choose not to adopt the playstyle abusing this bug will be penalized not only by losing the extra damage that comes from it but also because everything else in the spec will be nerfed to compensate for the bug still being in place. If people don’t realize something this fundamental the fight is already lost and Blizzard have won.
On the topic of ABarr specifically, with the risk of repeating myself, if they wanted to better integrate ABarr into the ST rotation there are much better ways to do it than relying on bugs and gimmicks. For what it’s worth, I think we (and most mage players in fact) actually agree on more than we disagree. I am just much less willing to accept a compromise and settle for half measures than most because I’ve been doing it for 20 years with Arcane and, frankly, I am just fed up.
First, this is incredibly rude and promotes toxic behavior. I encourage you to refrain from speaking ill of other people just because you disagree with the points they make. And I don’t appreciate this attack on my character.
Second, this tells me that you didn’t fully understand why people wanted the change reverted. The request to be allowed to double-dip was never about damage, still isn’t. That was never encouraged nor promoted amongst mage community. It’s about rotational complexity and allowing some talents to have value when they otherwise wouldn’t, so let’s get that straight. I don’t care if it causes other aspects of the rotation to get nerfed. I’d prefer that they implement the double-dip in a tooltip or as a separate buff you get after consuming NP, and then tune around it.
Additionally, if you’re putting an emphasis on damage then you’re looking at the game all wrong, and are either playing with toxic people or are a toxic person. Yes, the game is about doing damage. But there’s loads of content that you can complete, enjoy, and do well in even without doing the absolute most damage or “being the best”. If you’re looking to your position on a damage meter, or your parse as a measure of your success or self-worth then that’s a personal problem and a self-imposed limitation that only you can rectify. Higher level content is more about doing the mechanics correctly rather than parsing 100. Your damage is irrelevant if you don’t complete the encounter.
Last point I’ll make, and this is not a dig at anyone, but it seems to me that most of the people who do not care for the double-dip are not doing the content where getting the most out of your rotation would matter. They’re not attempting to get CE, nor are they pushing keys for rating and title. And that’s okay! I’m not using this to say one is better than the other. Whatever you do to the enjoy the game and however you enjoy it is awesome! Play WoW, have fun. But the truth is that if you’re not pursuing or participating in those kinds of content, then omitting the double-dip from your rotation and “losing out on all that damage” will not prevent you from performing adequately enough to complete the content. You’ll be just fine. Anyone believing or promoting otherwise is promoting toxicity via fixation on damage/“being the best”. Blizz did not tune the bosses/dungeons around everyone being perfect and parsing 100. You and your friends can get AoTC or finish that key even without you double-dipping.
But most of the time if people are genuinely interested in improving their performance, they won’t mind nuanced things like this and would instead be appreciative of the information. If you don’t know where to go to get Mage info, you can go to Wowhead, IcyVeins, or Altered Time (Mage Discord).
At the end of the day, implementing the double-dip truly does promote choice and opt-in complexity, since there’s no one mandating that you do it (other than yourself). Some will be aware of it and still forget. Believing that it doesn’t promote choice, especially due to “lost damage”, is again a self-imposed limitation.
I hope I did not come off as combative or aggressive. Just wanted to try and share my piece, especially since you called me naive and accused me of misleading people.
I do hope you, and others, continue to enjoy the game and realize you don’t have to double-dip if you really don’t want to.
Have fun out there!
So I think most people think this reverting is a win, but its a very sad indication that Blizzard does not have the courage and competency to try to fix Arcane.
I think I am switching to Evoker, or just not play after my sub runs out again.
Approximately 25% (maybe more - I stopped keeping track) of all of the posts on the “Beta Feedback: Mages” thread came within 24 hours of the “bugfix” to Nether Precision. In almost 2 entire months, a full blown quarter of the comments came within one day of a specific change.
That is not minutia. That is a catastrophic failure that the community made sure Blizzard was aware of. And instead of holding their ground they actually addressed the concern.
You spend a lot of time on the forums complaining that Blizzard doesn’t listen to us, then when they finally respond to feedback you continue to complain. Stop cherry picking.
And yet somehow you’ve always talked about how you didn’t pick some of the meta talents (like Radiant Spark) because you didn’t like it. It’s almost as if you… opted out of complexity and were still able to play the game…