The new prismatic bolt spell looks fun/sounds fun. However the spell visual is really not unique. Why did they create another Arcane pulse? lol
Does anyone know how to optimize using it? does it need to be used on CD?
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My interaction with it has been… enjoyable. My one gripe is that it replaces Arcane Blast – which is really not enjoyable. I just want to keep blasting and use Prismatic Bolt when I feel like it.
It looks nothing like Arcane Pulse, wdym? It looks like a juiced up Arcane Barrage that explodes into the same spherical blast as Arcane Surge. I agree that it isn’t the most unique or imaginative thing they could have come up with but I think it looks fine. The main problem it has is the massive proc variance and all the awkwardness that adds to the rotation, not its visual.
You can tell the same people that made Glacial Spike replace Frostbolt were also responsible for this too. Prismatic Bolt is literally a purple Glacial Spike except with a lot more RNG.
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You are 100% correct on this. The merging and replacing of mage abilities is so absurd.
Arcane Explosion or Arcane Pulse? Can’t have both!
Frostfire/Frost Bolt or Glacial Spike? Can’t have both!
Arcane Blast or Prismatic Bolt? Can’t have both!
Ice Nova or Cone of Cold? Can’t have both!
I wouldn’t be opposed if it went on charges (like two) and then for each arcane salvo consumed, it’ll reduce the cool down by some seconds. They can tweak the amount needed, but I’m thinking:
Two charges at 60 second recharge each.
Reduce cooldown by 0.5 seconds for every salvo (so 25 would be 12.5 seconds removed from Prismatic Bolt recharge).
This way, you remove the RNG factor, you still have a powerful cooldown, it won’t feel crummy if you go on a streak without procs (I’ve gone FOUR full 25 salvos without a single Prismatic Bolt proc), and most importantly, THE PLAYER is in control.
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What? Why is it absurd? It’s just a more powerful version of another spell.
It feels clunky. As an example, the transistion from FrostFire/Frost Bolt to Glacial Spike (although I hate the merging of the spells), have the same cast time.
The transition from Arcane Blast to Arcane Pulse is significantly longer. More than that, to me, I believe the merging of spells for the sake of saving key-bindings, is counter-intuitive to the class.
At either rate man, I’m happy you are okay with it, but to me, I just do not enjoy seeing abilities removed, pruned or merged for the sake of player simplicity. If they are going for simplicity, then what was the point of the single button assist thing?
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It looks like a watered down version of Arcane Pulse or Arcane Explosion to me 
. Arcane Pulse should be called Arcane Drop or Arcane Dump, lol. I don’t know why we don’t have a talent that just turns it into an AoE blast.
I personally don’t mind the current implementation. I just look at like the spell upgrades into a more powerful version of the spell instead of replacing it. A spell upgrading to a more powerful spell temporarily has been done before in many games, including WoW itself - thinking demon hunter here and meta form or shadow priest and void volley. Nothing novel or out of place for a spell to upgrade for me.
I will say I do like that in frost the cast times are the same. Rarely would you want to use a AB instead of the massive hitting PB, but there is some niche situations like just trying to finish off a low health mob quick, AB would be faster. That said, 99.99% I’m gonna wanna full send the way more powerful Prismatic Bolt.
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That’s not a niche situation though, it happens all the time in the open world or when doing solo content. If your target has like 20k hp left and PBolt has procced and replaced your AB you’re forced to waste it to finish them off unless you have a CC proc in which case you waste that instead. We literally have no other spammable spell besides AB left, everything else is either a proc or a cooldown. The only reason it isn’t as much of an issue in group content is because you can just let someone else finish off the mob and keep the PBolt proc for the next trash pack. That’s a bad trade off for not having to use a separate button and not good design.
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Well, I wasn’t using arcane in Midnight at all. I don’t think Prismatic Bolt is the reason I’m playing it now, but I’m at least glad it got some changes. Meaning someone looked at it. It’s jarring to be rapid casting missiles and blasts then to feel like I got Curse of Tongues to cast Prismatic Bolt though, lol.
Meh. I find a lot of times you think a mob is almost dead but it actually takes 2 more blasts to get the job done, and you would’ve been just well to cast one prismatic bolt.
We have other spells too. Can hit them with Orb or a couple uncharged barrages - if they’re low enough these will work fine, and if not low enough, well PB it in the face.
I actually used zero charge ABarrs to finish off a mob last night because I wanted to save my PBolt for the rare that had just spawned and it took like 5 casts because it deals so little damage with no charges or salvo stacks. Fun times! 
Well, there’s so many different scenarios but as someone that leveled as arcane, solo’d delve ?? as arcane, and done plenty of solo content it just doesn’t play where I’m wasting time using 5 barrages on something to save PB.
In that situation I just would’ve pulled that mob with me to the rare to cleave it down, or used invis to get out of combat to go to rare, or just used PB to finish it off knowing I’ll get plenty of PB procs when I start on the rare.
So playing slow and barraging is a choice, but not the only gameplay choice that would warrant separating out abilities cause you just had to have blast there.
I don’t really mind Prismatic Bolt replacing Arcane Blast in this case, because it’s a very high-priority ability that should make you immediately interrupt whatever you’re doing to cast it.
Besides being our highest-damage ability, it also gives us 4 Arcane Charges, 4 stacks of Arcane Salve and Abstraction, which immediately enables Arcane Missiles.
So once Prismatic Bolt procs, anything you cast instead of it is basically wasting resources. In particular, if you use Arcane Barrage, you can potentially even lose an additional Prismatic Bolt activation.
The only thing I could see us using after Prismatic Bolt procs, instead of Prismatic Bolt itself, is Arcane Missiles once we get the Season 2 set bonus.
As for this version of Arcane in 12.1, I’m actually very happy with what I’ve seen so far. A lot of the issues the spec has had since the beginning of the expansion have been addressed. This is one of the best versions of Arcane I’ve played.
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Gotta reduce the button bloat so they can bring WoW to consoles and stick it on the game pass. Can’t have more hotkeys than a controller can feasibly use.
(And before someone gets upset with me - I do NOT think it’s a healthy change for the game. I’d rather Microsoft just make an MMO controller with 12 thumb buttons the way some mice are designed.)
My biggest issue with it is how our flow changes. When the player controls the upgrade, it’s not that bad. But semi-randomly replacing spell A that takes X seconds to cast with spell B that takes X+Y seconds to cast is a rhythm interruption.
It’s going to get a lot of players frustrated that they accidentally interrupted a cast or got hit by an AoE because they thought they were casting a different spell and made the wrong decision. Yes, this does technically fall into the “skill expression” category, but “skill expression” should feel rewarding when you do it well instead of feel punishing when RNG hurt you (in my opinion).
My second issue with spell replacements is the way arcane is designed around buff / cooldown stacking. With the design as is, there’s a chance that reasons will arise where you want to delay casting Prismatic Bolt (build up more buffs, damage amp phase, etc.) Right now those cases are minimal (there’s nothing in our baseline kit that would make us want to cast Blast over Bolt that I can see), but I’ve been here long enough to know that come next expansion Blizzard will forget to double check those use cases. They’ll give us some kind of “Casting arcane blast increases the damage of your next prismatic bolt” mechanic that we won’t be able to min-max because we can do only one or the other.
All that said, so far I like Prismatic Bolt more than the dot we had previously. I’d much rather they keep this Apex talent and iterate on it than try to make our touch do more touching.
I am one those people. 
Most of the focus, and rightly so, has been on the bad side of the proc variance when you go for long stretches without a proc but I think it’s equally frustrating to get enundated by procs. You can easily get into a situation when your Clearcasting procs are capped, you’ve got a Prismaric Bolt active, and you’re also at or near full Salvo stacks all at the same time and then you get forced into making these ridiculous split second decisions in the back of your mind on which proc to prioritize and which to effectively waste all the while trying to focus on mechanics and situational awareness. It’s messy, it feels clunky and just isn’t well designed.
Sir, this is a Wendy’s! 
I like prismatic bolt but it DOES NOT need to have a cast time of 2s….no spell should especially if they aren’t gonna deal a lot of damage….
It does deal a lot of damage though, it hits harder than Arcane Surge, much harder.
It still doesn’t need to be on a 2s+ cast time, it’s clunky and slow in the rotation.
Last season the only spell I was casting that didn’t consistently hit harder than surge per cast (not per instance of damage) was Arcane Blast.
Surge’s cast time is also not appropriate, especially for the amount of damage it deals.